Behind the Wheel (Hearts & Horsepower Book 2)

by A. K. Evans

  “Maybe you should go to him and give him a chance to explain,” she suggested.

  I swallowed hard remembering the look of anger on Knox’s face on Saturday. It was much like the one I saw this morning when he walked into work and gave me a brief glance. He was still just as angry with me. I couldn’t say I blamed him.

  For whatever reason, I was especially emotional about Knox. I knew how much he meant to me, and the idea that he was willing to miss something that I believed was a big deal to both of us hurt more than I could have imagined.

  “I feel like an idiot for not giving him the opportunity to tell me what happened that day,” I admitted. “Thinking back now, I know it was selfish of me. In fact, I was about to apologize that day for what I’d said. But I didn’t get the chance before he got angry with me and walked away. And now we haven’t spoken since. I doubt he’s going to give me the chance.”

  “Don’t allow him to ignore you,” she ordered.

  “What?”

  Kendall took in a deep breath. After she blew it out, she asked, “Do you remember how I told you that Logan and I had a really rocky start?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well, when we finally got our heads screwed on straight and were no longer running on emotions, we made a promise to one another that we wouldn’t freeze each other out,” she shared. “We concluded that we both liked what we had between us enough to want to make it work, but we couldn’t do that if we were too busy holding grudges for days when we had a disagreement.”

  That sounded like a great idea. I would have been more than happy to integrate something like that into our relationship. Convinced that we were over, I didn’t think I’d have the chance.

  “It’s hot between the two of you, isn’t it?” Kendall asked. Though she was asking a question, her tone indicated she already knew the answer.

  Even still, I dipped my chin and confessed, “Very.”

  “It’s the same for Logan and me,” she offered. “And with chemistry like that, you have to accept that there’s bound to be disagreements. I didn’t like that we’d had so many in the beginning of our relationship, but we worked through it and know how to fight fair now.”

  “Knox is never going to talk to me again, Kendall,” I declared. “I just know it. He’s so angry with me.”

  She cocked an eyebrow as a small smirk spread across her face. “He will. I’m sure of it,” she began. Then she leaned in closer and whispered, “And once he does, I can promise you the make-up sex is going to be the best sex of your life.”

  As wonderful as I’m sure make-up sex with Knox would be, I still had reservations. Aside from the fact that I didn’t believe he wanted anything to do with me right now, the simple fact remained that he made plans to do something else on a day when I was counting on him to be there.

  “What if he doesn’t?” I worried.

  “Avery, do you want to be with him?” she countered.

  “I love him,” I blurted. I gasped as soon as the words came out of my mouth. Even though I knew I’d fallen for Knox, I hadn’t yet admitted it out loud. It was a bit strange to hear myself say those words.

  Grinning at me, Kendall stated, “If you love him, you need to make sure you don’t let him get away. Make sure he knows that you’re not going to give up on him or what the two of you have unless he tells you to your face that it’s over. You both deserve that.”

  I gave my brain a moment to fully absorb Kendall’s advice. She was right. Knox and I deserved to have a real conversation about what happened this weekend. I needed an explanation from him about why he’d bailed on me, and he needed to understand the reason for my explosive reaction.

  Feeling a lot better and much more determined now than I had been when I arrived at lunch, I gave her a smile and said, “Thank you for being the friend you told me you’d be, Kendall. It’s really nice to have someone I can depend on.”

  She returned the smile and replied, “You’re welcome. And I think if you just give it a little bit of time, you’ll find that you’ve got a few other people in your corner you can depend on. One of those people is the man you love.”

  I sat back in the booth, pushed my plate toward the center of the table, and returned, “I hope you’re right.”

  “I am.”

  Twenty-five minutes later, I was back at work. I still felt a lot of nerves about being there with the situation being as it was between Knox and me. But I tried to ignore those nerves. I tried telling myself it was a good thing I felt that way. I took it to mean I cared about him and about us.

  Since I didn’t want to cause a scene, I decided it would be best to wait until the end of the day to talk to him. Not only that, Knox and I weren’t being paid to fix our personal problems. It wouldn’t be fair to Logan for us to take advantage of the fact that he probably wouldn’t say anything to us if we’d tried to work out our differences while on the clock.

  So, I waited.

  Unfortunately, when I walked out into the shop at the end of the day and saw that Knox was talking with Ryker and not looking very happy, I simply walked over to my car, pretended to look inside it for something, and walked right back out of the shop and into the office. I gathered up my things and ran out of there.

  Kendall told me I needed to let Knox know I wasn’t going anywhere until he told me it was over. Maybe that was good advice. But for now, for tonight, I needed to take some time to prepare for the possibility that he might say those words to me.

  I needed just a little more time to hope for the best while preparing for the worst.

  “You’re okay with this being the way that it is?”

  I looked up from where I’d just fit the first header I’d fabricated to the engine to see Ryker there looking down at my work.

  This project was a completely custom one. Our customer had decided to have an LS3 engine—the same engine that came in older Camaros and Corvettes—swapped into his road racing Porsche 911. It was a cool project, and something I was particularly excited about because it gave me an opportunity to do a lot of fabrication work that was outside the norm.

