Wind Therapy - A.J. Downey Page 0,59
a shit that Reaver tagged your dumb ass,” Maverick said. “I told you it was a bad idea. No, my motives are purely selfish in nature, my man. I’m gonna need you healed up and in your prime – you feel me?”
The pointed look Maverick gave Fen and the slight head jerk he gave in my direction sent butterflies reeling in my stomach.
When he turned and made eye contact with me, those nerves fizzled out into nothing, though. The look Maverick gave me was a hard one, but not at me – for me. As though he owned me body, heart, and soul and would fiercely protect everything about me to the ends of the earth.
When his indigo eyes met mine? I felt all of that from my hair to my toes. The look telegraphed two things. One, that vengeance was riding back to Washington, and two, nothing and no one would touch me like that ever again.
I desperately wanted everything that went along with that look, but by the same token that very same look chilled me to the bone.
I pressed my lips together, biting them on the inside with my teeth to keep my mouth shut until Maverick and I were alone and could potentially discuss things further. He identified the misgivings on my face and gave me a slight chin lift.
We would talk later and that both was, and wasn’t, reassuring.
The ride helped, and I turned the phrase that had been uttered over in my head – wind therapy.
It was an accurate descriptor. The summertime wind was hot, washing over us, carrying tension and heartache, worries and concerns off us and blowing it back down the highway where it could lay forgotten for the time being.
I relaxed into the rhythm of the bike that carried us and held onto the man who piloted us expertly down the cracked asphalt towards the Cascades, the jagged peaks jutting toward an endless blue sky that was unfathomably deep. I closed my eyes and dreamed of stars and being among them, far from the complications here on earth that I faced.
The turmoil churning in my gut over my secret being out was something awful. I honestly felt so drained, like all I wanted to do was sleep for a thousand years. God, I wasn’t even certain that would do the trick to curb the deep tiredness living in the center of my soul.
I didn’t know if this was a tiredness that could even be cured by sleep.
I held on as we approached the foothills, the bike rising and falling as we crested each one, and I held to Maverick tightly and imagined we rode along the spine of some great, sleeping dragon. That each rise and fall was a breath the great beast took, inhaling as we rose, the slight peak as we crested the hill, and the rush as the great beast exhaled.
It was a story I would tell my little brother. Later. When I could see him again.
Mateo loved my stories… I loved them too. They took me far away from myself and the pain. Gave me an escape when I needed to go somewhere without any actual money or ability to go.
If it was one hard lesson I had learned on this trip, it was that it didn’t matter how far you rode, or how much you wanted to leave certain things behind… you couldn’t. Not when they lived inside your head.
It was a tough and heartbreaking reality and one, which it was time, to face.
I hated riding through Eastern Washington. Just traveling through made me huddle against Maverick’s back even more. He took his hand from the handlebars at least once to place it over mine where they rested over his stomach, giving them a squeeze as if to communicate, I know, it’s almost over.
I didn’t honestly feel like I could breathe again until we started to climb. Until the undulating brown hills started to give way to the unforgiving gray rock of the mountain and the withered grass shot up into deep green conifers.
It was high summer, but up high in the pass, it was much cooler than it had been on the sun-scorched eastern side. The cooler temperatures continued as we made our descent, the gray rock stark against the true-blue sky, bits of white still frosting the tops of the barren peaks around us. The trees provided us a lovely amount of shade and a reprieve from the punishing sun as we descended from