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GRIAN.
At the starting line, Grian hung from the edge of the world.
Engine humming, wheel-and-toe with a shoddily painted white line on dark, cracked asphalt. That streak of white— streaked black by burnt rubber soles and tires alike— was the only thing separating the dark nothingness stretched ahead of him. Like lightning cracking a night sky in two, it was the only reminder there was a sky at all. The void of an unsuspecting world asleep, of a race yet to be won. Nothing but him and the purr of his engine.
Nothing but that hunger, and the way it ached him as if it belonged to him.
It might as well have. That endless black, the faintest flicker of starlight Grian can glimpse through his downed visor. That night was an endless, hungry thing. And in the center of it all, smothered somewhere beneath the smog: the city, beating like a heart. Concrete rib cages. Pulsating neon lights in time with his heartbeat. Venous, twisting roads that hum with the rumbling of metal and gasoline. Smog or not, Grian didn’t need to see it to taste it— that heartbeat, that electricity, that lightning.
It might as well have been lighting, the way Grian’s nerves jolted. The way his hand twitched on the throttle, gloved fingers clenched tight to keep from a false start.
To his right, the other bike roared to life. Wheezing exhaust. The wind pushed the gritty cloud across Grian’s visor. The stench of gasoline stung his nose, ears, and mouth. Grian breathed it in greedily. He savored its familiar burn. A sweaty, fog-chewed exhale from the city’s gullet, ready to swallow him whole. Because hunger— this kind, the kind that brought a man here to the starting line in the first place— was a contagious thing.
It was an itch he couldn’t scratch. Not without his bike roaring beneath him, the world at his back. Not without the telltale snap of a crowbar against asphalt.
Grian did not look at his opponent; he didn’t need to. A cocky smile like that could be felt from anywhere in the world, let alone six feet. Anger threatened to swell the base of Grian’s throat shut; the next time those bastards smiled it’d be with blood coming from between their teeth.
The anticipation had him aching. Like each second he spent with a foot balancing him and his bike was another he spent being hollowed out, lungs, ribs, tendons all gutted from the cavern in his chest. All that remained was his heart, racing and pounding in his ears like hell was at his heels.
Grian shut his eyes and let the gasoline-slick air kiss his cheeks and whisper victory in his ear. In his ears rang the tinny voices of radio announcers, the subtle cheering of faraway fans tucked high and wide in the stands. It was practiced, the way the tension swelled. A perfect mimic of the hundreds of broadcasts he’d heard before, tucked under the covers with his radio antenna tenting the bedsheet above his head.
It was as clear in his head as it’d been those nights: The excitement in the air, the crackle of a live radio fighting for airspace. The thumping of a wild crowd’s feet, angry, belligerent bettors, the tangible, repressive heat of a midwest summer as if it could reach out through tinny speakers and scorch him. Excitable commentators, fierce jockeys, a few pretty Gs laid down on America’s favorite stallion.
Bike purring, nerves reeling, Grian’s fingers rested unsteadily on the throttle. His bike bucked with the impatience of a racehorse ready to tear free of the derby gates.
“Racers, ready?”
Grian finally opened his eyes.
The starter— Jimmy, a boy Grian’d come to call brother— crossed that white line. He walked, crowbar clutched in pale fingers, until he stood in front of the two bikes. The night’s cool breeze pushed his floppy blonde hair off his forehead, revealing a pair of dark, blank eyes.
This was it. Grian’s breath rattled inside of his helmet. It echoed like distant cheering, like racing hoofbeats.
“On your marks.” Jimmy raised that crowbar over his head. A white and black checkered handkerchief was tied to the neck of it. Those dark eyes locked with Grian’s through the visor.
“Don’t do this. Please,” Jimmy had begged. He’d clutched Grian by the front of his jacket, his thumb resting over the three-hearted patch resting over his single one. There’d been tears in his eyes, but they both ignored them. Jimmy out of embarrassment, Grian out of spite. “It’s suicide.”
There the edge of the world dangled— out on a dark, unraveling thread ahead of that white starting line. Where it ended and began anew, all in the breadth of his hand. Where all it took was a bike and the wind to be somewhere else, somewhere else, to let the city and the smog and the nothing beat in time around him in lightless, formless blurs of time. And all of it was in his reach. All in the space it took to wrap his hand around the throttle. To feel the clutch pulled tight like rigid, stiff tendons.
“Get set,” Jimmy called.
The crowbar jerked in the hair. Grian’s muscles unspooled as a clamber of feverous cheers erupted from behind him. He settled into his seat, back lax and arms posed on his handlebars.
“Don’t worry.” Grian had forced Jimmy to let him go. He held his brother’s wrist with one hand, not tight enough to leave a physical mark, but enough to remember. Like sunspots from staring up at the clear sky too long. “It’s only suicide if I lose.”
Jimmy’s eyes had fluttered, his mouth had flapped like a fish. If he doubted Grian— which of course he did— he did not argue.
“Go!”
The crowbar struck the ground, the sharp metallic ring racing through Grian’s ears and down the length of his spine like a stab of electricity.
He burst from the startling line like he was born to do it. Maybe in a way he was.
He, like the vicious rumble of the bike’s engine, hungered. A kind of appetite satiated only by the burning of rubber on asphalt, black marks scorched into cracked asphalt. His bike jerked alive of its own accord, it seemed like, suddenly roaring and churning and burning rubber beneath him until the ringing of the crowbar striking the ground was lost to the roar of the wind, the churning of metal.
Each neon sign, each worn-to-bone concrete graveyard, each precious second all blurred into one incomprehensible blip of experience. It blurred into excitement, into the cold air biting at him. It melted until each sensation— anger, memory, freedom— became indiscernible. Insignificant. Until they were nothing and there was nothing but Grian and the asphalt barreling out ahead of him like the endless edge of the world and the insatiable rumble of his engine beneath him. The heat of overworked metal, the taste of burning fuel.
It was easy to hand himself over to it. Even easier to lose himself entirely within it. To let his hands whisk away from the handlebars and hang in the air above his head instead, a horse galloping or a bird with its wings outstretched wide and healthily. Race or no race, the feeling never got old: the swooping sensation in his gut as if the world itself flipped on its axis. As if he was, for the first time in his life, truly untouchable. Invincible.
But everything came crashing back with a fierce lurch in Grian’s chest the moment his opponent’s bike lurched out a few feet ahead of his.
Grian wrenched his wrist around the throttle, and his bike bucked and sputtered, a sentient thing rebelling against its limit. A reminder of what was at stake. Grian reigned it and himself in tight, thigh muscles clenched tight on either side of the chassis. There was a balance to riding. It wasn’t about mastery or even control. It was about submission. Trust. It obeyed him, and he obeyed it. Just another few inches and—
The distance closed. His front wheel snapped at the heels of the rear wheel ahead of him.
