Chapter 1: The Anchor

The hardest part about having a plastic leg wasn’t the chafing. It wasn’t the way the silicone liner got sweaty and slippery during gym class, or the phantom itches in a shinbone that had been buried in a casket three years ago.

The hardest part was the sound.

Clack. Step. Clack. Step.

It was a metronome announcing my difference to the world.

I’m Leo. I’m twelve years old, and I hate recess.

I sat on the rusting bench at the edge of Miller’s Grove Park, tightening the laces on my left sneaker—the real one. My right leg, the carbon-fiber rod wrapped in a foam cover that looked vaguely like human flesh, didn’t need tightening. It just needed to be invisible.

“”Hey, Robo-Cop.””

I didn’t look up. I knew the voice. It sounded like gravel in a blender. Kyle Vance.

Kyle was fourteen, had a mustache that looked like dirt smudged on his lip, and a dad who owned half the car dealerships in town. That made Kyle untouchable.

I focused on the fallen maple leaves at my feet. Just ignore him. Mom says if you ignore them, they get bored.

Mom was wrong.

“”I’m talking to you, peg-leg,”” Kyle said, his shadow falling over me. It was long and distorted in the late afternoon sun.

He wasn’t alone. He never was. Flanking him were Mason and Troy, two linebackers-in-training who had neck muscles thicker than my thighs. They were laughing—that low, cruel snicker that makes your stomach turn into ice water.

“”Leave me alone, Kyle,”” I muttered, grabbing my backpack.

“”We just want to see how it works,”” Kyle grinned, stepping closer. He kicked the tip of my prosthetic foot with his dirty boot. “”Does it have a turbo button? Can you jump over a building?””

“”Stop it.””

“”Or maybe,”” Kyle leaned down, his breath smelling like stale Doritos and energy drinks, “”it pops off if we pull hard enough.””

My heart hammered against my ribs like a trapped bird. I tried to stand up, shifting my weight to my good leg, but Troy shoved me back down. Hard.

The bench rattled.

“”Where you going, freak?”” Mason jeered. “”We’re just doing a science experiment.””

I looked around the park. It was mostly empty. A young mom was pushing a stroller way on the other side, too far to hear. The wind was picking up, rattling the dry branches of the oaks behind us.

“”My mom is picking me up in five minutes,”” I lied. My voice cracked. Humiliation burned hot on my neck.

“”Your mom?”” Kyle laughed. “”The waitress? She’s probably too busy scraping tips off tables to remember a cripple like you.””

That did it.

I lunged. It was a stupid move. I had balance issues on a good day; against three varsity-sized jerks, I was a ragdoll.

I swung my fist, connecting weakly with Kyle’s shoulder.

The silence that followed lasted exactly one second.

“”Big mistake, Stumpy,”” Kyle whispered.

He shoved me with both hands. I stumbled back, my prosthetic catching on a tree root. I went down hard, the impact jarring my hip, the connection point of my leg searing with sudden pain. I landed in the dirt, face down.

“”Get his leg!”” Kyle yelled. “”Let’s see him hop home!””

Chapter 2: The Shadow in the Pines

Panic is a cold thing. It freezes you.

I felt hands grabbing my ankle—the fake one. They were pulling, twisting.

“”No! Stop! You’ll break the lock!”” I screamed, scrabbling at the dirt, fingernails tearing through dead leaves.

“”Pull it off!”” Mason cheered.

They were dragging me through the mud. I kicked out with my good leg, connecting with someone’s shin, but it didn’t matter. There were three of them. I was just a twelve-year-old boy who was missing a piece of himself.

Tears, hot and angry, blurred my vision. I wasn’t crying because of the pain. I was crying because I was helpless. Again. Just like the car crash. Just like the hospital.

“”Please!”” I choked out.

Kyle had his boot on my chest now, pinning me to the cold ground. He was grinning, holding a heavy stick he’d picked up.

“”Let’s see if this thing dents,”” he sneered, raising the wood like a baseball bat, aiming right for the expensive carbon fiber shell my mom had worked double shifts for six months to afford.

I squeezed my eyes shut, waiting for the crack.

It never came.

“”I wouldn’t do that if I were you, son.””

