by Shey Stahl
“You’ve always been there,” he assured me, just before he entered me.
Grid – Lineup of cars before the start of the race.
Jameson stared at the case for the longest time and Caden’s helmet. I wanted to ask him what he was thinking, but then again, I didn’t think I needed to know. This collection had been his for so long, and some of them, Jack’s. And now one had been added to it that he didn’t feel belonged there.
I thought about the first conversation I had with Caden after the accident.
He took one look at me, laughed because I tripped trying to use the damn crutches, and then went into his speech I was sure he practiced. “Don’t you dare apologize or feel bad for me,” he told me. “Because I’m not mad, or bitter, or whatever else you think I might be feeling. I’m… thankful to still be breathing and given a second chance.”
Taking a seat next to his bed, I sighed, searching for something to say to him that would be meaningful, but I couldn’t.
We talked about the races since the accident, the points, but then he sighed, the bruises in his face slowly turning from green to yellow in spots. “Every time I wake up, I have this moment when my eyes open and I think it’s not real. And then I try to move my legs, can’t, and then it hits me again.” His voice shook with the words, blinking back tears. Nineteen. He was nineteen and the career he’d worked so hard for was over. “They said there’s a spinal cord rehabilitation center in Atlanta that I can go to after I get released.”
I chewed on the inside of my cheek. “Are they hopeful they could get you walking again?”
“Maybe. I’m going to do everything I can. There’s new advances in medicine every day. I heard there’s some electro-therapy where they can shock the nerves into waking up.” His eyes moved to mine, bloodshot and wavering. “Maybe someday I’ll be behind the wheel again.”
“I’ll be waiting for that day, man.”
We didn’t say much else. There really wasn’t anything to say.
Turning, he smiled at me. “You leaving tonight or in the morning?”
“Lane and I figured we’d head out about midnight.”
“Okay, I’ll meet you at the shop then later?”
“Yep.” I shoved my hands into the pockets of my shorts, shifting my stance. I was curious if he was going to say any more, and then he looked up at me.
“For now, we’re gonna drop Caden’s car next season. We’ll talk about what happens next if his situation changes. I’ve spoken with the director for the World of Outlaws about what it would take to get him into a car, but currently there’s no rules for it.”
I nodded. “I talked to him a couple days ago. He was able to stand up, assisted of course, but it’s hopeful.”
Jameson sighed. “God, I fucking hope he walks again. I’m not one to pray, or whatever, but I pray for that kid.”
I chuckled. “I know what you mean. I’ve never known anyone more deserving.”
Jameson clasped his hand on my shoulder. “I know a few.”
And then he walked away.
I met Arie in the office where she’d been going through merchandise boxes all afternoon. She was in there with all the kids and Casten.
“Can I design the paint job?” Pace stared at the screen over Arie’s shoulder with the markups for the latest paint schemes of the JAR Racing cars. Someone had the bright idea to let the kids design the cars for the next race in memory of Jack for the West Coast tour. While I was on board with showing our support for Jack’s birthday, I wasn’t excited about what they had in mind. “It’d be cool if it was all black with no numbers.” Pace waved his hand around at the screen. “All black. Like a panther.”
Maybe this wouldn’t be so bad.
“Oooh, ooh—Stars and rainbows!” Bristol added, trying to twist the screen her way. “And flowers with a big swirly thingy down the middle on the wing.”
I was wrong. “I don’t like that. Not one bit,” I voiced, as if I thought my disapproval meant anything.
Arie waved me off, her hand flopping back behind her head and inadvertently, or purposely, smacking me in the lip.
“Please, Daddy!” Bristol motioned around with her hands, smacking Pace in the eye. Hand motions were a common theme between these two. “It’d be pretty.”
Glaring, Pace shoved his twin sister away from him. “You did that on purpose!”