He tugged on the throttle. His opponent— some wannabe prodigy swathed in blood-red leather, no more a local name than Grian— swerved his hog to cut him off. It was a bulky thing painted in a chrome-black that, without the coy blinking of its red taillights, might’ve disappeared into the darkness.
Grian hissed. The sound was lost to the biting wind.
Grian pitched his weight right and the bike, by extension, followed. Sparks flew, his front fork grinding against his opponent’s rear rim. The hog gave an uneasy wobble but did not falter. Teeth grit, jaw clenched tight, Grian held his breath as he tried again. This time he tossed most of his body-weight into it. His bike lurched— too much and even the horse will buck you off, the derby commentators whistled low in the rushing blood in Grian’s ears— and sparks bit at his exposed forearms as the rim of his front wheel scorched his opponent’s tire.
It almost worked, too.
But he hadn’t realized how far they’d already come. How much time he’d already wasted chasing the high of flying.
Suicide, Jimmy had called it.
The crypt.
The road narrowed. Four sprawling lanes suddenly cut down to one winding one: a man-and-disaster-made stricture in the abandoned highway by collapsed buildings and rusting cars over a decade old. Above them, a street block’s worth of skyscrapers cracked in two like candy bars. All that held them together and prevented them from collapsing in on the remaining lane of asphalt was a nougat of braided rebar and cheap, brittle caulk.
The makeshift tunnel trapped the heat of burning rubber and burning gas inside with them. All Grian could taste was the fuel and his own sweat from his upper lip. Exposed, live wires and jagged metal piping reached down for them as they careened through, bumper to bumper. Wheel to wheel.
Grian ducked his head low. Tried to remember to hold his breath.
His opponent’s momentum swung a large braided cord, assisted by a quick flash of a gloved hand. Just as fast, it snapped back at Grian. With a hiss, he jerked his bike to the side. He had no choice but to collide with a concrete barrier to his left. The chassis ground against it; the outer pants tore, a painful heat racing up the length of his shin and knee.
Better than an electrical cord to the face, but still a nightmare to ride with.
He struggled to reign in his racing heart. Sweat gathered at his nape, fogged the edges of his visor.
As suddenly as they plunged in the crypt, they erupted on the other side like bullets from a smoking gun.
Two miles to downtown.
The city’s skyline loomed above them, large and hungry and endless against the blank night sky. Lights and unfulfilled promises as far as the eye could see. The road opened up again, the city’s lungs finally expanding to draw in a deep, desperate breath. This was it. One short tunnel emptied them out into unsuspecting downtown.
Neon lights blazed, colorful streaks of air around them— festering, a secret undoubtedly spelled in their dots and dashes— when Grian and his opponent crossed the bridge into the city. It overtook them. Swallowed them in.
It felt like light-years apart when he stood on the opposite end of the tunnel, when the crypt was all that stood between his neighborhood and theirs. It felt like the empty nothingness sky was closer than they ever were. Brightly-lit obnoxious billboards with silhouettes of beautiful women, dazzling teeth, and sparkling drinks. Red-haired CEOs with pale skin, well-fed cheeks, cherry lipstick, and promises for a better, healthier tomorrow spelled in bold fluorescent letters.
The first intersections were empty, the city still asleep on its outskirts, pedestrian lights blinking with all the malaise of half-past 2AM. Twin red lights winked with disapproval when they raced past. One intersection, then the next, then a sharp turn towards the heart of downtown. Where nightlife still thrived in the eyes of stop-lights and the stench of alcohol pouring from bar doorways. Grian tasted the ghost of ethanol. The city breathed him in deeper.
The black hog jerked on its wheels. Precious feet of gain lost, just like that, and all for a drunk pedestrian-draped in the road. She shouted and leapt out of the way. Her heels caught on the curb as she fell back into her date and dragged the poor bastard down to the sidewalk with her.
Grian snagged the millisecond of opportunity. His entire body went rigid, skin rippling with adrenaline and the night’s freezing air. He pushed his bike to its limit, front wheel skidding in a slick of oil before hurtling ahead several feet. His opponent was finally at his back, wheel-to-wheel, neck-to-neck.
Somewhere, sirens sang. A distant sound, a near promise.
Not much longer. Hold the lead. Hold it.
Sometimes, he couldn’t tell if the words belonged to himself or the derby announcers.
They hurtled towards the last intersection before the final turn. The finish line was close enough to taste, Grian flying to the edge of the world faster than he could imagine it continuing, faster than he could imagine how sweet this victory would taste. How much glee he’d get from waving a scrap of that red jacket in Jimmy’s face with a bitter “I told you so” scalding his tongue.
Oncoming headlights prickled his eyes. The black hog wavered, hugging the right curb to avoid the impending night traffic. Grian did not move. He jerked the throttle, gloves hot and unbearably itchy.
He barrelled head-first towards the two oncoming cars. A battered minivan and a sports car.
Like clockwork, they swerved. The minivan one way, narrowly avoiding clipping Grian’s road-burned leg by a hair, and the sports car the other. It was the sportscar Grian banked on, and it did not disappoint. The driver laid on the horn, an ear-piercing wail that was drowned out by the roar of Grian’s engine. In an attempt to dodge it swerved right, sleek silver paint reflecting every neon-light on the square like a mirror. But the driver overcorrected. The sports car spun out like a high-speed disco ball until it crashed into the curb on the right side.
Right into the black hog’s path.
The trunk crumpled, metal pliant as aluminum foil, as Red-Jacket drove straight into it. Glass shattered. Somewhere, a lady screamed.
Grian didn’t stop to watch his body tumble like a rag doll over the car’s windshield.
The night dragged sluggishly into almost-morning, and yet bikers kept trickling in, one after the other.
Grian didn’t recognize half the folks coming up to clap him on the back and congratulate him on a race well won until they were red in the face. Either from pride or drink. Grian wouldn’t dismiss either as a very real possibility. All he knew was that several came up to greet him, but none of them were Jimmy. Still, each one made Grian equally giddy and dizzy with pride, his smile sloppier by the hour and his arm heavy as lead from the amount of times he thrust his newest prize in the air. Not that it would matter much by morning— later morning, anyway, when he was sober and nursing a gnarly headache.
