I nodded. “I understand.”
“Director.” Puglisi might as well have spat on the man’s shoes for how bitterly he addressed him before storming out.
A silent look passed between the rest of us acknowledging an agreement in thought about the man who’d just left, but it was a thought that would be left unspoken.
“Thank you, Mr. Branch,” Renner said, extending his hand once more.
“I just did my job,” he replied as they shook.
“Miss Snyder. Good luck next weekend.”
I murmured my thanks as Renner motioned me out of the room, though I kept looking back, waiting for Garret to follow.
“What just happened?” I demanded as soon as we were outside of the tent. “Do we really have another engine?”
He nodded. “Yes. And now it needs to get in the car.”
“How?” I stammered. “Where?”
Garret joined us and Renner’s attention flicked to him quickly before he replied in that short, matter-of-fact tone he used when this was the very last he’d say on the subject. “Worked out a deal with CD Enterprises. Engine’s on its way over now.”
“With CD—Colton Donavan?” I gasped as the name dawned and subsequently stunned me. “Colton Donavan gave us an engine?” I cupped a hand over my mouth in shock.
“So you better be on your best behavior at the charity gala tonight.” Renner pointed a finger at me. “The car will be at your hotel at seven.”
My gaze clashed with Garret’s as Renner walked off toward our trailer.
“Garret, what is going on?” I demanded, folding my arms across my chest. “How—how did this happen?”
I was reeling. Colton Donavan had the largest and most dominating racing team here. Not just here. At any race. Why would he give us an engine?
I looked at Renner as he got farther away from us. He’d been in the industry long enough to know Donavan. Maybe they had a relationship. Maybe he’d had enough money to buy one of their spares.
Garret’s eyes fell to my lips, staring at them as though I was water and he hadn’t had a drink in weeks.
“I told ye I’d fix this, lass,” he rasped, permitting one hand to reach out and cup my face. “I promised ye I’d get ye back on that track.”
“You did this?” I breathed. “Did you pay him—how could you afford—” I broke off and cupped my hands over my mouth. “If you used money that was meant for Claire—”
“Christ, Kacey. Ye know me better than that,” he assured me firmly. “I didn’t pay him, alright? All I’m sayin’ is that I told ye I would fix this and I found a way, with Voigt’s help, and then Donavan’s to do it.”
“G!” We both turned as Renner called for him.
“Stop worryin’, lass,” he commanded hoarsely. “We’ve got an engine fer the race, but it’s no’ goin’ ta climb in that car itself, alright?”
My heart twisted violently in my chest. He’d done something. I knew it. I could see it in his harshly honest eyes. It might not have been money, but that only meant the price was paid with something far costlier.
I shook my head slowly, in fear and disbelief.
Whatever it was, he shouldn’t have risked it for me. For this. It wasn’t worth it.
And then, for the first time, the thought that floated through my veins like blood, silently infusing everything about me, finally spoke, and the whispered words drowned out everything else.
I wasn’t worth it.
“What if I don’t win?” I reached for him, curling my fist into his shirt and pulling him close. My tremulous questions escaped into the small, safe space between us. “What if you did all this—whatever it was—and I don’t win?” I laughed bitterly and added, “Don’t even tell me there’s ‘no pressure.’”
Except it was every pressure inside my chest that began to eat away at my organs. Whatever they’d done…whatever they’d worked out…what if I let them down?
His face screwed, like I wasn’t speaking the same language anymore.
“No, lass.” He tipped up my chin. “Every pressure. Every. Fucking. Pressure.”
I gaped.
“Ye heard me,” he bit out, ignoring Renner’s second call. “There is every fecking pressure for us to fix this car and get ye back out there. Every feckin’ pressure…” There was a beat of silence. “But not to win.”
“W-What?” Now he wasn’t the one speaking English.
