Page 11 of Rear View
Stand tall, Ryah. Ask him who texted. Ask him who texted!“You don’t need to.” God, I sounded as pathetic as I was.
He exhaled, his chest falling with it. “No, I should. I’m sorry, R.J. I don’t want to hurt you and I shouldn’t have.” He gestured between us, then gripped the hair at the front of his head. “Crap! Just…sorry.”
My heart dropped. He looked so torn. And while the chasm inside my chest cracked just a little wider, he was hurting, so he still needed me and my grace. “Hey.” I stood, closing the distance between us, then wrapped my hand around his. “It’s alright.”
He nodded and pulled me to him, encasing me in his arms. I was midway through sliding my own around him when he drew back. Snatching up his coat, he headed for the door. “Are we still good for Tuesday? I get if you don’t want to—”
I forced a smile and waved him off, fighting back the tears that longed to break free. “It’s fine, Christian. We’re good.” He needed to go before those tears fell and exposed how raw my broken heart was. Following tight behind him, I opened the door. “I’ll see you Tuesday.”
“Tuesday,” he replied, then bent and pressed a kiss to my cheek. “Thanks, R.J.”
He stepped out and I closed myself in.
I wanted to chase after him, to tell him I was the one. But the sun was down, and I was alone. And I’d learned the hard way that bad things happened in the dark. Besides, who wanted a girl that was strapped to trouble? Christian hadn’t. Not that he’d told me as much when we’d ended things, but he hadn’t had to. His timing andthe way he’d pulled back had said enough. Still, evenifChristian had taken me back, it wasn’t like we’d be going public with it. Not whenhewas watching.
Chapter Two
Xavier
“You drop this thing on us and I’m kickin’ your ass,” I told Alec from under the car’s hydraulic hoist.
Yara, one of our rally team mechanics, rubbed the back of her hand across her forehead, dragging a streak of dirt over her taupe-colored skin. “I second that.”
Snow drifted over the gray concrete floor of the garage from the open door, sticking to the old oil and rust stains there.
Alec smirked where he stood next to the control levers. “If I drop this, you two aren’t kicking anyone’s ass.”
I cracked a lopsided grin. “Dick,” I said, then twisted to get a better look at the underside.“Shit.”
Yara’s mouth thinned when she lowered her torque wrench and nodded. “Shit.”
Giving the car’s side skirt a tap, I stepped out from under it, and wiped my grease-covered palms on the legs of my coveralls.
Yara followed, then shoved Alec aside and took over the controls. The thing made a high-pitched whine as she lowered it to the ground.
Alec laughed, then rubbed his palms together. “So, what was it?”
“The crankshaft,” I said.
Me and Alec had been climbing the ranks. We’d started drawing the good sort of attention and our team was doing decent, but the crankshaft was the heart of the damn car. That kinda expense was a hard hit for us.
Yara adjusted the straight black ends of her ponytail. “I’ll have to get clearance from Earl.”
“Xavier, Alec,” Earl called from the door of his office across the shop like he’d been summoned. He waved a hand for us to join him.
Alec and I exchanged a look.
Earl Gonzalez was somewhere in his mid-fifties. He owned the circuit and the team. Shitty black dye job on his short hair and mustache aside, he was a good guy, but the team was also a business. The bottom line mattered.
I dodged the tool chests and tires that sat out from the walls, then aimed that way, Alec flanking my left. Slapping the team logo above Earl’s door, I crossed inside where he waited.
“Take a seat,” he said.
I folded myself into one of the two chairs across the desk from him. Sitting back, I bent one knee, and stretched the other out in front of me. My forearms covered the armrests, my hands hanging loose at the front.
The rollers on his desk drawer hummed when he pulled it open. Grabbing some papers, he separated them into two piles. His attention jumped from me to Alec before he leaned forward and slid them across the desk. One for each of us.
I chucked my chin up. “What’s this?”
