19
Darren
“I thought he didn’t have any family,” I said, pinning the phone between my ear and shoulder as I made myself a cup of coffee.
I was on approximately cup thirty thousand since the night we went to the hospital with Greg, and I didn’t see the end of the trend anytime soon. The hospital staff wasn’t in love with the idea that I refused to leave, but there really wasn’t a whole lot they could do about it. They could tell me visiting hours were over, and I’d just move out into the waiting room and camp out on the chairs. It only took until the middle of the next day for them to realize my father and I were listed as emergency contacts in his records, so they cut back on their attempts to make me leave.
He was out of the woods, and the doctors were strongly leaning toward him not needing surgery, which was great news. But there was still no way I was leaving him alone in the hospital. Up until this conversation with my father, who was upstairs near his room while I was downstairs trying to fuel up, I thought Greg was essentially on his own.
“He doesn’t around here. He moved to Charlotte on his own. Apparently, his mother lives in Virginia, and they haven’t seen each other much since he moved here.”
“But she’s coming down to take care of him?” I asked.
“I don’t get the feeling there’s anything negative about their relationship, really. Just that he left home and went off on his own. According to him, they were really close as he grew up. Before we all got to the hospital, he asked the staff to call her and let her know what was going on. He knew we were all going to be coming up after the race, but he wanted to make sure she knew what was happening, too. She just let him know she’s on her way and is going to stay with him when he’s discharged to help him while he’s recovering,” Dad told me.
“I’ll be up there in a minute,” I told him and hung up.
When I got back into Greg’s room, he was eyeing the Jell-O cup the nurses brought him like he thought it might be alive. He finally took hold of it and poked it with his spoon, watching it jiggle.
“You’ll probably be getting much better food when your mom gets here,” I said.
“I hope so,” he told me. “She hasn’t cooked for me in a long time.”
“I’m relieved to find out she’s coming and will be able to be there to take care of you while you’re trying to piece yourself back together. I was looking around to find somebody to hire for you,” I told him.
Greg blushed and got very invested in his Jell-O again.
“You don’t need to do that,” he said. “You shouldn’t be worrying about me like that.”
“Of course I’m worried about you. We all are. We want to make sure you get back to fighting form as soon as possible. You’re going to be dealing with that bum leg for a bit, so you need someone to help you out. It’s good to hear your mama will be around to help you,” I told her. “Just let us know if there’s anything you need while you’re out. Of course, you’ll be getting paid, and if we can help you at all, we want to.”
Greg seemed touched by the statement, and possibly a little overwhelmed. I decided to give him some space and finally left the hospital when we got word his mother was getting close and would be arriving soon.
Monday morning, I called Quentin to let him know I might be late getting to the complex and headed over to Greg’s house. His mother opened the door with a bright smile. She looked just like I would have expected Greg’s mother to look—a small, feminine, slightly older version of him. She gestured for me to follow her and brought me into the living room where Greg was sitting on the couch, his leg propped up. He grinned when he saw me.
“Look at you,” I said. “Out in the real world.”
“Yeah. Thank goodness they didn’t have to do any surgery. It will take some time to get healed, but it won’t be as bad a recovery as it would have been if they had to put metal in there,” Greg said.
“I’m going to make breakfast,” his mother announced and disappeared into the kitchen.
“Have a seat,” Greg said.
I settled into a chair positioned near the end of the couch, and we started talking. It was good to have the chance to connect with him away from everybody else, away from the pressures of the complex. Even away from the hospital. Here in his home he could just relax, and we were able to have a good conversation. We talked about how the race ended, and what I was going to do next time.
Our conversation had shifted over to the next round of customized bikes we were working on when Greg’s mother came into the room with two plates overflowing with food.
“Thank you so much,” I said, accepting the surprise meal. “Wow. Maybe I won’t mind having Greg laid up for a while as much as I thought.”
She smiled at the teasing, but Greg looked slightly guilty again. As soon as his mother left the room, he turned to me.
“I’m really sorry to put the team in a lurch,” he said.
“You don’t have anything to apologize for, and you didn’t put us in a lurch.”
“Of course I did. The team has planned for the season to have two racers, and now it’s down to just you. I promise I will find a replacement to step in for me until I’m back on my feet. Someone who can take my place for the races I miss.”
I wasn’t too sure about that offer. As much as I understood how he was feeling and appreciated him trying to do whatever he could to minimize the negative impact his crash and injuries had on the rest of the team, I didn’t particularly like the idea of a different person just walking on to the team. I’d known Greg for a long time before I’d even considered having him race for us. It took watching him work on the bikes, practicing with him on the practice track at the complex, then putting him through training and trials before I agreed to recommend Quentin put him in his first race.
