by A. K. Evans
“Don’t tell Logan that. He might require you to spend time with me every day during the week if that’s the case,” she warned.
“That would not be a hardship,” I returned. “In fact, maybe I’ll mention it to him.”
Avery giggled. My heart pounded harder in my chest just hearing the sound. I gave myself some time to settle down before I started to steer the conversation away from work and to a place where I could learn a bit more about her.
To make the transition, I finally asked, “So, what’s the plan for the car?”
“What do you mean?”
“I’m curious what your goals are for the car, whether you purchase this one or something else,” I explained.
“Oh, right. Well, I want to be the best drag racer the sport has ever seen,” she declared proudly.
I was pretty certain I fell in love on the spot. I didn’t know if Avery was being serious or if she was just teasing, but if being the queen of the drag strip was her goal, I’d do anything I could to help her get there.
“Lofty goal,” I noted.
“Yeah, but I’ve still got time, right?” she asked.
Feeling her eyes on me, I dipped my chin and answered, “Yep.”
Silence stretched between us, and I knew that was my opportunity to steer the conversation in another direction. Or, at least, I was hoping it would.
“So, can I ask how you go into racing? I mean, there aren’t many women doing it,” I pointed out.
“I know,” she mumbled. “And it’s bothered me ever since I realized that sad fact when I was twelve.”
“Twelve?”
Avery didn’t immediately respond. She was quiet for so long, I took my eyes from the road again and glanced over at her. I could see she was struggling with something.
Not liking seeing her upset, I was about to say something when she rasped, “My dad and I lived at the track during racing season. It was my favorite thing to do with him.”
I had a feeling there was a story there, but I didn’t want to push for something she didn’t want to share. So, I simply stated, “I assume he’s the one that taught you everything you know about cars.”
“Yeah. And he’s the reason I’ve always had a Corvette. They were his favorite,” she shared.
Shit.
Were.
“Is he…” I trailed off, hoping I was treading cautiously and Avery could make out the concern in my voice.
“He died,” she started. After giving herself a moment, she continued, “When I told him about my plans to become a racer, he did everything he could to help me achieve my goal. Since I was still too young to drive a real car at the time, he found other ways to hone my skills. He bought me a tree to practice on at home.”
“So that’s why nobody can cut a consistent light like you do,” I interjected.
Avery let out a small laugh and returned, “I guess. Anyway, he got me into junior dragsters, and I did that for a while. I loved it. I loved the thrill I got from going fast and doing well. When I turned sixteen, I got a car. And over the next two years, my dad and I slowly built it together. For my eighteenth birthday, the only thing I wanted to do was go to the track to make my first pass down the drag strip in a car. It was the most exciting thing I could ever remember doing. Unfortunately, with my birthday being in the middle of August, I didn’t have nearly as much time as I would have liked before the track closed for the season. Over the winter, my dad and I worked on the car, making a few upgrades to it. He did the same with his car. And the following racing season, I was at the track the first day they opened. I spent all the time I could going testing and learning more about the sport. I’ll never forget it. That racing season was the best time of my life.”
Avery stopped speaking, but I had a feeling she wasn’t done talking. I stayed silent and waited for her to continue. And after some time passed, she spoke again. Only, I wished I hadn’t been driving at the time so I could have comforted her.
“When the season ended, Dad and I talked about our plans for the following year,” she started again. “I had been running the car with the stock motor and simple bolt-ons because he wanted me to get more experience behind the wheel. But for the next season, we were going to get a crate motor, so I could start driving something a little bit faster.”
“I bet that was a big change for you when you finally got that together,” I noted.
“It wasn’t,” she returned.
“It wasn’t?” I repeated.
Taking in a deep breath, Avery sighed, “That winter, my dad got sick. Cancer.”
Immediately, I reached across the center console and held her hand. “I’m sorry,” I lamented.
“He pushed and pushed for me to continue following through on my dreams, but my heart wasn’t in it. I knew my dad was going to die; it was just a matter of time. He fought hard in the beginning to stay strong for me. God, he was so strong. But it eventually affected him to the point where he needed help with everything. I spent every minute of the next seventeen months when I wasn’t working caring for him,” she shared.
Giving her hand a squeeze, my voice was soft when I said, “I’m so sorry, Avery. I can’t imagine how hard that must have been for you.”
“He was all I had,” she rasped.
“What about your mom?” I wondered, not sure if that was a wise idea but still wanting to know everything I could about her.
Following a beat of silence, Avery replied, “I never knew her. She left when I was a baby, and my dad raised me. And he was such a good dad that I never felt the loss of a woman I never even knew.”
Fuck.
I couldn’t even begin to understand how the woman sitting beside me had gone through what she had and still managed to turn into the woman she became. I’d never met anyone like Avery.
Strong.
Determined.
Focused.
Confident.
All after such a devastating loss.
“I’m glad you had him to teach you everything you know,” I remarked. “You’re amazing.”
