Racing Outside the Line: A Love Story at 190 Mph (11 page)

Well, if I’d learned anything in college, it was that when you are backed into a corner, the best way out is fighting. "Behave myself? Like a good lil’ kid sister?" I asked with sarcasm and disdain.

"Man, you’ve gotten quite a temper in your oh so
old
age... " I was looking for something to throw when he added, "Okay, I get it; you hate me for calling you that. But there isn’t much I can do about it now." I turned to face him and saw that he really was sorry that it had upset me.

"Why? Why did you call me that all these years? You had to know how old I was."

"I guess, deep down I knew how old you were, but…" He didn’t finish his sentence. He pushed his chair back and stood up.

He started to walk away from me heading toward the window, when I caught his arm. "Seth..." I didn’t know what to say, I just knew I didn’t want to let him get out of this discussion. It was frustrating that he knew me so well and still didn’t seem as if he could share everything with me.

He turned back to me and looked at what I’m sure was my forlorn face. I wanted so much for him to feel as comfortable with me as I did with him. He put his hand to my cheek and surprised me with an explanation. "I
had
to. I had to give myself a reason to…" He hesitated, and I leaned in closer to him, placing my hands on his waist. He took a deep breath and continued, "I had to give myself a reason to stay away from you."

My brow furrowed in confusion. I didn’t understand. I thought he didn’t want me all those years ago. I knew he was slightly attracted to me and cared about me like a brother, but that night of my prom, I thought he felt he had made a mistake. I looked away from him, trying to fit what he was saying to the idea I had believed for the past four years. He
had
to have regretted it; he had to have been wishing he hadn’t slept with me. Why else would he have left me the way he did? "I thought… I thought you regretted…" I couldn’t finish my sentence. I couldn’t bring myself to say it to him, it still hurt.

"You thought I regretted that night, I know, and I’m so sorry. I’m so, so sorry. I couldn’t tell you the truth without, without admitting that I didn’t want you to leave."

My eyes closed. I shook my head trying not to sound as if I were pleading. "What would have been so bad about that? We would have been together."

"You were too young, you wouldn’t have gone to college, you wouldn’t have had a life. I couldn’t do that to you."

I squeezed my eyes shut and shook my head more violently. I couldn’t accept this. Was he crazy? How could he not know what I would be like? Desmond had to have told him. "A life?" I said out loud trying to comprehend the meaning of the word. "A life?" I felt incredulity and disdain over the word that represented the shell of what I’d been living the past four years. "You don’t have any idea what it was like for me, do you?"

He pulled me into his arms and held me close. "I didn’t, not at the time. When you called that night a few weeks before you came home, I… didn’t know what to say… when your friend told me you had been suicidal, I… I thought she was exaggerating, trying to make me feel bad. But, then I remembered how you were after your dad passed away, what it took to pull you out of that, and I knew… I knew how badly I screwed up. But it was too late," he hugged me tighter and stroked my hair. "I thought you would have a life, Lexie. I thought you would be young and do stupid things in college. I thought you would forget about me. I really did," his voice shook the slightest bit with this list of admissions.

I took a deep breath and let it out slowly. All those years of thinking he didn’t care. The pain I went through, all of it was pointless. He pulled away from me and looked down into my eyes. "I’m sorry, Lexie."

I broke away from him feeling dazed. I walked over to the window, which had a low, wide sill with at least twenty pictures on it in frames. Pictures of the different cars Seth had had stared back at me. Several pictures of him in Victory Lane with Wyatt, and a few of Desmond and Seth in Victory Lane, lined the window sill. They were all in matching black frames that looked very neat and orderly. They were in such contrast to the chaos I felt rolling around inside me. I walked along the sill, looking at images, trying to imagine what my place would have been in these photographs if he had just been honest with me. Shifting my gaze, I looked out the window. It was beginning to get dark outside and the street lamps had just come on.

All those years, all that wasted time, all that wasted pain, over a reality that didn’t exist. I closed my eyes, why couldn’t it have been different? We could have been together like we are now.

