“Ha—”
I stand and face her with open eyes before she can utter my name again.
“I don’t know, Mom. I. Don’t. Know.” I grit my teeth and force a smile as my mom brings her hand back up to her face, covering her mouth.
“Jesus,” I mutter, shaking my head. I glance back into the bin and find the door hanger. I carry it along with the wreath to the front door, Bristol tagging along behind me with a star in her hands. My mom swoops in and lifts her up, and they both watch as I work the wreath onto the door. Bristol insists on stuffing the tiny, red plastic star into the pinecones, so I help wedge it into a space where it feels secure enough for the time being then kiss her on the nose.
“What do you think?” I ask, standing back to admire the ugliest wreath known to man.
“I want Dus-in to see it.”
My mouth slacks at her response. I didn’t even realize she had learned his name. I can’t help the onslaught of emotion that swallows me whole in an instant. Tears burn my eyes and spill down my cheeks without warning.
“Oh,” I gurgle out, cupping my mouth with both hands.
My mom’s panic from a minute ago is quickly replaced with parental superpowers, and she turns her body enough to shield my broken soul from my daughter.
“Oh, he is going to love it,” she says, nuzzling Bristol and shaking her on her hip. “Let’s get cookies.”
My mom eyes me over Bristol’s head as she backs through the front door, and in that passing gaze, I see it in her eyes. She knows the truth. She’s known it all along.
“Hey. Hey, come here,” Jorge says, immediately setting down the extension pole and wrapping me in his arms. I fall apart in his hug, too broken to even check whether my dad is witnessing this. I’m sure he is, and I’m sure he knows the truth, too.
Why couldn’t I feel something for Jorge? Life would be so much simpler. My heart would hurt far less. He’s full of goodness, and I don’t think he has ever made a terrible choice in his entire life, except of course, falling in love with me.
“It’s going to be okay,” he whispers over my head, cradling me to him and rocking slowly.
I sob, drenching the front of his shirt in saliva and tears. I nod a little, but I don’t believe my own body language. Not at all. I don’t know how any of this can be okay.
It’s going to hurt from this moment forward—for a lot of us. But I’m going to suck it up and take my best friend’s advice. I’m going to deal with my shit. And that has to start right fucking now.
10
There may not be many things I can control in my life right now, but this is one of them. Hannah was right. Not facing my real mother, at least on some level and in person, is an albatross I will carry around my neck until the day I die. And before it becomes too late to do something about it, I owe it to myself to take my own destiny in my hands. Especially since my racing dreams are no longer in my control.
Tommy didn’t come home last night. He probably spent the night at Bailey’s or out in the desert on the hood of his car. He and I used to do that a lot when the track was being built. Our own brand of camping. The stars provide a great backdrop for our fantasies, and something about sleeping outside has a way of clearing the head.
I wasn’t sure when Hannah would want to leave. I wasn’t even sure whether she’d know how to contact me or if she would just show up at our apartment or the track. So I got to her house at sunrise. The sun is barely over the horizon, and in its warm glow I’m beginning to feel ridiculous for being here, this place I stormed out of in the middle of Thanksgiving dinner. Why can’t I have something normal, just once?
When the Judges’ front door opens, I stand up straight and my pulse jets, ready to face Hannah, and beyond that, my real mom. Jorge steps through the doorway with a large travel bag rolling behind him, deflating my nerves, and shifting the anxious feeling in my gut to one worried that Hannah is leaving.
He holds up a palm, almost as if he’s expecting me, then quietly shuts the door behind him. I meet him halfway up the driveway and we shake hands like civilized men in love with the same woman.
“I thought you guys were staying through Sunday?” I move toward Hannah’s car, I guess willing to open the trunk for this dude and help the three of them flee. He waves me off when I motion toward the back of the car.
“I have a ride coming. Super Shuttle.” He shrugs his right shoulder and lifts the side of his mouth for a brief half-smile.