She sighed. “Yeah, well, I wasn’t sure I was ever going to get back to racing,” she shared. “I didn’t know if I could do it without my dad. So, for years, I didn’t race. I parked the cars and just went through the motions for years. Then a year and a half ago, I realized how much I missed it and how upset my dad would be with me for quitting. He always told me that no matter what happened, I should always pick myself up and keep going.”
“I’m glad that you did, and I’m sure he would be so proud of you now,” I said.
“Thanks, Knox. I think he would be, too.”
“So, what did you do with the other car?” I asked.
“What other car?”
“Well, you said you parked the cars all those years ago,” I reminded her. “I was just wondering what you did with the other one.”
“There is no other one, Knox. There are two cars, and they’re both still sitting in the garage at the house that I live in, the house I grew up in, completely untouched,” she revealed.
“What?”
“My dad’s car and my car,” she clarified.
Now I was confused. I had assumed the car she crashed was the one that she’d had all these years. I didn’t quite understand what we were doing today.
Shifting my eyes between her and the road several times, I decided I wanted to pull over and talk to her about this.
Luckily, we were driving down a road that had shopping centers on both sides. I quickly shifted to the outside lane and pulled in.
“What are you doing?” Avery asked.
I parked the truck and trailer toward the back of the lot where it was free of cars. Then I turned toward her and asked, “Why are you going to buy a new car when you’ve got two in the garage at your house?”
Uncertainty, fear, and a little self-doubt washed over her. At the same time, tears filled her eyes.
“They’re how he left them,” she rasped. “We did them together. I don’t have him
anymore.”
Reaching across the center console again, I took her hand in mine. My voice dipped low and I promised, “You have me.”
Avery held my eyes, but she didn’t respond.
“What would he want you to do?” I questioned her. “Would he want you to leave those cars there, untouched and collecting dust, when you could be out doing what the two of you loved to do the most? How would he react knowing you had them there, and instead of using them you spent fifteen grand on something you don’t need?”
She thought on it a moment, but eventually answered, “He’d probably be a little ticked off.”
“Look, I’m not going to tell you what you should do, but I think you should seriously reconsider buying another chassis when you’ve got the one your dad help you build sitting there. I get it if you want to keep his as it is, but your car is your car. The car you bonded with him over.”
Avery was silent again, and I could tell she was trying to decide if what I was saying made any sense. When her silence continued and she gave no indication of what was going through her mind, I said, “Avery, this isn’t me forcing you to do something you don’t want to do. But if it were me, and I had the relationship with my dad that you had with yours, I’d want him going down the track with me.”
“I never thought of it like that,” she returned.
“Obviously, I never met him, but from what you’ve just told me, I can’t imagine he wouldn’t want you to finish what the two of you started,” I stated.
Avery’s eyes shifted to her lap. “I don’t want to do it alone, Knox,” she said softly.
Using my free hand, I brought my thumb and forefinger to her chin. I urged it up, looked in her eyes, and promised, “You won’t be alone, babe. I’ll be with you every step of the way until you’re back behind the wheel.”
“And then what?” she wondered.
“I’ll be there with you every time you take it down the track,” I replied.
Avery took in a deep breath and asked, “What am I going to tell this guy?”
“You have his number?”
She dipped her chin.
“Pull it up and give me your phone,” I instructed.
She did as I asked.
And not even two minutes later, I’d apologized to the owner of the car we were going to go take a look at and let him know that we’d changed our minds. Obviously, he was disappointed, but I didn’t care. My only concern was the girl sitting in the passenger’s seat looking at me like I’d just given her the whole world.
“So, tell me about yours.”
“My what?” Knox asked.
“Your family,” I clarified. “I told you about my dad and nonexistent mother. Can you tell me about your family? Are you an only child like me?”
It was Friday night and Knox and I were in the same place we were two Fridays ago. At the shop, working.
Only this time, we were working together and talking to one another instead of giving each other hate-filled looks. Of course, I never actually hated him, but I really disliked him and the way he was treating me. His good looks were only going to take him so far when it came to me liking him.
But now things were much better. Because Knox had gone above and beyond to make amends. Best of all, he helped me to see that building and finishing the car I started with my dad wouldn’t be a betrayal or whatever it was I had twisted it in my head to be. Instead, Knox made me see that completing this project, the one my dad wanted to see me compete in, would be a way for me to not only honor him but also have a piece of him with me when I went down the track.
For obvious reasons, I completely shut down after my father’s death. He was the only person I had, and I didn’t know how I’d survive without him. In the months that I’d been caring for him, I felt like part of me was dying, too. When my dad finally passed, it felt like a piece of me had gone with him. To this very day, I knew I’d never get that piece of me back.
It was no surprise that it took me the better part of several years to come to terms with his death. Every day felt the same… like I was simply existing. And then out of nowhere, somehow, one day, I just decided I need to get back behind the wheel. I needed to get out and race again. But without the man who’d given me the very best of him from the time I was born, I struggled to complete it. Building my last car took longer than I had imagined. And in a single weekend, it all went down the tubes.
As it would with any person in their right mind, that crash devastated me. But the words my father said to me rang in my ear.
Get up and keep going.
