She straightened, looking down on me. “I know you’ll never keep him happy. Josh has always needed the rush, and seeing as he’s here right now, that’s still true.”

My muscles locked one by one, as if my body was trying to forcibly contain the anger that was rolling in my stomach. I concentrated on Josh’s helmet and sent up a little prayer that he not do anything that would get him hurt even more. “That may be true, but you don’t know me, or us.”

She laughed, the sound grating on my last nerve. “He’ll never stay tucked away in some safe little desk job, and I know that’s what someone like you would want.”

Start the damn race already, before I throw her off this thing. “And what makes you think that?” Crap, I’d taken her bait, and her Cheshire-cat smile told me she was all too happy about it.

“Because he didn’t give in when you asked him not to race. I heard you.”

Okay, that hurt, but I breathed through the crippling pressure in my chest. She didn’t know us. Didn’t know what we’d been through in the last two and a half years. Didn’t know the strength of our love, our determination, our commitment. I ran my thumb over the band of my engagement ring.

Josh swung his leg over the bike, and my heart stuttered. Maybe he was going to listen. Maybe he wouldn’t race. Hope lit my smile as he jogged over to me, and I crouched down. My happiness that he’d decided to see reason squashed the near-rebuke at running on his leg. “Thank you,” I said as he looked up at me.

His forehead puckered as he took off his jacket. “No, I just… I wasn’t getting enough mobility.”

The sound of Velcro unfastening nearly paralyzed me. “What the hell are you doing?”

He handed me his air cast. “I’ll put it back on as soon as we’re done.”

My hands took it, despite my brain ordering them not to, my mouth hanging slightly open as he put his jacket back on and zipped it. “I love you. You and me against the world, right?”

“Right,” I whispered. But what if it’s just me against you and the world?

He flashed me a smile and ran back to the bike, sliding on in one smooth motion. I stood slowly, clutching his cast like it was a link to the only piece of him that I recognized.

Simone didn’t say anything. She didn’t have to. Her point had been made loud and clear by the one person I’d needed on my side of an argument he didn’t realize we were in.

“Here we go, princess. You ready to console him? Evan hasn’t taken the eight-year break Josh has.”

“I won’t need to console him.” My chin lifted and my shoulders straightened.

They revved their engines, and Samuel backed up a few feet, raising his arms.

“Why is that?” Simone asked, lifting her eyebrow at me.

“Because I know him better than you do.”

She might have said something, but I tuned her out, my brain focusing 100 percent on Josh as Samuel dropped his arms.

The noise was deafening as the bikes sprang forward. Nausea tore through me as the engines whirred to a high pitch and then back down as they coursed through the gears. Just let him be safe. Please, let him be safe.

They sped down the runway lit only by the red road flares and their own headlights. I gasped, my fingernails biting into his cast as Evan swerved to the right, knocking Josh off-course. Asshole.

Josh corrected and then drove even faster. The speed sucked my heart straight out of my body. He’d never survive if he crashed going this fast. I’d lose him.

What if that was what he wanted? Was that what this was? Did he feel so guilty about what had happened to Trivette, to Will, that he was testing his own fate? Or was he so numb to it all that he truly couldn’t understand what the hell he was doing to me? To himself?

Did I even have the right to push the subject?

His taillight got smaller the farther he went from me, and I couldn’t help but feel like it was more than physical distance growing between us on that strip of concrete. My breath stuttered in my lungs as the lights swerved again, but then stayed steady.

The engines died down as they passed the finish line, but the cheers were almost as loud. “I can’t tell who won from here,” Simone said.

“Josh did.”

“What makes you so sure?”

I kept my eyes locked on Josh as he sped back toward us, Evan on his heels. He came to a sudden halt at the start line and ripped his helmet off before dismounting. The smile he gave me was blinding. The race had invigorated him, forced life back into his veins. Or maybe he had simply siphoned it from me.

I gave Simone a smile that Paisley would have been proud of. “You might have doubted the Josh that you knew, but my Josh, the one I’m marrying? He doesn’t know how to fail. It’s not in his vocabulary.” Go to hell.

He walked toward us, his eyes never straying from me despite the girls who pushed into his path. The sight took the edge off my razor-sharp anger. He was a flaming, hot mess of a man, but he was mine, and he knew it.

He reached up for me, and I handed him his cast. Put it on. I said it all with one arched eyebrow, and his grin only widened as he did. Using the railing, I swung to sit on the edge of the platform, and he pulled me through the opening, holding me tight as I slid down the length of his body.

“I won.” His face looked like a five-year-old’s at Christmas.

“Yes.”

“What did you think? Pretty badass, right? There’s nothing like it.”