The Finish Line

by Leslie Scott

  “I worry about Aiden.” I’d wanted to say more, to tell her what was in my heart. I couldn’t form those words yet, couldn’t speak them out loud.

  “Me, too.” She chopped vegetables without missing a beat. “But what do we do? We’ve talked about this, he’s a grown man who can make his own decisions. I believe he’ll do what he needs to do when it needs to be done. And when he does, we’ll all be here for him.”

  She was right, we would.

  “Now, tell me what’s been going on with you, what’s really bothering my girl?”

  I couldn’t tell her. It wasn’t possible to give voice to the pain that claimed me with such ferocity. The loss of what I’d almost had wasn’t real until my brother had told me love was worth fighting for. I’d almost had what my parents had, I’d come so very close.

  When I looked up at my mom, my bottom lip trembled.

  “Oh, baby.” She wrapped her arms around me and held me tight. We stood the same height, yet I was still the little girl with scraped knees, seeking comfort from the one person who would never turn me away. “Love hurts. Especially when it’s real. Don’t forget that.”

  She pulled away, straightened my hair, and wiped my tears away. “It’s harder for me to watch you struggle, because you are in love. Aiden has never loved Wendy. He had an obligation. Devin would have never loved you, not really. But Jordan?” She smiled ruefully. “That only comes around once. I can still see it in your eyes even if you won’t admit it to yourself.”

  “Mom—”

  She held her hand up in a move that reminded me so much of myself I had to smile. “Don’t Mom me, Raelynn. All of this is because of fear. Being afraid you’d have to shoulder the blame for his pain. His fear that he’d project his pain to you. You think I don’t know things, that I don’t see things, but I do. Before you decide to move on with your life, make sure that’s what you really want. Don’t look back and wonder what could have been. Don’t make yourself sick when he moves on and marries someone else, when he’s sleeping with someone else’s baby on his chest.”

  Her words were a slap across my face that shattered all the walls I’d built, all the healing I’d done at Hadley’s. I’d come to my mother for shelter, for comfort, and she’d hit me with reality in a way no one else really could.

  She left me with only one option.

  I made my way across the street, raw with emotion. The fluorescent shop light called to me like a moth to a flame. My mantra was that love was worth fighting for. Jordan loved me as much as I loved him. I wouldn’t allow myself to doubt that, because without love I had nothing.

  The concrete would have masked the sound of my footsteps up the driveway, but it didn’t matter. The music was so loud it drowned out all other sound for more than the distance of a race. That wasn’t unusual, guys were guys. Guys working in a garage and loud music seemed to go hand in hand.

  This time, though, there was only one guy and I knew from years of experience, he liked to work alone in silence. Maybe Aiden was right.

  I ached deep in my soul when I saw him. Jordan tipped a bottle back, took a long swig, and put it back before pulling more parts off his car. He’d jumped straight past beer and gone for something harder. I’d never seen him like this.

  I’d never imagined losing Devin would have changed him so deeply, right to the very make-up of his being. The man slinging wrenches and downing whiskey wasn’t the same man who’d made love to me, who’d freed me from my own fear and self-loathing.

  Or was he? I sighed and reached for the radio, cutting it off and leaving us with mind-jarring silence.

  I wanted to be angry at him for what he’d said to me, to feel something other than the overwhelming urge to hold him and kiss him. To pretend like nothing had happened and neither of us had been ripped open for the vultures to feed off.

  His head snapped up and around to where I stood. “What the hell? Cut that back on.”

  “Why, so you can drown out the world?” I fisted my hands on my hips, his menacing stare would not intimidate me. Drunk or not, he wasn’t his father or Caleb.

  Jordan pointed a socket wrench at me. “Mind your business, Casey.” He tugged off the busted carbon fiber fender and tossed it into a corner as if it had personally offended him. Then went to work on the cherry picker’s chains that held the motor up out of the car.

  I stepped over the tossed wreckage and leaned against the frame of the car. “Why are you taking the motor out?”