Joel sat like a sentinel at Grian’s side. A drunken, loose-canon sentinel, at that, but he was loyal in the way his ass remained glued to that peeling vinyl. His dark hair frizzed in the humidity of the bar, so many sweating, drunken bodies crammed into one tiny place. The low-green and pink lights made his skin a sickly color, but the chalky green stripe jumped out of his hair. With the swings of the music he tossed himself side to side, jostling Grian’s shoulder and nearly spilling his drink on more than one occasion. He was small, not an inch or so taller than Grian himself, but with a musculature that screamed he wasn’t to be messed with. Each crash of his shoulders against Grian’s felt like a second dose of whiplash all over again.
As if that wasn’t enough, he threw drink after drink down his gullet with the same heedlessness with which he raced. The boy would get himself killed—Grian was sure— one of these days. It was up to Joel or God or whoever it was that decided whether it was the drinking or the racing that’d do him in.
Through a bubbly hiccup, Joel muffled a laugh by biting his knuckles and leaning his bony skull on Grian’s shoulder. “Lemme see that trophy again.”
Grian didn’t even know— or remember— the guy’s name, but the dark leather was nice enough, he supposed. Grian’d made sure to cut it from his opponent’s chest, taking the suit-tie patch with it. Poor guy’d been too coiled with pain to really notice. At least one broken leg and half a dozen bruised ribs.
Grian thudded his empty glass on the table in favor of twisting the square of leather in his hands. He thumbed the thick, embroidered edges of the patch, lips pursed and blood buzzing.
That bastard didn’t deserve to wear it anyway.
Joel thumbed at it. His breath reeked of tequila. “Nice leather,” he drawled. “Who’d they steal that from, y’think?”
“Doesn’t matter.” Grian’s grin stretched without his consent, pulling his chapped lips painfully taut. “Not like they’re gonna poke around here much anymore.”
“Fucking finally.”
The corner of Grian’s mouth twitched. “You’re welcome.”
“Yeah, uh-huh. Where’s Jimmy?” Joel blubbered. He snapped his head up and turned it on a swivel, like those telescopes from the top of a submarine in those spy movies that he and Jimmy loved so dearly.
“Why don’t you go find him,” Grian mumbled, raising his near-empty glass just to have something to clank his teeth against. It hurt, a dull ringing filling his skull, but the mouth-watering pain distracted him from his brother’s absence.
Whatever Joel huffed out, Grian had no hopes of understanding it. His words were tangled and slurred and vindictive, which didn’t mean much when it came to Joel. He stumbled over himself to get out of the booth, shoving aside others who’d gathered to peer over Grian’s shoulder at the scrap of leather and gossip over which rival gang member would come scraping by for a chance at Grian’s jacket next. If his ringing ears hadn’t deceived him, he heard someone put five bucks on a Coral Kid taking Grian’s patch next.
Fat fucking chance.
“You haven’t made a tab, y’know,” someone said against the shell of his ear, breath warm and damp. Bony elbows dug into his shoulder blades.
Grian’s skin prickled. Even if it weren't for her voice, or the familiar weight of her arms folded across the back of his shoulders, he’d recognize the scent of brandy on anyone. She was the only one that drank the putrid stuff.
“Hello to you too,” Grian said, voice clumsier than he cared to admit. He tilted his head and spread the fabric out neat and flat on the table. “Where’ve you been?”
“Who d’ya think’s pouring all your goonie’s drinks?” Pearl’s laughter tickled the sensitive skin of Grian’s ear. The protrusion of her chin dug into the soft, fleshy spot where his shoulders and neck met. He cringed, thunking his head against hers. She didn’t budge.
Grian hiccuped, a laugh tumbling out of him faster than he could realize what it was that he was even laughing at.
“This is where you say thank you.” Pearl dug her chin in harder, then hesitated a second too long. “Figured you’d cut a bloody piece.”
Her judgement tasted about as savory as oil. Grian cringed.
“He got off lucky, y’know.” His eyes fell to his prize. He tugged at a loose thread at the corner. “A broken leg and some change. Not bad.”
“You couldn’t have won it straight?”
The way Pearl said it, it sounded like it was meant to be a question that got abandoned halfway there. As if along the way she’d figured the answer out for herself. A nasty habit of hers, knowing what Grian was thinking before he did. It wasn’t fair.
“Straight,” Grian scoffed. “He should’ve— I dunno— dodged.”
“Dodged,” Pearl deadpanned. “An F40?”
Sober, less victory-enrapt Grian might’ve laughed at that. He’d have understood that Pearl was Pearl, and as long as he drank and slept under her roof he’d have no choice but to heed her every whim and criticism. Even when her words were as dull-sharp as the stab of her elbows against his back.
“That Crook tried to kill me in the crypt,” Grian said, but the words tasted stale. “Threw a live wire right at my head.”
Pearl’s eyes briefly fanned over him, making a show of analyzing the top of his head to the tips of his scuffed, peeling combat boots. “And not a scratch on you.”
Grian hid the roll of his eyes behind a hefty swig of alcohol that stung more coming back up in a choking burp than it did going down. At this point there was more alcohol in his veins than blood. Grian was okay with that.
Jimmy still wasn’t here.
He watched the door.
Pearl hummed against his ear, as if she hadn’t heard him at all. “Where is Jimmy?”
“Will you stop that?”
“Think he’s still mad at you?”
Grian forcibly swallowed a groan. “He’s got no reason to be. I did what I had to do.”
“You really think the Crooks pulled off a stunt like that?” The way Pearl said it was in the way she said most things— dripping with a doubt dripping with so much potent condescension it nearly shocked Grian from his buzz entirely. It was difficult to breathe around her when she got like this: righteous and wise.
There was only so much she could know from behind a bar. Sure, BigB was a reliable fountain of information that streamed in from all different places— the Crooks in the east, their fellow neighbors in the west, the city folk up north past the crypt, and last but definitely least the shorelines in the south. But Pearl wasn’t out there night to night, day to day.
She hadn’t smelled the smoke. She hadn’t lost the cash stuffed in rotting mattresses or the marks in the doorframe that measured Grian, Jimmy, and Joel’s heights over the years. She hadn’t hand-picked through the charred skeleton of the safe house in case there had been any poor bastards trapped inside when someone set it alight. She hadn’t been the one to sob with relief in the aftermath, knelt in the same soot staining her cheeks and residual smoke scorching her lungs.
“Careful, little brother,” Pearl said. Grian felt Pearl’s grin more than he could see it, the swell of her cheek pressed against the pulsepoint of his neck. Then she reached over him, tipping over a bottle she’d seemingly pulled from thin air to top off his class with a few fingers of glossy amber liquid. “You’re a victor today. Best to look like it, hm?”
She tapped under his chin with the bottle.
