“Almost there, driver,” his crew chief said. “Hold on to it.”
“White flag,” said his spotter.
But he didn’t think he could hold on to it. His truck didn’t run as well down at the bottom, but that was exactly where Sam forced him go. Around turn two they went, bumping into each other in the middle. Adam’s back end broke loose. He could feel the truck begin to turn, feel his back quarter panel touch Sam’s. They were like two magnets, drawing together and then repelling one another, Adam pulling away only on the straightaway.
“Checkered flag.”
Two more turns. Would he make it?
“Come on,” he muttered to himself, knowing Sam was there, waiting for Adam to make a mistake. One more turn to go.
Sam began to catch him, the nose of his truck almost even with his own.
No.
The word was a shout in his head. He wouldn’t let it happen. He was better than Sam. Older. More experienced. He’d been pushing cars to the limit while Sam was in high school.
And there it was. The checkered flag. Right in front of him. He already had the pedal to the floor, but he mashed it harder, his toes growing numb, hands clutching the steering wheel as they both charged toward the dotted line.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
HE WON.
Becca watched as Adam’s truck crossed the start/finish line first, just inches ahead of Sam.
“Well, I’ll be damned,” he heard his crew chief say, though not to the team. No. John had to watch their own truck limp its way home to a twenty-ninth place finish.
“He won it,” he said, meeting her gaze.
She knew what he was thinking. They could have had that victory if she’d kept him on board. Now they were forced to watch fans scream and yell in honor of another team’s driver. Blain and Cece’s driver.
She jerked her headset off. “I’ll be at the hauler,” she said as their own truck crossed the start/finish line. Around her, crew members jumped down from their pit boxes, shook hands and congratulated themselves on finishing the night.
Becca hardly noticed.
Out on the track she could hear Adam’s tires squeal in protest as he did a burn out, then another one, the sound of the engine mixing with the roar of the crowd.
He’d won.
Well, good for him,
she thought. She’d known he had the goods. It’s why she’d hired him. Why he’d been snapped up by another race team in a matter of days. Adam was good. Good enough to go all the way to the top. She wished him well.
So why was she crying? Why was she suddenly finding it hard to breathe? Why did she feel such an odd combination of joy and sorrow that it made it hard to think, hard to focus on where she was going?
Somehow she found her way back to her rig, nearly bumping into a few of her employees as they buzzed around gathering items that needed to be stowed away.
The crowd roared once more. Adam must be out of his truck. She slipped inside her hauler, keeping her eyes averted from the flat screen TV at the end of the long aisle. But she caught a glimpse of him, anyway; a mirror someone had hung off one of the cabinets reflecting the image back to her. She stopped in her tracks.
He stared right at her, a smile on his face, Lindsey clutched in his arms as he gave a postrace interview. The sound was turned down, so Becca watched in silence as he gave a commentary. Behind him someone shook a bottle of something—Gatorade, it looked like—over his fellow team members, some of it hitting Lindsey, who squealed. Adam glanced back just in time to spy Cece coming up behind him. He stopped whatever it was he was saying and gave his team owner a hug.
Becca had to look away. She pushed open the door to the lounge, locking herself inside for good measure.
She couldn’t take it, she thought, all but collapsing into the chair that someone had pushed beneath her desk.
But, of course, that was stupid. And it was wrong. She was a team owner. She would have no choice but to watch him race. That was part of the job. She’d sit there and watch him race against her own drivers weekend after weekend and she’d learn to get used to it.
But for now, she just wanted to hide. And so she did, placing her head in her hands, resting her elbows on her desk. Her laptop hummed, the LCD screen closed, an LED blinking—but she hardly noticed. Tears pooled on her lashes. She wiped them away. But more came. Second after second, minute after minute, more came.
Someone knocked on the door a long while later. “Be there in a minute,” she said, wiping at her eyes. She needed to get herself together. They had a truck to load. Things to pack. A postrace meeting to coordinate.
“Becca.”
Becca’s head snapped up. That sounded like—
“Open the door, Becca,” he said again.
“Adam.” She shot up, wrung her hands, then turned away from the door, only to turn back toward it again.
You can’t run away forever.
No, she couldn’t. She was a professional. Time she acted like one.
Reluctantly, she opened the door, taking in Adam from his green-and-white firesuit—slightly damp and spotted with red Gatorade—to his mussed hair, still pressed down flat around the edges where the helmet had rested.
“I won,” he said.
Behind him her crew members still worked, packing up things but not so busy that they didn’t glance her way.
“You won,” she said, her left hand still resting on the door handle—as if she might swing it closed in his face if things got out of control. But they wouldn’t get out of control. She would listen to what he had to say, but that was it.
“I won the race for you.”
Her breath caught. He took a step toward her. She retreated, but only up against the door. And then, to her complete shock, he bent down, cupped her face—and kissed her.
Once.
Becca gasped.
That was all he did, just hold her face in his hands and kiss her once.
Then he drew back.
She didn’t move.
His head lowered again.
She knew in that moment that she was kidding herself. She wasn’t
falling
in love with Adam, she was
in
love. In love with the way his hands shook every time he held her. In love with the way he looked at her just before he kissed her—as if he couldn’t quite believe he was about to do exactly that. In love with the way he always seemed to know just exactly what type of kiss she wanted.
This one was no different.