“Oh,” I say, not fully understanding yet hoping.
“Yeah.” He nods and brings his lips together for a tight, conciliatory smile.
I blow out and shove my hands deep into my pockets while I rock on my feet, not sure what emotions to feel. This is bound to be a messy situation for him and Hannah, and I’m not going to celebrate that any rift between them will be hard on Bristol. Knowing Hannah as I do, she’ll fight to make things work with Jorge for their daughter’s sake. But I saw it in her eyes yesterday. I saw it when they first arrived. I see it every time I’m in her presence. She doesn’t love him. Her life would be a whole lot easier if she did, and I would be a far better man if that’s what I truly want for her. But I don’t. And I’m not.
Thank God, the shuttle pulls up a second later and Jorge wheels his suitcase toward the street. I take a few steps to follow him but stop about halfway. I’m not sure I can shake his hand again. It’s not that I dislike him, but there’s a more than slight part of me reveling in the fact he’s leaving, and I don’t think I can hide it for long.
“Hey, Dustin?” He turns to face me while the driver takes his bag and hefts it into the van.
I glance up, plastering on a tight-lipped cordial smile.
“I need you to do me a favor, man to man.”
My stomach rolls and my right hand forms a fist in my pocket. It’s habit. Jorge is not the kind of guy I’m used to having say that phrase to me. He’s a pacifist.
“Yeah, man. Anything.” I don’t really mean anything, but it feels fitting, and it’s better than punching him.
“Whatever you two talk about today, whatever you may feel, be sure you listen and take it in before you react. If people’s stories were only a page long, there wouldn’t be books to read. Take in the entire arc. Understand the journey. It will be worth it, I swear.”
His gaze holds mine for a few seconds and I finally nod, a bit puzzled by his cryptic advice for meeting my real mom, and maybe a little offended that Hannah shared my personal business with him. But he’s her person, so it makes sense that she would confide in him. I can’t begrudge that, just like I can’t assume him leaving now means anything other than the two of them needing a little time apart.
“I promise,” I finally utter, and his mouth curves into a satisfied smile before he turns and climbs into the van.
I actually wave goodbye and meander to the end of the driveway as the van zips down the street and closes in on the main road to the highway. The breeze picks up and I shiver, straightening my arms as I push them deep into my pockets. I’m caught in this feeling of instant loneliness, and my heart races as my anxiety ticks up. I don’t like not knowing what to do. I don’t like not having a plan. And nothing over the last two and a half years has followed any sort of blueprint at all. The only thing I could mildly control was the track, and that’s why it became my life. I couldn’t love Hannah, so I loved it instead.
Any woman felt like a betrayal, though I had every right to fall for someone else. I simply didn’t want to. Maybe I liked the hurt because it reminded me of what we once had. Physical pleasure was transient, and often a mutual distraction. The track was business and a way to cling to what I knew while Alex stole my passion for it. But there’s something in the air this morning, a sweet smell that fills my chest even though my heart is beating its way out of it.
I breathe it in as the front door opens and Hannah slips outside, her body bundled in sweat pants and an oversized tie-dyed sweatshirt, hair pulled back in a ponytail that rests on her sh
oulder. She holds up a palm the same way Jorge did a few minutes earlier, and I mirror her, my chest thumping differently than last time.
Rather than walk halfway up the drive to meet her, I let her come to me. Not because I’m being stubborn or proving some point, but because I’m indulging in her beauty. She’s a mother now, and it shows. Her eyes are a little more tired than the wild child who raced down desert roads with me. Her cheeks round when she forces a smile, and her pale skin hasn’t been kissed by the sun in months.
She doesn’t know it, but I found her artwork online. Her mixed media final project told her story. I could see it plain as day in the black and white photography she overlaid with graphics and paint and somehow poured digital movement into. They were images from the Straights, of the Supra and Ava and the lights that blur when two cars drive like bats out of hell under a midnight sky. It was perfection, and I’ve held on to this fantasy that one day, when her work is for sale, I’ll buy a piece and mount it at my racing headquarters. Because as much as it tells her story, it tells mine too. It tells ours.
