The Finish Line

by Leslie Scott

  It occurred to me as Hunter lined up for his run, that nothing was keeping me there.

  On his return trip, I pulled free of Hadley’s hand. “I’ll go home and get my stuff and meet you back at your place.”

  “Where are you going?” She started after me, but I waved her off.

  I stepped out into Hunter’s path, the motor of his truck giving a low growl as he geared it down to slow in front of me. “I need to get out of here,” I told him through the open passenger window.

  “What’s up, Rae?” Hunter’s face was a mask of indifference.

  “I—” I took a centering breath. “I can’t.”

  He nodded as if he understood perfectly, the mask fading quietly away. There was a type of love there, born of understanding and friendship. “You know, this is going to piss him off, right?”

  I stopped shy of climbing in and thought about it for a long moment. “We’re not together anymore. What I do isn’t any of his damn business.”

  He spoke on a sigh, as if he didn’t believe me. “Get in.”

  When we passed Jordan, he looked. I could feel his eyes on me the entire way. There should have been some sort of vindication. Instead, the weight on my chest only got heavier.

  Chapter Twenty

  After we’d loaded his truck into the trailer, neither Hunter nor I said much as he took me to collect some of my things, I’d asked him to draw a line in the sand between him and Jordan, and Hunter did it for me. It should have upset me that I purposely pitted him against Jordan.

  It didn’t.

  This was the second time Jordan had pushed me away, made me feel I wasn’t good enough for him.

  Fool me once, I thought to myself as countryside flew by out the window of Hunter’s rig. Part of me wanted Jordan to be angry, to be jealous. The other part wanted him to see that there was another life out there for me.

  I was doing exactly what I’d done when I’d left the first time. I’d tried to make myself something I wasn’t to show him what he’d been missing.

  I didn’t need to be reminded of where this behavior had gotten me.

  I gave Hunter a chaste hug and scrambled into the safety of Hadley’s apartment. There I spent days hiding in her spare room, wallowing in my own self-pity. Alone in my grief with only the occasional quiet word through the door from Hadley.

  The days I stayed in Hadley’s apartment, I didn’t give another thought to Caleb. The parts of me that Jordan had fixed, stayed whole. The parts he’d touched, the parts he’d woken inside me, those were destroyed. My only thoughts were of all the “could have beens” and “almost weres.”

  “Have you talked to anyone?”

  Hadley, for everything I was putting her through with my silence, was a saint. I looked over at her before standing to go to my room. “I talked to my mom.”

  “Working Monday?” She settled on the sofa and tucked her legs beneath her. The fading sunlight on her face gave her a fairy-like appearance.

  “I wish I didn’t have to.” I leaned against the doorway. “Bree isn’t going to be pleasant.”

  “I’d say she’s been more than unpleasant for a while now.”

  “True, but I’m not in the mood to deal. She’ll probably be smug or worse…happy.”

  Hadley made a face that was as unpleasant as my sister’s attitude had been. But she didn’t say anything else.

  “How can you always be so freakishly understanding?” I nudged her and tried for a real smile.

  “Because I’ve been there. Well, maybe not exactly where you are, but I’ve had my heart broken so bad I didn’t know what to do with myself.”

  I opened my mouth but shut it again. “I want to tell you that my heart isn’t broken. I want to tell myself that my heart isn’t broken.”

  Hadley moved off the couch and stood by me, resting her head on my shoulder. “Love sucks.”

  “Yeah.” I took a deep but shaky breath. “I feel like people keep slipping through my fingers.”

  “It just feels that way.”

  “My own sister won’t even look at me, blames me for all of this. All I did was love Jordan, Hadley. So many things happened between us before I moved and then again when I came back. Devin thought he knew me. But he never did. Not the way Jordan did. No one knows what he knows.”

  She squeezed my hand. “I think, maybe, you’re wrong about Breanna.”

  “No, she made herself pretty clear.”

  “Then why is she sitting outside on the steps of my apartment complex, smoking a cigarette?”

  I balked. “No way!”

