It takes us three hours to get Tiller off the bathroom floor and a trip to the ER where he has to get a tetanus shot. Stupid fuck scraped his ass against a wall in the tunnels and got a nasty infection.
By the time we’re at the event, Tiller is sound asleep in the van, and I’m on my game, ready to throw some tricks and impress Scarlet. And then I think to myself, when did I become the guy wanting to show off for a girl? I hadn’t done that since I was a kid, thirteen years old, trying to get Rhya to notice me in a way other than a friend.
I chalk it up to her ignoring me. Scarlet that is. If she wasn’t going to give into me, I’d show her why that would be a mistake.
Freestyle riding in the streets of Paris is something I’ve always wanted to do. Even better with this event, there’s no scoring, no judge there to critique your every move. It’s about throwing the best trick and getting the crowd pumped for when the real show comes.
The lead up to the world tour in Madrid, Spain is what we’re all looking forward to, but events like this are some of my favorites.
A lot of people ask me why I like freestyle riding. My answer?
It defies gravity, and when I’m airborne, I come to life. It’s about being free and doing what you want. The thrill of pulling off a trick no one else has.
In theory, all of it defies logic and sanity, but it’s a rush from a lifestyle of being so close to disaster yet taunting it. It’s about being completely in the moment. If only for a second, my mind is nowhere else.
For me, that’s why. If only for seconds, I’m free from everything else. The sponsors, the brand of me they’re creating, the women, the other riders. In those seconds, I’m alive only for me.
It may sound selfish, but it’s the only time I have that.
The freestyle events are set up a little differently from a competition. There’s a lot of down time and talk amongst the other riders. Or shall I say provoking? It’s how we work. It starts out as comradery and ends in shit talking. Every time.
I’m doing my practice runs, throwing tricks to rouse the crowd and get them on their feet. It ends in me trying to convince ESPN to move the ramp back so I can go for a double backflip since Scarlet’s here and has never seen me perform yet, I thought, hey, double backflip, oh yeah, that’d get me out of her so called bullpen.
“I’m not doing it, Shade,” the official tells me. “I don’t want to scrape you off the concrete tonight. Besides, if we move it for you, it messes up the rest of the event.”
Damn it. I’ll have to show off another way.
I’m heading back to the staging area, removing my goggles and hanging them on my handlebars and cursing myself for not carrying my helmet with me on the plane. Maybe that’s why everything is going to shit. It gets a whole lot worse for me when I see Jaime. He stops me by positioning his bike in front of mine on the narrow path to the pits.
I’m tempted to pin it and ask him how a mouthful of my front tire tastes. That’d probably get me disqualified though.
Jamie’s got that look in his eyes. After our interactions in Orlando, do you think I talk to him on a regular basis?
No. Never. I avoid him at all costs.
He nods to Scarlet standing in my pit, her phone in hand. “Is that your new assistant?”
“Don’t even think about it,” I snap, revving my bike, fully prepared to lay his ass out on the concrete.
He winks, placing his helmet on. “Oh, dude, I’m more than thinking about it.”
“No, you’re not. She’s off limits to you.”
“Relax. Maybe I’m looking for an assistant when you’re done with her.”
My blood boils in my veins, my grip on my handlebars tightening. The fuck he is. I’d make goddamn sure she’s never hired by him. Wasn’t sure how, but I’d make sure of it.
Do you know why freestyle riders enjoy the sport so much? It’s certainly not because we like being injured, though every rider here tonight is masking the pain of injury of some sort.
Two months ago, I tore my ACL and LCL and a partial tear to my PCL. I know what you’re thinking. . . what the fuck does all that mean, Shade?
It essentially means my knee is floating. There’s also this fun little artery that’s an extension of your femoral artery. It carries blood from your heart to your upper and lower leg. So. . . all that means is by me tearing up my knee so badly, there’s nothing keeping my knee from shifting and severing the artery. If my knee shifted on landing, I could bleed to death.
Your eyes are wide, aren’t they? You’re asking yourself why am I still throwing a leg over a bike?
I have an answer for you.
Because when I’m airborne, I come to life. I do it for the thrill of pulling off a trick no one else has. I do it because I’m defying all logic and sanity for the rush of a lifestyle that has me so close to disaster, yet I’m taunting it.
I’m on the ramp, getting to do my run when they announce me. I start out with the kiss of death, forty-five off the ground. Then I do a bike flip followed by a superman. After adjusting the steering damper, I pull off a 360 midair all with no shirt on.
Am I upset I didn’t get to do the double backflip for her?
Yes, but I think going shirtless offered me some points with her, don’t you think?
Take a look at her face when I get back to the pit. It’s worth the injuries.