“You should have shown up an hour earlier. You could have seen my dad’s full display at work.” She waves her hand across the view of her parents’ house as if washing it with a paintbrush.
“I think I got the picture from the little still lit when I arrived. Does he know he put five different colors of lights in the river bed? And none of them are blue?”
Hannah’s head falls back with a quiet laugh and my eyes zero in on the stretch of her lips, the natural light pink like candy against her skin.
“He does. He was so pissed because he was trying to make it look like water.”
Her gaze falls back to me. We stare at one another for a few seconds, nervous smiles playing at our lips. Jorge left. She knows I know. There’s a dangerous tinge of flirtation in the air, a flickering of electricity between us. I breathe out hard, testing the temperature with my breath. It fogs, but barely.
“It’s cold now, but you might get hot in that later,” I say, motioning to her sweatshirt.
She lifts it slightly and tugs down a shirt underneath, one I recognize instantly from the worn yellow fabric.
“That thing always did look better on you,” I say, my chest full of butterflies. This trip, it’s dangerous. And not only because I’m going to meet a woman who gave me up as a baby, but because I’m traveling with the one who broke my heart as an adult. I’m excited for it. Leaping in, like a fool.
“I brought a few snacks, but I figured we could stop and eat, or whatever,” she says, nervously holding out a few snack bars and stuffing them into her small backpack.
“So we’re really doing this?” My feet have a hard time moving toward my car, but Hannah’s instant positivity urges me forward as she smiles brightly and nods, nearly skipping to the driver’s side of the Supra.
“I did say I would drive,” she says.
I chuckle and glance sideways toward her car.
“Oh, you thought I meant mine? But don’t you remember? It’s not safe. Needs a tune up. Lots of miles.” She holds out her open palm and I lower my chin to my chest and shake my head with a laugh.
“You are really something, using my own words against me. Fine. You can drive the Supra,” I say, fishing my keys out and placing them in her palm. She wraps her fingers around my entire hand and our eyes mingle briefly, mouths touched with careful grins.
“I’ll keep her under a hundred,” she says, and I know that’s a lie.
She breaks that promise about twenty minutes into our trip.
* * *
This car. The open road. Arizona’s painted skies, desert hills, sprawling city core. Nothing is wrong when this is where we are. Maybe the familiar is a welcome distraction from the tension. Whatever the reason, Hannah and I transcend time for the two-hour drive through the Valley, and life feels as it was years ago, when things were simple and we were in love.
We talk about Tommy and Bailey. And while I know it hurts her to have to get the stories from me, she laughs gleefully and lights up with happiness as I fill her in on their awkward romance. From the beginning of it all, how it started with a bet between Tommy and me that he wouldn’t be able to go on one actual date with her without needing to kiss her when it was done. I knew he was smitten, and maybe my broken heart needed to see something good flourish. I gave him the push. And he more than kissed her after dinner and a movie. They made out in this very freaking car.
“Gross!” Hannah says, pretending to be disgusted by the steering wheel.
“Trust me. I detailed this baby after that, and he hasn’t driven it since.”
My eyes skim down her arm to where her hand grips the wheel, at home. Honestly, nobody else belongs behind the wheel of this car besides her. In some ways, I think she belongs driving it more than me.
Somehow, we managed to make two hours fly by without my stomach flipping once. But that easy feeling is gone now, stopped hard and cold by the harsh sign in the parking lot we just pulled into.
CASA PALOMINO
“Have we ever eaten here?” I don’t think we have, but Hannah would remember. She shakes her head and we swivel our attention to the parking lot, empty except for the two cars pulled up close to the back door.
“I didn’t think so. I read online that it’s supposed to be good. They probably aren’t open yet, though. Maybe we should get breakfast somewhere? Or drive by the other address I have, for her house.”
