Simon had always been drawn to the road.

Not the destination—never the destination—but the hum of an engine beneath his hands, the blur of scenery, the quiet promise that he could go anywhere and no one could stop him. Cars were his first taste of that freedom. The moment he got his license, he treated the driver's seat like an escape hatch; he was gone every chance he got. Sometimes he'd drive until the sun dipped below the horizon, sometimes he'd circle the same streets for hours. It didn't matter. The point was movement. The point was getting away from everything.

And then he realized a motorcycle wasn't some distant fantasy—it could be his. That became his goal.

He worked for years—long hours, crappy jobs, saving every coin with a stubbornness that made people think he was just trying to move out early. And yeah, that was part of it. But the truth sat deeper: he wanted something that was his alone. Something no one, especially not his father, could touch.

When he finally bought the bike—a gleaming thing that felt more like a companion than a machine—he was nearly shaking with excitement. He didn't ride it to show off, though the attention wasn't unwelcome. He rode it because it amplified that feeling he'd been chasing since he was old enough to want his own life:

Freedom.

A roaring, wind-soaked, bone-deep freedom that drowned out the past. The motorcycle became his pride, his joy, and sometimes—on the nights when the world felt too loud—his only calm. He cared for it meticulously, hands steady, movements practiced, treating it with a reverence most people reserved for holy things.

On the open road, with nothing but the engine and the wind to keep him company, Simon felt something he almost never did. Happy.