Aldo felt the familiar rush of adrenaline and basked in it. And then remembered it was his hands and not his feet that he had to move. Slowly, he and Harper lumbered off the starting line. The crowd thinned quickly with the sprinters—his former place of glory—taking off like greyhounds on the chase.

Aldo cursed his pedals and tried to keep pace with Harper who still looked a little green around the gills.

“Just relax into it,” he coached her. “We’re just out here going for a nice quiet jog-slash-pedal in front of the entire town.”

She snorted, but her feet picked up the pace a bit, a look of determination on her pretty face.

“Good job. Way to not suck,” he told her.

“Shut up, man-beast.”

* * *

“Oh my God. I’m dying. Aldo, I’m dying,” Harper gasped.

“If you couldn’t talk, I’d be concerned.”

“You’re not even out of breath,” she muttered.

He flashed her a grin. He was Aldo “Fucking” Moretta. He didn’t get out of breath…or at least he did everything to hide it. “You’re fine. You’ve got a great pace.” He waved from his bike at a group of kids cheering from the end of their driveway. Almost the entire course had been lined with Benevolence residents. It was the best turn out he could remember for a race he’d been running since high school. Everyone seemed to be in the spirit.

“Where’s your mom?” Harper asked, pointing ahead at his mother’s yard and the end of the block.

“Finish line probably,” he told her. It was closer to the start of the parade, and Ina Moretta had an entire parade candy strategy honed from years of literally stealing candy from babies.

“How much farther?” Harper moaned. “I don’t think I’m going to make it. Maybe I’ll just wait here. You can come back and pick me up.”

“Don’t be so dramatic. Do you hear the yelling?”

“I can barely hear anything over the wheezing of my lungs.”

“That’s the finish line.”

“Are you kidding? We’re almost done?”

“Half mile to go.”

“Seriously?” Harper perked up. “I think I can run that.”

“I know you can. And so can I.” He pulled the cycle into his mother’s driveway.

Harper used the pause to bend at the waist and suck in air like a vacuum cleaner. “Aldo—”

He carefully stood, reaching down to adjust his blade. “Before you even start, I cleared it with Steers. A half mile at a slow jog. Are you up for that? We’re not stopping until the finish line.”

Her face lit up, and he knew there would be no stopping Harper Wilde on the final leg of their journey together. “Let’s do it!”