Page 61 of The Knight

I feel as close to flying as I've ever been.

As close to being free as a girl with one foot in the grave and half a heart left to love can ever be.

We speed down the road, Tanner sometimes swerving ahead of me, only for me to catch him on a bend. The ground slowly dips bit by bit until suddenly we're accelerating fast down an incline, so fast my heart jumps into my throat. As the gravel road spills into a wide-open field, trees and posts in the distance, I slam on the brakes—too hard. I feel my stomach do a somersault as I come to a stop on the road and almost fall off the bike. As it is, the thing skids beneath me and flips me over, and I wince as the gravel skins my leg, pants yanked up to my knee, skin on fire.

Tanner comes to a stop nearby, more slowly and in control, then leaps off his bike and rushes over to me. The first thing he does is reach out and grab my helmet, gently lifting it off my head and looking into my eyes, the sun shining down on him. I bite down on my lip to keep from whining about the pain, feeling like a fool.

"You okay?"

"I'm fine." Wincing, I look down at my legs, the breath hissing through my teeth. "Just feel stupid is all. I should've known not to brake too quickly. I'm an idiot."

"Nah. It's a mistake anyone could make." His fingers are warm on my cheeks as he tilts my face up towards the sun and stares at me intently. "Your pupils are responding to light." Seeming not to care about how close we are at all, he runs impatient fingers through my hair, and relaxed minutely. "No bump on your head. You were lucky—all you got is a bit of road rash. It'll scab over and itch like a bitch, but you'll be fine."

"Thanks." Tanner doesn't take his fingers out of my hair right away, slowly drawing them down towards my neck, then abruptly pulling back as if he's been stung. I watch his expression shift from wide open to closed off, turning back into the boy who's uninterested in what goes on around him, who mostly grunts instead of speaking. Impulsively, I ask him, "What's the deal with you and your dad?"

He frowns at me. "That's a pretty big leap in conversation."

"We're gonna be stuck here for a while," I point out. "And I've been wondering why it is that you hate him so much. I mean, the way you talk about him, it's like you'd love nothing more than for his campaign to be ruined. But don't you want him to be president? You'd get to live in the White House and flirt with a whole new crop of privileged teenage girls."

Sighing, he combs his fingers through his short-cropped hair, then licks his lips and gets to his feet. Holding out a hand, he helps me up, then motions towards a bench in the distance. "Might as well sit down. I'll probably have to get that asshole Suede to drive over here and pick us up. You're in no condition to ride back."

I hate to admit that he's right. He offers his arm for me to lean on, and I reluctantly take it, only able to put a little bit of weight on my left leg without hissing in pain. The cuts in my skin are shallow, but they stretch from ankle to knee, inches wide and painful. Tanner grabs the bags off the back of his dirt bike as we walk past it, then lowers me gently onto the bench, staring at my leg. The blood, at least, is helping to wash the dirt away. Lucky me.

It doesn't seem like he's going to answer my question. Opening the bag, he pulls out a water bottle and a flat pack which, once he opens it, reveals a small first aid kit with some ace bandages and antibiotic cream. Surprise flickers across my face, and he smirks at me. "What, you thought Lukas was the only boy scout? I know a thing or two."

"I thought that pack was full of hard seltzer," I confess. In response, Tanner pulls out three cans, condensation dripping down their silver bodies, and I roll my eyes. "Of course."

"You might want one." He passes a cherry flavored can over to me, and I take it, curious. "This is going to sting."

That's all the warning I get before he's pouring cool water over my road rash, making me bite down on my lip from the sudden pain. The water flushes the dirt from my skin, revealing all the little pockmarked spots where the gravel scratched me to hell. With my luck, it'll probably be red and angry for a while before it fades, ruining the warm weather outfits I've been hoping to wear.

As Tanner uncaps the ointment and starts to carefully spread it on my skin, I open up the can of seltzer and drink deep, surprised by the pleasant fizzy taste of it. There's no heavy bitter punch of alcohol, which makes me think it'd be easy to get drunk on something like this—that's probably the point.

Conversationally, Tanner says, "Evangeline Connally isn't my mother."

My head jerks around towards him, and I nearly choke on the seltzer sliding down my throat. Coughing, I mention, "I knew you were adopted. At least after that interview."

"Yeah, thanks to you Dear Old Dad made me go on an apology tour." He rolls his eyes, continuing up my legs with careful fingers, the ointment slowly soothing the pain. "I guess I should clarify: Evangeline Connally isn't my mother, but George Connallyismy biological father. He had an affair."

"Oh." My stomach drops as I realize how much it must've hurt him to have to go on TV and declare himself adopted, all to hide his father's indiscretions—which he must be proof of. "I'm sorry."

"Don't be. My mom was miles better than that stone-hearted bitch he makes me call 'Mom.' She loved me." His voice is carefully neutral, but I can hear the pain behind the words. "Dad wanted to pretend like I didn't exist, but then his pretty blonde wife wasn't getting pregnant easily—that part was true—and my mom was diagnosed with cancer. She called him up and told him that his mayoral run would be ruined by scandal if he didn't do something to support us financially. He caved. I was only three, but he wanted a son."

Studying him, something clicks in my mind, and I wonder how I didn't see it before. Maybe because I wasn't looking—that was the point, after all. "Your mom, was she..."

"Black? Mixed, but yeah. It's more obvious when I'm standing next to the girls." Tanner unrolls the ace bandage and starts to wrap it gently around my legs, his movements still shockingly soft for a boy so hard and wild. "That was part of why Dad didn't want me around at first, I'm sure. The good folks of Kentucky look down on men who cheat on their pretty blonde wives with a black woman." He snorts indelicately, even as my heart squeezes into such a tight fist that I feel the pain he won't put into words. "After Mom died, dad did adopt me under the books, along with Evangeline. Right after she got pregnant, and she claimed it was a sign from God—that he'd blessed them with children because they'd taken in an orphan. Nevermind that I was George Connally's son from the start."

"She didn't leave him?"

"And miss out on being a First Wife? Please. It was obvious even then where things were heading for him. He was in with all the right people, and they'd pull all the strings to put him to the top. Me being around just gave them more leverage over him, and the people who put men like George Connally on the presidential fast track love a candidate they can control."

A surge of daring, fueled no doubt by the hard seltzer, makes me ask, "When you say the right people, do you mean the Syndicate?"

Tanner looks up at me, mouth quirking to one side. "You figured that out, huh?"

"Blake told me," I confess. I don't tell him what we were about to do when the secret spilled. "He said I deserved to know. He was light on the details, but it sounded like something out of a thriller. A secret society pulling the strings and running the world? That's the stuff of fiction."

"Or front page news, if you dare to read between the lines. Most people don't want to." Tightening the end of the ace bandage, he slides the metal clip over it and hops up onto the bench next to me, a can of seltzer in his hand. "The Syndicate isn't exactly the most secret organization in the world. Anyone who wants to can see which billionaires are donating to which presidential campaigns, who is hiding money in Panama, and all the journalists who write puff pieces about the rich and industrious. It's all a public game. Only the darkest part is kept secret, and if anyone tried to go public with it, they'd just call it all conspiracy theories and get you chucked in the looney bin."

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