  A quick look out of the window told me Hadley was right. My sister was there, lost and forlorn, just as I was.

  “Since when did you start smoking?” I asked as I stepped outside.

  Breanna just hitched a shoulder.

  Summer was losing its grasp, as the sun set the evening air grew cooler. I fought a shiver and sat on the concrete step beside her. “You’re so beautiful.” I sighed. “My sister. So, beautiful and always so angry.”

  “I’m not angry.” She cut her gaze at me.

  “Your eyes give you away.” I wrapped my arms around my knees and rocked back and forth rhythmically. Though the storm on her face didn’t seem to be directed at me, I readied myself for the blowback.

  Instead, she just quietly stated, “I talked to Jordan.”

  I fought the flutter of my heart in my chest at the sound of his name. “You did?”

  “Yeah.” She took a final drag off the cigarette and flicked it out into the small yard in front of the building. It smoldered there for a long time, the smoke twirling up to the sky. “He came by the shop yesterday.”

  I hadn’t been to work in days. Essentially, I’d quit my job. I didn’t let myself believe he’d come by to see me, I knew better. There had been finality in our last conversation. The words and pained emotions played again in those devastating black and white stop action, slow motion frames and everything sank to the bottom of my stomach like lead.

  “He actually wanted to talk to me.” She laughed and the sound echoed hollow against the building. It was a sad, empty sound. “I was ready to let him have it, tell him what I really thought of him. I’d been saving it up for a while.”

  “I bet you were.” I fought the half-hearted smile that twisted my lips.

  “I didn’t though, he never gave me a chance. I took one look at him and couldn’t.” Breanna pulled out another cigarette and lit it.

  What surprised me the most was that I couldn’t see the little girl that used to run barefoot through our yard. Or the long dark hair that flowed behind her as she peddled faster and faster to keep up with us on our bikes. Breanna was a woman grown, no longer a little girl, with as much of the world on her shoulders as I had on mine.

  “He told me some things…things you should have told me,” she whispered so quietly I barely heard her. “Things that changed you so much you couldn’t be what you were before.”

  I shouldn’t have had enough emotion left to be angry with Jordan, but I did. It boiled up like bile in the back of my throat and panic clawed at my chest.

  “No”—she gestured at me—“he had his reasons. He said that you’d be mad at him, but that I needed to hear it. To know your truth. So that I didn’t create one for you, myself. I’m sorry, Raelynn.”

  “It’s not for you to be sorry about.”

  “Yeah, all those things I said—”

  “You said them because they were, are, true.” I stopped her with a self-deprecating smile.

  “They are not. Jordan was right, you aren’t that person, Raelynn. You would never hurt someone you loved to make yourself happy. That’s why you stood there and let me say those awful things to you, because you love me.”

  Quiet, gentle reminders of all the pain rolled down my cheeks.

  “I’m sorry, Raelynn.”

  “Don’t be.” I squeezed the hand she’d put in mine. “I know what it is to love someone, even when they don’t love you bac
k. I’m sorry that Devin thought he was in love with me.”

  “No.” Breanna laughed with little humor. “That’s not something you can take the blame for, no matter how much I wanted you to.”

  We sat there until the sun sank behind the horizon and the streetlights flickered on with an electric hum. In the distance, a race car hit a lick. With my sister beside me instead of against me, life seemed…close to normal.

  “Why didn’t you tell any of us?” she asked without animosity. Something I’d gotten my fair share of from her recently.

  “I didn’t want to play the victim. I was scared. I was isolated inside myself. It wasn’t something I was comfortable talking about to anyone.”

  “But we’re family, if you had told me then I wouldn’t—”

  “Have been angry with me for sleeping with Jordan? For choosing to be happy, for choosing to love someone? No, Breanna, you’d have pitied me. I didn’t want that either.” She stared straight ahead, saying nothing so I went on. “What happened to me, doesn’t change anything. It never has, not between us.”

  “It did, because it changed you,” she argued with a toss of her hair. “You’ve been distant since you came home.”

