Page 23 of Drive To Survive

“Is he?” she asked, her eyes still dead ahead. “Did you talk to him when he came off the track?”

“Yeah. He’s buzzing, Everly.”

She looked at me then, head tilted back, a hand shielding her eyes from the setting sun. “You can say it.”

I frowned. “Say what?”

“That you were right, and I was wrong.”

“I wouldn’t dream of it.”

Her lips twitched, and I wanted to bend down and kiss the corner of her mouth. She refocused her attention on the track, but despite my reassurances, her shoulders remained stiff. My fingers itched to massage them, to help her relax. I could just imagine how that would look to the other parents lined up along the railing watching their kids out on the track, and so I stuffed my hands into my pockets instead.

“He has natural talent,” I said, giving in to a desire to keep the conversation going. “If you allow him to keep coming, we can hone his innate abilities.”

“Why wouldn’t I let him come?” she asked, her eyes tracking Rhett’s kart as he drove around the track.

“I don’t know, Everly. You tell me.”

This time she turned around. “You confuse me.”

I nodded, smiling wryly. “I confuse a lot of people.”

“You don’t fool me, though,” she said, looking away once more. “You act all grumpy and rude on the outside, but no man who shows the kindness to a child that you’ve shown to Rhett is all bad. Far from it. You can push me away all you like, but I see you, Nico Palmer.”

Air escaped my lungs in a whoosh. I stepped back, needing space. I ran my hand over the back of my neck, unsure of what the hell to say to a comment like that. Her fingers brushed my wrist, and then she put her hand inside mine.

My first instinct was to yank my hand away, but the second of hesitation brought on a warmth I couldn’t deny. That I didn’t want to deny. It felt too good.

“See, that’s not so bad, is it?” she asked.

I closed my eyes and shook my head. “I’m not the right man for you.”

“And I’m not the right woman for you, as you told me so eloquently earlier this week, but don’t pretend, Nico. There’s a spark here that I don’t understand, and clearly neither do you. It doesn’t make it any less real.”

I sighed, shaking my head for a second time. “It’s unethical. Your son is a student at my school. Even if I wanted to have a fling with you, it wouldn’t work.”

“Why?” she pressed. “What are you afraid of? That you’ll lose your impartiality with the other kids here? Don’t you trust yourself, Nico? Besides, if you don’t try, you’ll never know.”

This time I withdrew my hand and stuffed it back into my pocket. I had to put a stop to this, right now. “That’s just it, Everly. I don’t want to try.”

I turned away and left the viewing platform. Somehow, I had to get a handle on my emotions around her, control them and suppress them until they went away. Rhett was all that mattered, and me fucking his mother and then dumping her wouldn’t do that kid a bit of good. Whatever she said now, when passions were high, she’d end up feeling bitter, and no matter how hard she tried, that acrimony would spill over, and Rhett would be the one who’d suffer.

“Nico, I did it!”

Rhett tore off his helmet and came running toward me. I dropped to my haunches and held out my arms, caught him, and then powered to a standing position and swung him up in the air.

“You did, buddy. You nailed it.”

Over the last six weeks, Rhett’s early promise had begun to bear fruit. His confidence grew every time he got behind the wheel, and he had this instinctual balance between risk and reward that, from experience, I knew to be rare. Lots of factors could knock him off course, but if the stars aligned, and this kid stayed the distance, I could be looking at a future racing champion. It was early days, but that didn’t stop me from dreaming.

And that wasn’t the only thing that’d changed. Now, when Rhett turned up for his twice-weekly visits to the track, there was a light in his eyes that hadn’t been there when he’d first arrived. I’d love to find out if Everly was seeing improvements outside his visits here, but to know that, I’d have to ask her. Asking her meant talking to her, and I’d managed to avoid that particular activity for the last few weeks. I made sure that when she arrived with Rhett, I was already down at the track, and I stayed there until she left.

Some might call that kind of behavior cowardly. I called it sensible. Every time I caught a glimpse of her, I ached, and I wasn’t only talking about my balls. I got a pain in my chest, a kind of heavy weight that sat there and remained for a few hours after she left. I’d even started dreaming about her, and sometimes I’d wake with a raging hard-on and a bereft feeling the likes of which I hadn’t felt since I woke up in that damned hospital and Jared told me my career was over.

I knew that if I spoke to Everly, breathed in the heady scent of her perfume and the trace of lemon left behind by what I assumed was her bodywash, I’d lose control, shove her up against the nearest wall, and fuck her.

And afterward, she’d hate me for it, and I didn’t want her hating me.

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