Chapter 117: YOU RIDE LIKE MY GRANDMOTHER.

Chapter 118

Ren

"Yes," I said.

"No," said Lumi at the same moment.

Julian lowered the extinguisher a few inches and looked from the smoking pan to the flour on my shirt to Lumi’s bare legs, and I watched him put the whole picture together.

"I thought this was how I was going to die," he said. "Four months before my wedding. I was fully prepared to die brave."

"You came in with a fire extinguisher," Lumi wheezed.

"I came prepared!"

Neve reached up and yanked the battery out of the alarm with a bad-tempered snap, and the silence afterward rang in my ears. She looked at the pan, and then at me, and her mouth began to twitch.

"Alpha of the whole territory," she said. "Feared across three counties."

"Don’t."

"Couldn’t make a pancake."

"I made one pancake."

"It’s shaped like... I don’t know what that is, Ren."

Julian leaned over to look and snorted into his fist. Lumi handed him a fork, and he took a bite of the raw side out of what I could only call loyalty and chewed with the face of a man being very brave. "It’s good," he said.

"It’s not."

"It’s a little bit good."

Neve slapped the binder down on the counter. "Since we are all awake, and apparently all about to starve, I have questions about the wedding, and I will not hear any complaints."

I should have run. Instead I sat on a stool and watched my sister spread out fabric samples across the island, peach and sage and a pale gold that she swore wasn’t yellow, while Lumi, who had been put in charge of the bridesmaids, held each one against the window to check the light like she’d done it a hundred times. Julian ate pancakes at the end of the counter and offered his opinion every so often, always the same one.

"Whatever she wants."

"That’s not an opinion," Neve said.

"It’s the best opinion I have."

"What about the cake?"

"Three cakes."

"Why three?"

"One for the guests, one for us, and one with a wolf on it." He said it so seriously that Lumi had to turn around and pretend to study the sage swatch.

"No wolf cake," Neve said.

"A small wolf."

"Julian."

"A tiny, tasteful wolf."

I laughed so hard I nearly slid off the stool. Neve looked at me, and the exasperation on her face melted into something that made her eyes shine.

She reached across the island and squeezed my hand without saying a word.

I knew what she meant, because I felt it too. It was the first time in months that any of us had laughed in a room without someone watching the door.

.......

We left the house around two.

It wasn’t planned. Lumi was leaning in the garage doorway while I checked the oil on the bike, mostly because it gave my hands something to do, and she asked in a casual voice that didn’t fool me, "Does it still run?"

"Of course it runs."

"I mean the way it used to. With you actually on it." She nudged a tire with her foot. "Seems like you haven’t ridden it for fun in a long time."

She was right, and I hadn’t noticed until she said it. I’d ridden it to the border and to the council hall and back to the gates, but I hadn’t just ridden it since before she came home.

"Do you want to go?"

"Maybe." She tried to look like she was thinking it over, and she lasted about two seconds. "Yes. Yes, I want to go."

I found Neve’s old helmet and handed over my leather jacket, which hung nearly to her knees, and she zipped it up to her chin and grinned at me like a kid on the first day of summer.

She climbed on behind me and put her arms around my waist, and I felt her hands fit themselves against my stomach like they’d always known the spot.

"Hold on," I said.

"I’m holding."

"Tighter."

"If I hold any tighter I’ll crack a rib."

"Then you’re doing it right."

I took the old back road out of the estate, the narrow one that winds up through the pines, and I kept it slow until we were out of sight of the gates.

Then I opened the throttle. The engine dropped into the deep, steady growl I’d missed more than I knew, the trees blurred into long green stripes.

Lumi let out a shout of pure joy right against my back, with no fear in it at all.

"Faster!" she yelled over the wind.

"You said you were scared of this thing!"

"I said I was scared of you on this thing! I lied!"

I went faster. She whooped again, her laugh bouncing off my shoulder blades, and her fingers dug into my shirt every time we leaned into a curve, and I thought, This. If I could keep one sound for the rest of my life, it would be this.

At the top of the ridge, where the road gives out into gravel and the whole valley opens up below, I cut the engine and the quiet rushed in after it.

The territory spread out in front of us, rooftops and river and a thin line of smoke from somebody’s chimney, all gold in the early afternoon sun.

Lumi pulled off the helmet and shook out her hair, and her cheeks were pink from the wind. "I forgot it was this pretty," she said.

"I forgot too."

We sat on the bike for a while, her leaning back against my chest, my arms around her.

I’d stuffed the leftover pancakes into foil before we left, the burnt Texas one included, and she pulled it out and bit into the charred edge and made a face.

"Awful," she said.

"You don’t have to eat it."

"It’s the first thing you ever made me." She took another bite, chewing like she was doing it for a medal. "I’m going to finish it, and you’re going to be quiet about it."

"Yes, ma’am."

She went silent after that. I didn’t push, and I didn’t pull on the bond, because the quiet felt like it was building toward something.

After a minute she folded the foil over what was left of the pancake and held it in her lap.

"He drew a horse for me," she said.

"Priya taught him. She sat at my table with her coffee and showed him how to do the legs, and he did them wrong, all bent like noodles, and he held it up and said, ’Mama, look, he’s dancing.’" Her voice cracked right on the word.

"I put it on the wardrobe. It’s probably still there, in the hotel. That’s if they haven’t cleaned it up." We both knew they’d have threw it away since no one paid for the room.

I make a mental note to ask the hotel management.

"Lumi."

"I’m not spiraling. I just needed to say it out loud somewhere that isn’t a room with a door."

"Then say it."

"What if he thinks I left him?" It came out in a whisper, and she turned her head so I could see her eyes, which were wet and bright and furious at being wet.

"What if he’s sitting somewhere right now thinking that I just left, like they did?"

I thought about telling her no, it wouldn’t be like that, he’s three, he’ll forget. But she’d have known I was lying, so I told her the truth instead.

"He might think it for a little while," I said. "Kids do. But he’s three and he’s yours, and when you walk through that door, the first thing he’s going to do is run at you with his arms out and ask where you’ve been. I’d bet my pack on it."

A laugh broke out of her, wet and wobbly. "That’s a big bet."

"It’s an easy one." I pressed my mouth to her temple. "And when we find him, you’re not going to look like you haven’t slept in a week, so I need you to eat and rest and let me bring you ice cream at ten at night, because I’m about to become unbearable about it."

"You’re already unbearable about it."

"I’m just getting started."

She laid her head back against my shoulder, and I felt something loosen in her, the way a knot does when you stop pulling it. After a while she reached up and touched my jaw.

"Thank you for today."

"I didn’t do anything."

"You burned breakfast and took me on a bike." She smiled, a real one, small and a little crooked. "That’s exactly what I needed."

"You’re allowed to be happy today, you know," I said. "Even with him out there. It doesn’t mean you forgot him."

She nodded, and for a long minute neither of us spoke. Below us the river caught the light and threw it back, and a hawk drifted over the pines without once moving its wings.

"Ren?"

"Yeah?"

"You ride like my grandmother."

I stared at the back of her head. "Your what?"