Chapter 14: The Open Highway
The elevator doors opened not to the flashing lights of the press or the cool marble of the main lobby, but to the quiet, damp air of the service exit near the loading docks. The rain had finally stopped, leaving the asphalt slick and reflecting the amber glow of the streetlights like spilled honey. The noise of the city felt muffled here, reduced to a distant hum of tires on wet pavement and the occasional blast of a delivery truck's air brake out on the avenue.
Jax didn't let go of my hand as we stepped out into the cool night air. His leather vest was still damp from the evening's damp chill, and the smell of old wool and motor oil clung to him like a familiar comfort. He pulled a pack of gum from his pocket, offered me a stick with a quick, silent nod, and then unwrapped one for himself. We walked past the row of metal trash bins and out toward the curb where his old motorcycle was parked beneath the shelter of a corrugated steel awning.
"You okay, kid?" Jax asked, his voice rougher than usual, the adrenaline of the gala finally draining out of him, leaving him looking his age—forty-eight years of hard miles, unhealed wounds, and stubborn survival.
"I'm okay," I said, my fingers closing around the small folded paper in my pocket, the ink slightly smudged from my sweaty palm. "Are we going back to the garage?"
"Not yet," Jax said, straddling the bike and kicking the starter pedal with a familiar, mechanical rhythm that caught on the second try with a deep, low rumble. He reached down and adjusted the strap of my old jacket, making sure it was snug against the wind. "We're going somewhere quieter. Somewhere we don't have to yell over the sound of people pretending to care about things they don't understand."
I climbed up behind him, my arms wrapping tightly around his waist just like I had the night before, pressing my cheek against the warm leather of his back. As he pulled out from the curb and turned the front wheel toward the highway on-ramp, I looked back one last time at the Grand Royal Hotel. Its towering facade of glass and stone still glittered against the dark sky, a monument to money and silence, but the lights didn't look quite so intimidating anymore. The big, glowing sign at the top seemed smaller from down here on the street, just a billboard for a building full of people who were suddenly learning that some secrets couldn't be bought off with a trust fund or buried under a marble floor.
The ride out of the city took us across the old iron bridge where the river ran black and wide beneath the girders, carrying the runoff from the storm out toward the open country. The wind picked up as we hit the highway, whistling past my ears and flattening my messy light brown hair against my forehead. I closed my eyes for a moment, letting the vibration of the engine hum through my bones, feeling the strange, terrifying lightness of a world that had suddenly turned upside down and then righted itself again.
We drove for nearly an hour, past the neon-lit sprawl of the suburban strip malls and into the darker stretches of two-lane blacktop where the roadside was lined with towering pines and fields of wild grass. My eyelids grew heavy against the rushing air, the events of the evening—the doorman's sneer, the flashbulbs in the ballroom, Evelyn Sterling's broken expression—blending together into a cinematic reel that played behind my closed eyes. For the first time in as long as I could remember, I didn't feel like I was holding onto something that was slipping through my fingers. The faded photo was safe in my pocket, and the man driving the bike wasn't a ghost anymore. He was just Jax, and he was heading down the road with me right behind him.
May you like
Jax slowed the bike as we approached a familiar bend in the highway, the turnoff for the all-night diner where the neon sign buzzed with a tired, orange hum against the gray wooden siding. It was the same place where we had stopped two nights ago, before any of this had started, before the hotel doors had opened and closed in our faces, before the truth had finally broken its way out into the open air.
He cut the engine, the sudden silence of the night rushing in to fill the space where the roar of the motor had been. The gravel crunched beneath our boots as we walked toward the front door, the bell above the lintel chiming with its familiar, tinny ring as we pushed inside into the warm smell of fried bacon, burnt coffee, and floor wax.