His hand slid up to cup my face. “I don’t give a fuck if ye win,” he swore. “But there is every feckin’ pressure for ye ta be out on that track because ye are the only goddamn one. Yer the only one drivin’. Yer the only one racin’.” He broke off, his jaw tightening with a single, hard clench. “Who else would Claire have if it wasn’t ye, lass?”
My lungs seized, pain ripping them open.
“Who else will every other girl have” —he drew a ragged breath— “if ye aren’t out there? If I don’t get you out there ta prove ye have ta fight fer yerself against all odds.”
“Garret…”
“So, yeah, every feckin’ pressure, lass, not to win, but ta be there. Ta be exactly who ye are. Ta show up, get in that car, and ta drive… drive like they’ll never fuckin’ catch ye. Drive like yer leadin’ a revolution.”
I blinked quickly but it didn’t stop the tears that leaked down my cheeks. “I don’t want a revolution, Garret,” I whispered. “I just want to race.”
He made it sound so important. He made me sound so essential. And I was afraid at any moment, they would all realize I wasn’t enough. More than that, I was afraid he would realize it.
The man whose good opinion I’d wanted more than anything
The man who I wanted more than my dream—who was my new dream.
The man who I was afraid would give up everything for me if I let him…only to realize I wasn’t worth it in the end.
“It doesn’t matter if ye want it,” he growled, gently pressing a single finger into my left chest. I wondered if he could feel the way my heart heaved against my ribs with each beat—with each word. And then his hand rose, notching under my chin and lifting my worried gaze to his as he swore, “Ye are it, lass. Just by being yerself. Just by followin’ yer dream. Ye are the goddamn revolution.”
I dragged in a breath that carried his words down into my soul where they settled comfortably as though coming home.
A revolution.
His hand dropped along with his eyes, and he turned and walked toward Renner while I stood there questioning everything.
Most of all, why I was so sure Garret and I couldn’t make this work.
Kacey
“HEY, KACE!”
“Hey.” I tried to sound cheerful when Gwen answered my call. “Sorry I had to cut you off the other day.”
“Oh, it’s no problem. Hold on one—shh, Oscar!” I heard her gently chide her dog as he yapped in the background. “Sorry, he naturally assumes any and all attention must be for him.”
I chuckled. “It’s fine.”
“Are you okay? I saw you qualified—well—” She broke off with a laugh. “I didn’t see it because it was during my shift, but I think everyone on the floor heard when you broke the track record with how excited Claire was.”
My face felt at war, my lips breaking into a smile even as my eyes wanted to burst into tears.
“Kacey?”
“Yeah, sorry. Just distracted.”
“I also heard that you didn’t race today because you need a new engine.”
“I’m sure you did.” I let out a long sigh, staring over at the red dress laid out on the bed—the one I’d have to shimmy into in about an hour.
“Want to talk about it?”
I laughed. “I’d love to if I knew what to talk about.” I sank onto the mattress. “One minute, the engine is blown. The next, Garret shows up to say that Colton Donavan is giving us an engine but won’t give me any details.”
She hummed. “Interesting.”
“What?” I probed.
>
“Have you talked to him? Not about the car?”
“Yeah.” I gulped; there was no point in denying it—or the turmoil it was causing. “I put an end to it.”
Folding my legs under me on the bed in my hotel room, I toyed with a loose thread on the hem of my t-shirt, wishing oversized clothes were an acceptable type of ‘gown’ for the event tonight.
“Why?”
I shuddered. I didn’t realize how much I wanted her to ask until she did.
That was the thing about people whose profession it was to care for others—or maybe it was just Gwen; she always seemed to know exactly what someone needed even if it wasn’t what you might expect.
“I can’t, Gwen. I can’t tie him to this world. Not when it kills him to be here.”
“Does it?” she countered. “And, maybe I’m wrong…maybe I’ve met a different Garret Gallagher than you have…but I’ve never seen anyone able to make that man do anything he didn’t want to. I’m pretty sure stubbornness and innate sobriety are bred into the Irish genome.”