I can tell she’s a fan of the sport, and it’s fun to see this side of her, as well as having someone enthusiastic waiting for you. I don’t mean the pro hos either. They’re a dime a dozen. I mean this, the adrenaline in her blood telling her she’s witnessing something gnarly and disaster taunting. She sees it for what it is.
“Holy shit, that was sort of amazing.”
I wink. “Are you impressed?” I want to kiss her. Hell, I want to fuck her against my bike, but I shouldn’t. Something tells me she doesn’t want that.
“Definitely,” Scarlet notes.
I turn the bike off, kick the kickstand out, then swing a leg over to stand in front of her. “Want a ride?” She thinks I’m talking about me, and I am, but I’m also referring to my bike because she’s staring at it now. The way her eyes don’t lift, that right there tells me she’s not a pro ho. She’s impressed by my run, sure, but the bike holds interest too.
“Is that a pickup line?” Scarlet’s head tilts to the side as she studies me, her gaze lingering on my mouth.
I wipe my forearm over my forehead. “Only if you want it to be.”
I don’t know what she’s thinking, but I think it has something to do with my mouth on hers, or better yet, sucking on the nipples I can see poking through her tank top.
Stepping toward her, I lean in. Just a little so she feels the heat of my body next to hers. She stops breathing. “Not the ride you’re referring to, but someday I’d love to see what the fuss about these bikes is. And you should put a shirt on.”
“Make me,” I challenge. My cock stiffens, and I’m glad my riding pants conceal it. I’d gladly take her for a ride on my cock for sure, maybe even my race bike. I stand there, sweat pouring from me, and she’s smiling. Do I turn and walk away or do I ignore her and test my luck with the Rockstar Energy chicks? I can only take so much here.
Scarlet’s eyes drag to mine, and she fucking winks at me, stealing my sunglasses from my hand. She puts them on and leans in to whisper, “Nice try, but my answer is still no.”
What. The. Fuck?
Do you see the look on my face? Do you see the way my jaw clenches and my eyes narrow at her? I’m confused.
I want her. I want my sunglasses back too.
Mostly, I want to get to know her and figure out what the fuck her problem is with me. She’s our personal assistant, and I shouldn’t feel this way about her but I’ve also never been denied sex by someone I’m obsessing over.
I know what you’re thinking. Why her? Out of all the women trying to gain my attention since Rhya, why Scarlet Rose?
I’ve got a few answers for you. And they’re not in any particular order. . . or are they?
Men want what they can’t have. Simple fact here.
Her wild curls match her “fuck with me and I’ll shove my foot up your ass” attitude.
She doesn’t give two shits about me being a badass. She’ll still put me in my place.
And we like a challenge. Here’s an example for you. When I first did a double backflip at the X Games, it wasn’t because I wanted to. It’s difficult to pull off, and you need the right circumstances and the right setup to do the flip. If conditions aren’t perfect—right ramp, air time and a soft landing—the trick is incredibly dangerous. You can die.
So why’d I end up doing it in the X Games?
One, I wanted to win the gold, and with the tricks thrown there, you gotta bring your game. And two, fucking Reece wanted to rouse me a little and said, “I’m better than Shade any day, but that trick can’t be done.”
Excuse me? I don’t think so. I’d been doing it for months at home. I had yet to do it in competition, but the circumstances hadn’t been right at the last couple events for me to do it.
That’s how the double backflip got thrown in there. I sent him a text the day I heard he said that and said, “Game on, motherfucker,” or something similar to that.
I’d been so fired up because he somehow thought he was better than me that I was in the foam pit every day practicing the trick the month leading up to the X Games. When June came along and we were in LA for the X Games, Reece talked shit the whole time to ESPN trying to egg me on. Sure, we’re friends and he was doing it to rile me up, but I still didn’t find the humor in it.
I played it cool with ESPN. They’d ask, “Are you going to do it?”
“No.”
“Are you doing it in freestyle or best trick?”
“Neither.”
“You’re just trying to throw us off, aren’t you?”
“Nope.”
What they didn’t know was that I took the double backflip and added a flare to it. On the second time around, I let go of the bike completely, extended my body out, then grabbed it again and landed it.
Landing it is key here. At home, I’d practiced until blood was dripping down my arms, legs, and face. My knees had huge gashes in them. I was sure I broke my ankle and my wrist, and I could barely walk. But still, I was 100 percent certain I could land it clean at the X Games.
Okay. 99 percent.
Then came the X Games. The moment of truth when I was on the roll-in.
I could have killed myself, and truthfully, on the ramp, I figured I was going to, but then thought, let’s go out in a blaze of glory.
All right, I told you that story for a reason. Here are the facts. I didn’t want to do the double backflip, but they’d told me it was impossible, so I proved them wrong. And now I’m working on the triple because if the double could be done, so could a triple.
Knowing all of this, if someone, eh, Scarlet, tells me I can’t do something, what do you think my reaction will be?