  “I wasn’t distant, Bree. You were barely around, always keeping things to yourself.”

  She spoke to her feet. “We used to tell each other everything. You didn’t tell me about Jordan. Devin did.”

  “I didn’t have a chance. I would have. But, when you’d already been pissed at me for even thinking about it? I just needed more time.”

  “I wasn’t pissed I was—I wanted Devin to be happy.”

  There was a wistfulness to the way she said his name and a sadness in her eyes that couldn’t be denied. My heart ached for her, so I reached out and brushed a long tendril of dark hair behind her ear.

  “Even if it meant you couldn’t have him yourself?” I twirled the end of the lock of hair around my finger.

  This time she didn’t completely deny it. “I guess. Maybe. I don’t know.”

  “You would have hated me, Breanna.”

  “Maybe, but Devin was so upset, and I was already mad because I didn’t know, but I should have known. I felt—I don’t know what I felt.” She took a drag off another cigarette. “Mom is so wrapped up in the kids. Aiden is so wrapped up in Wendy and all her drama. Dad’s at work picking up the slack for Aiden. And you weren’t…you. It was like I didn’t belong anymore, like my family had forgotten I existed.”

  My sister took a shaky breath before she continued. I was pretty sure she hadn’t talked that much all at once since she’d been little. Dad had told me she kept things bottled up. Well, this evening, the bottle uncorked and her words were pouring like wine. “I’m not making excuses. But, it all built up. Then Devin told me about you and Jordan. I was mad you didn’t tell me, and I was angry you turned them against each other. I wanted to believe you were some sort of Jezebel. It was so easy to blame everything on you.”

  I took the verbal blow that I rightfully deserved, even if she didn’t mean to deal it. She sounded so young, so lost, and so ashamed, that I wrapped my arms around her and held her. Even though Breanna was a head taller than me, I rocked back and forth on the steps. I certainly hadn’t been there for my little sister like I should have.

  “I’m sorry, Bree.” I tried to keep the tears on my cheeks from leaking into my voice. “I’m sorry if I made you feel like you didn’t matter to me.”

  “I’m sorry too, for all of it. For everything. But, mostly for believing you would hurt any of us on purpose.”

  “Can we drink wine and eat pizza now?” Hadley was standing behind us with big tears in her green eyes. “I’m sorry for eavesdropping, I saw y’all weren’t killing each other, so I came out to ask about the wine. When I got out here you two were hugging, and I just thought about how happy I was.”

  Bree stood and hugged the petite blonde, I joined them.

  “No, really.” Hadley’s relief was resounding. “You both don’t understand how much easier my life is now. I’ve been a ping pong ball bouncing between you two for weeks.”

  My sister and I weren’t whole again, but we were far closer to it than we had been before. We understood each other.

  The three of us ate pizza that night in Hadley’s living room before I finally went home with Breanna. My parents didn’t question my absence or the fight with my sister. Once, Mom had told me that if we fought and made up on our own it meant we’d found a way to become stronger…together. So, after each fight she was thankful for the fight and the bond it tightened.

  I went back to work and tried to find a rhythm. I was sure we all did, even Jordan. I didn’t see him much, for which I was thankful. At first it stung, our town and our little world was so small that if you wanted to avoid each other, you had to try to do it. Obviously, he was making that effort. When I’d set my feelings aside and really thought about it I was thankful. I was still too raw to see him, to deal with being normal around him.

  Especially, when I was getting strange looks from so many. When it seemed people were coming into the shop only to gawk at me. I could swear they whispered when I came near.

  I didn’t say anything to anyone about it until two such whisperers walked out of the shop after paying and stopped to turn back and obviously take one last look. “I feel like I’m wearing a giant scarlet letter.” I told Aiden when it was just him and me up front, Hadley had already gone for the day.

  “Why?” He didn’t look up from the purchase orders he flipped through on the counter.

  “Those guys that picked up their car. They kept whispering to each other and looking at me funny. People have been doing it since SKS.”

