Page 4 of Dirt Driven

As he twisted to face me, his hand touched my leg sincerely. “Just hear me out… okay?”

That wasn’t the way to start a conversation.

“Okay….”

Hear me out? Who says that?

“I know you’re not happy,” he began, staring at his hands as he spoke, “and I don’t want this to be something where we blame each other and shit gets ugly.” With a deep sigh, he looked at me.

I nodded, relief washing over me that he felt it too. It wasn’t me, and it certainly wasn’t him. We had grown apart, a life distanced by the very thing we’d sworn wouldn’t happen a year ago. The distance in our marriage. The need to choose everything else over our relationship. It was me working with JAR Racing and him choosing racing constantly.

This life and everything we didn’t do and say had ruined us.

My attachment to Rager made me wonder if there was someone else Easton was turning to.

Would I have blamed him for turning to someone else at that point?

“Are you seeing someone?”

His stare caught mine, his answer just as quick. “No, I wouldn’t do that to you.”

“Are you wanting someone else?”

I supposed seeing someone, and wanting to, were entirely different.

His stare dropped, his answer a little slower. “No… it’s not that.”

Easton lied. He’d been fucking a model for the last year of our marriage. When I was dealing with the loss of my nephew Jack, and my mom was recovering from breast cancer, that was when he chose to end our marriage. It was a messy, awful divorce, and the day it was final and announced to the world, I was seven months pregnant with twins. That weren’t his. I didn’t cheat on him, but I guess, emotionally, I’d been cheating on him since the day we said I do. My heart never belonged to him, and looking at him now, he knew that.

I should have known he’d show up here, being that NASCAR was here too—at the same complex for the weekend, just a different track. But given the circumstances, why would he? He makes millions a year to race NASCAR, why would he even risk it?

Swallowing thickly, he lifted his sunglasses, his weight shifting from one foot to the other. I looked at his eyes, the creases in the corners. “How are you?”

Better without you.I didn’t say that. No matter how bitter I was that he cheated on me, or whatever the reasons were that we didn’t work, I didn’t want to hurt him. “I’m… good. Uh, what are you doing here?” I motioned to his racing suit. “Appearance?”

His eyes dropped from Hudson, to his racing suit and helmet in this other hand. “Oh, yeah. Well, actually, I’m racing tonight. Thought I’d see if I still had the open wheel side in me.”

Really? Jesus Christ.This is going to be horrible.

I knew exactly how my night was going to go. Easton and Rager were going to get into it, either on or off the track, and I’d have to explain it because I was the PR manager for JAR Racing. And maybe that was Easton’s plan to begin with. I didn’t know. I never know with him.

Hudson wiggled in my arms, trying to free himself when he spotted my dad in the distance. Dad and I made eye contact. He frowned, eyeing Easton.

Shifting Hudson to my other hip, I tried to hold him tighter because cars moved in the pits now. When I didn’t let him go, he stuck his hand down the front of my shirt and tried to rip my boob out. Another drawback to breastfeeding a two-year-old. They think your tits are their property.

Easton laughed and cleared his throat, sliding his sunglasses back into place. “I see you’re busy. Nice to see you again.”

Yeah, I bet, asshole. It was also not lost on me that his obsession with sunglasses was still there. Those sunglasses were the start of our problems. Okay, not the sunglasses, but the sponsorship that came with them and the model he fell in love with because of the commercial they had him do. So no, I didn’t like his stupid sunglasses.

And then he walked away and left me standing there. I eyed Hudson. “What did I say about touching Mommy’s boobies?”

“Boobies,” he repeated, staring at them, like he can’t figure out why I’d call them that.

Dad approached me, his eyes on Easton walking away. “What’d Easton want?”

I handed Hudson over to my dad as a sprint car was pushed by and onto the track. The throaty rumble that followed vibrated through my chest, the sweet smells of the methanol invading my senses.

“I don’t know that he wanted anything. He said hi, and that he was racing tonight.”

---