“Did not!” Bristol picked up a pen and held it in the air. I knew from experience you shouldn’t take Bristol’s threat idly. She’d totally stab her brother and not feel an ounce of remorse. We had the ER bill to prove it.
“Knock it off,” I ordered in my fatherly tone I had to use when outnumbered by heathens. Grabbing my rebel son by his shoulders, I separated them.
“Flames and fire!” Knox added and we all looked at him strangely. We shouldn’t be surprised after he set the carpet on fire last week. The kid was a pyromaniac in the making.
“The devil,” Hudson growled in a very disturbing voice I’d never heard before. He went from barely talking a few months ago to growling out his words like he was possessed.
I feared for my life with that one. And it dawned on me in that office with them that we made the weirdest kids.
“And,” Gray finished, “on the sideboard you should just add a picture of Harry Styles.”
I stared at her. “Not a chance.”
“Yeah, okay.” Arie nodded, trying to accommodate all their requests. “I’ll see what I can do.”
“It’s gonna look like a schizophrenic’s car,” I told her, trying to voice my disapproval for any of it other than the flames. At least Pace and Knox had some sense.
Arie laughed, like my request meant nothing. “Be nice.”
And you know, I was beginning to realize when you’re married and have four kids, your opinion in anything meant jack shit.
Beside me, Casten grinned and gestured to the car Rowyn and Ryder designed. His car was covered in swirls and dots and a random star here and there. None of it made any fucking sense. It made me dizzy looking at it. It looked like a drunk was let loose with a box of Sharpies while on a roller coaster and attempting to draw.
“Whose idea was this?”
I glared at Casten. “Yours!”
“Oh, right.” He smiled when I knocked my shoulder with his. “I’m fucking brilliant.”
HONESTLY, I WASN’T looking forward to the second West Coast swing based on how the first part went. Or the middle. Okay, it’d been a rough fucking year. But I’d also been racing long enough to know you had years like this. Ones that made you appreciate the good ones even more.
What bothered me the most was not having Arie there. I hated the few days she hadn’t been there this season. No way I wanted to do a fucking month without her. I also had to respect Arie’s desire to stay home and heal from her surgery. It didn’t stop the husband in me from wanting to be there for her.
We said our goodbyes that night in the parking lot of JAR Racing where the haulers had just left. Jameson’s truck was hooked up to the one T-shirt trailer we were taking, the lights on and highlighting the stone sign in front of the building.
“Are you sure?” I asked Arie, pulling her into my chest, the hum of the diesel in the background drowning out her sigh.
She gave me “the look.” The one that screamed stop asking that. “I’ll fly out to see you in a couple weeks with the kids when you’re in Washington.”
“Do me a favor,” I whispered in her ear, reaching down to grab her ass with one hand.
“What?” she yelped, wiggling against me.
“Send me naughty pictures every day.”
She laughed. “That I can do.”
I hugged each one of the kids, kissed Arie entirely too inappropriately in front of her dad, and then got inside the truck with Lane and Jameson. Tommy followed us.
“Where’s Paxton?” I asked. He was originally going to come with us, and we’d drop him off in Indiana on the way.
Tommy shrugged. “
He left this morning.”
I reached for my phone in my pocket, flipping through messages. “Aren’t you going to see him again?”
Tommy opened his cooler and reached for a beer. “Well, maybe. I don’t know.”
“You’re his dad,” Lane added, making his way inside the truck. “He’s fifteen.”
“Yeah, but once his mom finds out he spent three months with me, got arrested, lost his virginity, and now likes Fireball way more than he should, she might change her mind on visitation rights,” Tommy pointed out.
“True.” I smiled. “Did you ever figure out if his mom knew he was gone?”
“Nope. He kept saying he told her, but I don’t know. I didn’t see his face on the news.”
Lane shook his head. “The whole situation was weird.”
“Yeah, well…” Tommy took a long pull from his beer. “…what’s weirder is him thinking I’m his dad. He looks nothing like me, and I had a vasectomy when I was twenty-six. No way I’m that kid’s dad.”
