Page 84 of All That Glitters
My first instinct was to say no, was to be the asshole I’d been to her since the night of my mother’s dinner party, but it’s not what I went with.
“Yes.”
She cut a glance at me, like she didn’t believe me, then focused on the road in front of us again.
“I have a Zoom meeting later this afternoon, but that’s all I have active on my calendar. I’d spent yesterday and the two days before buried in work.”
I wanted to ask if that was because of the way things had been left when she’d come to the cottage. I’m not sure she’d forgiven me for that. I’m not sure I’d forgiven myself for it. I’d treated her horribly and even at my drunkest, I’d never treated a woman like that. And I didn’t even have that excuse with Helen…
“I guess it’s lucky that you packed an overnight bag.”
“I didn’t. I always carry one in the car. I’ve been caught one too many times in weather at a race track and I’m not fond of sodden clothing, nor those awful plastic parkas they sell.”
We fell silent again. I wanted to keep her talking. I wanted to keep talking to her, but I didn’t say anything else. I simply watched the way her left hand lightly gripped the steering wheel, the way her leg shifted between the gas and brake pedals, the way her right hand rested on the shifter.
She was one of the only people I knew who still drove a manual. Most had a dual transmission, a car that could switch between manual and automatic, but not Helen. She learned to drive street cars with a manual transmission, and she’d raced enough manual cars that I wasn’t sure she’d know what to do with her legs and hands if she had to drive an automatic.
Before the wreck, I loved driving and hated being a passenger. I didn’t trust anyone else on the road. There were few people I trusted to be in the driver’s seat now that I couldn’t figure out how to get behind the wheel. Helen Troye was one of those people. She was so comfortable, so natural in a car and it pissed me off that she gave up so easily.
I knew that I’d pissed her off by pushing last night, by bringing it up at all, but someone needed to. Hale hadn’t fought for her. Her parents hadn’t fought for her. And she… She of all people hadn’t fought for herself. She simply fell in line in order for Hale to have a seat.
Fuck.
None of them deserved her.
There was something there, something in all the shit in my screwed up brain that nagged at me but I refused to explore it, now and maybe never.
She turned off the highway onto a side street. Ahead was an old airplane hangar. It was partially deconstructed. Scaffolding and barricades, stacks of building materials sat off to the far side of the parking lot. Two other cars were parked out front and my stomach gave a strange flip. I had no idea what Darien Cross wanted with me and my anxiety kicked up until my upper lip was coated in sweat and my heart rate was through the roof.
Helen turned to me as soon as she parked and turned off the engine. “Ashton?”
I held up a single finger. I needed a moment to get myself together. I didn’t even know what was going on, what was going to happen and I was freaking out.
She was out from behind the wheel and had the passenger door open between one deep breath and the next. She was so tuned into me, in the shifts in my moods and anxiety levels.
She took my hands in hers. “Ash,” she said in that soft tone of voice that could permeate my darkest thoughts in the blink of an eye. “Look at me.”
It took a few seconds before I could turn my head, before I could do as she said, but I did it. I focused on her, focused on the way her dark hair shone in the sun, the way her eyes stared into mine. She never looked at me with pity or sadness, though I had accused her of that before. No, she looked at me with kindness, patience…love. There was fierce determination there, too. And it was all for me. She was determined that I would get through all of it, that I would drive again, that I would win again.
She was the anchor I hadn’t realized I needed. She was the anchor, the lighthouse in the violent sea that I was lost in, tossed around in.
“Breathe with me.”
In. Out.
In. Out.
“We can stay out here as long as we need to.” She would do it, too. She would stand beside me in the parking lot all day long if I needed her to. She would stay as long as it took for me to get myself back under control.
In. Out.
In. Out.
“In. Out.”
I hated this version of myself.
And I was grateful that she was the only one who saw it. She would never betray me. She would never blab to the racing world that the soon to be great Ashton Glitterati was an anxious, scared, fucking mess.