Of course, that was the moment that I opened my eyes and looked down at the last grouping of picture frames. They were the most recent. There was a picture that looked like the whole staff in front of the new shop and one of the crew in Victory Lane that I recognized from a race a month ago. In both photographs, stood Alexandria smiling her perfect little smile with Seth’s arm poised lovingly around her shoulders. I picked up a picture of the crew before a recent race that had Alexandria standing next to Seth, they were smiling into each other’s eyes. Alexandria. My brain stalled as it avoided taking in unpleasant information.
That would be his fiancée, Alexis
, said the crappy voice in my head that spoke the evil truths I really wanted to avoid.
You know, the one he was engaged to when he made love to you last night, the one he is
still
engaged to right now as you stand here trying to figure out how you could have fit into his life. How you could have been in her place in these photographss!

"What am I doing?" I asked myself aloud. Holding the frame in my right hand, I brought my left hand up to my face, covering my eyes.

"Lex," I hadn’t even seen Seth walk over to me, but he was suddenly there in front of me, trying to pull the photograph from my hand. "I want
you
—I don’t want to lose you again."

I didn’t know he’d ever really had me. He certainly hadn’t ever claimed me as his own, aside from as a "kid sister," but here was this ridiculous woman standing here in the photograph being claimed by him in front of a hundred thousand people. She hadn’t suffered the pain of rejection; he hadn’t let her go on for years thinking he didn’t want her.
He didn’t know I was in pain,
I tried to tell myself.
He didn’t know I wouldn’t move on
.

"Lex, say something, please." I finally let go of the photograph as Seth pulled it from my hand placing it face down on the window sill. He started to put his arms around me, but I jumped back as if he were trying to strike me.

I shook my head more fervently and whispered, "I… need… time."

Seth started to reach for me again, but Desmond walked through the door smiling broadly. "Sorry about that, Lex. You’ll get used to the constant interruptions, though. So Seth, I was thinking Lex could hang out with the three of us more. I gave her a full clearance badge, and I’m working on getting her a pass for this weekend’s race. That’s okay with you, right?"

Seth was still staring at me while I was looking down at the frame he had placed back on the window sill. "Yeah, that’s good, Des." I noticed there was only sadness and concern in the quiet way he responded.

"So, that settles it, then," Desmond began cheerfully, "you’ll definitely be staying, and maybe I could even get you to help me with a few things here in the office."

Seth slowly and cautiously reached his hand out toward me, probably gauging my reaction in case I jumped away from him again, but I didn’t. I remained perfectly still as he lifted my chin up to look him in the eye. "Does that settle it, Lex? Will you be staying?"

Will you be getting rid of your fiancé? Will we be together permanently?

A quick rapping pulled our attention to the door, where Allan, Seth’s assistant, stood. "Seth, Adam’s here to talk about the changes you wanted to make to the website—he’s waiting in the conference room."

"Thanks, Allan," Seth didn’t take his eyes off me, "let him know I’ll be there in a minute." When Allan left the room, he resumed his line of questioning in a softer voice, "Will you stay?"

I might have said, "I don’t know" or a flippant "maybe" because that was really all I felt capable of—I still had a lot to digest and come to terms with—but his eyes were so soft. They were pleading with me, imploring me to stay with him, and after so many years of wanting this, I couldn’t say no.

"Yes, I’ll stay," but I quietly added, "for now."

Desmond clapped his hands once, "Good! I’m pretty much done here, we can head home now. I don’t know about you, but I’m starving," then he paused to look at Seth. "Seth, you can let go of her chin now, I think she’ll be needing that."

Seth immediately broke contact with me and went to his desk to gather together some papers. "I’ll meet you back at home in 45 minutes." He walked to the door and paused in the doorway to look back at me. He looked like he wanted to say something, but then his eyes shifted to Desmond, and he walked away, down the hall.

"Let’s get out of here, huh?" Desmond grabbed my hand and helped me to uproot myself from my location at the window sill.