The voice didn’t come from the playground. It came from the woods behind the bench. It was deep, calm, and carried a weight that made the air suddenly feel very heavy.

Kyle froze, the stick held high.

We all looked toward the tree line.

A man stepped out of the shadows.

He was huge. Not gym-rat huge like Mason, but ‘move-heavy-objects-for-a-living’ huge. He wore faded olive-drab cargo pants, heavy combat boots that looked like they’d walked through hell, and a black hoodie with the sleeves pushed up.

His arms were maps of scars.

But it was his face that stopped the blood in my veins. He had a thick, graying beard, and eyes that were so dark they looked like two bullet holes. He didn’t look angry. He looked… focused. Like a wolf looking at a deer.

“”Who are you?”” Kyle demanded, though his voice wavered. He lowered the stick slightly. “”This is none of your business, old man.””

The man didn’t blink. He took a step forward. Leaves didn’t even crunch under his boots. He moved with a terrifying silence.

“”You’re stepping on a fallen soldier,”” the man said, his voice dropping an octave. He pointed a scarred finger at me. “”And you’re holding a weapon.””

“”It’s just a stick,”” Kyle scoffed, trying to regain his bravado. “”And he’s just a cripple.””

The man stopped five feet away. The temperature in the park seemed to drop ten degrees.

“”That ‘cripple,'”” the man said softly, “”has fought battles you couldn’t survive in your nightmares.””

He looked at Kyle’s boot, still resting on my chest.

“”Move your foot,”” the stranger commanded. “”Or I’ll remove it.””

Kyle hesitated. He looked at Mason and Troy, looking for backup. But his friends had taken two steps back, their eyes wide. There was something about this stranger—a kind of dangerous energy that screamed predator.

“”You can’t touch us,”” Kyle spat, though he removed his foot from my chest. “”My dad is—””

“”I don’t care who your father is,”” the soldier interrupted. He knelt down, ignoring them entirely, and looked at me.

His eyes softened instantly. He reached out a hand. It was rough, calloused, and shaking ever so slightly.

“”You okay, Trooper?”” he asked.

I nodded, too stunned to speak. I took his hand. He pulled me up with effortless strength, steadying me until my prosthetic locked into place.

Then, he turned back to Kyle.

The softness was gone. The wolf was back.

“”Run,”” the soldier whispered.

It wasn’t a suggestion.

Kyle dropped the stick. The three of them scrambled backward, tripping over themselves before turning and sprinting toward the parking lot like the devil himself was snapping at their heels.

I stood there, brushing the dirt off my jeans, my heart still racing.

“”Thank you,”” I whispered, looking up at the stranger.

He didn’t smile. He was staring at my face, searching for something. He looked like he was seeing a ghost.

“”You have her eyes,”” he murmured, mostly to himself.

“”What?””

He shook his head, clearing the thought. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a silver lighter, flipping it nervously in his hand.

“”I’m sorry I was late, Leo,”” he said.

I froze.

“”How do you know my name?””

He looked at me, a profound sadness swimming in those dark eyes.

“”Because,”” he said, his voice thick with emotion, “”I’m the reason you lost your leg.”””

The world didn’t stop spinning, but it definitely slowed down.

“You’re… him?” I whispered. My throat felt like it was stuffed with cotton.

The man—Mike—nodded. He put the lighter back in his pocket, his hand trembling just enough for the Zippo to click twice against the metal casing.

“Three years ago,” Mike said, his voice rough like sandpaper. “Route 9. Thanksgiving Eve. I was in the blue Ford F-150.”

The memory hit me harder than Kyle’s shove.

Screeching tires. The smell of burning rubber and pine air freshener. My dad shouting, “Leo, get down!” And then… the crunch.

That sound. Metal folding like paper. The world turning upside down. The darkness. And then waking up in a hospital bed with a flat sheet where my right foot used to be.

I took a step back. My good leg was shaking.

“You killed my dad,” I said. It wasn’t a scream. It was a statement of fact. A cold, hard fact that I had lived with every single day.

Mike didn’t flinch. He didn’t try to deny it. He didn’t say, “It was black ice,” or “The deer ran out,” or any of the things the lawyers had said in court to keep him out of jail.

“I know,” he said. The pain in his voice was so thick you could almost touch it. “And I took your leg.”

