The Champion (Racing on the Edge) (20 page)

We said our goodbyes, I wished him good luck, and then I
headed up to the tower with Emma.

On the way up to the private suites, I ran into Paul
Leighty’s girlfriend, Elaina. She was new this year and had some things to
learn about tact. She flat out asked me if Jameson had signed a prenup.

Who asked that?

Up until that moment, the thought of a prenup had never
even crossed my mind. Jameson never mentioned it. No one in our families ever
mentioned so why did this girl I’d only met five minutes ago?

That got me thinking the majority of the race about
prenups and if Jameson had wanted one. It was a little late now but he was
worth a lot of money these days and had cars, houses, all kinds of stuff I
would consider his but if something happened—I had to mentally stop myself
there. I couldn’t focus on the race and prenups so I instead focused on the
race.

“Your fuel window is sixty laps bud.” Kyle told him once
he was making the pace laps prior to the start.

“10-4.” Jameson said and then asked, “I need a couple
Gatorades at each stop.”

“Will do. Just make sure you try to keep cool and keep
drinking fluids.”

Being NASCAR’s longest night, none of the drivers were thrilled
with the heat today. I was worried about him and by lap three hundred, when the
sun had finally set, the temperature hadn’t dropped and my fears of him getting
dehydrated were starting to grow.

“How do these auxiliary switches work?” Jameson asked.
His voice was completely drained.

“If you turn on the one for your seat, you’ll have to
turn the one for your helmet up.”

“Oh,” he began to fade in the field creating a distance
between him and Paul Leighty in turn four. “No wonder.”

“How’s your temps?”

It took another lap before he replied to Kyle’s question.

“Me? Or the car?”

“Both I guess.” Kyle let out a nervous chuckle that was
rare for him. “You hangin’ in there bud?”

He was silent for another lap as he battled with a lap
car to stay in his twelfth place running order and my heart leapt into my
throat.

“Yeah, just tired,” He let out a whoosh of air and
continued with a dull voice. “When I get close to other cars, my temps shoot
up.”

It didn’t help that he was running mid-pack after a pit
altercation when Spencer dropped the jack too soon.

On the final stop, water was spewing from the radiator
from the vent on the right side of the hood and got Spencer and Gentry in the
face. Whenever the temps in the car went up, the vent on the right side of the
car near the windshield spewed hot water.

It seemed every stop, and there were many from the tires
shredding about every twenty laps, something went wrong. The guys were dropping
air tools, tires were getting away and Jameson kept getting in the pit at the wrong
angle. He had the pit in between Colin and Paul and every time, Colin got into
his pit sideways so that meant Jameson got into his at the wrong angle.

“Damn it, we need to get this together!” Jameson shouted
after the last stop. “I need another Gatorade. My feet are burning through the
heat shields. Oh, and not the grape one. That was gross.”

I laughed beside Nancy who was holding Axel up near the
window to see the cars pass by. His wide green eyes fixated on the track below.

Jameson didn’t want to make a big deal out of it but he
was, in fact, feeling the heat and making comments, like the heat shields and
that he was tired. That was his way of letting us know without complaining.

“How many more laps?” I asked mostly to myself and
worrying about Jameson.

Nancy looked over her shoulder at me shifting Axel to her
hip. He latched on to her necklace with his hands and then quickly turned to
sucking on it. “I think there’s about a hundred.”

Those hundred laps were way longer than I, or Jameson,
would have liked.

At one point Kyle and Jimi contemplated taking Jameson
out of the car and putting in a back-up driver from the Nationwide series.

He managed to hang onto a ninth place finish but as soon
as he was out of the car and walking away from the car he collapsed.

The media, huddled around, caught wind of the situation
and started in about the drivers doing too much each week and the possible heat
exhaustion results.

There was no way you were going to tell Jameson Riley he
was doing too much. Yes he was doing too much between racing sprint cars, the
Cup series, running a track and a three-man sprint car team but like I said,
you couldn’t tell him that. He was doing what he loved.