  He reached for the half empty bottle of liquor and took a long swig before answering. “Frame’s bent, gonna hafta replace the front end, the rest is sound, but I gotta pull the motor before I get started on it.” His words weren’t slurred, but they were close to it.

  “Need a hand?” It wouldn’t be the first time I’d helped him work on a car.

  “Nope, got two.” That came out clearly enough. I held back my flinch at the razor-sharp edge in his words.

  When he sat the bottle down I reached for it and took a pull myself. It burned like fire and tasted of hell’s rancid boil. If I was going to fight for love, I’d need fortification.

  Jordan sneered when I made a face. I hadn’t expected that unhappy curl of his lips to feel like a knife in my chest, but it did.

  “Don’t look at me that way.” I scowled before mocking him. “I’m not some big tough guy.”

  “No, you aren’t.” He snatched the bottle from me. “You should go.”

  I didn’t go, I’d expected that response. I ignored the little voice inside that told me he was right, I had no business being here. Then I remembered the look on my brother’s face, the words my mother had told me, and took a fortifying breath.

  “I’m not going anywhere right now, Slater.” I sneered as his last name rolled off my tongue. Two could play this game.

  “You weren’t invited.”

  “So? The door was open. Aiden’s worried about you.”

  He snorted and started moving chains around on the motor. The effect of the alcohol was evident in his eyes, it left them reddish and glassy, and in the thick way his tongue formed words. The only place it wasn’t obvious was in the sure and effortless way his arms moved around the engine with the chains. “Aiden can piss off.”

  “I’m worried about you.” I was all out of bravado.

  His only response was the clanging of the chains and the occasional grunt of effort. I forced myself to not let my eyes wander, to focus on Jordan. I used that focus to remember why I loved him, why I’d always loved him. Even if the man before me tried his best to act as if he didn’t deserve that love.

  “You’re drunk.” I pointed out quietly when he finally fumbled and dropped a chain that clattered and rang down to the concrete.

  “Hello, Captain Obvious. That’s the whole point of the bottle.” He hitched a thumb toward the whiskey.

  “You don’t get drunk.”

  “Well, tonight I am.” He glared at me as he pulled the chains tight with a resounding clang.

  “Jordan—”

  “What do you want from me, Raelynn? Say whatever it is you have to say to appease whatever guilt your brother stuck you with and get the fuck outta here. I already said what I needed to say to you.”

  I took the force of the words with a cringe. Instead of cowering as I’d done with my sister and with Devin, I allowed my frustration and anger that had built up talk for me.

  “You already said what you needed to say? You mean when you told me we were a mistake? I was a mistake?” He didn’t look at me, but his shoulders stiffened as he turned away. “If I was a mistake, Jordan, why did you go to Breanna? Why did you tell her what you did?”

  Silence.

  Desperate for a response, any response, I took the bottle and slung it across the garage where it shattered against the concrete wall. It was Jordan’s turn to flinch. Not that it stopped me. I was on a roll. “Guilt? You know all about that, right? That’s why you’re in here tearing apart the car you wrecked. Drunk so you don’t have
to think about why that fender is garbage and why the frame’s bent, so you don’t have to remember he’s gone. So drunk you don’t have to remember I’m gone.”

  He turned and glared angrily at me, but didn’t say anything. Then there it was, a flicker of something worth fighting for. In those dark eyes, hidden beneath the brim of that old black ball cap. I kept fighting.

  “You’ve been drunk the entire time? Run me off so that you don’t have to look at me? You don’t feel guilty about that?”

  I knew I was on point when he couldn’t look at me any longer. “Is it me you blame, Jordan, or yourself?”

  Whatever steam I’d built up faded away when he turned back to me, whiskey soaked tears shimmering in his eyes, but not spilling. No, never spilling. “Get out of here, Raelynn.”

