Read Racing to Love: Eli's Honor for Free Online Page B

general, his bike, or working out. How could a child learn to fix something on his bike, just by watching it done— once ? Knew the statistics for all the professional riders…he had ingrained them in his memory. Set up changes to be made for his bike, and when they needed to be made. Dallas knew and had every intricate detail down pat. Things the average race spectator wouldn’t even give a second thought to, he could pick apart, instantly. Like cornering a berm, if the track was loose. He could watch the riders in practice and see what they were doing wrong, and before he ever kicked his own bike to life, he knew what to do to guarantee he’d be going faster than any other racer. He knew what weather conditions did to a track, to tires, and to his stamina. And he could adjust the corrections accordingly.
    If it had to do with racing, Dallas was all there.
    When it came to schoolwork, Honor tried to help him at home. She never lost patience with him, she let him take breaks between subjects as he did his homework. He was fine at home. Dallas would grumble here and there, but he did the work. It was a slow and tedious process, and together they struggled through each subject, night after night. Honor knew school didn’t come easy for her son, there was a piece to the puzzle missing, but he was brilliant. She could hear it in the way he discussed racing and the mechanics of the bike or the physics of a track layout. It was in his vocabulary, and more than obvious in the patience it took to become the best at a sport he loved so dearly.
    Three months. It was March, if they could just survive until May, it would all be good.
    Or so she had thought.
    Today’s meeting was a shock. Honor was still reeling. She did not like being backed into a corner, but they’d ambushed her, bringing in the counselor and the special education teacher from the middle school that he would attend in the fall.
    She brought her fingers up under his chin, her heart breaking as she read the disappointment written across his face. “Honey, this isn’t you. You know that right?”
    “The other kids call me stupid, Mom.”
    “You’re not stupid—do you hear me?” She waited for him to nod. “I just think you process it all differently. You have manuals to every bike you’ve ever been on memorized. You can do complicated math formulas if it pertains to your bike or the way a jump should be hit, or when you and Uncle Mac go to design and build something new on the track out there.”
    She waved a hand dismissively toward the window of the kitchen that overlooked the track. Small and extremely technical. Tight corners, steep jumps, and whoops. What started out as the only thing he found interesting enough to do with his son, Kolby had begun building the track on the ten acres out behind their house when Dallas was only three. As he got older and the bikes got bigger, they added to and made the original flat circle track more and more difficult with Mac’s help.
    Now it rivaled any indoor arena racetrack. It was also the reason that Honor fought like hell to stay up on the bills. The thought of having to sell their small ranch house wasn’t that upsetting, but she couldn’t bear the weight of having to move Dallas away from the track he rode daily. She knew what would happen to his racing if he couldn’t practice as much as he did. She also knew what would happen to the boy if he couldn’t ride whenever he wanted to. It was his escape. His life was hard enough. She couldn’t take that away from him, no matter what.
    “I hate school, Mom.”
    The knife in Honor’s chest twisted another quarter turn, and she looked to the ceiling. As usual, there was no answer in the sprayed white pebbles above her.
    She took a deep breath and forced her tone to be encouraging. “It’ll be fine, Dallas. We’ll get through this, you and me. Like always.”
    “’Kay.”
    In a move that only happened these days in the privacy of their own home, Dallas