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If I could have, I would have spent the entire day there in the conference room with everybody, but there was a lot of work to do. I grabbed a lemon-and-blueberry scone and headed back to the garage. I was so grateful to be working for such a family-centered business. I couldn’t remember ever working at a place that felt quite like this. They truly seemed to appreciate every person who worked on the compound. I watched Quentin for a few minutes and noticed he greeted everybody by name. With most of them, he mentioned something about their family or something going on in their lives, just acknowledging that he knew them and valued them as individuals. It warmed my heart and also further invigorated my determination to do the best I could for the company. It wasn’t just about my work ethic and always wanting to be my best. I really wanted to do well for them and keep them at the top of the industry.
That started with figuring out exactly what happened that led to Greg’s crash and trying to figure out if there was any way to stop another accident like that from happening again. The wreck was getting to everybody, but I held a particular amount of fear and sickness in my stomach every time I thought about it. Ever since that night, I had been dreaming about Darren. Dreaming about him wasn’t all that unusual. At this point, more nights than not featured dreams about our time together and conjured up new images of encounters with him. But that wasn’t the type of dream I’d been having since the race. Instead, I dreamed about Darren being the one in the wreck and it ending far more horrifically than Greg’s.
In my dream, Darren smashed into the ground at a blistering speed, landing on his head so his neck snapped. He died there in front of me, leaving me to know I’d never gathered the courage and humility to tell him about Willa, to tell him he had a daughter. Each morning I woke up from the dream panicked, out of breath, and with tears in my eyes. I wasn’t proud of my cowardice. He deserved to know his daughter, and she deserved to know him. Willa was still so little she hadn’t yet caught on to the idea that she didn’t have two parents involved in her life.
She hadn’t yet pieced together that there was anything different about our family. But one day she would. If I didn’t do something, there would come a day when she would realize she wasn’t being raised by a mother and father, that she didn’t even know who her father was. I never wanted her to have the sense that she wasn’t good enough, or that she was somehow different than other people. It hurt me to think she would ever question who she was or feel less connected to her identity because of her not knowing him. That type of pain, anger, and sadness wasn’t something I ever wanted for her, and I never wanted her to feel like I’d betrayed her or held anything back from her.
I didn’t want to keep holding back the truth and wanted to think I was a much stronger, braver person than I was being. But I wasn’t sure how to get away from it and force myself to take the next, life-changing step.
The scone was gone by the time I got to the garage, and part of me wished I’d grabbed another. Greg’s bike was already dismantled on the floor of the garage, and I immediately dove in. My intention was to go over every single part of the machine and examine it closely to detect any possible anomalies or problems it could have that might explain how everything had gone so wrong during the race. Something as simple as a part malfunctioning or a piece of metal grinding against another in the wrong place could be destructive. If I could identify the piece that went wrong, we could take steps to repair those parts more efficiently and stop it from happening that way again.
I was elbow-deep in the parts when I heard footsteps behind me coming into the garage. I assumed it was Gus, there to be a part of figuring out the issue and reconstructing the bike. It was going to be a huge undertaking to get the bashed and battered machine performance-ready again, so I could understand his desire to help.
“For a retired guy, you sure do work a lot,” I teased without taking my eyes off the motorcycle parts.
But Gus’s voice didn’t answer. Instead, a hand grabbing me by the shoulder startled me. It spun me around before I could really process what was happening, and for a split second, I saw Darren standing in front of me. I didn’t have the chance to say anything to him because a split second later, his mouth was on mine. His lips pressed against mine without hesitation. There was nothing careful or cautious about the kiss, nothing that said he was experimenting or gauging to see my reaction. Instead, it was instantly hard and intense, quickly becoming deep and all-consuming.
