What I don’t ask for is enough alcohol to knock me into a drunken stupor. Being able to forget about all of my flaws sounds like a perfect idea right now.
“Baby, you seem weird,” Keanna says a few minutes after watching me down my pain meds. She’s sitting on the stool next to me. We can’t leave since The Track is technically still open for a few hours, even though no one is here.
I look over at her, a lie balancing on the tip of my tongue. It’d be easy to tell her that I’m fine. That nothing at all is wrong. But she’d know better.
“Just thinking about life,” I mutter, taking another sip of the water she’d brought me.
“Baby…” her hand slides up and down my back. “You’ll be back on your bike in no time.”
“Yeah, until I get hurt again.”
Her hand stops moving. “You don’t get hurt very often, Jett. It probably won’t happen again.”
I shake my head. “You don’t know that. It’s all chance. But it’s worse than chance…chance is that you might get hurt in a car wreck. What I do is choose to ride a dirt bike all the time, and that’s a much more dangerous thing than driving.” I slam the bottle of water down so hard it makes her jump.
“What I’ve chosen is a career that will most definitely get me hurt over and over again.” I look at her, noticing for the first time that she’s wearing the dark purple scarf I’d bought her from my trip to Washington. I swallow. “What happens when I don’t recover in a few weeks? What happens when I fuck up my knee or my wrist or my head, and I can’t ride anymore?”
Her gaze darkens. “Baby…you’re just thinking about the worst right now. It’s going to be okay.”
I shake my head and stare out the window in front of us, looking out at the empty fields across the road. “Underneath this motocross thing, I’m a nobody. A total loser.”
“You are not,” she says, standing off her stool. “You’re an amazing person. So what that your leg is broken? You’ll heal and you’ll be fine.”
I shrug. “I just can’t stop thinking about how one day I might not recover fully and I’ll be off the team. One day will come where I can’t race motocross anymore. What will I do then? You’ll have a fancy degree and a good job and I’ll be stuck being the idiot loser that you have to take care of.”
She laughs. It’s a little chuckle at first, but then she bursts into pure, unfiltered laughter. “Oh my God, Jett…” she puts a hand to her chest and forces herself to stop laughing.
I sit up straighter and cross my arms over my chest while I wait for her to stop laughing.
“You think I’ve got this shit figured out? I have no idea what I’m doing, either. Nobody does. I don’t even think most adults know what they’re doing.”
I frown. “How are you so cool with this? I’m potentially a big failure with no career prospects to fall back on.
She shakes her head. “That’s not true. You have this place, The Track. You have experience and skills and fame. You could become a reporter on motocross, or a race announcer, or the manager of a team like Marcus. You could do all kinds of things.” She reaches for my hand. “Besides, baby. You still have a lot of racing ahead of you.”
“What if I don’t?” I say softly, as I stare at her hand in mine. “What if the next crash is what does me in? Stops me from racing forever?”
She shrugs. “What if a meteor crashes through the roof in three seconds and kills us both?”
Everything is quiet for a few seconds. I look up at the ceiling, then exhale. “Glad that didn’t happen.”
She punches me in the arm. “See? Everything is fine.”
I reach out and run my fingers down her chin, taking in how purely beautiful she is and how she has the ability to be calm and serious when I’m freaking out. I breathe in deeply and then pull her toward me for a kiss.
“Sorry I freaked on you, baby doll,” I whisper against her lips. “I’m just not having a good day.”
“Not every day is a good one,” she says, pressing her forehead to mine. “But no matter what, I’ll always be here with you. Sink or swim, win or lose.”
I grin, and some of my fear washes away beneath the power of her loving gaze. I wrap my arms around her and tug her toward me. She gets off her stool and positions herself between my legs, her hands finding their way around my chest.
“We’re soul mates,” she says. “Where you go, I go.”
“What if where I go is Loserville?”
She shrugs. “It doesn’t matter where we are. As long as we’re together.”