Lane, Jameson, and me all stared at one another. It was Lane who spoke up. “No shit? But you let him believe it?”
“Eh. We got free labor out of it for the summer. Kid could change out gears faster than anyone I’ve ever seen.”
We laughed when my phone dinged. It was a message from Arie.
Arie: Check your phone. You have about thirty naked pictures of my new tits.
Willie, who I didn’t know was riding with us, laid his chin on my shoulder. “Can I borrow your phone?”
Willie spent the next hour complaining that I broke his nose and Jameson nearly kicked him out before we made it out of North Carolina for getting blood on his seats. I spent the drive worrying about Arie, unsure how it was going to go without her by my side.
As I watched the scenery change from city life to barren farmland, I realized that I didn’t fear racing any longer. I wasn’t nervous about getting into the car, or wrecking. What I feared was our life changing and not having my family around for it.
Gearhead – Device that reduces motor speed and increases motor torque.
“I miss your pussy. My hand isn’t cutting it anymore.”
I laughed. “Really, dude? No hello or how are the kids?” I asked when I answered the phone. “What if one of the kids had answered?”
I could hear the smirk in his words. “I would have known it was them by their breathing. All our kids are extremely loud breathers.”
He was right. They were. I was sleeping next to two of them right now. Sighing, I settled into our bed I’d been occupying by myself for the last two weeks. It’d only been fourteen days and I missed Rager so much he was literally all I thought about.
“You did good tonight.” He’d finished third at Skagit and I could tell by the tone of his voice he was pleased by it.
He let out a breathy laugh. “I want a win about as bad as I want your pussy.”
“Oh my God.” I laughed lightly, trying not to wake the kids. “Is that all you think about?”
“No, I think about winning.” I could hear doors closing in the background and Lane’s laughter. “And pussy.”
I let out a breathy sigh, one I knew would get to him. “Which one more?”
“Seeing how I just finished racing and you’re not here waiting for me, I’m going to go with pussy. You should probably send me a picture so I can get through the night.”
“I’m not sending you a picture. I’m holding our babies.”
He groaned. “You’re impossible.”
“I can’t wait to see you,” I told him, running my hands through Hudson’s hair as he slept next to me.
“Just fly out here. Come see me,” he begged. “I need you here. I’m dying out here by myself. It’s quiet and there’s no Legos for me to step on. And… the bed is cold at night.”
I shifted in the bed and reached for my water next to me. “You only want me there because your hand is tired.”
“Not true. I want you here because your pussy is better than my hand.”
I laughed and he sighed into the phone. “And, I miss you. Every fucking thing about you, baby, I miss.”
Okay, that got to me. I almost caved.
“How are the headers doing?”
I chuckled and ran my fingertips over the tops of my breasts. It was still so weird to me thinking I have a boob job. “Less swollen.”
“Can I see?” He sounded eager and the idea that he couldn’t wait cemented the smile already on my lips. “Facetime me. I wanna see them.”
“No. The kids are in bed with me.”
He grunted and the sound sent a rush of emotion through me. I missed him so much. “Fine. Send me a picture later.”
“Why so Willie can try to steal your phone?”
There was noise in the background again, as if the guys had returned to where he was. “He’s not talking to me after I broke his nose.”
“I can’t believe you broke his nose.”
“That’s what he gets for trying to see my wife naked,” he growled. “He keeps it up and I’m going to break his jaw.”
“Uh huh.”
He sighed and I heard another door closing followed by laughter in the distance. “I gotta get going but I just needed to hear your voice before we hit the road.”
“Me too,” I told him, smiling. “I love you.”
“I love you too.”
For the next couple weeks, that was how most of our conversations went during his time on the West Coast. Every track, every night, he called to check on us, and my pussy. After a while, weeks, I’d finally been cleared by my doctor to travel again and couldn’t wait to surprise him in Calistoga.