  Glancing back down at the headers, I tried to figure out what Ryker didn’t like about them. Not caring to waste time, I returned my attention to him and asked, “What don’t you like about it?”

  Ryker lifted his gaze to mine and declared, “It’s fucking stupid.”

  Jerking back at his statement, I felt myself grow angry. I was in no mood to be criticized. Not when I’d just spent nearly all day working on this and especially not when I had plenty of other things on my mind.

  No.

  That’s not right.

  I only had two other things on my mind.

  The situation with my family and the situation with Avery.

  And right now, Avery was at the forefront of all my thoughts.

  “Fuck off,” I spat. “It’s staying like this, and I’m doing the other one tomorrow.”

  “I’m not talking about the headers, Knox,” he returned. “And it blows my mind that you would even think that’s what I was referring to.”

  Not amused by him, my brows shot up as I gave him a questioning look. What I didn’t do was respond to his words.

  Shaking his head and realizing he was going to have to be very specific about what he was referring to, Ryker clarified, “I’m talking about you and Avery. I thought you’d take a day or two and cool off, but it seems like you’re holding on to a grudge for some stupid reason.”

  “Ryker, man, I appreciate what you’re trying to do, but you need to stay out of this,” I advised.

  “Oh, okay. So, you and Avery talked about it Saturday night or sometime yesterday and just decided what you have between the two of you is not worth getting over whatever the hell happened on Saturday morning?” he retorted.

  “No, we haven’t talked,” I admitted.

  “So, you’re just being stupid then?”

  This was not going to continue. I loved the guy like a brother, but he wasn’t g
oing to continue to stand there and insult me.

  “You’re getting dangerously close to stepping over a line you shouldn’t,” I warned him.

  “I don’t give a fuck,” he replied. “All day long I’ve watched you and her not say a single word to one another. And I’ve watched everyone else walk around on eggshells around the both of you just trying to remain neutral.”

  “Maybe you should take a hint from them,” I suggested. “Because this is none of your business.”

  Unfazed by the seriousness in my tone, Ryker pressed on. “Sorry, but that’s not going to happen,” he started. “Years ago, I made the biggest mistake of my life and can only look back now and wish I had someone who would have talked some sense into me. It’s too late for me now. My situation is far beyond repair, but yours isn’t. So, right now, I’m going to be that person for you whether you like it or not. Hopefully, I’ll be successful and can stop you from making what’s going to be the biggest mistake of your life.”

  I let out a sigh. There I had it. Ryker was not going to be dissuaded. Interestingly enough, I didn’t know what the situation was that he was referring to, so the fact that he was telling me about it now indicated he felt strongly enough about what was happening between Avery and me. For that reason, I figured it was best to let him say whatever he had to say.

  Even still, I didn’t want him to think I was happy about it.

  “Well, I’ve got work to get done, so say your piece so I can get back to it,” I ordered, my frustration and impatience evident in my tone.

  “Are you going to work this out with her?” he asked.

  “There’s nothing to work out,” I lied.

  Yes, I lied.

  Because I wasn’t sure I could admit the truth. The truth being that I’d spent the last two days feeling worse than I did when Avery and I were at odds when she first started working at LT Motorsports.

  I missed her.

  God, I missed her so much.

  As though on cue, she picked that precise moment to open the door from the office and walk out into the shop. She didn’t look my way, and I pretended not to notice her. But the truth was that while my face and body indicated I was paying attention to Ryker, my eyes were only on her. They followed her as she walked across the shop to her car. They lingered there while she opened the driver’s side door and bent to look inside. And they never left her as she closed the door, moved away from the car, and walked back across the shop to the office again.

  Once she was through the steel door, I looked at Ryker. He’d cocked an eyebrow and challenged, “Nothing to work out?”

  I shook my head, even though it was a betrayal of everything I felt. I was not going to do this to myself. I wasn’t going to do this to her.

  “It’s better this way,” I told him.

  Ryker narrowed his eyes at me. “Better? And what way are you referring to? Have you officially ended things with her? Because I’m not getting that vibe from you.”

  “There’s nothing left to say,” I remarked.

  Crossing his arms over his chest, he held his stance. “You’re wrong about that,” he insisted. “And if you don’t pull your head out of your ass, and do it soon, you’ll live with a regret that eats you up from the inside out every day for the rest of your life.”

  Fuck.

  What they hell had he been through?

  Is this why he was always in such a foul mood?

  “Don’t put your shit on me,” I demanded.

  “No? You don’t think I should?” he questioned me. “How would you feel knowing I was terrified for that woman I know you feel something deep for when she went down the track for the first time on Saturday? How does it make you feel to know I tried to get her to stop from pulling forward to stage the car because I knew she wasn’t in the right head space? I could see it.”

  Now it was my turn to narrow my eyes at him. My body had gone from tense to completely solid at his words.

  “What are you talking about?” I asked.