“You mean drink like it,” Grian corrected flatly. His buzz was a distant, tinny thing. Voices from a radio drowned out by the bar’s laughter and clashing and glasses clinking violently against teeth. Funny. Seconds ago it’d all sounded like music. But now it was just noise. His ears rang.
Regardless, he picked up his glass and choked down Pearl’s disgusting brandy with a strangled cough. He blamed it on the copper taste on his lips, the taste of gasoline and blood that didn’t belong to him. The droning in his ears, if he allowed his eyes to glaze over and unfocus, sounded too similar to the strangled screaming of a downed rider, clutching his twisted leg and begging for help as Grian cut a hole in his jacket.
Pearl withdrew, bony elbows and all, and patted Grian on the shoulders. “Congrats,” she sing-songed all the way around the booth as she retreated to the bar.
The brandy’s sickly aftertaste roiled like bile on Grian’s tongue. Seriously he didn’t understand how she stood the stuff, but it only took a few seconds for the warmth to swirl in the tight-knot forming in his stomach. It couldn’t have been more than a few seconds that that warmth skyrocketed to his brain, his cheeks fuzzy and tight. He sinks deeper into the booth with a pleased sigh, head hung back. The vinyl creaked against his pants and leather jacket.
His eyes nearly fell shut. But through the cacophony of singing men and women and a bottle smashing somewhere by the blaring jukebox— yet another expense to be added to Grian’s bottomless tab, no doubt— Grian heard the bell above the door ring once.
He jerked his head up. He’d hoped for a flash of shaggy blonde, sheepishly late to yet another celebration from hours of talking to himself in-and-out of coming around. But the piece of delicacy leaning favorably in the doorway was a welcome, though unexpected, sight.
Grian elbowed his way out of the booth.
Whatever flavor chapstick Scar had on was the most deliciously irritating thing Grian ever tasted.
Against Pearl’s brandy there wasn’t much of a competition, yet it lingered. Clung to him like a second skin, the bitter aftertaste carrying over even when Scar kissed him so hard his vision splotched around the edges. It was trying to drown Scar out, scrub Grian clean like Jimmy often tried against Grian’s road rash with a tried-and-true rag doused in rubbing alcohol and a set jaw. It stung like a bitch and it hurt now, especially when Scar reopened an old cut on Grian’s bottom lip.
“Hey,” Grian hissed, fisting a warning hand in Scar’s shirt. A ridiculous, pillowy silk shirt that felt like it’d tear if he so much as dug his fingernails in it too hard. It was striped— hard to tell which colors in the Oyster’s bathroom with flickering lights that washed everything a sickly green— and it fell open at Scar’s collarbone and upper chest with a dizzying precision.
Scar chuckled an airy, “Oops, sorry,” that Grian promptly swallowed down.
He hummed, a low content sound in the back of his throat that was drowned out by the music leaking in through the crack in the bathroom door. He curled his fist in the back of Scar’s hair, holding him tighter and closer. As if that was even possible.
What was that taste? Peach? Vanilla?
Whatever it was, it was sweet and soft and pliant. Something Grian could eat his fill of and never complain of a stomach ache, allowing the sugar-rush to go straight to his head and belly and drive him crazy. Not that Scar needed any help in that department. It didn’t matter that Grian could feel a nauseating rumble of bass through the floor, up his knees, snaking through his ribcage. It didn’t matter that it drowned the natural rhythm of his own heart— a weak mimicry of his bike under him, engine flipping over. An artificial, exogenous excitement injected straight into his veins.
The closest thing to drugs Grian could find himself hooked on.
Not that it’d be any less dangerous.
It didn’t matter that his breath stunk brandy or that the stench of toilet bleach stung his nostrils every time he parted an inch to catch his breath. None of it could matter when he had Scar like this: long, tanned neck prickling with nipped bruises, eyes glazed over and half-lidded and lips parted in pouty anticipation each time Grian had the audacity to pause for breath. The sight teetered precariously on the edge of indecent and obscene.
As sudden as a sharp intake of breath, it was too much.
Scar dragged his head up as if it weighed twenty pounds to chase Grian’s mouth. Grian stopped him with a hand over his eyes. Scar’s head hit the stall door again with a soft thud and a soft, wounded sound that made Grian’s stomach twist.
At this point he couldn’t be confident it was Scar or the brandy that was starting to make his stomach turn sour.
“Stop that,” Grian huffed. His words were still tripping one over the other, like someone had tied their shoelaces together. The taste of dishwater alcohol and Scar’s breath battled in Grian’s mouth. “Just— ugh.”
“Stop what?” Scar’s eyelashes tickled Grian’s palm. The bastard was still smiling. His lips were shiny and swollen. Grian had to look away to keep them from dragging him back into the whirlwind.
Because somehow it was always as easy as that; Grian there one second, feet firmly planted, and then gone the next. It was all too easy to be swept up into Scar’s typhoon, or whatever the hell it was that made it hard for Grian to stay away. Despite his better instincts.
Grian tried to decide what it was exactly he wanted Scar to stop doing.
He landed on a curt, “Pouting.”
“Well.” Scar licked his bottom lip. “It’s not like you've even let me say anything.”
That’s the point, Grian thought. But his lips ached and his head swam too much to say much of anything. He withdrew his hand and manhandled Scar out of the way in the same breath. Scar let him, dutifully moving aside. The stall door swung on a single creaky hinge and clattered against the wall where overlapping phone digits were carved and paired with initials and broken heart etchings.
Grian, with what he could only later call a drunken stumble once his inebriety and pride faded in tandem come tomorrow, moved to the line of sinks. One large mirror rimmed with pulsing, faulty lights offered a tousled, lip-bloody reflection Grian cared little to look at. Hair hanging in his face, he ducked his head and scooped as much bitter tap water as he could manage into his mouth.
Water, tasting of blood, tumbled like ice cubes in Grian’s mouth. He spat it out only when the residual burn of brandy faded from his nostrils and all that remained was his own stale breath.
The cut on his lip stung.
“Who was that guy?”
Scar’s reflection loomed behind him in the mirror. Its distorted middle made the man look taller than he actually was, like his head almost brushed the ceiling tile. And that stupid shirt— looked as if he’d let it fall from Grian’s manhandling, his entire shoulder now falling out of the gaping neckline.
“What guy?” Grian raised an eyebrow at him.
“The one all over you in the booth.” Scar waved a hand over an imaginary set of bangs on his forehead. “With the green hair.”
“Joel?” Grian choked on a laugh. “You’ve gotta be joking. What’re you, jealous?”
“Maybe.” The smile on Scar’s stupidly handsome face said he was anything but.