“Why are you here?” I demanded, tears finally spilling over. “Are you here to finish the job? You want the other one?”

“I’m here,” Mike looked at the ground, then back at me, “because I can’t sleep, Leo. I haven’t slept in three years. Every time I close my eyes, I see your dad’s car.”

He reached into his back pocket. I flinched, expecting a weapon. Instead, he pulled out a folded, oil-stained piece of paper.

“And because I saw you walking to school last week,” he continued. “I saw how you walked. You’re favoring your left side. Your alignment is off. You’re in pain.”

“I don’t need your help!” I yelled. “I hate you!”

“I know,” Mike said again. He stepped closer and shoved the paper into my hand. “Give this to your mom. Please.”

Before I could tear it up, he turned around.

“And Leo?” he said, not looking back. “Tighten the proximal bolt on your knee joint. A quarter turn. It’ll stop the clicking.”

Then he walked back into the woods, vanishing into the shadows like he was never there.

Chapter 4: The Ghost in the Kitchen

I ran home.

Or, I tried to. Running with a prosthetic that’s misaligned is like trying to run with one foot in a bucket. I limped-ran, gasping for air, clutching the greasy paper Mike had given me.

My house was a small, siding-peeled bungalow at the end of a cul-de-sac that had seen better days. The grass was overgrown because Dad wasn’t there to mow it, and Mom was too tired after her double shifts at the diner to care about curb appeal.

I burst through the front door.

“Mom!”

My mom, Sarah, was at the kitchen table. She was still in her uniform—a stained teal apron over a black t-shirt. She had piles of coins and crumpled dollar bills spread out on the table, counting tips. She looked exhausted. Her blonde hair was pulled back in a messy bun, and there were dark circles under her eyes that never seemed to go away.

“Leo?” She jumped up, coins clattering to the floor. “What happened? You’re covered in dirt. Did those boys…”

She saw my face. She saw the tear tracks cutting through the dust on my cheeks.

“I fell,” I said, breathless. “But… Mom, I met someone.”

“Who?” She rushed over, checking my elbows, checking my leg.

“The man,” I stammered. “The man from the accident.”

Mom went rigid. Her hands froze on my shoulders. The room went dead silent, save for the hum of the old refrigerator.

“What did you say?” her voice was a whisper, sharp as glass.

” The guy in the truck. The soldier. He… he saved me from Kyle. He gave me this.”

I held out the paper.

Mom snatched it from my hand. Her eyes scanned the scribbles. It wasn’t a note. It was a check. A cashier’s check.

For fifty thousand dollars.

And a note scrawled on the back: For the medical bills I caused. – M.

She stared at it, her hands shaking violently. Then, she looked at the front door.

“Where is he?” she hissed.

“He left. He went into the woods.”

“Stay here,” she ordered. Her voice terrified me. It wasn’t sad; it was dangerous. She grabbed her keys and marched to the door.

But she didn’t have to go far.

Through the screen door, we saw him. Mike. He hadn’t left. He was standing on the sidewalk, staring at our house, his hands in his pockets, looking like a stray dog waiting to be kicked.

Chapter 5: The Unforgivable Debt

Mom threw the door open so hard it banged against the siding.

“You!” she screamed.

It was a sound I’d never heard from her. primal. Animalistic.

Mike looked up. He didn’t move. He stood his ground on the cracked pavement.

“Sarah,” he said calmly.

“Don’t you say my name!” She marched down the porch steps, the check crumpled in her fist. She threw it at him. The paper ball bounced harmlessly off his chest and landed in the gutter. “We don’t want your blood money! Get away from my house! Get away from my son!”

“I can’t,” Mike said.

“You killed him!” Mom was sobbing now, hitting his chest with her fists. “You killed David! You ruined everything! Why aren’t you in jail?”

Mike took the hits. He didn’t block them. He stood there like a stone statue, letting a grieving widow beat the guilt out of him.

“I wish I was,” Mike said softly. “I wish it was me, Sarah. Every day, I wish it was me.”

Mom collapsed. Her knees just gave out.

Mike caught her.

For a second, I thought she would scratch his eyes out. But she just hung there in the arms of the man she hated, weeping uncontrollably into his dirty hoodie.