  Shaking his head in disgust, he answered, “It’s a wonder she didn’t run this car into the wall. After her burnout, she started pulling forward to pre-stage the car. I happened to look away from Nash for a moment and stared right through that windshield at her. And through the lens of her helmet, I could see it. Her focus was not on getting that car down the track safely. Her mind was on something… no, someone else. I’m telling you right now, if she wasn’t as good as she is behind the wheel, that pass could have gone a lot differently than it did.”

  I swallowed hard at that news.

  The idea that Avery could have wrecked again, that she could have been hurt or trashed a car that held so many good memories for her, would have been devastating. Not just for her but for me too.

  Because just the thought of her being upset made me feel ill.

  And yet, despite the reality of that, I still hadn’t done anything to fix things between us. This was all because I wasn’t convinced it would make a difference.

  “I’m just going to disappoint her,” I finally admitted.

  There was a beat of silence before Ryker asked, “Do you want to explain what you mean by that?”

  I didn’t exactly know where to start.

  “She’s my mother,” I declared.

  “What the hell are you talking about?” he pressed.

  “Long story short,” I started. “Peyton’s pregnant. Everyone is planning to go out to Seattle closer to the baby’s due date next year. And, well, after twenty-five years, my mom is finally realizing she pushed away a good man in my dad, who has recently moved on and is getting serious with someone else.”

  Ryker stared at me. He did this for a long time without saying a word. After some time passed, he stated, “I’m failing to see what this has to do with the relationship you have with Avery.”

  “I’m not going to become my parents,” I told him.

  “Why would you?” he shot back, clear confusion written all over him.

  He didn’t understand because he didn’t know how things went down between Avery and me in the trailer after she got back from her pass down the track. He also didn’t know all the things my mother had admitted to me on the phone earlier that morning.

  “They fought all the time when Peyton and I were little,” I started, realizing I needed to give him a bit of the backstory. “As a kid, I never understood what it was about. And it wasn’t until Saturday morning that I figured out the reason why. My mom basically admitted that nothing my dad did was ever good enough. She’d always find a way to criticize him. And she did it for no good reason. Now, twenty-five years later, she’s realizing how foolish it was and how she’s now going to spend the rest of her life alone because he was the guy for her. She’s held out hope all these years that they’d somehow find their way back to one another, but he’s moved on now in a way that that’s never going to happen for my mom.”

  “It took him twenty-five years to move on?” Ryker wondered.

  I dipped my chin. “I think he’s dated here and there, but this one is serious.”

  Ryker gave me a nod of understanding and a brief moment of silence before he asked, “So, you’re going to become him? You’ll live empty for the next twenty-five years because you think their fate is yours? I’m sorry, but your dad is just as much at fault.”

  “What? Why would you say that?” I asked.

  “Maybe your mom’s expectations were unreasonable, maybe they weren’t,” he began. “I don’t know. But either way, she obviously needed something she wasn’t getting then. Could your dad have done something to alleviate the pain they both obviously lived with for a long time?”

  Yes.

  He could have.

  After talking to my mom Saturday morning, I had no doubt their situation could have gotten better. He spent years searching for something and never found it. She waited, hoping he’d return. But like Ryker said, if my dad had gone to my mom at any point after the divorce, I had a feeling she would have apolog
ized for how she treated him and explained where it stemmed from. In the same breath, if she’d done that, I know he would have apologized for the role he played in making her feel like she needed to be combative. He loved her.

  I’d taken so long to respond to Ryker, he spoke again.

  “It’s not my place to say what it is, and she didn’t share anything with me specifically, Knox, but Avery needs something,” he shared. “Whatever it is, it was something she thought she found with you. Because when you walked away from her on Saturday, that girl broke in a way I’ve only ever seen one other time in my life. If you don’t fix it, Knox, she’s never going to recover. A girl like Avery, as strong as she is, after everything she’s been through, she’ll never recover from you walking away from her. And you? You’ll live every day of your life knowing you did that to her, and it’s going to eat you alive.”

  Suddenly, my lungs felt like they were on fire as my throat grew tighter and tighter.

  She’ll never recover from you walking away from her.

  She’ll never recover.

  Maybe she would be like my mom in that way.

  The only difference is that I didn’t need to be like my dad. Instead of looking at Avery’s reaction on Saturday as her simply bitching at me for what I didn’t do, maybe I needed to see it for what it was. It was her way of telling me what she needed.

  Knowing what I knew of her, knowing what she’d endured in her life, I already had a pretty good idea of what she needed.

  Consistency.

  Dependability.

  Love.

  She could get that from me. And she didn’t need to beg for it.

  Because I wanted to give it to her.

  I’d just been too blind, too angry, and too emotional that day to see it.

  “I can see something’s starting to penetrate,” Ryker noted, interrupting my thoughts.

  Bringing my eyes back to his, I confessed, “I fucked up.” I started pacing back and forth, feeling nothing but shame and disappointment with myself for doing this to her. To us. “Shit, Ryker. I fucked up,” I repeated.

  He shook his head. “You can make it right, Knox,” he insisted. “But you need to do it soon, or she’s going to give up on you.”