by Nikki Wild
But it wasn't like that. Not really. I believed what Dane had told me. He’d been dragged into this workd. He did what he had to do for his family. I could respect that.
And now… things were changing. I had to admit that it was nice to be the source of someone's redemption. Seeing me, in that crash… It had meant something to him. It had shown him who he truly was, maybe even reminded him who he wanted to be.
And now… he may be in trouble. Whatever odds and ends he’d traded for the parts were clearly valuable and I didn’t want him to have to part with it on my account.
I sat up slowly, casually running my hands up his chest and looping it around behind his neck. We kissed, but it wasn't the firestarter type of spark that we had before. It was something deeper. Something more meaningful. It wasn't just lust anymore.
I don't know what it was for him, but I found myself dangerously close to wanting to say the L word out loud to Dane. Which would've been a disaster, and a foolish move besides.
He didn't need that. He’d done the right thing, and he’d put himself and his finances in jeopardy to get the parts. All to help me leave him in the rearview mirror.
But was that what I really wanted? Was it time to run already?
Probably…
"Good afternoon, sleepyhead," he said, running his fingers through my hair once we broke our kiss. "Hope you don't mind that I let you sleep."
"How long was I out?" I asked.
Dane shrugged. That was when I realized that he wasn't dressed like he had been. He was wearing a pair of overalls now, and a tight, once-white wife beater beneath it that was now stained here and there with grease and motor oil. "A while. There’s still time to shower and head for the dance, if that's what you want to do."
"It is!" I said, worried that he'd take any hesitation as a sign that I didn't want to go. I was looking forward to it. It would be my going away present to myself, one last night of bliss and carefree love. Something to keep me warm in the cold nights in an empty bed that would make up the next few years of my life. Something to remember him by…
"The Bentley wasn't as bad as I thought," he said. "If we go to the dance and leave early, there’ll still be time for me to work on it tonight. Hell, there's a couple more hours left in the day. I might even have it finished for you before we head off. Depends on a few things, but maybe."
"Really?" All at once I was hit with a range of emotions. Relief came first, but that quickly darkened and soured into something different. Disappointment. Now that the moment was so near, I didn’t know how I could possibly say goodbye.
"Is that all right?"
I nodded. "Of course. You keep working, in that case. I’m going into the house and cleanup, if that's all right."
He nodded, and when he leaned forward and our mouths met again it was the type of kiss that I’d dreamed about ever since I was little girl. Not just urgent. Not simply needful. Content. The type of kiss that I could have ten thousand times and never grow tired of.
And it broke my heart. I looked away, blinking rapidly in a vain attempt to hide the tears. It was all over. It was all going to end so soon…
And I wasn't ready. I didn't want to have the conversation that we needed to have before I drove out of town for the last time. I didn't want to thank him, or say goodbye, or tell sweet, softly shadowed lies about how we would stay in touch. Our worlds would never meet again. He’d done right by me and I'd enjoyed my time in his arms, but the ambitions we had were pulling us in two different directions.
Maybe that was okay. At least, maybe I'd make it okay, one day.
I tried not to hurry out of the garage. I bent as nonchalantly as I could, retrieving my bag and making sure the tears weren't falling yet as I glanced back at him to give him a sad, lingering smile.
Dane knew. He could see. He started to reach for me, but then thought better of it. I knew the feeling. He was going through the same thing I was. What was the point of love if all it meant was another goodbye?
I didn't want to drag this out. We’d dance and pretend the whole world outside this little town didn’t exist, and then I’d go.
Without another word, I left the garage and crossed the big, green lawn to the main house. I didn't know where the shower was, but I was sure I could find it. The bathroom downstairs didn’t have one, and that was the sum total of the facilities that I’d used so far, other than Mother Carson’s kitchen.
The screen door was unlocked and the big, wooden one stood open. Of course. That was how things were here. In all my time in Chicago and New York no one had ever pulled a gun on me, but I locked my car when I drove around town and I bolted my apartment with three separate locks when I came home.
Here, I probably made it all of fifty feet into the town limits before someone had pointed a pistol at me and then shut out the Bentley’s tire, but for all the motorcycle gangs and criminal chop shops, it felt different. Safer. It didn't strike me as strange at all that I could reach out and open the screen door and step into this house without even knocking.
"Come on in here," his mother called out, from a room down the hall into the left. "You and I need to talk, girl."
My heart sunk. She would know, too. She was too smart not to. Maybe Dane and I could fool ourselves that we could have a fairytale goodbye before all this ended, but I knew his mother would see right through that.
I couldn't ignore her. There was nothing to do but walk down that narrow hallway, lined with family photos. I saw Dane in a lot of them, but the only ones where there was a smile on his face with the ones where he was near his father and their racing car.
When I found her, she was sitting in the dark. There was just enough sun streaming through the slats of the blinds to stripe the ground and light the room up a little, enough so that I could see it was a den. There was a big cabinet full of trophies on one side of the room, and she sat in an overstuffed leather lounge suite. When she saw me in the doorway, she patted the seat beside her. "Sit down," she said, and it wasn't a question.