“You talk too much,” Grian said, bracing himself on the sink with one pale hand and wiping his mouth with the other. He kept his eyes low, focusing on Scar’s exposed collarbone. “Anyone ever tell you that?”
“Oh, yes, of course,” Scar said without missing a beat, a peppiness to his voice that made Grian’s heart jump in his chest as if it was a stone skipping across water. “Lots of times.”
He strode forward, only taking three steps to reach the sinks. He leaned in as close as he could without his nose touching the glass, taking a few fingers to tousle the frizzy swipe of hair lifted from his face. He made no move to straighten his shirt.
Grian watched him from the corner of his eye. “Joel— it’s not like that.”
Scar kept prodding his hair like some proud showpony. The only indication he was listening was the lightest tilt of his brow and the way those dark green eyes shifted to Grian in the mirror.
“He’s family.” Suddenly his face felt hot. “Not blood, but—“
“But?”
“Doesn’t matter any. Family’s family,” Grian said.
“Good.” All at once Scar was looking at him. Properly. His entire body turned to face Grian’s, cheek brushing the swell of his shoulder as he leaned his body weight onto the sink directly next to Grian’s. His head tilted in a way that feigned such a sweet innocence that it made Grian’s stomach shrivel right beneath his skin. It calcified into a hard stone that made it impossible to swallow the saliva pooling in his mouth, to breathe past his throat, to think straight. It took considerable effort to keep his body still.
Grian’s jaw clenched, unclenched.
Scar grabbed Grian’s lower jaw, gently, fingers softer than any biker Grian’s ever known. Any biker worth their salt, anyway. It was quick, assessing touch. Fingertips tested the topography of Grian’s jawbone, the hinge by his ear, then trailing down to his chin, where Scar’s thumb nudged it open by a press to Grian’s bottom lip.
There was patience in it, but it was no patience of Grian’s. His skin squirmed.
“What?” Grian hissed.
“Oh, nothing. Nothing at all,” Scar said, but his grin screamed that it was anything but nothing. Before Grian could press any further, Scar brought both hands to Grian’s face and kissed him.
Damn him. Damn him and that mouth— whether annoyance bled from him entirely or gave a second to wind to this ridiculous neediness piling high in his ribcage, it didn’t matter. Grian kissed him back, tugged at that stupid shirt, and let Scar crowd him with his back against the line of sinks. For a blissful, drunken moment it was nothing but wandering hands and clashing teeth and the faintest dizziness that let Grian shut his eyes and pretend he was on his bike, that he was hurtling toward the finish line with absolutely nothing else in his way. He was flying.
But a hand— Scar’s wide, clumsy hand— dug into his left thigh with the intention of helping haul him up onto one of the sinks.
The brief flash of pain nearly blinded him. When he blinked he was back in the heart of the crypt, the cement barrier tearing his leg to shreds.
“Ow! Ow, ow, okay! Enough!”
Scar yanked his hand back as if he’d been scalded, eyes wide and mouth comically drooped in guilt. All at once it was gone— that bad, flirty guy not afraid to take what he wanted— and was replaced by something clumsy and affectionate. “Oh my goodness! What was that? Are you okay? I’m so sorry—”
With a breathless laugh, Grian shook his head and nudged Scar away by the shoulder. “It’s fine,” he said. “Just some roadburn, not a big deal.”
His leg still burned when Scar lowered him back to the floor. It throbbed as if his heart had migrated from his chest to his leg, all his blood rushing in defense to a battle already fought. If he’d been smart, he’d have cleaned it directly after the race. Or at the very least before he’d started drinking and feeling sorry for himself.
But Grian wasn’t smart. The man standing in front of him, eyes welled with worry like he had any right, was a prime example of that.
“I’m fine,” Grian said again, because he knew Scar didn’t believe it. Why it mattered, Grian wasn’t sure.
Scar’s crumpled brow smoothed over only when Grian sighed and pulled Scar in by the front of his shirt for one last kiss. The tension in him eased, like the flip of a lightswitch, like the ignition of an engine. His hands settled on Grian’s waist, not enough to hold him there, but enough to maybe memorize the outline of him if he wanted. Scar seemed the wax-poet type.
He pulled away after a moment, too brief but much needed as Grian felt his lungs starving for air. He didn’t let go of Scar. Not yet, anyway. Their noses barely brushed, and for the first time since tugging Scar into this dingy bathroom by the wrist, Grian could smell bleaching chemicals and hear the gurgling of poor plumbing running beneath their feet. He could feel the rattle of it, the only thing strong enough to rival the thumping of the speakers out the door or the heat of Scar’s breath fanning across Grian’s eyelashes.
Grian struggled to reel his heartbeat in. “I’m not gonna break.”
“No,” Scar agreed. He hummed, lips pressed together like he was savoring the taste of tap water and Grian’s general impassivity. “I want to watch you. I want to see you win.”
Unable to bite back a victorious smile that made his cheeks ache, Grian said, “Oh Scar. The only time you’ll get to see me win is when you’re the one staring at my tail light.”
Scar, to his credit, didn’t waver. There was a cocky tilt to his mouth. Those hands stayed on Grian’s hips, fingers cold where they found the gap of skin between his jacket and belt.
“You should go,” Grian said, turning them so Scar’s back was to the propped door to the bathroom. He was damn lucky Pearl hadn’t barged in on them yet, or any other biker who drank their bladders to the limit. “You’re pushing your luck.”
“Always,” Scar said, taking a step back. Only then did he straighten his shirt collar to cover himself back up.
“Go. Out the back so no one sees you.”
And just like that, he left. Scar ducked out of the bathroom and into the crowd, as if a man like that could ever blend into this crowd. It sickened Grian; it made his stomach flutter with butterflies he’d very much like to strangle with his bare hands if he could ever manage to smoke them out. For now, though, all he could do was slump against the sinks and laugh to himself.
His face was sore.
He licked his lips.
Peach.
Mumbo’s distaste was as easy to sniff out as the stench of soldering metal.
His all-black welding visor left everything— aside from tense shoulders and temperamental hands wringing the soldering iron like it was Grian’s neck— to the imagination, but Grian didn’t need much of that when it came to the mechanic. Though Grian was unclear whether that was a strength of his or a weakness of his friend. Either way there was little room for guesswork. The only sign clearer than an agitated Mumbo was thunder in an oncoming storm.
When the storm was coming, Grian half-heartedly tried to steer clear of it. But his bike needed work and Mumbo was the only man that he trusted enough to get near his baby with something hot and corrosive.
