by Kat Ransom
Internal bruises are infinitely more damaging than those on the outside.
“Cole, what do you mean—of the three of them?” Emily asks from behind me.
“Confession time, Ava,” I call to her. “And what did you do to get even?”
“Mom?” Emily pops out from behind me and stares, with huge eyes, at her mother. The same mother who dares to call mine a whore.
“I was going to be a chemist, Emily. I see myself in you every time I look at you. I threw it all away, I gave everything up and ruined my life for a man, a cheater. The same as you are doing with Cole. I couldn’t let you do it,” Ava cries, tears in her eyes now.
“Ruined your life? What about me? You had me! What did you do?” Emily begs her.
“Ava, you stay quiet,” the Major General barks, still staring me down.
“Enough goddamn lies!” Emily screams. I’m sure half the motorhome can hear us yelling.
“I got even. I had an affair, too,” Ava admits as she wipes tears away. “Are you happy now?”
“With who?” Emily asks, her face wracked with confusion.
Ava can’t lift her head and waves her arm towards me then lets it flop onto the table in front of her as her answer.
“Cole?” Emily looks to me with haunted eyes, full of fear at what Ava has just suggested.
“Fuck no,” I take my eyes off the Major General to look at Emily and shake my head. Jesus, one thousand times no.
“His fucking father,” Ava admits in defeat.
“What? STAN?” Emily lets out a shriek that could break glass.
I don’t blame her. It’s like her very own episode of Jerry Springer in the motorhome right now.
“It was just revenge,” Ava tries to rationalize. “Stan was the person your father hated most in the world at the time. Don’t you see? Cole’s whole family is toxic, Emily. Everything they touch gets ruined. It’s in their blood.”
Emily puts her hands over her face and mumbles several words, but few coherent sentences, “I can’t, this is, what the fuck…” It goes on for several beats. “This is so messed up.”
It’s breaking my heart for her to go through this, but it’s the only way forward now. No more secrets, no more lies.
Take your Jerry Springer guest star asses home and fuck the hell off.
“As trashy as my parents are, and I do not deny that,” I interject, “it seems to me that you two really take the cake. And yet you both still sit here trying to blame me, blame Emily. Still!”
“Shut your mouth,” the Major General shoves me in the shoulder.
“Stop it,” Emily yells and tries to step between us, but I hold my hand up to keep her safely away.
“You had the nerve to nerve to tell me I’d cheat on Emily, that I’m just like my father. It was always you two projecting your shit onto us. Well, guess what? I’m not eighteen anymore, and no one believes your bullshit anymore. I’m not my father, I never have been. I may have left Emily—because of you two sick fucks—but I won’t make that mistake again. I had my reasons, what the fuck were yours?”
He shoves me again, harder.
“I’m not gonna hit you if that’s what you think you’re doing—provoking me. Trying to taunt me into proving your point, like you did,” I point to Ava, “Let me tell you, Major General, it takes a lot more balls not to hit someone, most days. Maybe you should get some.”
The veins on his forehead are bulging. Ava stands up and tries to wrangle Emily out the door while she protests and pushes her mother away.
“How could you do this to me?” Emily shoves her mother away, “You’re both sick, disgusting! I will never forgive you, either of you, for what you’ve done! I was miserable for six years. Six fucking years—it was all because of you two!”
The Major General rounds the table again and tries to take Emily’s arms.
“The horrible things you said to Cole, I will never forgive you!” She continues wailing on him.
“Emily, stop this. It’s over now, we’re going home,” he wraps his hands over her biceps.
“Don’t touch me,” she screams and pulls away from him.
That’s all I need to hear.
“Get your fucking hands off her,” I warn him.
“You stay out of this. Goddamn it, why won’t you go away!” He screams at me.
Emily jerks away from her father, “You have made me feel so stupid, but what you two have done—cheat on one another, lie to your daughter, manipulate me, try to destroy Cole’s worth—you two are the stupid ones. All of these years, I lived in fear of disappointing you. Well, guess what, you’re the disappointments. You are the failures. Not me!”
Her fingers poke at them, her face flushes in anger. Her chest is rising and falling. For the first time, the Major General and Ava stand with mouths open. Their good girl has left the proverbial building.
“Security!” Emily calls.
The conference room door bursts open immediately. The guard and Liam both storm in. Other people who’d started congregating around the door, listening to the shouting match, try to disperse like they haven’t been caught eavesdropping.
“Emily, what are you doing?” Ava protests.
“Please remove these two from the property, they’re trespassing and not welcome,” she tells the guard. “Please make a note that this man assaulted Cole,” she adds and points to her father.
“Emily, stop this. We are your parents,” the Major General argues.
“No,” she roars. “Parents don’t do this to their children. You were supposed to love me. All you’ve done is lie, manipulate, hurt. I never want to see you again, never!”
The security guard and Liam start to shuffle Ava and the Major General out as professionally as possible, but I’ll have both their asses handcuffed and dragged out of here if I need to.
Emily buries herself in my chest, her fingernails clutching my fire suit.
As much as it pains me to say it, I ask.