Maybe there were people in this town that were willing to disobey her, but I wasn't one of them. I sat as directed, and when I looked over at her in the dim light I was surprised to see a bar of afternoon sun shining across her face. She was crying, and before I knew exactly what I was doing I reached out and wrapped my arms around her and pulled her close.
All that strength… It evaporated at my touch. She was so small, so skinny. She broke down, and it was like trying to hold a pile of fabric and sticks together as she sobbed uncontrollably against my shoulder, her bony arms wrapped around me.
"Don't let him get hurt," she said, over and over and over. "Don't you let my boy get hurt. Not my last boy. Please."
I would've told her anything to take the pain away, but I was glad that I could at least tell her the truth. "I won't," I said, and in that moment my decision was made. “He’ll be okay… He made a deal with the bikers, and I promise I’ll find some way to pay him back…”
Maybe I could arrange for the bank to up my limit on my credit cards…
I thought that would go some distance toward fixing things. I thought it might even make her happy, but his mother was shaking her head furiously, and when she leaned back and stared at me her eyes blazed through tears. "You think I’m talking about that damn devil’s bargin he made with those lowlifes? It's you, Kara. You're the one that’ll hurt him. You’ll break him in half when you leave."
Chapter 22
“Come on," I said to her, helping her to her feet. I wasn't used to towering over anyone, but I was certainly head and shoulders above her. And this time, unlike the first time I met her, I felt it. She wasn't as powerful and intimidating as she was before. There was almost nothing left of the imposing woman that I'd first seen.
"I'm okay," she was telling me, but I ignored her and helped her through the house. I moved toward the kitchen where I could smell some coffee brewing, which meant that we had to go down that long hallway again. I watched her eyes, and su
re enough they flicked from one picture to the next as we went. Once, she even reached out with a hand to gently trace the jawline of a man that must've been her husband. It was frightening watching that gesture. He reminded me exactly of the way that I'd first touched Dane, when he pulled me from the Bentley.
"Sit down," I said to her gently, once we were in the kitchen. I helped her into a chair and sat in the one beside. "I won’t hurt your son. You need to know that."
I don’t know if I was expecting her to disagree, but the light that blazed in her eyes for a moment reminded me of the other side of that twinkle that Dane had. Someone whose eyes could light up like that could see right through you, or so it felt. "You won’t mean to," she told me. "But that doesn't change the fact you’re fixing to just the same."
I shook my head. "It's not my intention, I promise. We’re going to some dance at the church tonight, but I can call that off if you think it's best. Either way, I'll be out of your hair before too long. Maybe even before the sun rises, though I'd appreciate it if you didn't tell him that. I'm not one for goodbyes…”
She watched me closely, and finally the wry twist of a smile pulled at the corner of her lips. "That's just it. Are you this dense all the time, or did you your head in that crash? Maybe it's my son. Does he have this effect on you? At least it’s mutual. Young love makes fools of us all, or so they say."
"I'm not being foolish," I said, defiantly.
"You’re being foolish if you think you can just walk away from all of this with no hard feelings. You’re the one causing him pain. Can't you see that? He’s head over heels for you. You caught him, hook line and sinker."
On one hand, I suppose I'd already known. At least, I feared it. But on the other, it was hard to convince myself that a man like that could have fallen for a girl like me. I didn't have the sense of danger or adventure that he craved. At least, not in the same way as he did. I opened my mouth to protest, but she cut me off.
“Why do you think I was so startled when I saw you yesterday?"
I shrugged.
"Because when he’s with you… he’s different. Let's just say I've seen that look before in my husband's eyes. He’d give up anything for you, and I’m guessing that’s exactly what he did."
"What do you mean?" I asked, already fearing that I knew the answer.
She nodded. "It's a small town, Kara. People talk. You can’t expect for a deal like the one he did not to set tongues wagging."
I sighed. “He won’t tell me anything about the deal. He said he traded them some ‘odds and ends’.”
I watched as those old, strong hands locked on to the edge of the table and held her up right. I had the feeling that I was watching an old tree fight the battering wind one last time, but she was still wily and cagey enough to have a few tricks to remain standing.
She pushed herself to her feet and went to a drawer. I'd assumed that it was full of silverware, but instead of knives and forks she pulled the folder from it and came back to the chair next to me, where she sat down.
"What's this?"
Her only answer was to open it and push it in front of me.
It was everything. Pictures of Dane and his father on the racetrack. Jimmy standing next to one of the cars, smiling wide in front of all those sponsor stickers splashed across the hood. Happier times. And then there were police reports for Jimmy, Dane's brother. Mugshots. Receipts from the bar that I'd been to earlier, where Sam had written special notes to Dane’s mother telling her his tab was canceled. He wasn't welcome.
There was more. So much more. As I lifted the pages and set them aside I worked my way down to the ones for the back, correspondences from Jimmy in prison and then somber invitations to his funeral, and then his father’s.
It was like I was watching the descent of the Carson's. Here was the end, black and white. Those hallway pictures of been one part of the story, and the contents of this folder were the other.