Jameson was forced by the track officials to visit the
infield care center along with a handful of other drivers but his thoughts were
once again focused on the race and what he could have done for a better finish,
despite his lethargic demeanor.

“Man,” he wiped a cold rag across his forehead and over
the back of his neck. His matted sweaty hair stood in odd directions. His face,
flushed from the hours of exertion portrayed his thoughts clearly to those who
knew him well. “I must have slid through that pit box five times onto the air
hose.” He looked at Spencer who sat beside him being treated for the burns to
his hands and forearms when the overspray from the radiator had scorched him.
“Sorry guys. It just wasn’t my night.”

They understood though. Everyone had bad nights. Just
look at last year when this very same race was almost lost because of his pit
crew.

Later that night when we got to the hotel, the same one
we stayed at a year ago, I watched him sleep wondering how I got so lucky to
have him.

I can’t say everything in our live was easy but I can say
that we worked well through it.

Sometime in the night, Jameson’s fingers slid around my
neck and then into my hair to cradle the back of my head. I could feel his
breath on my face and then his nose at my temple. We exhaled together and then he
moved to rest his forehead against mine.

His body trembled from exhaustion as he smiled. “I can’t
believe it’s been a year.”

“Me either.” I smiled knowing despite the complications
from the race, he remembered the night and what tonight meant.

That’s when the prenup ideas came back to me and I voiced
my concern.

“Should we have signed a prenup?”

I was immediately turned in his arms. “No.”

It was a prompt answer. One that you know he didn’t have
to think about.

“But what about, I don’t know, all they money you had and
all your shit. Wouldn’t you want your shit protected?”

“What is this all about?” he finally asked sitting up on
his elbow to look down at me.

“Paul’s girlfriend asked me if we signed one.  I
just thought, maybe with the whole Darrin thing, and being pregnant, you may
have forgotten about one.”

His eyes scowled even in the poorly lit room.

“No, I didn’t forget. Phillip asked and I said no. If you
were to ever leave me, you might as well take everything I have. To me, I would
have nothing left if you were gone. Besides that,” he continued. “It’s not like
you were in it for the money. I knew that.” He laughed leaning back on the bed
beside me. His hand moved over the sheets to find mine. “You were in it for the
sex.”

“Yeah, you’re right. I’m in it for the sex.”

The topic of the prenup was never brought up again. He
said his part on it and I never questioned his intentions. He knew what he
wanted.

I’d taken a vow to myself that I’d never hide anything
from Axel or Jameson.

If something was wrong, I would tell them.

I understood why people put things off. Fear of the
unknown. To me, as I’ve said many times, not knowing was worse than the fear of
keeping the secret.

What if I hadn’t stayed that night in Charlotte with
Jameson?

We wouldn’t have experienced some of the best times of
our lives. In those three weeks I learned more about myself and him than the
previous eleven years. I also got knocked up, but I learned a lot.

If I wouldn’t have listened to myself that night in
Charlotte I wouldn’t be looking down on the most beautiful little boy.

Currently stealing flowers from grave sites he was
beautiful and had brought so much joy to our lives. Being a mother to a child
where your husband was constantly on the road was difficult at times, but I
wouldn’t change anything about our lives. Well maybe some of the late night
crying sessions or the teething. Those weren’t fun. I knew the fast passed
lifestyle Jameson lived racing on the edge and I knew what we had, wouldn’t be
any different.

Four months had passed since Charlie passed away and we
were now having our memorial race weekend for him, on what would have been his
forty third birthday.

In those four months, life had changed as it always did
with time.

We moved back to Mooresville because of Dana and Cooper.

It never failed. When I was home alone they’d come over,
so I made the executive decision to move back to Mooresville.

Along with a pair of restraining orders, it was the best
thing for everyone.

After they broke into our house, which I later learned
was not actually a “break in” but a “let in” by Spencer. Regardless, it was
what sealed the deal for me.