“Maybe.” I chuckled thickly. “But I don’t think I could live…wondering…if he really wanted to be there.”
She was silent for a long minute. Long enough to make me pull my phone away from my ear and check the time and that the call was still connected.
“Be there or be with you?”
My heart stuttered. “Does it matter?”
“It’s the only thing that matters, Kace.” And I couldn’t argue. “Why can’t you believe he wants to be with you?”
It was my turn to pause, my tongue turning thick with the weight of its shameful truth. “I don’t know. Because I don’t think…” I huffed. “He told me I was enough, but I can’t—”
“Believe it?”
I balked. “I was going to say force him back into the racing world,” I replied. “But also maybe that.”
The last I said quietly, as though even the empty silence in the hotel room was judging me.
“Why don’t you think you’re good enough?”
It didn’t matter that she asked gently. It didn’t matter that I truly wanted to answer. My chest ached because I didn’t have an answer—and that was the wound I’d managed to ignore for so long. Until today. Until now.
Until Garret.
“I don’t have a reason, Gwen.”
“Oh, Kacey.” The warmth in her voice felt like she’d extended a hand through the phone to take my shoulder and give it a comforting squeeze.
“I’ve met a lot of people… cared for a lot of people… gotten to know a lot of people,” she told me. “And I’ve helped a lot of people who’ve experienced trauma. The kind of ‘big’ trauma that gets you on the ACES scale. Abuse. Neglect. Assault. The kind of trauma that makes it into movies.”
“But I haven’t, Gwen. I haven’t, so I shouldn’t feel this way. I shouldn’t—”
“Just wait,” she pleaded, and I caught the thread of something personal in her tone that I had to bite my lip not to pursue. “I’ve also met so many more people who struggle. Who have this undeniable, relentless, and, according to them, unaccountable, belief they weren’t good enough in one way or another. People who didn’t trust themselves. In relationships. At work. People who didn’t know who they actually were, but believed that, whoever it was, wasn’t enough.”
You don’t belong.
The words reverberated in my head like the rumble of an engine. I’d taken that statement as a challenge because it hurt too much to accept that I’d taken it to heart.
In the truest twist of fate, it’s those who strived to be the best, who never, themselves, felt good enough.
“I saw it so much, and it was never talked about.” She let out a small exhale. “And I saw it in myself. So, I talked to my friend, Dr. Shelly, and from there, I realized that trauma is far broader than we currently give it credit for.”
I swallowed over the lump in my throat. How I felt—how I thought about myself—was easy to ignore for so long because there was no reason. Sure, there were little things that happened in my life, but no earth-breaking trauma that dropped me into the chasm of self-doubt.
It was easy to ignore because if I didn’t I felt a sense of shame.
Shame that I’d had a—for the most part—supportive family and a good childhood. I should be fine. I shouldn’t feel the way I did.
“Trauma is individual. It is based on your own circumstances. Your own perception… Do you not think that ex breaking up with you because you loved racing didn’t have an effect? Or your mom being disappointed when you chose racing as your career? Or when you continued to pursue it after that first time you crashed?” She didn’t wait for my answers because she both didn’t need to hear them and knew what they were. “Don’t even get me started on the things people… drivers… the media… have said about you. But I’m just wondering about before all that…”
“My parents love me, Gwen,” I insisted, walking numbly to the window.
“I never said they didn’t,” she reminded me. “But that doesn’t mean they didn’t say something at some pivotal moment that you’ve carried with you this whole time.
I stopped and sucked in a breath, hit by a memory so vivid I wondered if I’d traveled back in time.
It was strange. So much of my past before racing had blurred together, as though life hadn’t started until I stepped into that car.
“I remember the first race I went to at Pocono.” I murmured. “My dad was working, so my mom and I went to see him. She gets headaches a lot, so the noise was usually too much to even think about going, but that day she agreed to.”
