Wilder

Rachel would love that teapot. It could be my Paxton pot. The time I got in way over my head and let yet another reckless asshole break my heart. At least this one won’t break your body.

I took it out of Paxton’s hands and headed to the owner of the booth. This was definitely my Paxton pot. It could sit next to Rachel’s “I failed my chem final” pot and right above my “doc said one more surgery” pot.

As I took my money out of my wallet, Paxton rolled his eyes. “Put your fanny pack away,” he said with a smile.

It was the closest to a joke he’d made since we left Rome.

“I can pay for it,” I argued. There was zero chance I was taking anything else from him. Not when he already had way too much of me.

We locked eyes, a battle raging along the tension that connected us. “Fine,” he acquiesced. “But you’re not paying full price.”

“It’s on the sticker, Pax,” I said as we arrived to the booth.

“Haggling is half the fun,” he said. “Besides, they expect you to.”

I rolled my eyes and let him get to it. By the time it was over, we’d lost a ton of time, but he’d gotten my teapot more than half off.

“Thank you,” I said, tucking it into my small backpack.

“No problem,” he answered.

We walked side by side along the main walkways, then turned down a few alleys with smaller booths, tangling ourselves in the web of the market. With every step, the tension between us became something palpable, almost as if I could reach out and pluck it like a guitar string.

What if this was how it would be from now on?

Maybe he was done with me.

That thought hurt more than it should have.

“It feels good to get out,” he said, breaking our awkward silence.

“I bet,” I answered.

“It sucks that we blew the opportunity for the stunt, but I guess resting up before we head for more ramp practice is a safer bet.”

I paused in the middle of the walkway, and Paxton turned around.

“What’s wrong?”

“You’re getting on another ramp?”

He nodded. “Of course.”

“What the hell do you mean, of course? Like it’s a given? Like there’s not even the possibility that you might take a look at what almost happened to you and rethink that choice?”

“Leah, nothing happened.” He took a step toward me, and I moved backward.

“Really? Because I was there. I saw you come down. I saw the bike hit, and you hit, and then the bike come down on you.”

“I take risks every single day of my life. It’s what I do. It’s who I am. It’s how I made my name.”

“Even if it kills you?”

He shook his head. “It hasn’t.”

“Yet! You’re not even healed and you’re ready to jump back on a bike and flip it backward.”

“Forward,” he corrected. “We were going backward in Rome, but I’ll actually be working on flipping it forward. Three times, which has never been done. We just didn’t have the right kicker in Rome.”

My mouth hung open for a second until I snapped it shut. “You nearly got yourself killed going backward, which—forgive my physics—should be easier than forward, and now you’re going to take it up a notch?”

“If you think that’s almost killing myself, then we should probably talk about your definition of death.”

That carefully constructed wall I kept lost a brick.

“I am more acquainted with that concept than you have ever been!” I yelled.

Okay, maybe it lost an entire row of bricks.

“What? Because our brakes didn’t work on the zip-line? That was a baby accident compared to what I’ve seen—what I’ve done.”

My fingernails dug into my palms. “Like what happened in Rome? You can’t tell me nothing happened when you’re sitting on two tampered brake assemblies and a cracked chest plate. You’re not that stupid.”

His eyes narrowed. “Is that what you call trusting your friends? Stupid?”

“Is that seriously how you define trust?”

“Yes.” He walked forward, and I retreated until I felt a stone wall at my back. “That’s when you hand someone your faith.”

“Blindly?”

His eyes narrowed. “I’ve known some of them my entire life. I would take a bullet for any of them.”

“Would they take one for you?”

“Yes,” he answered instantly.

“How the hell can you be so sure when you’re sitting on evidence like that? You’d hop back up there and wait for someone to do something that kills you?”

“I don’t expect you to understand.” His eyes went glacial, which only fueled the anger controlling me.

“Why? Because I don’t want to hurl my body through space? Because I think you don’t have to do extraordinary things to be extraordinary? I can’t understand because I’d rather curl up with Netflix than drive as fast as I can just to see if I can beat the score of the guy next to me?”

“What? I don’t race.” He shook his head. “You wouldn’t understand because you live in a bubble of your own making. You can see the amazing things happening around you, but you’d rather watch from the inside because you think it’s safer.”

“It is safer!” I shouted. Too close. He’s too close.