“Are you sure this is what you want?” I whisper into the side of her head. “I know you’re upset, I’m sorry. I’ll support whatever you decide, but be sure. You don’t get over having no family, Em.”
“I’m sure,” she mumbles into me, then lifts her head and looks me in the eye. “Please make them leave.”
“Okay,” I kiss her hair. “Get ‘em the fuck out,” I call to security.
The guard nods, and her parents are shuffled out of the motorhome, both absolutely incredulous as if Emily has no right. As if she owes them loyalty in the face of so much selfishness, total disregard for her wellbeing.
Liam comes back a few minutes later. I’m still holding Emily, who is quiet and still in my arms.
I can only imagine how much is racing through her mind right now.
“Hey, I’m real sorry guys. But the rain is letting up, they’re predicting we’ll start the race in twenty. We need you in the garage in ten.”
I nod at Liam, and he gives us a minute.
I keep my arms wrapped around Emily, rubbing my hands up and down her back. No one knows better than I do what she’s feeling or the road she has ahead of her now.
“All I ask is that you don’t run. Let me help you, in whatever capacity you decide. I can’t take it if you run right now in this condition. I’ll lose my mind.”
She doesn’t answer me. Goddamn it.
“Okay, if you really want to run, at least know that I will chase you. But is that really what you want?”
She shrugs her shoulders.
“Why did you move to London, baby? Why did you pick Cambridge, of all the schools in the world?”
Emily lifts her head to see me, her eyes are red and swollen, but her tears have stopped. “It was a nine-month master’s program. It’s one of the best…”
“Be honest,” I interrupt her. “Look me in the eye and tell me you didn’t move to London to be near me.”
She looks away.
So fucking stubborn.
“Em, we can talk
until the cows come home, and we will. But you either know it by now, or you don’t. I’ve made it as clear to you as I can.” I pull her face to look at me, “I love you. I am desperately, pathetically, hook, line, and sinker in love with you. I always have been, I always will be.”
“I know. I love you, too. I just…”
“Just nothing. That’s all that matters. Let’s lock this shit down.”
“Cole, we need to go,” Liam announces from the hallway.
“Will you be here after the race? Or do I need to start the search party now?”
She tries to hide her face, but I can see her lips quiver a tiny bit, “I’ll be here.”
I kiss her head, thankful as hell for her answer, and start heading out of the room.
If she stays, we have a hell of a path to forge to move ahead. But we’ll get there. She just needs to stay, to let herself feel, not run from it.
She can crash against me as hard as she needs to, over and over like a wave breaking on the shore. I will be the boulder that is always there to absorb it like she was for me.
“Cole, wait,” she calls at the last second.
I turn my head back.
“Good luck, have fun, go fast, come back to me, then take me to bed, I love you, I’ll be waiting for you.”
Thirty One
Emily
My phone alarm goes off, and I sit up from Cole’s bed in the motorhome.
I gave myself thirty minutes. A bit more than five, because I think I deserve thirty freaking minutes to process what just happened. But less than twenty-four hours because I’m done wasting time.
So many years have been spent feeling afraid to fail, hiding away, not really living because I was scared of consequences. For what?
What the hell was the point? Here I thought I was so smart.
Cole has always had far worse consequences to deal with than I ever did. He lives, every single day, despite them. He doesn’t hide or cower. He’s out on the track right now doing what he loves, in the face of the most significant consequence there could be.
Cole could so easily have taken the bait and brawled with my father, but he’s a better man than that. He’s experienced so much violence but doesn’t resort to it. He should be teaching cadets how to be real men.
Throwing his rain jacket over his clothes that I’m still wearing, his pants flopping around my ankles like bell bottoms, I make my way to the garage. I can hear the roar of the cars on the track.
My feet take me there, but my heart leads the way.
It’s driving.
I may not always be able to feel and not think so much, but all I have right now are feelings. Because there is no science to truly explain people.
All the psychologists in the world could not put this Humpty Dumpty family nightmare back together again.
And that’s okay.
Because when I walk into the garage and Mila gives me a big hug, when Liam ruffles the hair on my head, zips my jacket up knowing I’m cold and makes me eat another protein bar—I feel it. When I look on the television screen and see Dante and Cole racing around the track neck and neck again—I feel it. When Edmund, the engineers, and mechanics, wave, and welcome me back—I feel it.
I feel it, and I know that family is not your DNA.
When I look at my cell phone, and I see messages from Makenna and Klara and Professor Tillman, I know family is not genetics. It isn’t what makes up the cells in your body or the blood that flows through your veins.
Family is the people you choose to surround yourself with. It’s the people who are always there for you when no one else is. The ones who accept you, exactly as you are. In your perfectly imperfect form.
A bunch of little somethings that combine to make something greater, something stronger and more stable than any of the individuals.
My family is here, my real family, and it’s led by the man currently going entirely too fast on last season’s tires that I know absolutely nothing about.
C’est la vie, as Oliver the weasel might say.
Cole knows what he’s doing, he’ll always come back to me.
And I’m done running from him.