The memory was so clear I could reach out and touch it. The dirt under my sneakers where we parked in the fields. The warm pretzel she’d bought for me. Walking down the row of cars lined up to pull out while my dad worked.
“I was in love the second the race started. On the edge of my seat. But she…she was getting a headache. I could tell. We only made it about twenty laps before she took my hand and told me we had to go.” I blinked and tears slid down my face. How was I just remembering this? “I told her I didn’t want to leave… I told her I wanted to race.”
There was a grieving moment of silence. The death of the fallacy that my desire to race had started in college with an ex-boyfriend’s car.
“What did she say, Kacey?”
“She crouched down and held my face and told me I was too smart to race—that I had too much potential.” My brow furrowed. “And then she told me I didn’t belong there.”
And there it was.
The first time someone had told me I didn’t belong. And it was my mother.
And even though she’d said it kindly—with a small, encouraging smile on her face. With good intentions and love in her heart. As a child, all I heard was that too smart wasn’t good enough. All I saw was that it was good enough for my dad—my hero—but not me.
And it planted the sprout of a weed inside my mind, growing doubt that was hard to extinguish.
“Maybe if she didn’t love you, you wouldn’t have taken it to heart like you did,” she told me gently, pushing me past where I was comfortable thinking into those crystal clear, but chilling waters of the truth. “So, tell me why you don’t think you’re good enough for Garret?”
“Because I’m afraid,” I murmured.
Tears pricked in the corners of my eyes. It felt like I was digging a bullet out of the center of my heart—one that had been buried in there for a long, long time.
“I’m afraid that he’s going to wake up one day and take my hand and tell me that I don’t belong there. With him.” I walked over and reached for a tissue from the nightstand, hating the tears that fell. “That I’m not good enough.”
“Oh, Kacey…” Her concern wrapped around me like a blanket, warm and familiar.
“Because every time I’ve found something I truly wanted—truly loved—I’ve been told I didn’t deserve it—that it wasn’t mine to have,” I murmured so quietly but t
he words boomed like a megaphone inside my heart. “And I’m so afraid to lose him now that I’ve realized I’m in love with him.”
I dropped my forehead onto my palm with a groan.
There it was.
The checkered flag waving in a race my heart just realized it was driving.
I was in love with Garret Gallagher.
“Does he know?”
You’re enough for me. More than enough.
“He told me I was a revolution,” I replied, and even though it wasn’t a direct answer, somehow it still felt like the right response to her question.
A small shared chuckle broke the levity of the conversation. “Well that’s a kind of compliment I haven’t heard before. But I can’t say I don’t like it.”
My head dropped back with a groan. “What do I do?”
“Woah… nice try.” Gwen laughed and I let out a long exhale; it was an unfair question to ask of her. “I can’t tell you what to do, Kace. All I can tell you is that you aren’t alone. This confusion. This questioning and self-doubt. There are so many people who suffer through it believing they have no real reason—no good reason—to feel it. But we do. We do feel it. And the only way to stop feeling it, is to confront it.”
“How do you know? How did you get so smart?” I teased lightly.
Gwen laughed. “They say experience is the best teacher.” She paused. “You could say the only way to end it is to revolt.”
Revolt.
“Just like you do every time you get in that car. You leave the doubts behind—even if it’s only while you’re on the track.” Seven-thousand RPMs. “You’ve fought for your dreams, Kace. You still do. Maybe it’s time to fight for your heart.”
“You mean surrender it?”
Because that was what Garret Gallagher stood for. Complete and total surrender.
“But isn’t that what a revolution is?” Gwen paused, thoughtfully. “The will to lose everything in a fight for the only thing that matters?”
Kacey
THE BLACK TOWN CAR PULLED up in front of the hotel at seven on the dot, and I slid into the back seat with my head down.
I’d started getting ready at six-fifteen since fancy wasn’t in my wheelhouse.
Revolution: A Driven World Novel (The Driven World) Page 33