The idea was still tossing around in my head when I left Greg’s house and headed for the compound. Along the way I stopped at one of my favorite bakeries and bought three large boxes of pastries. Mom’s baking had taken a savory turn recently, and though I always enjoyed what she made, a spinach and feta puff didn’t stand in the place of a raspberry jelly-filled donut or a ganache-covered eclair. There was definitely a place in the world for the rich, buttery, cheesy things that kept cranking out of the kitchen and filling little bags Mom placed on our desks during the day. But that place wasn’t today. Days like today, when everyone was still going to be upset about what happened at the race the night before and shaken up worried about Greg and his recovery. Days when everyone’s minds would be on trying to figure out once and for all what went wrong and how to prevent it from happening again. Those kinds of days deserved chocolate.
When I got to the compound, I didn’t head straight for the garages like I usually did. Instead, I went into the main building carrying the three boxes of treats. I stopped by the reception desk and offered Glenda a pastry. After she chose the one she wanted, I borrowed her intercom and made an announcement inviting everybody to come get a snack in the conference room.
“Thank you,” I said to Glenda, and she flashed me a thumbs-up from behind her custard-filled donut.
I carried the boxes into the large room and set them out on the table. Going into the nearby kitchen, I started making pots of coffee. I brought the first two into the conference room and came back with several mugs just before everybody started showing up. I went for another round of gathering the mugs, then brought a final two pots of coffee before settling in to enjoy the treat. Mom and Merry stood off to one side chatting about the baby, and I half listened to them for a while, but most of my attention was focused on the people milling around the conference room.
It was a rare occurrence to have everyone together on the compound and seeing it added to the sheer value of every one of these people. It also made the absence of Greg feeling heavier. I tried not to think about it, which led my eyes to wandering over to Kelly. She stared into the boxes carefully, evaluating each of the available pastries so she could selec
t the perfect one. It was such a nonevent, something I never would have noticed someone else doing. Yet Kelly doing it was somehow adorable. She was being so analytical in her decision, like it was the most important thing she was thinking about that day. It made me interested in what she was finally going to choose.
More than that, it made me rethink the decisions we made about each other. What happened to Greg was the first major injury on the team since my time racing. There were some severe incidents many years ago before Quentin took over and racing was a different sport. But since the era of my oldest brother running the company and me racing, we hadn’t suffered any major catastrophes. A few bumps and bruises, a couple of skids, but no moments when any of us thought one of our own wasn’t going to make it away from the racetrack.
If there was anything to take away from this, it was that life was short. It was short, it was unpredictable, and it wasn’t guaranteed. None of us knew how much time we had left. On any given day, something completely unexpected and horrible could happen, no matter how careful we were or how much we did to avoid it. I decided right then I wasn’t going to waste any more of the time I had.
20
Kelly
I tried to make up for my indulgent lunch with Pam by eating a healthy breakfast, but Darren announcing the presence of pastries in the conference room was just too much for me to resist. It was an unexpected treat to gather with the other people from around the complex to eat the delicious goodies and drink coffee together. Many of these people were coworkers of mine, but I wasn’t familiar with them, yet. I spent the vast majority of the time I was on the complex down in the garages. That meant I really only encountered the Freeman brothers, Gus, Greg, and the other mechanics on a regular basis. When we all had lunch together, I had the opportunity to spend time with other members of the family, but there were some people I rarely encountered at all. This was a great chance to meet them and feel more connected to everybody working together.
The experience at the race was definitely bonding for all of us. Not in the way any of us would have wanted it to be, but it was undeniable watching the sheer terror of Greg crashing and not knowing if he was going to be all right made us all more aware of each other. I saw faces in that conference room I couldn’t immediately link a name to, yet I felt kind of attachment to them, like we were connected just because we worked in the same place and were linked by that association. Spending more time with Glenda, the receptionist from the front of the office building, Minnie, and Merry was especially fun. They all got along so well and seemed to enjoy spending time together. Watching them made me miss the time with my own sister and with my friends back home. When they readily welcomed me to come talk with them, the feeling of inclusion took some of the edge off. I looked forward to getting to spend more time with them soon.
If I could have, I would have spent the entire day there in the conference room with everybody, but there was a lot of work to do. I grabbed a lemon-and-blueberry scone and headed back to the garage. I was so grateful to be working for such a family-centered business. I couldn’t remember ever working at a place that felt quite like this. They truly seemed to appreciate every person who worked on the compound. I watched Quentin for a few minutes and noticed he greeted everybody by name. With most of them, he mentioned something about their family or something going on in their lives, just acknowledging that he knew them and valued them as individuals. It warmed my heart and also further invigorated my determination to do the best I could for the company. It wasn’t just about my work ethic and always wanting to be my best. I really wanted to do well for them and keep them at the top of the industry.
That started with figuring out exactly what happened that led to Greg’s crash and trying to figure out if there was any way to stop another accident like that from happening again. The wreck was getting to everybody, but I held a particular amount of fear and sickness in my stomach every time I thought about it. Ever since that night, I had been dreaming about Darren. Dreaming about him wasn’t all that unusual. At this point, more nights than not featured dreams about our time together and conjured up new images of encounters with him. But that wasn’t the type of dream I’d been having since the race. Instead, I dreamed about Darren being the one in the wreck and it ending far more horrifically than Greg’s.
