Page 85 of Danger

Chapter34

Danger

I crack my neck as I stare into my over-brewed coffee. It’s pretty much sludge at this point, but I keep drinking it in the hopes it keeps me awake a few hours longer. I can’t stop thinking about the words Monterey said to me. The look on her face when she thought Isabella might be a past lover.

I laugh a little to myself.

“More coffee, gorgeous?” the waitress asks me.

I glance up at her, and her eyes register their recognition and a smile spreads across her face. “I get off in a few hours. Maybe I can help turn your bad night around?”

I try to smile, but it just doesn’t happen and I groan instead. “Don’t think there’s anything in the world that can make this day better.”

She refills my coffee with a smile. “Had to at least try.” She walks away and I don’t even stare at the curve of her ass as she does. I no longer care about things I used to before I started this whole facade with Monterey. It’s weird, right?

Love.

It’s a crazy fucking feeling, and I hate the fact I feel this way. Love is a great feeling, if you’re able to be with the woman you love. However, I can’t be with Monterey. It would never work. She deserves better, and it’s that plain and simple.

I muster up the courage to head back to the hotel, and face the music that awaits me. Today we’ll be heading back to California. To the place I’ve been dreading on stepping foot in since this whole tour started.

But, I need to man up. I need to end this relationship with Monterey and pick up the pieces of my life.

I swipe my phone on, wondering if I should call her. Wondering if I should just shoot her a text to see what she’s up to.

I have over fifty text messages from everyone I know. I click open the first one, reading the message there.

It’s from Luther Grander. “Danger, call us. We need to handle this.”

I read another and then another and they all say the same things. I click open my social media and there it is, plastered at the top.

“Race Car legend, Earl Wheeler, speaks from his jail cell about his book being a New York Times bestseller,” the headline reads.

I skim the article, picking up a few sentences here and there as my heart beats wildly in my chest.

“...Earl’s son, race car driver, Danger Hudson is expected to race next week in LA. We haven’t gotten any word yet how Danger feels about his father’s book, but we’re hopeful we’ll be able to get an exposé. We know Monterey Grander, Danger’s fiancee, loves the book and has been seen on tour reading the story of how Earl Wheeler left racing after an injury and worked at a college where he killed a few students over the course of a few years…”

I swipe off my phone, shoving it into my back pocket. Only one person could have printed this story. That asshole Ricky Moore.

I’m pissed.

Red blurs my vision as I make my way back to the hotel. I’m so mad I can’t even think straight, and I hate the fact that everyone now knows my past. That they now know where and what I come from.

From an evil so horrible, so terrifyingly wicked that it suffocates me at all times.

I spot the hotel a block away, and immediately my gaze lands on the overzealous crowd of media and fans waiting for me outside.

The back of the hotel is empty, and I decide to dip in through the back entrance before any of the media has spotted me. I go through the kitchen, and I hurry my steps so I can make it up to my room without being seen.

The thing I like about the back areas of hotels, is that nobody bothers you. No one asks you why you’re there. Most everyone back here knows me, and yet, they let me pass without any words or annoyance of trying to get my autograph.

I make it to a service elevator and punch at the button. Once inside, I breathe a simple sigh of relief that I haven’t been spotted so far. But, it still doesn’t soothe the ache that burns deep inside me. The fire that started the moment Ricky Moore first spoke to me. It’s like once the fire started it choked up all the oxygen surrounding me, making it harder and harder to breathe.

I haven’t seen my father since the day he murdered my mother.

I haven’t seen my father since the day he tried to murder me.

Since the day they carted him off to jail.

---