Page 155 of Twisted Trails
He scoffs. “Well,Ms. In Love three times.”
“Shut up.” I chuckle, bumping my shoulder against his.
Dane’s smile fades into something softer. “No, really. How areyou? I feel bad for not checking in more.”
“You don’t have to,” I say, a little too quickly. “I’m feeling good. But…” My voice trails off, and I feel the crack forming before I even finish the sentence. “I wanted to talk to you about something.”
His head tilts. “Anything.”
I hesitate. Not because I don’t trust him. I do. With everything. But this? This is the thing we’ve carried together from the start. The fire that kept us moving forward when wecouldn’t look back without falling apart, and I’m about to ask him to let me put it down.
My thumb finds a loose thread in the blanket and tugs. I can’t look at him yet. I’m afraid of what I’ll see if I do. Hurt. Disappointment. Maybe even betrayal. Because this revenge is not just mine.It was never just mine.
I inhale slowly and then lift my gaze to him. “How bad would it be if I let go of our plan?”
His eyes snap wide like I just pulled the ground out from under both of us, and maybe I did. Maybe that’s what this is. The unbuilding of the thing that used to keep me alive. The part of me that used to think justice and vengeance were the same thing.
Now, I’m starting to think there’s a difference.
“I know,” I rush out. “I know it’s yours too. I know he ruined your life as well, and it’s not fair of me to say that, but…” My voice catches, and suddenly my throat feels tight.
I look down at my hands and the tape wrapped around my fingers. Every time I move them, I’m reminded how far I’ve fallen behind.
“I have to win the next race to even stay in the running,” I whisper. “And we both know that won’t happen. Not with these fingers, and it’s not just that. It’s just…”
The words falter again. I can’t bring myself to say it. That I’m tired of chasing pain for the sake of a goal I don’t recognize as mine anymore.
“It’s not the most important thing in the world anymore,” Dane finishes softly.
A truth I’ve been circling in my mind for weeks.
“What if…” I barely manage the next words. “What if I just wanted to finish the season in a good way? Not gunning for the overall. Not telling anybody about my secret. Just letting Allen Crews disappear into nothing afterward.”
He doesn’t answer. Just watches me like he’s watching a thread unravel, waiting to see if I’ll break or hold.
“And what if…” I continue, pushing the words out before my courage disappears. “What if I did the hip surgery as soon as the season’s over? Took the time to actually heal this time. Get strong again, and maybe next season, or the one after, I come back. As me. Alaina Crews. In the women’s field. If no one finds out what we did, there’s no reason I couldn’t, right?”
Silence stretches between us, but when I finally have the courage to look up at him again, his eyes are wide and brimming with too many emotions. Grief. Relief. Love.
I blink back the burn in my own and ask the question that’s been strangling me from the inside.
“Would you be mad at me for that?”
He shakes his head wordlessly, but the way his eyes hold mine says everything.
The relief hits first, then the guilt. That horrible twist in my chest that I even had to ask him. That I made him carry this with me all this time without really seeing how heavy it was for him too.
I blink, and the tears are already rising fast. “Mason said it doesn’t matter what the world thinks. As long as our people know the truth, I think that’s enough. It’s okay if just the people who matter understand what happened, and we can still love our sport, our lives, even if the Raine siblings are out there doing the same.”
“Yeah.” Dane swallows hard, so hard I can hear it. “Yeah. I think we can do that.”
All the breath leaves my lungs as I reach out and hold up my uninjured pinky. He stares at it, then at me, and a tear slips out of his eye and runs down his cheek.
“I promise you…” I whisper, “… to give life a fighting chance, Dane.”
Hegrips my pinky so hard he almost breaks this one, too, then yanks me into him. It’s not a careful hug. It’s a collapsing one. Arms clinging, shoulders shaking, every breath ragged.
He cries into my neck like he’s finally letting go of everything he’s been holding in since I crashed, since I broke, and I hold him like he’s the only thing that matters, because for so long, he was.