It was crazy to me that at the start of the season my biggest worries had been him taking over partial ownership of JAR Racing, and me having the breast cancer gene. And now, they were on us being together again.
RAGER DIDN’T TAKE well to the idea that I wanted to keep the kids home with me for the final West Coast swing of the year. Or that I’d be celebrating my thirtieth birthday at home without him. Which sucked. I didn’t realize how much I missed him until I didn’t see him on my birthday.
Truthfully, I thought it’d be good for him to have some time with the team, my dad, and to be completely focused on racing. After a month, I was dying. I wanted my husband. The kids were miserable, hated being at home and asked constantly when we were leaving for the track.
So I made a plan to fly out to Calistoga, arranged to take my mom, Rosa, Kinsley and Caden with me, and we met up with the team.
“You didn’t say anything to him, right?”
Caden groaned, scrolling through his phone. “No, I didn’t.”
“He thinks I’m at home with the kids, right?” I looked down at Hudson asleep in my arms as we rode to the track from the Santa Rosa airport.
“I swear I didn’t tell him. He doesn’t even know we’re together.”
The entire flight I was nervous and downright jittery. I hadn’t seen Rager in over a month and I wasn’t sure how to act now that we were heading to see him. I knew once I saw him, everything would be back to normal, but I was still nervous anticipating his reaction.
Honestly, the separation had been good for our relationship. If anything, it was stronger. We talked multiple times a day, discovered FaceTiming phone sex was highly erotic and had some serious conversations about the future and what he wanted from his career.
I watched every race on DIRTVision with the kids in hopes to catch a glimpse of him or just the mention of his name. That was when I knew I had to go see him.
“I can’t wait to see Daddy!” Bristol gleamed the moment we were out of the car in the parking lot.
“Me too!” Pace said.
“I want kettle corn,” Knox noted, hanging onto Caden’s wheelchair and then on his lap. My kids were all over Caden. Probably because he had a wheelchair and they thought it was the coolest thing ever.
“I could down a beer,” Caden noted, winking at Kinsley.
&
nbsp; “No drinking, dude,” she told him, handing him his cell phone Knox had kicked out of his hand. I was so nervous Knox was going to hurt him climbing all over him, but Caden didn’t say anything. He loved my kids as much as they loved him.
It took some time but we made it to the track right after the start of the main event but couldn’t make it into the pits because they were in the middle of the track at Calistoga. Making our way through where the merchandise trailer was parked, Hayden and Lily screamed when they saw our crew wandering through the parking lot. We probably looked a bit crazy after a seven-hour flight with five kids, but every one of us were smiling.
“You made it!” Hayden gushed.
I glared at Caden. “I thought you didn’t tell anyone.”
“I didn’t tell Rager.”
“Hayden can’t keep a fucking secret to save her life,” I pointed out.
Caden winked at me. “Sorry.”
I shoved his shoulder lightly when Lily pointed to the track behind us. “Arie, there’s three laps left and Rager has a ten car lead on the entire field.”
My eyes widened. “What? Really? I thought he started last in the main.”
“He did,” she said, grinning. “Which makes it even more impressive.”
Rager hadn’t won since the accident at Eldora. A couple of second-place finishes, but nothing close to a win. Anticipation rolled through me and I reached for Pace and Knox. Hudson was already inside the trailer with Rowyn and couldn’t probably care less about his dad’s win. So I scooped up the other three and rushed toward the fence line to watch the final laps.
Caden and Kinsley came with me and we stood at the exit of turn four. “Last lap,” Caden noted, smiling and closing his eyes, breathing in deep. I wondered what he was thinking in that moment, regret or peace?
Rager’s car came flying into three. Clay roosted up, spraying the wall we stood next to as the powerful rumble of his car popped as he lifted. He blipped the throttle to slide into the slick corner, nearly bumping the wall before dipping down on the inside to take the checkered flag.