When we got back home, I went upstairs and unpacked my suitcase. I tried to convince myself that everything was going to work out fine, but I wasn’t having an easy time of it. The words,
"He’s still engaged
!" kept repeating over and over in my head as if it were the tune to "It’s a Small World." Would he actually break up with her? Would he be upset about it? Would he ever be engaged to me? Would we ever be able to be open about our relationship? Would I ever just be a sane, happy person… probably not, at least in answer to that last question. I was standing on the balcony in a light yellow sundress that was considerably cooler than the jeans I had on earlier, when I heard Desmond’s bellow, "Lexie, dinner!"

During dinner, the three of us settled into a comfortable conversation about old times, old races, and practical jokes. It was easy to joke around with them, and I was thankful for the light-hearted distraction from obsessing over the future of my relationship with Seth.

A time-honored tradition among the three of us had always been late night swimming in the rain. It felt good to continue the light-hearted atmosphere with Seth and Desmond after so much drama. We took a few beers out to the pool and jumped in.

I could hear Desmond and Seth discussing something business related, so I took that opportunity to dunk my head under the surface of the water. When I came up, though, my ears couldn’t help but hear her name.

"You’re gonna have to work something out because Alexandria and I just aren’t getting married." My heart was beating very fast, and I disguised a large smile by taking another gulp of my beer. I floated over to the side of the pool that put me just a bit closer to the boys. Trying to make myself look casual, I put my beer up on the ledge, but I was really trying to hear what they were saying.

"You’ll have to take this slowly or it’s going to be a big PR nightmare. Are you sure this isn’t just cold feet? I mean, you got like this with Cynthia and Marie, too."

"No, Desmond, it’s done," was Seth’s firm answer before continuing in a softer voice, "You said it would be tough with Cynthia too, and you made
that
work."

"That was different, you weren’t engaged to her. Since Cynthia, everyone has called you the consummate bachelor, the driver least likely to commit. You know how much work it took for me to spin your relationship with Alexandria in the right direction? This is going to be tricky." After a moment of quiet, he continued, "Tell me this is something you both decided, tell me this isn’t going to be another stalker in the making."

Seth didn’t answer. He downed the rest of his beer and swam away from Desmond toward me. He splashed me and winked, probably trying to gage my reaction to the information I had just heard. I certainly had a lot of questions. Not having paid attention to the tabloid articles that surfaced about him while I was away at college, I really had no idea who Cynthia and Marie were. I splashed back and swam after him to start a dunking war.

He was clearly much stronger than I was, so I definitely spent more time underneath the water than Seth did, but more importantly, I spent more time with Seth’s hands on me. It was a game I used to play when I was younger when the feelings I had for him were in no way returned. It had been an excuse to be close to him, but the game now felt much more seductive since I knew that when his hand slipped and touched my breast, or his arms held me against his body a little too tightly, it was no accident. Thankfully, Desmond seemed oblivious to the difference in motivation that our game had taken on.

After laughing so hard that my throat was scratchy, I swam to the side of the pool in an attempt to catch my breath and to take another gulp of beer. When Desmond offered to make a batch of his infamous Tequilaritas, Seth’s sparkling eyes caught my attention, making the momentary absence of Desmond quite welcome.

The second he was out of sight, Seth had his hands all over me and his tongue delving into my mouth. I don’t know what was sexier about that moment, the actual kiss or the excitement over the possibility of being caught. Either way, it was amazing.

"You are definitely the sexiest woman alive," he sounded amazed. "I wanted to do that the first second I saw you in that damn black bikini of yours."

My eyes widened with concern,
well, at least he didn’t find the note
, I thought to myself.

"Yes, I read the note too," he smiled nodding. "You left it in the top drawer. I was looking for a Band-Aid." Crap, not only had he read the note, but I clearly still couldn’t hide a single thought from appearing on my face. I really had to work on that. "You don’t keep in touch with this Ace guy, do you?"