— If I can’t love you, then what do you suggest?
— Hate me? — Iya said dryly, as if she was genuinely afraid to even propose it.
— But to hate someone, you need
just as much strength as you do for passionate love. Love and hate
are such powerful emotions—probably the most powerful—
that at their peak, the line between them just doesn’t exist.
↢ ↣
He had black eyes, dimples in his cheeks, and my heart caught between his fingers.
— Kill me.
— If you’d asked me that a month ago, I would’ve gladly agreed, but now I’m just gonna say you’re out of your mind, Vi.
— I’m a racer, Kian. You’re not the first to say I’ve lost it.
The knife is snatched right out of my hands, though I can’t say I was holding on too tight. When it glints in Kian’s fingers, I force myself to freeze, to stand still as if I’m not scared—though that’s a lie.
— You’ve been through so much, survived so much, Vi… — he whispers, and the blade disappears behind his back, though its unreal shimmer still lingers in my mind. — It’d be so unfair to kill you now, when everything’s almost over. You’ll thank me later.
I jerk my head up to catch his gaze—the gaze of those venomously black eyes.
— And you’re the one saying I’m not all there.
Kian chuckles softly, and the night’s darkness splits open, its thickness behind me thinning out, laced with moonlight.
— Crazy people are the best, Vi. They’re the eternal winners. And we’re gonna win. Even if you beg me to chop you into a million pieces every single day.
— I hate you, Kian Ellington.
— Don’t say that, Vivienne Ferelit Bonner. You’ll be the death of me.
↜ ↝
Lucas’s garage was the only place where you could hear English, Spanish, and French all mixed into the same conversation. For me, though, the garage was a spot to crash on the couch in the middle of the day and wrench bolts until midnight, until Lucas yelled from upstairs that electricity ain’t free and it’s time to head home.
I hated that last part with every fiber of my being because home felt as empty as a rich person’s crypt with no family to mourn them. Lucas didn’t get it and kept kicking me out of the garage, muttering that he could handle the pile of scrap just fine without me.
— Don’t call Millie scrap! — I slammed my fist against the metal doors, painted in every color of the rainbow, and trudged home on foot.
— Hey, don’t be mad at him, — Tata’s voice crackled through the phone. — He just wants you and Millie to be well-rested for the showdown.
— He wants me to lose it.
— You’ve already lost it, Viv. Who else would name their car Millie? But if you wanna shine bright again in the sky of that ridiculous showdown, you’ve gotta let Lucas work on Millie and get some sleep. Giving up and moping around right now isn’t an option. You need to be that star again, Vivi. That’s what made you who you are.
Helpless, lonely, incapable…
— Sleep, yeah, sure. Thanks, — I ran my fingers through my hair, pulled back into a ponytail. I didn’t catch what Tata said next.
My thoughts looped back to what she’d already said: the showdown made me who I am now. That wasn’t entirely true, of course, but there was a good chunk of truth in it.
The showdown changed my life forever. And honestly, that whole year was just insane.
For some reason, I always believed that before something incredibly good happens, life starts to fall apart. And it didn’t just fall apart—it cracked and crumbled into bricks, like the wall of a high-rise during an 8.0 earthquake.
Two years ago, Mom died of cancer. Two years ago, I was working two jobs while helping Lucas turn wrenches for five bucks an hour to pay for her treatment. I stumbled upon the showdown—a series of underground street races—by chance from some random garage customer who rolled in from California in his white Nissan (“Buy a Nissan, suffer alone”). Lucas was against it; unlike me, he didn’t care about the prize money.
— I don’t wanna see your brains smeared across the track by the Waterfront at a pretty sunset. Who else is gonna change tires on my old Chevy for five bucks?
— Has anyone’s brains ever been smeared across the track?
— Vi!
But then he helped me find a car, and we fixed it up after every race.
By the time I won, though, the money wasn’t needed anymore. I left half of it to the hospital where Mom spent her final hours.
