Page 50 of Tipping Point

He gives a noncommittal grunt.

“Have you ever had a serious relationship?”

“Off the record?” I watch his neck tense up.

I frown. “Just making conversation.”

“I told you I have nothing to offer women.” He shrugs.

“Well, not nothing. You bought me a fabulous dress.”

We’re quiet for a moment as we reflect on the dress, how he helped me step into the shoes, how he looked at me afterwards.

The tension between us is back, warm and thick and cloying.

I clear my throat. “Anyway, they had quite an interesting take on it.”

“On what?”

“On being with a race car driver.”

He’s keeping his eyes on the road and his shoulders relaxed, but I can see his fingers clench the wheel a little harder.

I wish I could let it go.

Why can’t I let it go?

Because I suspect he was waiting for me at the cafe. Because of how his eyes drew me in and how the muscles on his forearms flexed when he drove, how he grimaced, and smoothed the pain away with the tip of his tongue. Because his body under the shirt was covered in tattoos and because his shoulder was a warped and twisted scar, and because I wanted to touch him there, and trail my hands down and have him shiver the way I did when his thumbs grazed my ankle.

He will not give me any part of his soul, and he’s made that very clear. He’s waiting for me to decide if that is good enough for me.

I’m not sure that it is.

Besides, I think, shaking my head. This isn’t where I’m supposed to be. As soon as Dixon is ready, after his wife, after he mourns, he will take his place here.

It’s all temporary. It will do me good not to get lost in that.

We pull up to the curb at the hotel and a valet stands off to one side, tentatively gauging if Finn wants his service or not.

I hadn’t realised we’d stopped, and Finn sits with his back to his door, body squared towards me, watching me in silence.

I blush.

“What did you want to say?” he asks softly.

“Just that they seem to have found ways to make it work, this lifestyle and the risk.”

He bites his lip.

“My mother would disagree.”

I don’t speak, urging him to fill the silence.

“It’s having a family, or racing,” he states. “That’s what my mother said before she left.”

“She left you?”

He nods. “My father didn’t know how to fill that void in me. He tried by taking me to go racing, instilling this passion in me.”

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