While Mumbo worked, sparks flying off his helmet, Grian perched on one of Mumbo’s old work benches and rolled his left pant leg up to tend to his day-old road rash. Far enough that he wouldn’t catch any stray (accidental or otherwise) burns, but close enough to keep an eye on Mumbo’s handiwork. His leg hadn’t spared the body of his ride from the cement barrier, red paint scorched and peeled to reveal the grooves gouged from the aluminum beneath. Mumbo, despite his evident anger, took precision in closing up each uneven gash.
Grian wished he would have offered his leg the same treatment. However his fine-motor skills, comparatively, were lacking.
He only had a pair of tweezers (a reluctant loan from Mumbo, which left Grian wondering if he used it for the shop or for his mustache) and a few dingy rags soaked to the bone in rubbing alcohol. After years of watching Jimmy take care of it for him and so many of the other bikers, eyebrows drawn tight in concentration and tongue poking the inside of his cheek, you’d think Grian would’ve learned a thing or two. But he only poked and prodded at it, the skin raw and too painful to touch with his fingers. His brother made it look easy, plucking each little microscopic piece of gravel out and wrapping it all up before Grian had time to get too restless and whiny.
What a riot Jimmy would’ve found this. He could imagine it now: the indignant flare in those brown eyes, the arms crossing his chest like it makes him any more daring and confident. “You shouldn’t have left it to scab, wannabe.”
Grian could see himself too. Chin tucked. Anger poorly withheld beneath a paper-thin surface. He could hear the venom in his imaginary voice as it spat out, “Then where were you?”
Jaw clenched tight, Grian began plucking little pieces of gravel that had yet to fall out on their own. The scabs had already started forming around them.
Some bubblegum pop song that made Grian too aware of his own headache blared through the boombox Mumbo kept precariously balanced on his toolbox. The antenna was crooked. Every few seconds another song or disjointed voice of an overzealous radio host would bully his way through, only for the woman’s voice to carry on about how girls just want to have fun.
Grian groaned and opened his mouth.
The soldering stopped and Mumbo’s visor snapped up. “The door’s there, mate. ” One gloved finger pointed unkindly to the propped garage door, open to nothing but shiny wet asphalt and a smoggy morning. “I’ve seriously had it up to—”
“Mumbo!”
“—here with you.” Mumbo thrust his hand high above his head, fingers wiggling at the ceiling.
“I’m innocent,” Grian balked, eyes narrowed. He gestured to his scabbed rash. “Wounded too.”
“Wounded,” Mumbo mocked with such incredulity that Grian feared the word would jump out and burn him like a spark off the iron. “Yeah, right.”
“I fought hard,” Grian said, chin raised and chest as puffed as he could manage with his knee awkwardly folded against his chest. He’d propped his chin there to get a decent look at his handiwork: some awkward gravel-plucking and dabbing at the torn away scabs with the soaked rag. It stung fresh as the day he’d gotten it, but without any pride or drinking alcohol to bolster it…
Yesterday’s victory faded fast.
“Right you are, mate.” All that remained of Mumbo’s fire was the faintest tuft of smoke, a dejected sound that punctuated his fall onto his butt, long spindly legs stretched out: one under the bike’s ribcage and the other in front of the front wheel. He flicked his gloves off and cleaned his hands on a loose towel that was more black than white. “A fight you started.”
The air hung still. As if it leaned forward on its elbows in anticipation, staring down at the top of Grian’s head and wondering, ‘well?’.
The unpleasant swell at the base of Grian’s throat was strikingly familiar to the way he’d felt in Pearl’s bar, eyes heavy on the door waiting for a head of naive blonde hair to come tumbling his way in. It tasted of bile and it reeked of the expired toothpaste Jimmy used the morning of the race, when he’d sat on the edge of Grian’s bed and pleaded.
“Not you too,” Grian groaned and went to rub his eyes. He realized halfway there that his hands were drenched in alcohol and settled for digging the heels of his palms into his forehead instead. “Between you, Pearl, and this hangover I’ve had about all I can handle.”
“Pearl,” the word came out as a burst of air, a sigh of relief. “Has she kicked you to the curb yet?”
Grian peeled his palm away to glare at Mumbo. “Traitor.”
“What about Jimmy, then?” As briskly as it’d come the relief faded, fallen to the ground like stamped mud with a distinct footprint that spelled: DO NOT GO HERE.
“What about him?” Grian said through a tight jaw.
“Isn’t he the one to tidy all that up for you?” Mumbo wagged the wrench over him, as if casting a spell to heal his road rash. “He’d burst a blood vessel watching you rip open the scabs like that.”
There was nothing Grian wanted to talk about less than this. But effectively cornered in a shop that not only belonged to Mumbo but was filled to the peg-boarded brim with all sorts of power tools and hammers and wrought metal that looked like a torturer's candy store, he feared he lacked much of a choice. When Mumbo wanted something, he got it. Especially from Grian.
“Avoiding me,” Grian said. “That or sticking his nose where it doesn’t belong.” Jerking his hand above his head dismissively, he added: “Coin toss.”
He swung his legs to hang from the workbench. They were too short to fully touch the floor, but the undone shoelace of his right boot dragged with each lazy hinge of his uninjured leg. The blood rushing back to his feet made his aching scabs pound all the more. This kind of pain he was used to, at least. A welcome distraction, a displacement of fear not yet ready to swallow.
If his heart was in his feet, it wasn’t in his chest; he couldn’t feel it worry.
“Uh-huh.” Mumbo hummed thoughtfully. “Funny, innit— I thought that was your specialty. Brothers, eh, mate?”
“Why don’t you go ahead and throw that wrench at my head? I know you want to.”
“As much as I’d love to— I imagine it’d make such a nice sound—” Mumbo wrapped his knuckles on the hull of Grian’s bike, a dull metallic hollowness filling the air. “— I can’t. Need your skull intact so your clever little brain can get us out of whatever bloody mess you’ve got us into.”
Mumbo’s venom stung, but his anger was favorable to Jimmy’s— baby-doe eyes and an angry mouth that made Grian’s stomach flip. Barbs of pettiness and empty threats didn’t bother him much, especially coming from a mechanic. Besides, Mumbo wouldn’t actually hurt him. Grian knew it as well as he knew his own name; as well as he knew Jimmy would come crawling back eventually, as well as he knew that Pearl would wait with him, even if she gloated and goated all the while. She was too proud and too excitable to let Grian wither in peace.
“Mess?” Grian scoffed. The sound was weak, even to his own ears. “I won. There’s no mess.”
Mumbo raised an eyebrow at him. “You can’t seriously think I’m that naive.”