I read them. And all the while, the trembling hand of Dane's mother rested on mine. "I'm so sorry," I said when I was done. “Dane told me some of this, but I had no idea. Not the extent of it."
"I didn't show you these to hear that you were sorry. I showed you because it mattered. This was Dane's life, up until he found you. This is all he had to look forward to. An empty house with a few graves behind him and an old woman waiting for him to dig the next hole. That was it. The things he got up to… I know they aren’t right, but he’s trying to get better. Now you're here, I can see things are different for him."
I took a deep breath and let it out slowly. There was so much here, so much history. I'd stumbled upon a story that I never would have known if everything had gone to plan, I would've sailed past this town and a hundred others like it in my plane and never given it so much as a second thought.
Hell, if I'd driven past Dane he’d have caught my eye, but I probably would’ve turned my nose up at him. After all, I had better places to be… right?
But it wasn't true. That whole life that I'd left behind had just been me treading water. The reality of it was that I hadn't felt alive at all until he pulled me out of the Bentley and showed me that things could be different. He might like to go fast, but he showed me how nice it feels to slow down a little, too…
Was she asking me to stay? And if she did, would I give myself permission to?
Maybe I really was being the foolish girl she’d accused me of. The fairytale wasn’t real. There might be a happy ending, but mine involved me getting to Orlando by Sunday. That was it. Maybe I’d try to keep things going from a distance, but could this ever really work?
“Dane didn’t promise those biker fools a bunch of odds and ends. I think he traded them the cars,” she said.
I immediately knew what that meant. All his talk of going back to racing and trying to make ends meet was just a smokescreen. Dane had given the Reapers more than just money. He’d given then his legacy.
That was the odds and ends. That was why the Reapers were going to let me drive my Bentley right out of here. He’d traded the most valuable things he owned.
"I have some friends. They’ve got money."
Well, that wasn't entirely true…
I started again. "Actually, they’re not exactly friends. They’re more like investors. But they trust me. They’re going to be at a conference I set up tomorrow. That’s where I was supposed to be going back before the crash. I’ll talk to them. I'll get the money to get Dane out of this. He won't lose the garage because of me. He doesn’t have to give up the car."
None of this was what she wanted to hear, but she was a strong woman who was used to things going in directions that she didn't want them to, and so she nodded.
“And what about you?”
"Tell him, when the time is right, that I would've stayed I could. Maybe in another world, if things were different, I would've stayed forever."
I smoothed her hand with mine and stood up, closing the folder. I couldn't bear to look at anymore. All that misery. All that heartbreak.
And because of me, it might not be over.
Chapter 23
Dane
I tossed myself head-first into the repair job. At least I knew how to fix the Bentley. With Kara… Well, what was there to do? She’d be on her way soon enough. We could have some fun while we lasted, but the moment of her departure was fast approaching.
I was good at taking stuff apart and putting it back together. Mom and Dad always said that the first thing I’d done when I got my Christmas presents was to take them apart. I guess I just liked seeing what made things tick. I was good at making things do the things they were supposed to do them, and it wasn't long before I was fixing toasters and stoves and, eventually, the family car.
But I couldn't fix Kara. I didn't know what she wanted.
No, that wasn't right. I knew exactly what she wanted, I just didn't have a hope in hell of ever being able to give it to her… That girl had big dreams and the best thing to do was to let her go l
ive them.
I was impressed with Kara. She’d defied my expectations and as I learned how she’d pulled herself up by her bootstraps, all I could do is admire her spirit. She was strong in ways I don’t think I’d ever seen in a woman. She’d rule the world some day.
What could I offer her that could rival that?
Nothing. Not one damn thing.
But no matter how many times I told myself that what Kara and I had was just a fling, I wasn’t able to convince myself that I was telling the truth.
Even now, as I tightened the last screw and made sure the last bolt of the Bentley’s axle was secure, I didn’t know how best to face reality. The repairs were done. The car was as good as new to anybody giving it a once-over.
But I wasn’t feeling triumphant.
Something had happened when I saw this girl for the first time. I’d changed. It was like everything that came before that moment had happened to someone else.
And, to my surprise, despite how gorgeous she was, it wasn’t just about Kara’s looks. That was only part of it. When I'd seen her behind the wheel of the Bentley… it was like seeing my future. Even before she spoke, I knew her. It was like we were destined to fight the world together, and just the fact that I was even having a thought like that made part of me want to laugh in my own face and kick my own ass.
Yes, she was one in a million. But that was all the more reason why it was so clear to me that she was meant for someone else. When the time finally came for her to settle down, I didn't really believe that she would miss the small town guy that had dragged her from the wreck he had a part in making happen then fucked her a few times in the middle of nowhere. Kara wanted a life that would contain more than I could ever give her. I was going to be a memory. A fun story to tell her girlfriends over wine in one of those fancy bars they have up north.
Could I let her make me into a footnote in her life? Was I going to wave goodbye and dream of what might have been, or was I going to take a risk and ask her to stay?