By the way, Spencer paid the price for this “let in”
incident and spent two days in the hospital because Jameson tased him with a taser.
This wouldn’t have ordinarily landed someone in the hospital but Jameson did it
at the worst possible time he could. Spencer was driving.

The conversation between Nancy and Jameson was the most
entertaining when he had to tell them who tased Spencer.

“What do you mean you tased your brother?” Nancy gasped.
“Jameson, that doesn’t sound like a very nice thing to do.”

Jameson’s response: “It wasn’t a nice thing to do but he
let Dana in
my
house while we were on our honeymoon. That wasn’t very
nice.”

She turned to Spencer and his broken arm.

“Spencer,” she scolded. “That woman is crazy! Why would
you do something like that?”

That went on for an hour and in the end, Nancy was upset
with Spencer and took Jameson’s side in the whole situation. No surprise there,
Jameson was her baby and could do little wrong in her eyes.

Just so we’re clear, that taser was taken away after that
by Jimi.

Andrea had taken over my position at the track and
Jameson hired a whole array of staff to fill in the voids from us not being
there. I flew home every few weeks to make sure everything was running smoothly
but other than that, Axel and I traveled with Jameson, in our home away from
home
...
the motor coach.

This worked well but if I was being honest with you,
raising a kid on the road was not easy nor was it easy raising a kid in
general. There were times Jameson got stressed out and took our parenting
frustrations out on each other but looking at our families, we understood that
was completely normal. Hell Alley and Spencer once stopped talking for a week
over grounding Lane for sticking toothpaste up his nose. You may think this is
not a normal thing to ground a kid for but the little shit did this weekly. It
was like he was lacking mint or something.

Alley, the amazing super woman that she was, had just
given birth to Alexis Nicole Riley a few weeks back when we were in Daytona.
Days after her birth, she was back to working. I couldn’t understand how
quickly she recovered from childbirth. I still felt out of shape after having
Axel. Or maybe that was the ten pounds I still carried around with me.

With everyone starting families, Spencer and Alley
decided to have a house built near ours in Mooresville and across the street
for Aiden and Emma. Their fifteen hundred square foot apartment in Charlotte
was apparently not big enough any longer.

Having the entire family living within walking distance
to one another was like living with the cast from those
Jackass
movies.
The boys were always thinking of stupid shit to do and usually, one of them
ended up in the hospital or with a concussion.

In the last four months, Jameson had three concussions,
six stitches above his left eyebrow, two broken fingers and three broken ribs.
And those injuries were just at home, not racing.

Aiden and Spencer’s injuries were similar only worse at
times because Jameson had a flair for talking them into the dangerous shit. He
usually say something along the lines of: “I bet you can’t make that.” And then
he’d rattle off with some ridiculous dare. Every
single
time they took
the challenge.

After the third concussion, Simplex, concerned their
driver was crazy, forced him to sign a contract that prevented him from
engaging in reckless or unsafe behavior that would prevent him from living up
to his end of his five year contract with them.

I wouldn’t say it was all the activities they were doing,
just the way they were doing them that made it so dangerous. They were crazy.
He may have signed the agreement but I think Simplex knew damn well he didn’t
stop riding his dirt bike or racing sprint cars. Two things he’d rather die
than give up. Asking a guy like Jameson to give up sprint car racing was like
asking him to give up sex.

That was clearly not an option.

Emma and Aiden were busy getting everything ready for
their little
ones
that were due in November. The shocking revelation
really came when they found out they were having twins. Aiden was not at all
excited about this but eventually came to terms with it.

Emma was wrong to have decided a
major
life decision
without him but they worked everything out after a few weeks and Jimi’s words
of wisdom.

His exact words to the two of them after a very public
fight at a restaurant outside of Atlanta, “Listen you two
...
I’m tired of this shit. Act like fucking
adults! So you fuck up and get married in Vegas, did you really expect either
of you to make responsible decisions when it came to becoming parents?” Neither
of them said anything so he continued with, “That’s what I thought.”