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“Harvick filled in. Filled in. 0.006 seconds separating them. 0.006 seconds. Second closest race in NASCAR history. Harvick filled in for Earnhardt. History.”
“It's insane how much you know about this,” I comment, running my hands down my sweats as I sit back in the wooden chair, watching the racers finally slow.
“Y-you know what it takes? What it takes to make history?” Colin asks.
I pause, turning to face him. He's looking directly at me now. Colin is looking at me. He's never made eye contact for this long. Ever. If at all.
“What's that?”
He stares at me, and for a second, I wonder if he's forgotten what we were talking about. Until he speaks.
“Courage.”
I hold my breath as I gaze back at him. It's like he sees something in me. My hidden truth I've been covering for so long. He knows what I'm doing here. That I've fallen in love with his sister even if I haven't admitted it to her. He knows my weaknesses, my omission of painful truths. My reasons for playing football again. The hopeless boy beneath this shell of a man who still clings to the belief that miracles can happen, and that makingherproud of me again will somehow make that deadly disease vanish without a trace.
It's like he sees it.
He sees me.
As the coward I am.
“Colin?” I hear Dylan's voice sneak up on us from the other side of the door.
But I can't keep my eyes off of Colin.
“You finished the form?” she asks with the paper in her hand.
His eyes shift to her hands behind me before peering down at the floor.
“You put me and Lake as your pit crew? We're the team?”
He nods once and my heart grips at the thought of him writing my name down. Me. He chose me for his pit crew. Wrote out my name.
“And what is this? What did you write?” She holds the paper closer to her nose as she tries to read something he wrote. “I can't read this, Col. The team name.”
Colin turns his gaze back to me again.
“The Canary Cowards.”
He nods once to himself, turning to kick back in his chair again, and I feel my chest tighten as he repeats the name, the truth stirring up these impending emotions.
“The Canary Cowards,” he repeats.
47
Lake
It'searlyasIslip out of the warmth of her bed to answer a call.
“She's not up for cooking, but still wants you to come.”
It's the tone that kills me. Not up for cooking. That's not like her. Not even close to her. A childhood of meals straight out of the pages of Taste of Home. Cooking was her happiness. Putting her heart and soul into the meals she made for the people she loved. Having her own money meant finally being able to fill my belly the way she never could when I was growing up. Loving the fact that, as a football player, I needed all the extra calories I could get. But this? This hurt.
The past few days have been busy. It's as if my mom and Dale don’t want me around. Her excuse is that driving back and forth to help with her medicine is a waste of my time when I have therapy, team meetings, press meetings, photoshoots, gym sessions, more therapy, more Dylan. I’m always being tossed the casual, “Dale is here to help. Besides, I'm feeling good.”
But she isn’t good. She’s dying. I can hear it in the weakness her voice carries. That same weakness I keep denying I hear. She isn’t getting better. She’s getting worse.
The drives to the city have been long, and staying at Dylan's means I have to wake up earlier than ever in order to make it through rush hour traffic, but every extra minute spent driving is worth it just to get that time with the one person I seem to need the most.