  I gave my head an emphatic shake. “I love you, Jordan Slater. I’ve loved you since I was six years old. I’ll love you until the very last breath I take. You can try to run me off, you can push away everyone who cares about you. But, we’ll never stop giving a shit, we’ll never stop feeling the way we feel about you. There won’t be a day when I don’t love you.”

  He turned his back to me. “And if I don’t feel the same way about you?”

  “That’s bullshit.” It was a herculean effort that kept the trembling from reaching my voice.

  “Go home, Raelynn. I’m not like you, I never was.” The raw emotion in his voice was nothing compared to the pain that contorted his face.

  “That’s the third time you’ve asked me to leave tonight.” I was shaking. Anger, fear, and everything in between jockeyed for position. I was sick, but couldn’t look away from the grief-stricken man before me. “If I walk out that door, I’m not coming back. But I’ll do it, if you can look me in the eyes and tell me you don’t love me. That you never did.”

  He stared down into the engine of the Malibu and whispered, “You deserve better than me, Raelynn, you always have.”

  “And now you think Devin would have been better for me?” That Jordan could even think that possible was staggering. He had no idea what he’d done for me in the past few months.

  I’d be lost if it wasn’t for Jordan.

  “I know he would have.” His eyes met mine and it was apparent he believed that.

  “Devin could never have done for me what you did. He could never have given me what you gave me.” I forced a smile and tasted salt on my lips. My own tears had begun to fall. “I won’t let you belittle that. I won’t let you take that away from us.” I turned to walk out, but stopped and pointed at the shattered glass and alcohol stained concrete. “No matter how much of that you drink, you’ll never be your parents. There’s too much of the old man in you.”

  I laughed to keep from screaming. “You’ve taught me so much. I won’t make the same mistakes I made in the past. I won’t make them, because I knew you. Because I loved you, because you loved me. You’ll never be like them. You’ll never be what you think you are right now.”

  I left him with that and walked across the street, for what I told myself would be the last time. No more tears, no more guilt, no more of any of it. I had to move on, for both of us. I’d meant what I’d said, from how much I loved him to how much I believed him to be like his grandfather. One day he’d see it, maybe not right now but one day.

  The only thing certain was that I couldn’t stand there and let my heart break again, not this time. Not anymore. I stood in my back yard and let the numbness take me. With each breath, the pain waned. Mom was right, I’d never be able to watch him love someone else. I didn’t know what I’d do, but that wasn’t something I could watch.

  I loved him too much.

  I’d love him forever.

  At least I went down fighting for it.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  The detachment I’d so desperately sought settled in as the week dragged on. Through that numbness, I’d come to the conclusion that my actions, my own foolish heart, had devastated us all. I had to take responsibility for that, own it. If I’d only waited, if I’d distanced myself from Jordan perhaps things would have been different. Maybe Devin would still be alive and Jordan and I could have made a real go at it.

  Now, I tried to give Jordan as much space as possible.

  Before the accident, I questioned why Aiden stayed with Wendy even when she made him miserable, when everyone knew she was messing around on him. I understood now, that if you selfishly sought your own happiness, you could ruin the lives of the people you loved most. Aiden understood that, I respected him for his choices. He put the happiness of his children above his own.

  He stayed with Wendy out of love for his kids.

  In the past several months and everything that had come to pass, I’d thought I’d found myself. In some ways, I had. Caleb and what he’d done to me were a distant memory, my personal guilt from those days absolved. Jordan had helped me with that. While he couldn’t save me from this pain nor heal this hurt, he’d changed me.

  He’d selflessly given me a great gift. But what had I given him in return? I focused a lot on that in the days that followed our confrontation in his shop. For now, I’d give Jordan what he needed the most, a life without me. It was the least I could do to repay him for what he’d done for me, no matter how much it hurt.

  By Friday, my melancholy had caught Hadley’s attention. The little blonde, who had quickly become one of my closest friends, had given me several days to stew before she brought it up. I’d seen the questions in her eyes days before she asked them.

  “What’s really going on, Rae?” She watched me push salad around in a plastic container. “I thought things were getting better, you and Bree had made up.”