“Why did you come back?” she choked out, pulling away from him, revulsion washing over her face as she realized who was holding her.

“Because the insurance money ran out, didn’t it?” Mike asked quietly. “I checked the court records. I know you’re drowning, Sarah. I know Leo needs a new socket fitting that costs six grand. I know you’re three months behind on the mortgage.”

Mom wiped her face, staring at him with a mixture of hatred and shock. “You’ve been stalking us?”

“Watching over you,” he corrected. “There’s a difference.”

He bent down and picked up the check from the gutter. He carefully smoothed it out and placed it on the hood of Mom’s rusty Toyota Corolla.

“I sold my house,” Mike said. “I sold my truck. This is everything. Take it. Please. It’s the only way I can breathe.”

“I don’t want it,” Mom spat, though her eyes lingered on the check. We needed that money. We needed it so bad it hurt.

“Burn it then,” Mike said. He turned to walk away. “But get the boy’s leg fixed. He’s walking wrong. It’s going to ruin his hip.”

Chapter 6: The Mechanic

Mike didn’t leave.

Well, he left the property, but he didn’t leave the neighborhood.

That night, I watched from my bedroom window. He parked an old, beat-up van down the street. I saw the glow of his cigarette in the dark. He was keeping watch.

The next morning was Saturday. I woke up to the sound of metal clinking against metal.

I limped downstairs. Mom was still asleep; she had worked a double shift and cried herself to sleep.

I opened the front door.

Mike was in our driveway. He was kneeling next to my bike—the red mountain bike I had gotten for my 9th birthday. The one I hadn’t ridden since the accident because my prosthetic foot couldn’t grip the pedal, and the chain was rusted solid.

“What are you doing?” I asked, stepping onto the porch.

Mike didn’t look up. His hands were covered in grease. He was working a wrench with surgical precision.

“Rust,” he grunted. “It’s like cancer. You gotta scrape it out before it eats the whole thing.”

“I can’t ride that,” I said bitterly. “I can’t bend my knee enough to complete the rotation.”

“I know,” Mike said. “That’s why I’m shortening the crank arm on the right side. Physics, kid. Shorter radius means less knee flexion required.”

I walked down the steps. I shouldn’t be talking to him. Mom would kill me. But… he was fixing my bike. Nobody had fixed anything around here since Dad died. Everything just stayed broken. The faucet, the fence, me.

“You were a mechanic?” I asked.

“Combat engineer,” Mike said. “I built bridges. And I blew them up. Mostly I just fixed Humvees that got hit by IEDs.”

He paused, wiping a smudge of grease from his cheek. He looked at me, his dark eyes intense.

“In the army, we have a saying: Adapt or die.“

He tightened a bolt, then spun the pedal. It whirred smoothly. He reached into his tool bag and pulled out a weird-looking stirrup made of duct tape and heavy wire. He attached it to the pedal.

“This will hold your foot in place,” he explained. “So it doesn’t slip when you push.”

He stood up, wiping his hands on a rag. He gestured to the bike.

“Try it.”

I hesitated. “Mom will be mad.”

“Mom is sleeping,” Mike said. “And a boy needs to ride a bike.”

I straddled the bike. It felt foreign. Scary. I clipped my prosthetic foot into the makeshift stirrup. It held.

“Push,” Mike commanded.

I pushed. The pedal went down. My knee bent—just enough. It cleared the top. I pushed again. The bike moved forward.

I wobbled, panic rising.

“I got you,” Mike’s voice was right beside me. His heavy hand gripped the back of the seat, steadying me. “Keep pedaling. Look up. Don’t look at your feet. Look where you’re going.”

I pedaled. The wind hit my face. For the first time in three years, I was moving faster than a limp. I was flying.

“I’m doing it!” I yelled, a laugh bubbling up from my chest.

“Keep going!” Mike shouted, running alongside me.

For ten seconds, I wasn’t the cripple. I wasn’t the broken boy. I was just Leo.

Then, the front door slammed open.

“LEO!”

Mom was on the porch, wearing her bathrobe, her face pale with terror. She saw me on the bike. She saw Mike running beside me.

“GET AWAY FROM HIM!” she shrieked.