He didn’t pressure her. Didn’t force himself on her. He kissed her. Softly. Gently. Tenderly moved his mouth against her own. They were little baby kisses, ones she could barely feel, his soft lips capturing her lower lips between his own. Nibbling…nibbling…nibbling and causing her legs to grow weaker and weaker and weaker.
And then he stopped.
She opened her eyes. He didn’t move. Neither did she. After a moment or two she realized he was waiting for her to say something.
She knew instantly what it was.
I love you.
Don’t go.
The words lodged in her throat. She opened her mouth, tried to say them. But in the end she just couldn’t.
“I love you,” he said gently, and the words weren’t a taunt, or said as way of prompting her to say it back. The words were a statement of fact with maybe even just a hint of surprise thrown in. “I love you,” he said again, straightening.
I know.
But she didn’t say the words aloud because he was stepping back, moving away.
“Goodbye, Rebecca.”
I love you, too.
“Adam,” she said softly.
But he ignored her. And this time she knew it was over for good. This time she knew he wasn’t coming back.
“WHAT DID SHE SAY?” Lindsey asked the moment her dad came out of the hauler.
Her dad checked up. “Lindsey,” he said, stopping in the middle of the road that separated the permanent garages from the haulers that parked across from the structures. “What are you doing here?”
“I followed you,” she admitted, having to move out of the way of a man pushing a cart of tires. Everyone hustled about, fans working their way through the crowd in search of autographs. She saw a few heading their way. “Everyone thinks you ran off to go to the bathroom, but I knew better. You have a bladder like a camel.”
Her dad shook his head and started walking again. “We need to get back to Victory Lane.”
“What did she say?” she asked, falling in step beside him.
He smiled at a fan who thrust a piece of paper out in front of him, signing his name without thought. A few people called out their congratulations. Lindsey marveled that even with it being so dark out—the only light came from the inside of the still-open garage—everyone seemed to recognize her dad and know his name. But that was the way it should be, because her dad rocked and one day
everybody
would know that.
“Well?” she asked. He didn’t say anything, and she paused to swipe away a gnat that buzzed around her face. Now that it was dark the bugs were out in full force.
“We’ll talk about it later,” he said, turning just past the garage and heading toward Victory Lane.
“Dad, wait,” she said, grabbing his hand and turning him toward her. “
What
did she
say?
”
“Nothing,” he said, looking away from her and swiping a hand through his still-damp hair. “She said nothing.”
Lindsey felt her eyes widen. “Did you tell her you love her?”
“She doesn’t care.”
“But did you tell her?”
“Of course I told her,” he said, standing there, his big body tall and stiff and yet somehow slumped. “I told her that.” He looked away. “Yesterday I told her that, too. But she doesn’t care. She’s too focused on what it was like being with Randy to realize I’m a different man. A better man.”
“And you thought by winning tonight’s race you’d win her heart, too.”
His gaze snapped back to hers. In the halogen glare of the garage lights, she could see him look at her in a strange way, his eyes darting all around her face only to connect with hers again. “You really aren’t a little girl anymore, are you?”
“I am,” she said softly because she could see the hurt in his eyes. “I’ll always be your little girl, Daddy.”
She thought he would continue to stand there, hoped that he wouldn’t, so when he stepped toward her and pulled her up and into his arms, she felt tears come to her eyes. His big arms wrapped around her just as they had a hundred times, her feet dangling off the ground. Two weeks ago she might have told him she was too big for that kind of hug, but tonight she didn’t care. She loved her dad with everything she had, and she wanted to kill that Becca Newman for turning him away.
“I love you, kiddo,” he said softly, his face buried in the crook of her neck.
“I love you, too,” she said back.
He pulled back, shifting her to one side but still holding her aloft. There were tears in his eyes.
Her dad never cried.
Not even when her mom left.
“You’re all I’ve got, aren’t you?” he asked gently.
“I am. But you’re all I’ve got, too.”
“And that’s enough, isn’t it?” he said, his green eyes peering into her own. “That’s always been enough.”
“It is,” she said, putting a hand against his jaw. He hadn’t shaved, his whiskers prickling her skin. “We’ll only ever need each other.”
They were familiar words. Words her dad used to say to her to comfort her after her mom had left. She could tell he recognized them. “You’re pretty bright for someone so young.”
She tried smiling at him, somehow managing to pull one off. “Hey, you just said I wasn’t little anymore.”
“I said you weren’t a
little girl.
You’re always going to be a Tater Tot.”
“Next to you, Hulk Hogan would be a Tater Tot.”
He smiled back. That was good, she thought. “You better get going,” she said. “Cece and Blain might get mad that their new driver is missing in action.”
“Yeah. You’re probably right,” he said, setting her down. “Cover for me, would you? Tell them I’ve had a touch of the flu.”
“Will do,” she said with a conspirator’s smile.
He turned. She didn’t follow. He turned back, still walking. “You coming?”
“Actually, all this talk of going to the bathroom has me thinking I might need to go, too.”
“’Kay. I’ll see you over there.”
She waved. He glanced back once more before heading off to a victory celebration that she wouldn’t normally miss, but at the moment she had bigger fish to fry.
Becca Newman.
Lindsey turned on her heel and marched her way through race fans, crew members and the occasional toolbox being pushed toward a hauler, her frequently muttered, “Excuse me,” falling on mostly deaf ears.