Camden by Shey Stahl

 

All she wants to know is that she matters to me, but my excuses are stronger. I told myself I couldn’t, wouldn’t touch her. Until I did, and nothing will ever be the same.

Inside the truck, my hands shake. What have I done? Have I lost her completely now?

I punch the dash board in Roan’s truck as he gets inside.

“You fuck up, kid?” he asks, staring at me in the darkness.

My knee bounces, my nerves shot. Hell, my entire frame is shaking. “More than you know.”

But did I? She’s isn’t a mistake. She’s a feeling. A love I never knew existed and formed from an incredible friendship. One I might have lost.

Go ahead, junk punch me now. I deserve it.

While you’re at it, take my heart. I don’t want it anymore.

“What’d you do?” Roan asks, his breathing light and easy as he drops his cell phone into the cup holder of the center console.

It’s raining now. Steady fat drops falling in a drum beat on the windshield.

Splat. Splat…. Splat.

“Wasn’t thinking,” I finally say, my words shaking, my throat so tight that when I swallow, it sends a sharp pain through my chest.

Roan drops his hand from the steering wheel. “What do you mean?”

My heart is in my fucking throat now, competing with the tightness. “I fucked up bad.”

Silence lingers between us. I can hear every damn drop of rain hitting the truck.

“River?”

I nod, but no words follow. I can’t make them, just like I can’t make myself get out of the truck and run to her. I glance over at Roan. He’s watching me. I think back, ten years ago. Him, standing in front of Ophelia after riding a dirt bike through her wedding to prove a point. “You can’t marry him.”

Back then, he was begging her not to marry another man. What if that’s where I’m driving River?

Thoughts of her still drift into my head and before I can stop them, I remember the taste of her, the hold she had on me that night, and it’s unbearable. I want to erase the memories, rid them from my brain to move on and not be lost in this. The problem is the weight of my words crushed both of us.

 

 

 

I bitched out. There’s no other way around it. I fucked up.

I left that night with Roan.

I’m sure you can guess by now, since I told you twice, or maybe more, but I’m really good at disappearing. I internalize what I can’t handle and in turn, leave. I bottle it up and distance myself, something I learned from watching Roan, someone I respect greatly and who became a father figure to me. He taught me to deal with my shit and not let others see it.

Okay, I had to leave. I had obligations that tied me to Erzberg and a commitment to Roan, but still, it couldn’t have come at a better time for me.

After a month of training in Erzberg, I fly to India for the Red Bull FMX Jam and that leaves me, once again, fearing to see River and riding from the airport to the event with Scarlet. That’s a whole new level of fear.

“You missed a lot,” Scarlet says, eyeing me.

I raise an eyebrow. “I did?”

“Yes, you did. And have you bothered to look at your phone?”

“No.” I glance down at my phone and then wish I hadn’t. Text message after text message. In the backseat, Sloane is there, kicking my seat and crying over whatever movie Scarlet turned off on her. “Didn’t have service.”

“Mama turned off my movie!” Sloane wails from the back, still kicking the seat.

I nod to the kid. “Why’d you turn off her movie?”

Scarlet scowls in the rearview mirror at her toddler throwing a fit. “I didn’t. She did and blamed me.”

I laugh. “Are you sure she’s not Tiller’s?”

Scarlet snorts. “Don’t even go there. Look at your messages.”

Sighing, I attempt to drown out the crying kid and look. And there it is. News article after new article of River, riding through the streets of Abu Dhabi naked on her bike, arrested, and then photographed flipping the local police off. I groan, my head hitting the headrest. “What the fuck was she thinking?”

“She wasn’t,” Scarlet says, turning out of the parking garage and then slamming on the brakes abruptly. My head snaps forward, then back. “Whoops. Sorry.”

I glare at her. “I see your driving skills haven’t improved in the last month.”

“I see your ability to avoid hasn’t either.”

I stare out at the passing cars all honking at us. Hell, even Sloane in the backseat is looking like she’s thankful for the blacked-out windows. “Avoiding and working are two totally different things.”

“Not really.”

“Actually, they are.” I pull the hood of my sweatshirt up over my head. “Stop talking to me. I haven’t slept in days.” Putting in my AirPods, I attempt to drown Scarlet and Sloane out and think about what the next few hours might bring. I know River’s in the city, competing tonight, but I have absolutely no idea what she’s going to say to me. Knowing her, nothing. And I deserve it.

The Gateway of India is a protected monument in Maharashtra. It’s something like eighty-five feet tall and a local tourist attraction. Maybe that’s why they decided to have an event there, but regardless, it’s pretty cool flying through the air and seeing the Gateway beside you knowing you’re damn near the same height as the iconic structure situated on the pier.

The second I step from the car, my eyes land on the Gateway of India and the jumps situated in front of it. It’s beautiful. Have you seen the Gateway of India? It looks a bit different tonight with motocross ramps situated in front of it. The ramps are protected by inflatable slides on the sides to give you a false sense of security. I’ve landed on them before. It gives you a softer fall when you’ve greased the landing, but still, it’ll break some bones for sure.

My eyes shift to the scene before me. A jump show is the same everywhere you go. Women half dressed, drunk men wishing they had the balls to do it themselves, and loud music. It pulses through the air, the rich smells of 2-stroke racing fuel invading your senses, and you know you’re among the greatest to ever throw a leg over a bike and let go thirty feet high.

In the pits, if you can call a gated-off section of the pier the pits, I know she’s near me. I can feel it. Twisting my head, I notice her then, signing autographs near the fence line, Shade on one side of her, Tiller on the other. They do this by design any time she’s near the fence with a group of men. She’s been pulled over it a time or two and now has the rule she doesn’t interact with fans without them.