  How could I tell her? I didn’t want to be patronized. She wouldn’t mean to do it, but I was tired of hearing what other people thought about my relationship with Jordan. Maybe it made me a coward, but I couldn’t do it anymore. “It’s not Breanna at all. There are a bunch of things I’m still having trouble dealing with.” It was partially the truth, I couldn’t deal.

  Hadley’s hand was warm as she reached across her desk and laid it over mine. “Have you even talked to him?” I could only blink at her, which brought a smile to her lips. “I may not be genius material, but even I can see you falling apart.”

  “Falling apart?” I put down the fork and rubbed my eyes with my palms. I’d been doing so well, the numbness helping me to cope with the dual loss. Apparently, I wasn’t hiding my inner turmoil as well as I’d hoped.

  “Without Jordan…maybe you’re blaming yourself for everything…” The last part she said so quietly I barely heard her.

  A lone, silent tear streaked down my cheek through my makeup. “Maybe it is.”

  “Take off early, go talk to him. Aiden said he hasn’t been to work all week, not even in the shop.”

  I gave a snort. “He doesn’t want to talk to me, Hadley.”

  “Sure he does.” Her optimism fell on deaf ears.

  “No, he doesn’t.” I let her see how serious I was about that. “We’ve already said everything we needed to say to each other. It’s over.”

  “Oh.” She settled back in her chair. But she was only quiet for a few seconds. “Well, he’s an asshole.” Her cheeks flushed with defiant anger.

  I appreciated the sentiment and forced a laugh as I wiped the tears that stung my eyes. “We swung for the fences and struck out. That doesn’t make him an asshole.”

  She opened her mouth to argue, but closed it promptly. Then she stood and began pacing her office in a huff. Barely an inch or two taller than me, she looked downright frightening while she fumed.

  “I know!” She spun back on me and grinned. “We’re gonna go get drunk.”

  There would be no arguing with Hadley, I’d already figured that out. Not long after the shop had closed for the day, I found myself tucked into her small red sedan zipping across town as the sun set in the distance.

  Felt was one of only a few bars in Arkadia. It was the only on
e that catered to people who wanted to do more than drink. Off the main drag, just outside of town, it was also one of Hunter East’s favorite places to hang out. I wasn’t surprised to see his truck in the parking lot, nor Vic’s car for that matter.

  Most Friday nights during the summer and fall months they’d be holed up working on their cars. With Devin’s death still so fresh, nobody was doing much of that.

  “What it do, Hadley?” the bartender called as we walked into the dimly lit, hazy front of the place.

  “It’s doing. Give me a pitcher.” She strolled right past the bar and through the swinging doors to the back. The back part of Felt held two rows of dangling lights above an equal amount of pool tables. The walls were lined with chalk, sticks, and neon signs advertising any number of beers. It smelled of grease from the kitchen, beer, and smoke. I took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. Felt suited my mood.

  Hadley claimed a table against the wall by tossing her purse on it and the nearest open pool table by smacking down a stack of quarters. This obviously wasn’t her first time. “A regular?” I asked with a raise of my brow.

  “Sort of.” She let her hair down and finger combed it. “I worked here when I first moved to town. I covered Alley’s, the bartender, off nights for her. Turns out, I’m a pretty good pool player.”

  I gave my best shot at a grin, but even that was a grim imitation. “Let’s find out if you are.”

  Vic, Hunter, and several other guys were playing pool at the back of the room. Vic noticed us first and shouted out in salute. I waved back at him as did Hadley. It was those simple little things that bothered me so much. How was I supposed to be normal? I couldn’t, not when I was so culpable.

  I fought to hide the residue of pain that seared me numb. I was an imposter, pretending to enjoy a night out so I didn’t hurt my friend’s feelings.

  Our beer was there before Vic could gather up his own and come over. I immediately poured a large glass and downed it.

  “Look at you, out of the house.” He hugged me. “Good to see you, kid.”