After that, there was no stopping me. There wasn’t a race I didn’t join, a ranking I wasn’t in, or a conversation where they didn’t grit their teeth mentioning “that upstart.” I floored the gas, blasted the loudest music, and escaped down the roads of New Atlantis to nowhere in particular all night long. By day, I was back turning wrenches with Lucas.
He stopped trying to talk me out of racing.
When the fire in me cooled a bit, I stopped showing up everywhere and stuck to the biggest races. But the next year, I was back at the showdown. They invited me to every illegal meet-up that the cops eventually busted.
Still, Lucas kept kicking me out, pointing at the clock and my apartment: “The star of modern street racing needs to sleep in her own place. Get going!”
The star of modern street racing wanted to become a witch and scare lost tourists in a dense forest, but good luck finding one of those on the East Coast.
The July evening outside the garage hit me with scorching heat. The hot air burned my throat and lungs, and the pavement, baked all day, seemed to steam. But a breeze from the ocean brought relief, a coolness and freshness I desperately needed. My clothes stuck to my skin, coated in a thin film of sweat. At the bus stop, adjusting the bag on my shoulder, I glanced at my hands: dirty, stained with grease and grime embedded in my skin. Before bed, I often wondered what my hands would look like if fate—woven by the Norns, the Moirai, or whoever—had taken a different turn. Neat, clean? Maybe Mom wouldn’t have had to suffer, waiting for me to scrape together money for her treatment. Maybe she’d still be alive if I’d learned about the showdown a year earlier, instead of when it was already too late.
I closed my eyes, which immediately stung as if someone had poured sand into them. Mom, of course, would’ve had a sharp reply to thoughts like these:
“Good heavens, Vivienne Ferelit Bonner, you’re killing me. Where are you gonna get that kind of money? Rob a bank? Don’t make me laugh and let me die in peace.”
Mom was the only person who stayed by my side my whole life. And for her sake, I dragged myself from one end of the city to the other. She used to say we were descendants of some old aristocrats, which I just laughed off. We were more likely descendants of some ancient convict lineage shipped to the East Coast from England. And the fact that I had a middle name and a French last name? That was just Dad’s whim.
Vivienne Ferelit Bonner, ugh.
Mom’s talk of holding my head high and aristocratic blood was just words meant to comfort me. But thanks to them, I finished college and somehow clawed my way into high-profile journalism circles. Guess Dad’s stubbornness and curiosity played a cruel trick on me. Those journalism circles pushed me to the fringes the moment I, after two years of work, uncovered a trail of illegal dealings across the East Coast states—arms trafficking over the Atlantic to Europe. It all centered in New Atlantis, with red lines pointing straight to the mayor and some big-shot officials. Then I had to come face-to-face with the people I’d been digging dirt on.
I wasn’t surprised when they shut me down, fired me, and told me flat-out to stay out of sight. What did surprise me was that I walked away from it alive. I came out almost unscathed, so much so that Fernie, seeing me the next day without a single bruise, stared at me like the Canterville Ghost had moved into her apartment. But aside from saying I was fine, I didn’t tell my friend a thing.
After sitting at home for a month, crying on Mom’s lap and listening to her talk of aristocratic blood and keeping my head up, I pulled myself together to find a new place in the world since I’d been kicked out of the old one. Then, with Mom’s sudden cancer diagnosis, I had to search even harder—working at Lucas’s garage, washing dishes, and freelancing as a translator for shady agencies in between. Mom never blamed me, understanding we were barely scraping by on life’s slippery ladder.
Mom and I shared a tiny apartment in a building that looked oddly like a beehive or a hollowed-out tree. Back when I was little, Dad showed me beehives in Grandpa’s garden. Grandpa lived in a small house in a village near Cardiff, surrounded by trees that bloomed so sweetly in spring that I never wanted to return to dusty New Atlantis.
Even now, I didn’t want to be here. So, stumbling home, I collapsed onto my bed and fell asleep, helplessly burying my face in the pillow.
***
Hey everyone! I hope you’re enjoying the story so far and will stick with the characters until the very end! I’m looking forward to your comments, feedback, or just a simple heart. Yours, S.E.