I slammed on the brakes, skidding to a halt. Mike let go of the seat immediately and stepped back, hands raised in surrender.

“I was just fixing the bike, Sarah,” Mike said calmly.

“Get off his property,” Mom warned, her voice trembling. “Or I’m calling the police. I mean it this time.”

Mike looked at me. He looked at the bike. A small, sad smile touched his lips under that thick beard.

“Ride’s over, Trooper,” he whispered.

He turned and walked away, back to his van. But as he walked, I noticed something I hadn’t seen before.

He was limping.

Not a prosthetic limp like mine. It was a heavy, painful drag of his left leg.

The leg that would have been on the brake pedal during the crash.

“Mom,” I asked, watching him go. “Why is he limping?”

Mom didn’t answer. She just dragged me inside and locked the door. But I saw her look at the check, still sitting on the kitchen counter where she had left it the night before.

She hadn’t burned it.Chapter 7: The Eye of the Storm

The heat broke three days later, but it didn’t break cleanly. It shattered.

The sky over our subdivision turned a bruised purple, the kind of color you only see before a tornado warning. The air grew heavy, smelling of ozone and wet asphalt.

Mom was at work. She had picked up an extra shift at the diner because the transmission on the Corolla was slipping, and trouble always comes in threes. I was home alone, sitting on the floor of the living room, trying to disassemble my prosthetic knee with a screwdriver I’d found in the junk drawer.

Mike was right. The alignment was off.

When the sirens started wailing, I froze. The wind hit the house like a physical blow, shaking the windows in their frames. The old oak tree in the front yard—the one Dad used to say was the guardian of the house—groaned loudly.

Then, the lights died.

“Great,” I muttered, my heart rate spiking.

I grabbed my crutches—my “leg” was currently in three pieces on the carpet—and hopped toward the kitchen to find a flashlight.

CRACK.

A sound like a gunshot tore through the roof.

I screamed, covering my head. Dust and insulation rained down from the ceiling in the hallway. Water started pouring in instantly, a cold, muddy waterfall soaking the hardwood floors Mom had spent years polishing. A branch. A massive branch had speared through the roof.

I slipped on the wet floor, my crutches sliding out from under me. I hit the ground hard, pain shooting up my residual limb.

“Mom!” I yelled, even though I knew she couldn’t hear me.

The wind was howling now, a deafening roar. The water was rising fast in the hallway. I tried to crawl, but the floor was slick with rain and drywall dust. I felt small. I felt broken.

Then, the front door burst open.

It wasn’t the wind.

It was Mike.

He was soaked to the bone, his black hoodie plastered to his massive frame. He held a heavy-duty blue tarp under one arm and a nail gun in the other. He looked like a soldier storming a beach.

He saw me on the floor.

“Leo!”

He dropped the gear and was at my side in two strides. He didn’t ask if I was okay; he scooped me up like I weighed nothing, carrying me into the living room, which was still dry. He set me down on the couch.

“Stay here,” he ordered. His voice cut through the noise of the storm. “Don’t move.”

He grabbed the tarp and the nail gun. He dragged the dining room table into the hallway, climbed onto it, and punched through the hole in the drywall to reach the roof beams.

For the next twenty minutes, I watched a man fight a hurricane.

He was shouting, grunting, hammering. Water soaked him, mixing with the sweat and grime on his face. I saw the muscles in his back straining as he wrestled the heavy tarp against the gale-force winds outside. He was slipping, sliding, cursing, but he didn’t stop.

Finally, the waterfall slowed to a drip.

Mike climbed down. He was shivering violently. His hand—the one that held the nail gun—was bleeding.

He collapsed onto the floor, leaning back against the wall, chest heaving.

“Is it… is it fixed?” I asked, my voice trembling.

Mike nodded, closing his eyes. “Good enough for now.”

The front door opened again. Mom rushed in, soaking wet, her face pale with terror. She had driven through the storm.

“Leo! Oh my god, Leo!”

She saw the water. She saw the debris. And then she saw Mike, sitting in a puddle of water in her hallway, bleeding.

She didn’t scream this time. She didn’t yell. She walked over to the kitchen cabinet, grabbed the first aid kit, and knelt down beside him.

“You’re bleeding,” she said. Her voice was flat, emotionless.

