Page 35 of Speeding Hearts

It felt like it belonged there.

I wanted to do so much more, to pull her in so she fit next to me, her whole body safely tucked against mine, but instead I held her hand. I didn’t trust myself to do anything else.

“It’s okay if you want to quit,” I said softly. “Nobody’s judging you.”

“How can I quit when I haven’t even started?” she said, her voice tinged with something like anger. She pulled her hand away and something sharp jabbed at me from inside, the loss greater than if she’d pulled her whole body away from my embrace.

“What do you want to do, Stella?” I asked.

She let a long pause pass. “I don’t know.”

I rolled on my back, frustrated now. What the hell was I doing? I shouldn’t be here. I should sit out in my truck, wait for dawn, and head into work. I should give her space. Givemyselfspace.

Also, what the hellwasshe doing? Why was she here if she wasn’t sure she wanted to be?

Because you told her to come.

The memory that I’d been the one who mentioned the speedway in the first place was like a kick in the gut. Thiswasmy fault.

I should never have told her about this place. I shouldn’t have gotten the stock car for her, I shouldn’t have taken her to the Back Track.

Hell, maybe I shouldn’t have kept taking those company trucks to her garage back in Jewel Lakes when I’d known half the reason I made sure to be the one who did it was because of her.

“Dean?”

I turned toward her. There was moonlight now, filtering in through the curtains. I could see the outline of her face.

Her familiar face. Her beautiful face.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered.

Whatever frustration I was feeling fell away as I pulled her hand up to my chest, cradling it there. “You don’t have anything to be sorry about.”

“I do. I’m sorry I put you in this position. I’m sorry I haven’t got my shit figured out—that you’re having to deal with me going through with this crisis.”

I laughed softly. “I’m sure I’ll have a crisis I’ll need help with soon enough. In fact, dealing with my dad is crisis enough, and having you here means it’s not all shit.”

She considered this, then said, “Was your dad always like this?”

“What, an asshole?”

She laughed. “Yeah.”

I thought back. The memories were fuzzy, but I didn’t think he was. “No, actually. He was always kind of hot and cold, but he didn’t used to be as bad as now. In fact, he used to play with me, as a little kid, until his old back injury would start acting up.” A memory I hadn’t thought of in years hit me then—after playing catch with me, he’d had to lie in bed for a week afterward, missing work because his back had seized terribly. I’d always thought that was my fault, though back then, he’d never blamed me.

For the first time in a long time, I thought of my dad with something like fondness. “I was an only child. We were kind of… buddies. He was my first teacher, showing me how the engines in his shop worked.”

“So, what changed?”

“The crash,” I said, without a moment’s hesitation. My chest was heavy as the truth of that sank onto me. “When I was fourteen, I snuck into the Speedway. My dad would never take me there, and I resented him for it. Sometimes I’d go with my mom, and it would turn into a giant fight when he found out. I just wanted to see the cars up close, but Uncle Colin had left the window open in the office, and I’d gone all the way there. Dad and I’d had a fight that day… and I was pissed at him.

“I took out a car, but I had no idea what I was doing. I got it up to speed, and it was… It was half like I wanted to prove to my dad I could do it and half like I had a death wish. Except that I did buckle up and put a helmet on. I took it up as fast as I could, and I lost control. I rolled what felt like a hundred times. I should have died, but instead I landed upside down, smashed against the wall, several bones broken. The only reason I did survive is someone driving by saw smoke coming from the track.”

“Jesus, Dean.”

“You’d think it would have been a life lesson, but honestly, things just got worse from there. My parents blamed each other instead of me. My father blamed my uncle, too. None of them have ever been the same.” Shame, burning as deep and hot and painful as it had when the car had finally stopped rolling, exploded within me at the retelling.

“There was no reason for me to have done something so reckless. I wasn’t running away from abuse. My life wasn’t so horrible.”

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