In my dream, Darren smashed into the ground at a blistering speed, landing on his head so his neck snapped. He died there in front of me, leaving me to know I’d never gathered the courage and humility to tell him about Willa, to tell him he had a daughter. Each morning I woke up from the dream panicked, out of breath, and with tears in my eyes. I wasn’t proud of my cowardice. He deserved to know his daughter, and she deserved to know him. Willa was still so little she hadn’t yet caught on to the idea that she didn’t have two parents involved in her life.
She hadn’t yet pieced together that there was anything different about our family. But one day she would. If I didn’t do something, there would come a day when she would realize she wasn’t being raised by a mother and father, that she didn’t even know who her father was. I never wanted her to have the sense that she wasn’t good enough, or that she was somehow different than other people. It hurt me to think she would ever question who she was or feel less connected to her identity because of her not knowing him. That type of pain, anger, and sadness wasn’t something I ever wanted for her, and I never wanted her to feel like I’d betrayed her or held anything back from her.
I didn’t want to keep holding back the truth and wanted to think I was a much stronger, braver person than I was being. But I wasn’t sure how to get away from it and force myself to take the next, life-changing step.
The scone was gone by the time I got to the garage, and part of me wished I’d grabbed another. Greg’s bike was already dismantled on the floor of the garage, and I immediately dove in. My intention was to go over every single part of the machine and examine it closely to detect any possible anomalies or problems it could have that might explain how everything had gone so wrong during the race. Something as simple as a part malfunctioning or a piece of metal grinding against another in the wrong place could be destructive. If I could identify the piece that went wrong, we could take steps to repair those parts more efficiently and stop it from happening that way again.
I was elbow-deep in the parts when I heard footsteps behind me coming into the garage. I assumed it was Gus, there to be a part of figuring out the issue and reconstructing the bike. It was going to be a huge undertaking to get the bashed and battered machine performance-ready again, so I could understand his desire to help.
“For a retired guy, you sure do work a lot,” I teased without taking my eyes off the motorcycle parts.
But Gus’s voice didn’t answer. Instead, a hand grabbing me by the shoulder startled me. It spun me around before I could really process what was happening, and for a split second, I saw Darren standing in front of me. I didn’t have the chance to say anything to him because a split second later, his mouth was on mine. His lips pressed against mine without hesitation. There was nothing careful or cautious about the kiss, nothing that said he was experimenting or gauging to see my reaction. Instead, it was instantly hard and intense, quickly becoming deep and all-consuming.
My hands gripped his hips and pulled him harder up against me as his hands cupped around my neck. Our tongues tangled, and as the kiss got dirtier, I wondered if we could get away with disappearing off to his office for a little bit without anyone noticing.
Suddenly, he pulled away. The kiss was over far too fast, and my brain was reeling as it broke and Darren stepped back. There was immediately a sense of emptiness and disappointment that his lips were no longer touching mine and his body wasn’t crushed against me anymore. Then a flicker of fear went through me as I wondered why he had that sudden, sharp reaction.
Maybe he’d come down to the garage as an experiment. He wanted to see if there was still anything between us. Or maybe he had been wondering since seeing me
again what had attracted him to me in the first place. Our first night together had been absolutely incredible, and maybe now he was trying to figure out how that could have happened. He was all too happy to agree to be just friends with me, so it was possible that kiss was just his attempt to figure out what we had three years ago.
The nervousness and uncertainty rolled through my mind, but when I opened my eyes to look at him, it didn’t seem like Darren was uncomfortable or confused. He was still standing close in front of me, his eyes locked firmly with mine. His hand lifted again and stroked down the side of my neck, curving around the back to hold it tenderly as we looked at each other.
“Just so you know, okay?” he said. “I didn’t want there to be any question about how I’m feeling or what I’m thinking. Because I want more than friendship with you.”
“But we said…”
“I know what we said. I don’t care. That’s not how I felt then, and it’s definitely not how I feel now. There’s no way I can just be friends with you. I don’t want to,” he answered.
With one more soft, brief kiss, he walked away. My mouth hung open as he walked over to the other side of the garage and got to work. My brain seemed to have crashed and gone into a factory reset. I couldn’t manage a single cohesive thought to explain what just happened or decide how I was going to feel about it. It took a few long seconds before I was able to get my brain processing again, and then a bit longer to convince it to work in conjunction with my body. As I got back to work, I glanced over at Darren and could have sworn I saw a smirk on his face before he turned back to cleaning his race bike. I huffed out a shocked laugh and mentally added that to the ever-growing list of things I needed to figure out.
Millionaire Daddy: A Secret Baby Romance (Freeman Brothers Book 2) Page 11