Page 3 of Ride or Die

Please.

I don’t believe in God. I gave up on her a long time ago. But there’s got to be something. Something, somewhere out there.Because in forty-five seconds, he’ll pull up to work. And the first thing he’ll do is check the cameras. And if he finds me here, trying to leave, I won’t survive. And I need to survive. For my babies, I need to survive. I’m all they’ve got.

Please.

Opening my eyes, I turn the key again, holding my breath as the engine tries and tries, and tries before finally kicking over, the steady rumble of the motor like music to my ears.

“Thank you,” I murmur under a breath to whatever God may or may not be listening.

I ease the car down the driveway, pulling out onto the street, a weight lifting off my shoulders the farther we drive away from the house.

“Morris!”

Startled by Billie’s shriek, I’m torn from my momentary relief, looking at her in the rear vision mirror to find her searching the back seat frantically, her cheeks turning red the more panicked she becomes.

“What’s wrong, baby?”

Her eyes fill with tears, her bottom lip wobbling and then, meeting my gaze in the mirror she sobs, choking out, “I left Morris in the bathroom!”

I look around for what, I don’t even know. We can’t go back. Not now. We can’t ever go back there.

“It’s okay, Bil. Morris’ll be fine,” Tom says, turning as best as he can and reaching out his hand to console his little sister. “Besides… We’ll be back home in a few days,” he lies, and I feel his gaze slide to me.

My teeth clench together, molars grinding as I stare at the road in front of me, unable to say a thing because I’m scared if I try to talk, I’ll burst into tears of my own and that’s not going to help anyone.

Billie sniffles again, and I look in the mirror to find her wiping tears from her cheeks with the cuff of her sleeve, and seeing her so heartbroken while trying her hardest not to cry as her brother comforts her, causes fresh tears to prick my eyes.

Tom sits forward then, staring straight ahead. I try to swallow around the lump that’s wedged itself in the back of my throat, but it’s thick and painful, and it’s making it almost impossible to catch a breath. Reaching across the center console, I give his arm a squeeze to both thank and reassure him, despite having no plan whatsoever.

“Where are we going?” he asks quietly.

I grip the steering wheel so tight my fingers ache, glancing up at the sign that hangs over the road, directing the way to the interstate on-ramp.

“As far away from here as we can get,” I whisper back to him as I flick on the blinker.

CHAPTER 1

COLE

The room smells too clean, sterile. I hate it. I hate this paper-thin smock that doesn’t even cover my bare ass, the shrill beep of the machine I’m hooked up to, the way the lights hum overhead like I’m stuck in some kind of laboratory; a science experiment gone wrong.

My head pounds, dull and deep, like one of them bruises you can’t see, but I grit my teeth against it. I’m sitting upright, but it feels like I’m leaning—like the whole world’s been knocked a few degrees off its axis and nobody bothered to tell me.

Pain, I understand. Pain I can handle. What I can’t handle is the look on the doctor’s face. He’s standing there with my scans pulled up—my brain, sliced into neat little segments, displayed like it’s just another case file. Another problem for him to solve. Or not. Probably not, judging by the grim look on his face.

“A concussion,” he says, calm and measured, like he’s talking about the fuckin’ weather. “Not your first, I’m guessing.”

“Nope,” I answer, popping the p obnoxiously. A defense mechanism, because I fuckin’ hate this shit.

He nods like that confirms something he already decided about me long before he even walked in the damn room.

I feel it then—that heat rising in my chest. That tight, restless anger that always shows up when someone starts talking like they know what’s best for me.

He gestures toward the scans. “With repeated head trauma, there’s a very real risk of long-term damage. We’re not just talking about recovery time getting longer. We’re talking about conditions likeChronic Traumatic Encephalopathy.”

The words hit, but I don’t flinch. I’ve heard it all before. Every rider has. It’s the thing that gets thrown around any time they want to try rattle you. CTE.

“Memory loss. Mood changes. Cognitive decline,” he continues. “It doesn’t always show up right away. Sometimes it takes years. But each concussion increases that risk, tenfold.”