“It’s nothing,” Mike rasped.

“Give me your hand.”

She cleaned the cut. The silence in the room was louder than the thunder outside. I watched them—the woman who lost everything, and the man who took it away—sitting knee-to-knee on the ruined floor.

“Why?” Mom asked, not looking at his face. She was wrapping gauze around his palm. “Why do you keep doing this? Why can’t you just leave us alone?”

Mike didn’t answer for a long time. He watched the candlelight flickering on the walls.

“Because I made a promise,” he whispered.

Mom froze. She looked up, her eyes searching his. “What promise?”

Mike pulled his hand away. He looked like he was in physical pain, but not from the cut. He looked at me, then back at Mom.

“I wasn’t drunk, Sarah,” Mike said. “And I wasn’t texting. And I wasn’t speeding.”

“Then what?” Mom demanded, her voice cracking. “The police report said ‘Failure to maintain lane.’ You just… drifted. Into us.”

“I drifted,” Mike admitted. “Because I flinched.”

He took a deep breath, his hands shaking.

“I saw a bag on the side of the road. A black trash bag. Just sitting there. In Iraq… that’s an IED. That’s a bomb. My brain… it just clicked over. I didn’t see Route 9 anymore. I saw Fallujah. I yanked the wheel.”

Tears were streaming down his face now, getting lost in his beard.

“I hit you. I know I hit you. And when I woke up… the silence. That’s the worst part. The silence.”

Mom was crying too, silent tears that tracked through the rain on her cheeks.

“I crawled out,” Mike continued. “I ran to your car. The roof was crushed. You were unconscious in the passenger seat. David… David was pinned.”

I sat up on the couch. I had never heard this. No one had ever told me this.

“David was awake,” Mike said, his voice breaking. “He was pinned by the steering column. His chest… it was bad, Sarah. Real bad. But he was awake.”

Mike looked at me. His eyes were burning with an intensity that scared me.

“The fuel line had ruptured. I could smell the gas. I knew I only had time to get one person out before it went up. I reached for David. I tried to pull him.”

Mike sobbed, a harsh, guttural sound.

“And he stopped me. He grabbed my wrist. He looked me right in the eye. He pointed to the back seat. To Leo.”

My heart stopped.

“He said, ‘Not me. Him. Take the boy.’”

Mike wiped his eyes with his uninjured hand.

“I argued. I tried to grab him again. He shoved me away. He screamed at me. ‘SAVE MY SON!’”

“So I did,” Mike whispered. “I cut Leo out of the seatbelt. I dragged him into the ditch. I used my belt as a tourniquet on his leg because it was severed. I held his artery shut with my bare hands.”

He looked at Mom.

“And then the car went up. With David inside.”

The room spun.

I thought about the fire. I had nightmares about fire, but I never knew why.

“He didn’t die in the impact?” Mom whispered, her hand covering her mouth. “He… he chose?”

“He chose Leo,” Mike said firmly. “And I chose to listen. I killed your husband, Sarah. But I didn’t kill him with my truck. I killed him by obeying his last order.”

Mike looked down at his boots.

“That’s why I’m here. He gave me a job. ‘Save my son.’ I haven’t finished the job yet.”

Mom stared at him. The hatred that had been in her eyes for three years… it didn’t disappear. You don’t lose that kind of pain in a second. But it changed. It softened into something else. Something like grief. Something like understanding.

She reached out and touched his shoulder.

“You saved him,” she whispered.

“David saved him,” Mike corrected. “I’m just the mechanic.”

I looked at my leg, sitting in pieces on the floor. I looked at the man who had haunted my nightmares, the “monster” I was supposed to hate.

And I saw the truth.

He wasn’t the monster. He was the only other person in the world who missed my dad as much as I did.

“Mike?” I asked, my voice small.

He looked up at me, eyes red and raw.

“Can you fix the roof?”

Mike looked at the ceiling, then back at me. A faint, sad smile appeared.

“Yeah, Trooper. I can fix the roof.”Chapter 8: The Finish Line

Spring in Miller’s Grove always smells like wet asphalt and blooming dogwood. It’s a deceptive season—pretty, but the ground is still soft enough to swallow you whole.

I stood at the starting line of the middle school track, the red rubber granules crunching under my spikes.