She’s standing still, dressed in her riding pants and sports bra, jersey off as usual. This I’ve become accustomed to, and I’ll take the riding pants if it means she’s not walking around naked.

Staring out at the pier, I sigh and make my way over to them when the fans start screaming my name. I’m dressed for the event now, my riding boots squeaking with each step as I approach them. I smile and wave, but it’s a ploy to deter the anxiety raging inside me. My heart pumps faster and faster the closer I get.

“Cam-Man!” Someone yells from beside the fences.

Even from ten feet away I can see River’s shoulders tense as someone says my name.

Her hand on the poster hesitates, stalls and I see her suck in a breath. She tilts her head, glances at me and then looks the other way, positioning her body away from me. Tiller gives me a nod, but he’s pulled another direction by Scarlet.

Shade smiles, but continues to sign autographs next to her.

I stand closer, to the point where I can smell the Victoria’s Secret lotion she’s wearing. The one that my van smelled like for a damn week after Naches and I had to drive with the windows open all the way back to California to get her out of my head. It consumes me and weakens the already-fragile hold I have. And then she’s looking at me, so vulnerable and open that I regret walking over here.

“Nice job in Erzberg,” a fan notes to the left of me.

“Thanks man.” I nod to him, smile and sign his shirt. This guy apparently follows me closely. I haven’t competed in the Erzberg Rodeo, a hare scramble Roan has won five times now, but I’ve been training for two years with him.

At the sound of my voice, River tenses and draws her bottom lip into her mouth. I suck in a breath and move closer, until our bodies are touching.

Like I expect, she distances herself from me.

I grab her by the arm and yank her into my chest, ignoring Shade’s curious stare and the ones around us taking photographs of the interaction. “You’re not even going to say hi?”

It’s a bold move on my part, to touch her again.

And a bitch move, if you ask River, because I’m pretty sure she’s considering squeezing my balls in her hand with the livid expression I’m leveled with.

“Let go of me,” she growls.

I smirk, adrenaline kicking in even though anxiousness brews inside me. Her feistiness, I’ve always been turned on by that shit but after a month away from her, it sends a jolt right to my dick. “Make me.”

She likes this side of me. In fact, she craves it, provokes and keeps it at bay. Only now, she resists. “I don’t have time for your bullshit today,” she says and shoves a Sharpie into my chest.

Shade smirks beside me. “What’d you do to piss her off?”

I shrug. It’s not like I’m going to tell him I fucked his niece and then didn’t call.

Welcome back to reality, I guess.

I follow her into the pits, unable to accept her snub. I should face reality. This is on me, but my pride wins out and I keep up with her. “Don’t act like you don’t like me,” I tell her, my expression as hard as stone. “You know goddamn well I’m all you think about.”

Do I know this though? A month went by. I have no idea what she’s been up to lately and I have myself to blame. What if she met someone? What if she’s engaged like Ophelia was when she left for college and returned to Roan tied to someone else?

There’s that tight throat again. What a familiar, annoying sensation. My stomach clenches from nerves, my heart hammering in my chest, waiting for her to answer me. I look down at her hand. No ring. Thank fuck!

River, she’s headstrong, willful and nothing I can control. And as I expect, she shoves me away from her and I realize what I’ve done. Pushed too far. “Was,” she spits at me. “Past tense, motherfucker.”

If you had any doubt she was Tiller’s daughter, you have your answer now, don’t you?

That’s not even the worst part of the night either. That part comes nearing the end of the event after I secured the win with a double backflip that I rotated into a no-handed superman midair. Next to fucking impossible, but as it turns out, isolation gets me determination and on my fucking game tonight. Or, I’m trying to impress River.

Take a look at her on her bike, shirtless still, and every bit as set on destroying me as she has been since I showed up here. I’m in the pits, helmet still on, breathing heavy and watching her in the staging lanes.

She’s… off, and I know what that look means. I’ve seen it on her dad so many times I know how this will play out.

She looks at Shade, then Tiller, then me. “How far back was that ramp in Madrid?” she asks Shade, but her eyes are locked on mine. As if to say, this is because of you.

His face goes blank. Pale. All the blood drained from it as his eyes shift from mine, to hers in the next beat. We all know what happened in Spain when Shade pulled the triple for the first time. He broke his neck and nearly died. When Tiller tried it, pelvis, arm and back. Knocked him out of freestyle competition after that.

And he could be a voice of reason for her, but he’s further back in the pits with Amberly, oblivious to what his daughter is trying to prove here. Hell, even I don’t know what she’s trying to prove but I rip my goggles and helmet off in the next motion and rush toward her. I wave to officials, to Roan, Tiller, anyone. I scream at her, at them, Shade, anyone to stop her.

Shade stands in front of her bike and I grab the face of her helmet and force her to look at me. “Don’t you dare pull that triple here,” I warn, anger pulsing through me. “I fuckin’ mean it, River.”

She jerks her head out of my grasp. “Your word means nothing to me,” she yells over revving her bike and twists the throttle and leans into the handlebars and rolls forward. She runs over Shade’s leg with a wheelie and I can’t watch. I don’t want to, but I’m forced to. Frozen. Awaiting destruction because she can’t do this. I don’t say that because I don’t believe in her, but the ramp isn’t the right distance and she knows it. Maybe that’s why she’s doing it.

To fail.

In front of everyone.

I might never know.

It happens on the second rotation. She misjudges the landing, and the speed of the wind. The bike stalls, dips forward and she misses.

Freestyle accidents are silent, until they’re not. The sound of metal against dirt absorbs the harshness of it. Until metal on concrete, until that sound is the only one reverberating through your thoughts, silence is something you pray for. Anything to get the noise out of your head.