Chapter 59

Lumi

Instead of the bike to move forward, it moved down.

My stomach dropped before my brain even understood what was happening. The front wheel tipped over the edge of the grassy cliff, and for one full second, there was nothing under us but open sky.

"Ren!" I screamed his name into the wind, my arms locking around his waist so hard I probably left bruises.

"I’ve got you," he shouted back, his voice steady even as the ground fell away beneath the tyres. "Trust me, Lumi. Just breathe."

The bike hit a hidden path cut into the side of the cliff, one I hadn’t even seen from above.

It was narrow, rocky, and dropped at a sharp angle, curling down the rock face like a ribbon. The engine roared as Ren leaned hard into the turn, his knee nearly scraping the stone wall beside us.

I squeezed my eyes shut. I couldn’t watch. My face pressed into his back, breathing him in, using it as the only steady thing in a world that had gone sideways.

Slowly, the wild shaking of the bike smoothed out. The engine dropped from a roar to a low growl.

When I finally opened my eyes again, we were on flat ground, rolling along a quiet dirt track next to a wide, still lake that hadn’t been visible from above at all.

Ren slowed the bike to a stop and killed the engine completely.

The silence afterward felt enormous. Just wind through the trees and water lapping softly against the shore.

"You’re insane," I breathed, my heart still slamming against my ribs. "You could have killed us both."

He swung his leg off the bike and turned to look at me, there was something boyish about the grin on his face, something I had never once seen from him before.

"I’ve done that path a hundred times back home," he said. "Never on this cliff, but I know how to read a drop when I see one."

"You could have warned me."

"If I’d warned you, you’d have panicked before we even started. This way you were scared and trusted me at the exact same time." He held his hand out to help me down.

"That’s the whole point of trust, Lumi. It only counts when you don’t know what’s coming."

I glared at him, but my legs were shaking too badly to argue properly. I took his hand and slid off the bike, my knees nearly giving out the second my feet touched solid ground.

He caught me before I could fall, his hands settling firm on my waist.

"Steady," he murmured, looking down at me.

For a moment neither of us moved. The lake sat behind him, silver and calm under the grey afternoon sky, the wind pulling a few loose strands of hair across his forehead. He looked lighter here. Like whatever he usually carried on those broad shoulders had been left behind at the top of that cliff.

"Why did you bring me all the way out here?" I asked quietly.

He looked out at the water for a moment before he answered. "Back home, there’s a place like this. A quiet spot outside the city, near the water. Whenever things get too loud in my head, whenever I need to think, that’s where I go." He glanced at me sideways.

"We’re not home right now. So I figured this was the closest thing I could give you." Something warm moved through my chest, slow and unexpected.

He had thought of this. In the middle of everything, he had still found room to think about giving me somewhere to breathe.

It hit me then, quiet and sudden, that almost every decision he’d made these past weeks had been about me in some way. Flying across an ocean. Burning himself out for Theo. Bringing me here now.

I didn’t know what to do with how much that meant. So I just said the only true thing I had.

"Thank you, Ren."

He didn’t answer with words. He just nodded once, like he understood exactly what I meant even without me spelling it out, and turned to walk toward a flat stone near the edge of the water.

I followed him.

We sat down close enough that our shoulders touched, watching the ripples move slowly across the lake. For a long while, neither of us spoke. It wasn’t an uncomfortable silence. It was the kind that didn’t need filling.

I was the one who broke it.

"Tell me about racing," I said.

He turned his head, and I saw real surprise on his face, like it was the last thing he expected me to bring up.

"What made you think of that?" I shrugged, feeling a little foolish now that I’d said it out loud.

"I don’t know. I just... I try to picture it sometimes. You, on a track, going that fast, with no one telling you what to do." I looked down at my hands.

"I wanted to know if I’m picturing it right." The corner of his mouth lifted, slow and real.

"Racing’s one of the only things I do purely for me," he said.

"Not for the pack. Not for the business. Not because someone needs me to fix something." He looked back out at the lake.

"When I’m on that track, I’m not an Alpha, and I’m not the man everyone bows to in some glass building. I’m just Ren. Nobody’s problem to solve. Nobody’s protector. Just a guy with his machine and a straight line in front of him."

I liked hearing him talk like that. His voice went softer, less guarded, like the words themselves were letting something out of him.

But then I thought back over the last few weeks, and a small frown pulled at my brow.

"I haven’t heard you talk about it since I got back," I said. "Not once."

He looked at me, his brow furrowing slightly. "What do you mean?"

"I mean I haven’t heard you mention racing at all. Not a single race, not a single track, nothing." I hesitated, then asked the question plainly. "Did you quit?"

He blinked, and for a second he looked genuinely confused, like the idea hadn’t even occurred to him.

"I didn’t quit," he said. "There’s just been a lot going on. Things that needed my attention more."

I knew exactly what he meant by that. Me. Theo. The mess I’d dragged him straight into the middle of.

I looked down at the water, feeling a small twist of guilt in my chest. "Wouldn’t you like to race again?"

He didn’t answer that directly. Instead, he turned his whole body toward me, his dark eyes steady on mine.

"Would you like to see me race?"

My heart gave a strange little jump. "Yes," I said, without even having to think about it. "I would."

Something shifted in his face the moment I said it. He stood up in one smooth motion, brushing off his jeans, and held both hands out toward me.

"Then come on," he said.

I stared up at him, completely lost. "Come where? Ren, we’re in the middle of nowhere. There’s no track out here."

"There’s more out here than you think," he said, that same boyish grin creeping back onto his face.

"I’ve got a surprise for you." I let out a small laugh, shaking my head as I took his hands and let him pull me up.

"Another surprise? You’ve done nothing but surprise me since we landed in this country."

"Get used to it," he said, tugging me gently toward the bike, his fingers warm and sure around mine. "I’m not finished yet."

He led me back to the bike, but instead of climbing on, he walked past it, tugging me along a narrow trail that cut through a thick line of trees at the edge of the lake.

Branches brushed against my arms, and the ground was soft and damp beneath my sandals, but Ren kept a steady grip on my hand the whole way, glancing back every few steps to make sure I hadn’t tripped.

"Where exactly are we going?" I asked, half laughing, half out of breath from trying to keep up with his long strides.

"You’ll see."

"That’s not an answer."

"It’s the only one you’re getting."

The trees thinned out after a few minutes, and the trail opened onto a wide stretch of flat, hard-packed dirt tucked into a valley between two low hills. My steps slowed the moment I saw it.

It wasn’t a proper track. Not like the glossy ones I’d seen on television, with painted lines and grandstands.

This was rougher, older, carved straight into the land itself. A long oval loop wound around the valley floor, the earth worn smooth and dark in places where tyres had clearly torn through it for years.

"What is this place?" I breathed.

"An old training loop," Ren said, letting go of my hand and walking a few steps ahead, his eyes scanning the track like he was looking at an old friend.

"Riders from around here use it. Off the books, mostly. No cameras, no crowds, no rules except don’t die." He glanced back at me with a small smirk.

"I raced here a long time ago, before I ever set foot on a real circuit. My dad brought me out here on a business trip, and the minute I saw the race start, I knew it was exactly where I wanted to be.

That day was when I became a biker."

I looked around at the empty valley, trying to picture him small and young, gripping the handlebars too tight, his father standing somewhere close by shouting instructions he probably ignored.

"Do you miss him?" I asked.