And now I no longer looked at the crash as the horrible thing that it was. I looked at it as a blessing in disguise. Because if I hadn’t crashed, I’d still be racing that car instead of here with Knox working together with him to finish what my dad and I had started.
This felt way better.
Way better than winning any race with a different team would have felt.
And it was all thanks to the man standing slightly bent over the engine bay unbolting components from the setup I ran more than sixteen years ago.
Or, he had been bent over the engine bay. At my question about his family, he stood up straight and declared, “I’m glad you had a close relationship with your dad and good memories to look back on. Because for the first eight years of my life, I sat around listening to my parents arguing all the time. They finally got divorced and now live an hour away from here… in opposite directions. The holidays are a nightmare because I can’t just go to one house. It’s been a lot of years and they still hold a grudge against one another, my mom more than my dad. They weren’t horrible parents, and we always had everything we needed, but they definitely didn’t do anything to shield us from their fighting.”
“Us?” I asked.
Knox smiled and shared, “One of the better things my parents gave me was a younger sister. Peyton. Unfortunately, my sister moved with her husband to Seattle when he had a job transfer a couple years ago. So, I don’t really get to see her very often. We talk occasionally, though, and call each other on holidays and birthdays when we know we won’t see each other just to check in.”
“Wow, Knox. I’m sorry.”
Shaking his head, he insisted, “There’s nothing to be sorry for. Peyton’s happy. I’m happy. And my parents are better off apart.”
“Well, as long as you’re at peace with it, then I guess that’s good,” I said.
Knox smiled at me again before the two of us got back to work. We ended up going back to my place last night and loading the car up in the trailer since the trailer was already hitched to the truck. Then we brought it over to the shop and unloaded it.
The plan was to pull everything out. All of it. Everything in the engine bay was being pulled first, and the interior was second. Kieran was going to tear down the motor and build it for me. Knox was going to fabricate a cage for me. Those were the first two steps. Once that was all taken care of, I knew Ryker would lend a hand in getting it all reassembled if needed. Logan had already offered to tune it for me at no charge, and Nash promised to get the suspension all dialed in.
So, even though things had started really rocky between us, I couldn’t stop feeling extraordinarily grateful for where we were now. It was nice to have someone in my corner, helping me and rooting for me.
While he was the best of what I’d gotten, it wasn’t just him. I had the rest of the team. I had Logan, Kieran, Nash, and Ryker. There was no doubt in my mind about the kind of people they were and the lengths they’d go to just to help me.
Roughly thirty minutes later, the pizza I’d secretly ordered for us for dinner arrived. I hadn’t mentioned to Knox that I was doing it because I knew he would have insisted on paying. And I wanted to do something nice for him after everything he’d been doing to help me.
After we’d both taken a few bites, I said, “I think I want more.”
Knox’s eyes went from the slice of pizza in my hand to the box on the table. “There’s plenty lef
t,” he insisted.
I let out a laugh and explained, “I’m not talking about pizza, though I’m definitely going to eat more of it. I meant, I think I want more power.”
“Okay. What are you thinking?”
I took another bite of my pizza, chewed, and swallowed.
“Well, I was making just over a thousand horsepower with the supercharger setup I had on the car,” I started. “It ran decently at the few test sessions I took it to right up until the crash. But over the last week or so, I’ve been thinking a lot more about the rebuild, and I thought I might try to make a bit more power. The blower I have now does have an option for a smaller pulley, which would give me more boost and ultimately, more power.”
Knox popped the last bite of his first slice into his mouth and reached for another. After dropping it on his plate, he encouraged me, “I think that’s a great idea. You want to be the queen of the drag strip, babe. The only way to do it is to go big.”
“You think it’s a good idea, then?” I asked. “I don’t want to be taking on more than is reasonable.”
“Yeah, I think it’s a good idea,” he insisted. “I mean, what are we talking about here? You’re already making over one thousand horsepower. A smaller pulley will give you what? Another two hundred horsepower?”
“Um, I think it’s about that much,” I told him.
“Right. Okay, so why wouldn’t you do it?” he questioned me.
I shrugged. “I don’t want to wreck this car, too,” I explained. “One thousand to twelve hundred sounds like a big jump, but that’s not what concerns me. I’m probably going to be looking at another ten to fifteen miles per hour in the quarter mile. It doesn’t sound like a lot, but when we’re talking about going from a hundred and sixty to a hundred and seventy-five, it’s a lot. And it’ll likely do a lot more damage if there’s an impact.”
Knox didn’t immediately respond. He took several bites of his pizza and stared at me. I was wondering if he thought I was crazy or stupid or something when he finally asked, “Do you have faith in yourself?”
“Yes, of course, but—”
“No buts, Avery,” he ordered. “If you believe in yourself and your ability as a driver, you need to remember that. You can’t get into something with that much power and have doubts. That’s when bad stuff can happen. And I’m pretty sure you’re already going to have a lot of jitters the first time you are back at the track after the crash. I think that’s normal considering what happened. But beyond that, you need to be as confident as you are in everything else when you’re in that car.”