Lane 4.

To my left was a kid from Oak Ridge who looked like he shaved twice a day. To my right… was Kyle Vance.

Kyle didn’t look at me. He hadn’t looked at me since the day in the park. He hadn’t teased me, either. Fear is a powerful teacher, but silence is a louder one.

“Runners, take your mark.”

I crouched down. My heart was a drum in my ears. Thump-thump. Thump-thump.

I looked up at the bleachers. They were packed with parents holding iPhones and lukewarm coffees.

I found Mom instantly. She was wearing a new dress—yellow, bright as a dandelion. She wasn’t wearing her apron. She wasn’t counting tips. She was waving a foam finger that was embarrassingly large.

And next to her, taking up enough space for two people, was Mike.

He looked different. The wild, Unabomber beard was trimmed close. He wasn’t wearing the hood. He wore a simple flannel shirt tucked into clean jeans. He still looked dangerous—you can’t wash the war off a man like that—but he didn’t look haunted anymore.

He wasn’t hiding in the trees. He was sitting in the front row.

He caught my eye. He didn’t smile. He just tapped his chest, right over his heart, and then pointed a finger forward.

Forward.

“Set!”

The gun cracked.

For the first ten meters, I was behind. My prosthetic side—the “blade” Mike had helped me get fitted for with the last of his insurance settlement—was springy, but the start is always clumsy.

Clack. Spring. Clack. Spring.

I heard the crowd roaring. I heard the wind.

But mostly, I heard Mike’s voice in my head from our training sessions in the empty parking lot behind the grocery store.

“Don’t fight the leg, Leo. Trust it. It’s not a replacement. It’s an upgrade.”

I hit the curve. The centrifugal force tried to throw me off balance. I leaned into it. I dug the carbon fiber toe into the track.

I passed the kid from Oak Ridge.

I was gaining on Kyle.

Kyle was fast. He was running on two legs of flesh and bone. He was running for a trophy.

But I wasn’t running for a trophy. I was running for the man who died in a burning car so I could breathe. I was running for the man who lived through the fire so I could walk.

I pushed. My lungs burned. My hip screamed.

Adapt or die.

I pulled even with Kyle. I saw his eyes widen in peripheral vision. He couldn’t believe it. The “broken” toy was passing him.

I didn’t look at him. I looked at the white line ahead.

I crossed it.

I didn’t win first place—some gazelle from the eighth grade took that—but I beat Kyle. I beat him by a stride.

I collapsed onto the grass of the infield, gasping, staring up at the blue sky.

A shadow fell over me.

I expected a medic. Or maybe Mom.

It was Mike. He reached down—that same scarred, massive hand from the park.

“Get up, Trooper,” he said, breathless from running down the bleacher stairs. “Soldiers don’t lay down on the battlefield.”

I took his hand. He hauled me up.

Mom was there a second later, crushing me in a hug that smelled of vanilla and laundry detergent. She was crying, but they were happy tears. The kind that wash things clean.

“You did it,” she sobbed. “Oh, Leo, you flew.”

I looked at Mike over her shoulder.

He was holding something. A small, velvet box.

“Your mom and I talked,” Mike said, his voice gruff. “We found this in the evidence box from the police station. They finally released it.”

He handed it to me.

I opened it.

Inside was a watch. It was charred around the edges. The glass face was cracked in a spiderweb pattern. But the second hand… the second hand was still ticking.

It was my dad’s watch. The one he was wearing that night.

“It took a hit,” Mike said softly, looking at the watch. “It got crushed. burned. Buried.”

He looked me dead in the eye.

“But it still works. It keeps time just fine.”

I gripped the watch. I looked at my plastic leg. I looked at my mom, who was smiling for the first time in years without forcing it. And I looked at Mike, the mechanic who had fixed us all.

“We’re not broken, are we?” I whispered.

Mike put a heavy hand on my shoulder and squeezed.

“No, kid,” he said. “We’re just custom-built.”

We walked to the parking lot together. The three of us.

The scars were still there. They always would be. But as we walked toward Mike’s new truck—a beat-up Ford he was restoring—I realized something.

I wasn’t listening for the clack-step of my leg anymore.

I was just listening to the sound of us moving forward.

One step at a time.