The shop was an extension of Mumbo, and the Mumbo was born of the shop. To Grian it grew more troublesome to tell where the man began and his craft ended, a miraculous type of obsession pumped through Mumbo’s veins that Grian could only attempt to understand when he was on his own bike, when a flag snapped in the air and cheers on the radio died to a dull, low.
Mumbo was good at what he did. It’d be foolish to discredit the work he did— the mastery, at times bordering witchcraft that man channeled through gloved hands. Hell, Grian wouldn’t have a bike without it.
But that didn’t mean he understood. That he knew the game and how its played.
Such an understanding was something you earned. Like the torn scrap of a red-leather jacket still tucked in Grian’s back pocket. It was something that you took and that took from you equally, the asphalt chomping at any skin you’re foolish enough to leave bare, the night wind stealing the breath from your lungs, the excited hunger from a fight well fought— win or lose.
“I already got this lecture once,” Grian said. “I don’t need it again. Not from you.”
In a flurry, Mumbo folded his gangly limbs under him and rose to his feet— all six (and 2 inches) of them. He towered over Red Bird— the not-so-loving nickname he’d given Grian’s bike back when he’d made its first round of repairs, a whopping 36 hours after her engine had first turned over— and Grian both, wringing long, pale fingers together as if working his words from his knuckles like oil from a dirty rag.
“Maybe you do,” Mumbo said. “Seems like it hasn’t sunk in.”
Grian stared down at his dangling feet. The dragging shoelace.
Frustration was too little a word for it— the welling of emotion wedged solidly at the base of Grian’s throat. It made his skin itch from the inside out, like he was swelling with a fever no amount of medicine or cold compress could break. It was the kind of fever you needed to burn out with tire rubber on the asphalt, with the wind lashing your cheeks pink and your heartbeat lost somewhere between your eyes and your throat. Last night he’d been flying, and today he was pinned to the ground with the reality of it all.
He wasn’t an idiot. Not in the way Jimmy or Peal or everyone else thought he was. He knew what he’d done. He wasn’t ashamed of it. What else was there to do?
“Grian.”
Eyes scrunched shut, Grian braced his arms on the edge of the workbench, fingers bloodless and cold with his grip on it, and forced a steady breath in through his nose and out his mouth.
“I did what I had to do.”
“You had to start a war?” Even with closed eyes Grian could see the way Mumbo was no doubt gaping at him, the only expression that proved he had a mouth beneath that bushy mustache. If Grian’s eyes weren’t already stinging, he’d laugh. “Or, what, you think those guys are just gonna let you off easy after what you did to their buddy?”
Why was everyone so concerned for that loser? Grian won, the wispy leather-swathed blonde didn’t. Win or lose, kill or be killed, that was the dance of the outskirts before Grian learned to ride. Before he learned to talk or walk or coo or breathe. Crews and gangs fought. They gnashed their teeth and bit each other’s throats. That was the way things were; that was how they would always be. You were born to one gang or the other and then you died there.
You fought like all of hell was at your heels in the in-between.
Yet another thing Mumbo— sheltered by steel walls, garage doors, and bubble-gum radio pop— would’ve never understood. Not in any way that mattered.
“It’s a street race.” Grian forced his eyes open again, sticking out his left leg. The pain spiked, like he was dragged across that cement barrier all over again. “People get hurt.”
“I’m not worried about those losing dogs,” Mumbo said, voice thready and weak. “You won yesterday. But what happens tomorrow?”
Grian stared up at Mumbo through his brow. A parallel row of dying fluorescent lights stung his already tired, red-rimmed eyes. It washed out Mumbo’s skin, a greenish-pale spectre. Gingerly, Grian hopped down from the workbench and approached his friend. Mumbo stood there, lips pressed flat and cheeks gaunt as ever, as Grian laid a hand on his shoulder and squeezed.
“You know I’m not going to let anything happen to us.”
Mumbo studied him through oil-black, narrowed eyes— ever the skeptic.
“You’re tough, G,” he said sadly. Those thin, bony fingers rose to squeeze Grian’s opposite shoulder. It felt like an apology. “But I don’t think you can keep that promise.”
Maybe Mumbo was right. But this was no promise.
Promises could be broken.
TANGO.
There’d only ever been one deathbed at the Crook.
Tango remembered little else but the dread of the affair. It was stuffy the same way the overcast sky dragged its feet days following the biggest summer storms. The heat and cold mixed and mingled and never made up their damn minds, and it made the air a tangible lump to swallow. The death, or the anticipation of it, was no less slimy going down. It clung for days. It stained like a ring of forgotten coffee festering at the bottom of an old hand-me-down mugs Skizz left everywhere. Everyone saw it. Of course they did.
But it was easier to pretend they didn’t.
That was all Tango could remember— the dodging. Crooks were good at that.
This grief, however, was contained. Nice and neatly packed away in the smallest of the remaining in-tact bedrooms the Crook had to offer. It was here that Tango was banished to rest, where he laid the remnants of his red leather jacket in his lap the same way an elderly man may fist a quilt he’d made back in the days of his youth. He’d reminisce every stitch and patch and memory sewn into the lovely thing. Tango wished he’d had enough time for that.
He wasn’t dying, but the jacket might as well have been. His fingers lingered over it a second too long, mourning the perfect red leather, the patch that Skizz had sewn in for him not even a few months ago. The tiger finally earns his stripes, he’d said with a grin only a proud brother could muster. Tango’s face had flushed and he’d all but punched Skizz to get him to lay off, but Tango had spent the entire two subsequent nights unable to sleep. He’d stared blisters into the ceiling, listening to Impulse and Skizz snore on the floor next to him on nights where it was his turn to sleep in the bed, just to keep himself from staring at the red leather draped over the rocking chair.
This— Tango curled his fists into the fabric hard enough that his knuckles ached— was the only thing that was his, the thing not shared amongst his fellow crew. And he’d gotten it cut out of him. Gutted. Like it was no better than a fish set up next at a roast, fragile little bones exposed for the world to see, for it to pick its teeth with.
Tango’s stomach grumbled.
A soft laugh dragged Tango from his anger-ridden stupor. The flush flooding his cheeks in rage quickly rose to the tips of his ears. A flash of heat came over him, his stomach knotted. What a beautiful sound that was. Lying there on the pavement that night, sirens wailing and Tango’s heart trapped in his throat, he feared he’d never hear it again. Feared the screeching of his own faltering mortality would be all he’d hear for the rest of his life— whether that was seconds, hours, or decades.
“Stop,” Tango groaned miserably.
“Sorry,” Jimmy said, but that jerk didn’t mean it. He was still laughing. His brown eyes were teary. “How long’re you gonna stare at that thing, bud? It’s getting a bit sad.”
