Arlo & Aurora

chapter forty-eight

The air was thick with a cloud of loose dirt, and the compact bodies of the crowd made the already hot spring evening feel thrice as stuffy.

My body was shaking. My legs and hands and everything in between felt like jelly, making it a fight for my adrenaline to communicate with my limbs and actually get me to move.

I was running, though I had no idea where to. My feet trailed along the only path that seemed to lead to the race track, but it was still unknown whether it actually did. Every part of me felt too weak and unstable to move as fast as I was.

My mind was so focused on my destination that I didn't even realise when I had made it to a gate similar to the one I had entered through, running straight past the man that guarded it.

"Woah, woah, woah." A scream lodged in my throat at the sound of his voice and the pair of hands that gripped onto either side of me.

The more I thrashed about, trying to pry the security man's hands off me, the more his hold seemed to tighten. I winched at the strong, painful feeling of his nails digging into my flesh, holding me back from reaching the entrance to the closed-off trackside.

I wasn't certain if Zoe had followed me, but when I heard her panicked voice from behind me, the red-headed girl rushing down the stone steps, I knew she had. "Let her go! She's Scott's girlfriend."

The Italian man chuckled, still firmly gripping onto me as I continued to put up a fight. "Oh really? I sure haven't heard that one before."

"She's telling the truth." I grunted as his strength overpowered mine. "Let me go! I need to see him."

He dragged my body off to one side, which proved difficult for him when I purposefully dug the heel of my shoes into the ground. The crowd still roared with cheers, unbeknownst to what had happened to the man they were all here to see, since the race track had become one big blur of speeding bikes to be able to keep up with just one if you stopped paying attention.

But I hadn't stopped paying attention. I wasn't interested in anyone here other than Arlo. Thus my distraught when I saw he had fallen from his bike in a split second of my attention being captured elsewhere.

There wasn't much time between me registering what had happened and scrambling away to go and see to it. But what I had seen, was what appeared to be Arlo's large frame laying a few feet beside his bike, which had just seconds before been racing at a high speed along the dirty track.

I was beyond worried. His bike was the fastest of them all, speeding ahead of each of those that seemed to be riding way beyond a hundred miles per hour. I was worried what I may face when the gate was opened, yet I still fought with all that I had to hold onto the possibility that the inevitable wasn't actuality.

With the only guard's attention on me, Zoe jumped at the opportunity to launch towards the gate. I watched her as she attempted to break it open, and mirrored the way her face scrunched up in annoyance when she found that it could only be opened from the opposite side.

My body slumped in defeat, my persistent fight coming to a halt as she shared a look with me. That was our only way in. The only way to know if he was okay, and it was blocked.

Just as I was about to burst into a fit of tears, a face appeared in the small window in the metal gate. It was Tristan, eyes wide with worry as he slid open the tiny window to inspect the commotion.

"Tristan," Zoe rushed over to him, reaching onto her toes to meet his eye, "please tell him she can come through."

Tristan's wide eyes stretched even wider when they landed on me, my body still held upright by the violent hold on my arms that I was certain had begun to make me bleed, or at least noticeably bruise.