“Dustin,” Hannah says, reaching over and grasping my arm. My eyes dip to her touch and my lips part. I feel them quivering. I’m scared.
I swallow hard.
“Yes?”
“It’s going to be okay.”
I blink a few times before lifting my gaze to meet hers again. I accept her promise even if I don’t believe in the idea.
“Do you think that’s her car?” she asks, tilting her head toward the white sedan with Hawaiian flower stickers decorating the lower edge of the back window.
I lick my lips and search my instincts. I have no idea what this woman is like, if she’s the kind who dreams of islands and beaches or simply likes beautiful things. I can’t even picture her age, though I know from the report from the investigator that she’s forty-four. She was nineteen when I was born. So young. Probably scared shitless. I mean, look at the man she was tied to because of me.
Because of me.
She took off. Left me with him. Ran as far as she could. I ruined everything. I’m probably the reason she works as a waitress here instead of running some company or writing books or—
“Dustin, stop,” Hannah interrupts my spiral. My forehead is covered with a light sheen of sweat. I run my forearm over it and give in to the uncertain feeling, rolling my head to my left and staring at the only person who has ever truly understood me.
“What if she doesn’t want me?”
That’s the question at the heart of my fear, at the center of my pain. I’m unwanted. Unlovable. A mistake.
Hannah draws in a deep, slow breath then looks down to where her hand still grasps my arm. She slides her touch to my wrist then forces my palm to open wide, sliding her fingers between mine and covering the back of my hand with her other one. She holds me tight, and I zero in on the feel of her pulse beating around my hand. I breathe with it, chase it, and find the same calm she seems to have found. Somehow, she’s here with me and not following Jorge back to Omaha. Her own foundation has been rocked, yet here she is, steady as a naval ship in the high seas, assuring me that my fears aren’t going to be realized.
Her lips part and she takes a few slow breaths, seemingly on the precipice of telling me something. I wait for her to work through her thoughts because anything she says that makes this moment less scary is worth my patience.
“I can’t tell you how, Dustin. I can’t because I’m not her and I wasn’t there, but there are things I’ve heard,” she says, pausing to draw in her lips and shake her head. She’s struggling, but still . . . I wait through it. H
er eyes flicker up, and the moment the blueness of them opens full on my own, I see the wide open sky that waits for me. I fill my lungs at the potential. I feel the edge of bravery creeping in. “My dad could tell you more, probably.”
My heart stops as I mentally dive into past conversations with Tom. There have been moments when I’ve stopped him, and got the sense he wanted to tell me more about my childhood, or maybe about Colt and why my life was as crummy as it was.
As my eyes dip, Hannah lets go with one hand and her fingertips lift my chin, forcing my gaze back up, back into the blue. I breathe. I feel whole.
“All you have to do is ask him, Dustin. Anything you want to know. But his words aren’t mine to tell, and they’re too personal, between you and him. It wouldn’t be right for me to take that opportunity away from either of you. But I know, all the way to the very center of my heart, Dustin, that the woman who birthed you loves you very much. I can guarantee it.”
My quaking has stopped, and I swallow the dryness down while I wade in Hannah’s beautiful blue eyes a little longer. She nods slowly and I beg myself to accept it.
“Will you come with me?”
She nods.
“Of course.” Her soft smile hugs my heart. She doesn’t let go of my hand until I’m ready, and when I finally part and step out of the car, she joins me at the front and weaves our hands together. How did she get so strong?
The air smells of Hatch chiles and fresh tortillas, and even though it’s barely past eight in the morning, my mouth waters with the flavor-scented air. If that is my real mother in there, she’s a magician. Also, I’ve missed out on so many years of amazing food.
We pause at the back door and Hannah reaches for the knob, testing it. The door pulls open easily, but she closes it gently after moving it an inch.
“You should probably knock. You don’t want whomever is in there to face-plant you with a pan.”
Burn: The Fuel Series Book 3 Page 8