  I didn’t say since Devin died. I didn’t have to, my brother’s eyes darkened anyway. “It’s not just you, Rae, it’s all of us. I’ve gotten emails already and Hadley’s fielded voicemails and calls at the shop about how we’re all responsible and reckless, how our sport got a guy killed…”

  Past the floor to ceiling glass of the lobby, the sun was setting in the array of oranges that signaled autumn. Beside me, Aiden took in the layers of reddish hues as well. His face was lined with a deep-set sadness I hadn’t seen before. I let that sink in. I’d been so wrapped up in me and my problems, I never noticed how fully the accident had affected everyone.

  “Jordan gets the worst of it, though.” Having found what he was looking for, Aiden stacked the papers on the counter. “It’s brutal from other people, but nothing compared to what he’s doing to himself.” He leveled his dark gaze at me and used it to say all the things he couldn’t or wouldn’t.

  “Don’t look at me that way, Aiden. I can’t give you what you want here. Jordan made his feelings about me and what he thought of our relationship perfectly clear.”

  “He was lying out his ass.” Aiden pushed off the counter he’d leaned on and headed for the door to the garage. “Go by there tonight and see him. He’s a mess, Raelynn. I’ve tried talking to him, Vic’s tried, Breanna has, everyone has…but you. Maybe you can talk some sense into him before he drinks himself to death.”

  He pinched the bridge of his nose. “I don’t think he’s been sober since the funeral. I know you love him. When love like that is real, Raelynn, you don’t just give up on it. The old man is the only person to ever fight for him. He’s gone now. Prove to Jordan that he’s not alone.”

  I’d spent all this time thinking Jordan had been avoiding me on purpose, that he’d been staying away from me to shield me from the awkwardness, to protect me as he’d always done.

  Aiden’s words left me questioning all of that.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  The light was on at Jordan’s shop when I pulled into my driveway. My brother’s words echoed in my mind. I had never seen Jordan drunk, much less to a state of drinking himself to death. Aiden wasn’t usually prone to exaggeration, but I was hoping in this instance he was.

  Jordan had seen the dark side of substance abuse in a way I coul
dn’t fathom, that most people wouldn’t understand. How bad must he be hurting, to let himself go like that? The drinking to excess bothered me immensely.

  Maybe Aiden had known I’d worry, as he’d known I wouldn’t ignore what he said. My brother knew I cared too much. There was no doubt I loved Jordan, that even with a broken heart I couldn’t watch him go down in flames. Even if saving him meant I’d be the one left in ashes.

  Inside my house, I found Dad snoring in his recliner with the baby on his chest. He’d barely been home an hour. If I woke him he’d use his granddaughter as his excuse for falling asleep in the chair, the same way he’d done with the three of us when we were little.

  It was one of those moments that made my heart trip in my chest and fill me with a deep, all-encompassing love. There were pictures of Dad sleeping that way with me or Aiden on his chest. I had vivid memories of him falling asleep like that with Breanna. He was a great dad and so was his son. Aiden was doing everything he could to save his marriage even knowing it was a losing battle. Both men would do anything for their children, for their families.

  Even tell me to shelve my broken heart and pride.

  I’d experienced a lot of things in life, not all of them good. At the end of the day I was so very blessed regardless, like that sweet little girl sleeping on her granddaddy’s chest. I knew those blessings. Jordan hadn’t had the benefit of a family like mine. He’d made his own family. Loving me had cost him part of that family and tore a huge hole inside both of us.

  I tossed my stuff on my bed and pretended that I hadn’t noticed the shop light on at Jordan’s when I pulled in. But when I glanced through the door at my dad my stomach twisted with a twinge of regret. It was easy to imagine Jordan doing that, holding a child that would be ours. We could have had a relationship, strong and full of love like my parents. If only the crash hadn’t happened.

  That loss was as painful and immense as the loss of Devin.

  “They look adorable,” I told Mom when I found her in the kitchen getting dinner ready.

  The look of love on her face was how I would always remember her, even once I was old and gray. “Yeah, I took a picture of them before I came back in here.”