It took a measured spoonful of Tango’s remaining patience and fondness to keep from hauling said thing straight at Jimmy’s head. “You wouldn’t get it,” he said with what was most definitely not a pout. His lip was still swollen from the wreck. That was all.
“I wouldn’t?”
Tango couldn’t tell if Jimmy was arguing or genuinely asking. The heat in his voice implied the former, but the puppyish tilt of his head suggested the latter.
Sometimes, when it came to Jimmy, Tango preferred not to find out. He kept quiet, head hung chin-to-chest in a silent bow of defeat he’d only allow behind a closed door. It just so happened Jimmy was on the wrong side of that door. The jacket’s chest had been gouged out, right where Tango’s heart would’ve been. A small yet irreparable scar of defeat. Tango stuck his hand through the hole from the underside, unsurprised when his calloused fingers poked out at him.
Jimmy was watching him. Tango didn’t have to look to feel the dedicated intensity of it— something Tango’d studied from the opposite end of the same nonsense war, from the sidelines of burning asphalt and rapidly fading tail lights. Clammy knuckles poised in fists against his pale, flattened lips. As if a trigger away from biting down on them just to keep from shouting something out. Jimmy watched things as if his life depended on their outcome, and the way the outskirts were, maybe it did. But he watched Tango with that same drowning ferocity. He had yet to figure out why.
Sure enough, Tango turned his head. Jimmy had his fingers to his mouth, deep in thought.
“Don’t hurt yourself,” Tango chuckled weakly. His ribs pulsed with a dull, protesting ache. He winced and hugged his torn, bloodied jacket to his chest.
Those big, worrisome brown eyes flickered to the lump beneath Tango’s covers where he’d been not-so-subtly hiding the clunky mess of wood and fabric scraps holding his shattered leg together. Crooks are handy with a lot of things but first-aid sure as hell isn't one of them.
“It’s whatever.” Tango huffed and waved him off. “You shouldn’t even be here.”
“Well, I am,” Jimmy said indignantly.
“That’s not what I’m arguing.”
“I’m not just gonna leave,” Jimmy said. His fingers were back on his lips again, teeth grazing the knuckle of his forefinger. He had himself twisted into a knot in the old rocking chair, white paint chipping away and fluttering to the carpet like snowfall with each lazy creak of the wood.
Tango stared back at him, eyes heavy.
Maybe some part of him should have felt shame, stowing Jimmy away here. Treating him like a dirty secret not even the lowest of the low could know.
Though, admittedly, it was difficult to. The outskirts— no matter what crew, family, or burrow you crawled out of— was home. It always would be. So what if the floor was slanted? It was a Crook guarantee, the building’s foundation just-enough-centimeters askew to send a ball rolling if Tango made the mistake of resting it on his desk. So what if there was no electricity for a lamp? It worked just fine, whatever meager sunlight the broken window let in.
So what if there was no A/C? There was an oversized, rusted-to-God unit that hung out the window and down the side of the building. Its top was pried open, several wires taped with electrical tape to the sides. A still frame of open-heart surgery. It’d be there when Tango healed up enough to hobble out of bed and pry this cast off.
Tango was sure that, wherever it was that Jimmy came from, they weren’t eating like kings or spending towers of quarters on jukeboxes at the diner. Though the same things that bound them together would, Tango had little doubt, be the things that tore them apart. There were millions of things about this— about them— that would never work. Jimmy rolled with Grian, Joel, and the Neighbors. Tango was stuck here in the crooked house with his own crooked brothers. The two crews mixed as well as curdled milk and circuitry. There’d always be war.
Now more than ever.
There’s no shying away from it. If you’re gonna be a Crook, you be the best dang crook there is.
That voice again. Skizz’s. Tango’s heart ached with each beat.
Tango clenched his jaw and pretended he wasn’t afraid of the words about to come out of his mouth: “You’re not the only one that’ll get gutted if you’re caught hiding out here. Be smart, Jimmy.”
Jimmy stilled where he was folded up tight in that old rocking chair. As if he’d become a permanent fixture in the rooting wood. He didn’t move for a second. He watched Tango like he had a race, like he had Tango and his brother at the starting line several nights ago. It was only a matter of time before that crowbar came cracking down.
Crack down, he did.
“Smart? I told him not to do it. I threw my dignity at him, I practically begged the man. I mean— I tried to, but you don’t know him, Tango. You can’t tell that jerk to do anything. You tell him to cut an avocado and he’ll eat the whole thing— skin and pit and all— just to poke at you,” Jimmy rattled. “He wouldn’t know the smart thing if it punched him right in the jaw. He’d swallow his teeth first.”
“He’s got to know we didn’t do anything,” Tango said. “You know that, right?”
It’d all happened so fast— Tango’s rapid rise and fall from grace: from budding mechanic to resident fix-it to prodigy rider finally with a chance to prove himself on the turf. His fists blanched in the bunched red leather in his lap, as if ripping it to smithereens would undo what’d be done. As if it’d earn him any respect back. It wasn’t fair. Some young hot-shot from the west end decided to roll in toting his black leather and sleek red bike and call Tango and his brothers arsonists?
“I know.” For a moment, Jimmy almost sounds sad about it. There’s the slightest give in his expression, brow bowed under the weight of duty and whatever it is he feels toward Tango. Something Tango hasn’t been brave enough to try to put a word to yet. “But you still provoked him. You took the race.”
It sounded like an execution. But even in Jimmy’s cruel tone, there was doubt. A sliver of space for Tango to prove him wrong.
Tango didn’t— couldn’t— take it.
“I’d just made it in. I couldn’t back down from a challenge.” He gestured out to the door, where the other Crooks were waiting and scheming how to tear Jimmy’s end of the neighborhood to shreds. Payment for Tango’s broken leg and pride. “They’d rip me to shreds otherwise.”
Jimmy didn’t say anything for a long, agonizing moment. He pressed his knuckles to his lips and thought.
Then at once Jimmy was on his feet. He snatched Tango’s disgraced jacket from his lap and held it with both hands. Deft fingers traced the same wound patterns Tango’s had, as if memorizing the tearing in the stitching. As if trying to imagine how it’d felt when his brother had taken a knife to it and cut the patch free. As if memorizing what that type of glory must’ve felt like, if it felt like a glory to Jimmy at all, or if it felt more like a betrayal. Tango wondered, not for the first time, if Jimmy’s brother— Grian, was it?— had shoved it in Jimmy’s nose as a trophy, and if Jimmy had congratulated him.
“You haven’t died,” Jimmy said. His fingers wiggled lazily in the hole in the left chest. Little white flags. “You’ve lost. If there’s anything in this world I get, it’s that.”