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I couldn’t help the smile that lit my face.
I also couldn’t help the wince that followed that smile when she left my apartment and slammed the door so hard the rafters shook.
The keys that’d been sitting on the table by the door even jingled.
“Damn,” I murmured, my smile returning. “She’s pissed.”
As she rightfully should have been.
I’d said some not so nice things.
I should really apologize, yet my first instinct in this all was to protect myself from people knowing too much.
As a NASCAR driver, there wasn’t really much about me that people didn’t know.
It was fairly obvious that the fans would take literally anything I could give them, and this would be the juiciest news that had come out all year. Then I’d get a ton of bullshit thrown at me from all sides, and I’d spend the rest of my life answering ‘yes, I’m okay.’
When, in reality, when the chemo started, I’d be dying inside.
But my answer would always have to be positive, when in fact there was nothing about this experience that was positive.
Needless to say, if the news got out to the wrong person, shit wouldn’t be that great for me. Hence the not telling her anything.
Then again, if I was being truthfully honest, Zip scared me. And this fucking cancer scared me more—i.e., why I ignored it until it happened—and adding those two things together was like a match made in hell.
I was so lost in thought, about how I’d fucked up, about what my life would look like now, that I didn’t hear her come in.
In fact, I didn’t hear her walk across the apartment in front of me.
I was seeing, but not registering, thinking about how life would be different now.
How I’d have to give up racing for a while—and that was if I could get this cancer under control.
There was always a possibility…
“Are you okay?”
I blinked, startled to find Zip practically standing directly in front of me.
“Uh, yeah,” I croaked, and definitely not because I’d been intubated.
I definitely wasn’t okay.
She frowned.
That frown had me reacting before I could stop myself.
“I’m sorry for saying untrue things to push you away,” I blurted.
It had to be the pain meds.
I’d told myself I wasn’t going to apologize for that, yet here I was.
She blinked.
“I don’t think those things about you,” I said. “I like that you’re a free spirit. I like that you do what you want, and damn anyone who gets in your way. I like that you give everyone shit, even me. And I like that you’re living your life exactly how you want to live it. I also like that you don’t treat me like I’m some famous person. I’m just a normal guy to you.”
Her face changed throughout my words.
One, she looked flabbergasted. Two, she looked happy, with a slight flush to her cheeks. Three, she looked curious. But the last face…
“Why do you look embarrassed all of a sudden?” I asked.
“I, uh, have something to tell you,” she said.
My brows went up.
“Why do I have a feeling I won’t like your answer?” I asked.
She sat on the ottoman and looked at me sheepishly. “I might be a little obsessed with you.”
I blinked.
“That’s why Winston never introduced us,” she admitted. “He knew that I had this huge thing for you.”
“Thing?”
“Well,” she hesitated, “you were a big part of why I made it through a lot of my later childhood somewhat sane.”
“What?” I asked, confused.
“My dad used to plan our stops around the NASCAR events,” she explained. “Were you aware of that?”
I shook my head. “No.”
“Well,” she crossed her arms over her chest, tucking her hands into her armpits. In that moment, she looked so fucking vulnerable that I dropped my feet to the ground and began to lean forward but thought better of it. Instead, I moved so that my legs were on the outside of hers. “So my dad did some things…”
She then went on to tell me that her dad, in the process of trying to live his best life, had started to supplement his income via human trafficking.
“What a great way it was for him to use all the popularity of a NASCAR event that people flood to, while also giving this oh so convenient, family-friendly option to go to a circus while you’re in town.” She shook her head. “Obviously, I can’t prove that was why he’d paired up the events. But I have a sneaking suspicion that’s why.”
I shook my head. “That’s wild.”
“Winston was able to pinpoint at least one child to every single stop we made for ten straight years,” she said. “And since there were other events in town, it went unnoticed. I…” She looked at me then, her eyes haunted. “I changed my name because I couldn’t be associated with that man after learning all of that about him. It was bad enough that our childhood was so fucking awful. But to learn that we might’ve been a part of all of that…”