Mostly. Being chased is kinda fun in the right circumstances, like naked-time.
Imagining it, I grin as I grab a set of headphones off the charging rack. Before I forget and turn into the worst friend ever, I ask Mila if she can locate poor Makenna, who is god-knows-where wandering around the track, and she sets off to find her.
Then I throw my headphones on. I don’t want to sit at my regular engineer station today, though, and I’m hoping Edmund will humor me.
“Do you think I could pull up a stool?” I lift one side of his headphones off his head and ask him when I reach the pit wall.
“It would be my honor,” he winks.
He seems healthier since the last time I saw him thank God.
“Thank you for everything,” I tell him.
“We’re the ones who should be thanking you. Every driver out there today is safer because of you, because of what you did.”
“It wasn’t just me,” I blush. It was so many people. It was the same family who helped. The ones who believed in my crazy ideas and long-winded tangents about tires, materials, compounds, and chemicals.
“Celebrate the win when you get it, Emily,” he reminds me.
“I intend to.”
Edmund and I sit together with the other chief engineers and strategists, and we watch our boys on track continue to duke it out. I know they’re having the time of their lives doing it.
The track is nearly dry now, and the sun is starting to peek through the overcast sky. It’s time for both the drivers to make a pit stop to get off the wet tires and back onto slicks.
“Can I?” I ask Edmund.
“Yes, please. I had hoped for this, you know.”
“What’s that?”
“I’m old. I want to bloody retire one day. I have a wife I’d like to see more of. Travel with her when we actually have time to stop and see the sights. Play golf or some shit,” he laughs.
I grin at him as big as I can. I don’t think Edmund will ever be a golfer, but I like the thought of him relaxing and puttering about with someone he loves. He’s taken care of Cole and Dante since they were just teens, and I’ll be eternally grateful to him.
With that, I cue the pit crew to get ready and push the button on my desk to broadcast my microphone to Cole’s car.
“Now that things aren’t so wet let’s get you slicked up. Box, box, box.”
“Emily?” He responds half a second later.
“Copy that. Come in this lap so I can service you.”
Edmund lowers his head, and his shoulders rack with silent laughter.
“What if I like it wet?” Cole responds.
“Plenty of wetness forecasted for this evening. Box, please.”
“Jesus Christ,” he mumbles back.
My face is beet red, and I don’t dare turn around to see what’s happening in the garage, but I can hear the crew laughing, even over the roar of the cars screaming past us.
The British broadcast networks are probably having a field day over this. I imagine they’re apologizing for more suggestive content right now.
Cole’s car comes in a moment later, and in the two-point-three seconds he has before the car launches again, he sees me out of the corner of his eye.
We’ve double-stacked the pit stops, and Dante flies in right behind him, then they’re both gone in the blink of an eye.
The crowd is on its feet and screaming for Cole, the only American driver on the grid right now. I know he can hear them inside his helmet, see them waving flags in the stands, as he and Dante make their way through the pack.
We’ve made good strategy calls on the tire changes, and both have made up several places. They’ve cleared the back-markers, and their tires are heated up.
“How’s the car feeling?” I ask him to make sure everything is stable before I give the next or
der.
“Car feels better now, feels like it’s with me.”
“Well, then open that baby up and give me everything you have. Push hard.”
There’s a long pause. And by a long pause, I mean maybe one-second because, in Formula 1, one-second is a lifetime.
“Uh, confirm if that was real or…”
Edmund laughs and pushes his radio button, “Bloody push, Ballentine.”
“Not as much fun when you say it, Edmund,” Cole responds.
The laps tick by, Edmund and I watch the data and run all the numbers. If he keeps the pace up, he may be able to win again.
“Can we turn the engine up?” Cole asks over the radio. He knows a win is in sight, too.
“We can. I’m turning it up right now, Cole.”
I do actually change his engine mode, give him more power. But I have something else in mind, too.
“How’s that feel?” I ask when I see his data change under the extra horsepower.
“Everything feels very right.”
“I think it can feel even better.”
“Oh yeah?” He chuckles, and I picture him biting his lip as he flies through the chicanes, the asphalt covered in bright red, white, and blue.
“Yeah. I think we should turn it up even more.”
Edmund taps me, raises his eyebrows in question, and I give him the gesture for don’t worry, I know what I’m doing. I don’t mean the engine. He’ll see in a minute.
“I think the car might blow up if you turn it on any more, up any more, I mean,” Cole answers.
“Well, I think you were right when you said we needed to lock things down.”
“Message unclear, come again?”
“Yes, please. Just as soon as the race ends.”
“Em…” he warns.
I glance up at my television monitor, and I see the networks are broadcasting our radio messages. I can’t hear what the commentators are saying, but clearly, they’ve all caught on to the unusual banter.
I feel like I’m broadcasting a version of Charlotte and Steel’s torrid love affair here, but mine’s better than fiction.
I check all of his data one more time. Everything on the car looks good.
I check the screen, he’s in a good spot on track.
And then I give a huge middle finger to every fear of failure, every consequence, every minute of lost time we’ve wasted without each other.