CHINA
The track sits there, looming, dark and enticing. I can’t remember a time when I didn’t ride on two wheels. The sounds of a revving engine or squealing tires didn’t set my heart rate soaring and my soul alight. Ri’s right. I need to get back on and stop being fearful. The fear of...never mind. Just fear itself is a stupid enough reason. I’ve never been afraid of anything that had to do with the track, and now should be no different.
Perching myself on the steps, just feet away from the track, I look at all the marks from years of hits, scrapes, dings, flips, and quick stops. It gives me a moment of serenity, which is something that’s been sorely missing in me lately. Earlier today, we drove over to set in motion the stipulations of my parents’ will. My brothers and I also worked out the date of her funeral. Thankfully, the hospital gave us time to allow Wyatt the opportunity to attend in person, but he’ll need the weeks we’ve requested to get him up and moving. Hopefully, he’ll be out of the hospital for good, not for just a few hours with a sidekick nurse.
I needed a bit of time to myself to think alone, to finalize that part of my life I both anticipate and dread. My mother never made it easy to love her, so her funeral will be for others, not for us. At least her cremation is booked for two weeks after my birthday. I didn’t see an urn as a present I wanted to accept.
This funeral won’t be any different than the last, I know it. I feel the same.
When my Dad died, I couldn’t make myself feel any emotional attachment to the funeral proceedings. It was for everyone else but me. He died on a track; a track he loved. I went to the funeral at that same damn track where he went up in a fiery inferno, and I went to the funeral, but only in body. My spirit hadn’t shown up for the event.
I thought it was...it doesn’t matter what I thought. I wasn’t there. My race was taking place at the same time, and while I felt joyous for winning, his life had been extinguished.
I’ve woken from dreams, remembering the events differently. I’d been watching from the sidelines of our Crown Industries paddock, and as he died, I ran out to the track like a banshee on a mission. I had no care for the dangers of forty-five Indy cars at two hundred plus miles per hour. I could see his car crumpled, and I watched it catch fire. I’d dreamed that I could be the savior, the princess saving the King, instead of the way it always was, him protecting me.
Close enough to see him through the flames that licked his fireproof suit, the visor shattered at the one corner, allowing me to see him. His eyes were sallow, slow in movement, and sorrowful. He knew I could see him dying, and I knew he was barely alive. It was during his final breaths before the fire consumed him that I was dying right alongside him. Falling to my knees on the track, watching as the dying light cast a shadow over his features, he passed away. My heart shattered, my soul crushed, and my will to move was erased. Waking up in a sweat repeatedly, I couldn’t bother looking at the track the same anymore.
They’d told me he died on impact, that his neck had snapped, but I know better than all of them as I saw it in my dreams. That’s what scares me. No, what scars me.
My soul had made an abrupt U-turn to the paddocks the day he was placed in the bricks at Indianapolis, and I’ve been afraid for what came next. Only months have passed, but it feels so raw. I haven’t dealt at all with his death, with Mom’s, or with Wyatt and Circe’s crash. Nor, of course, have I dealt properly with my stupid incarceration. I didn’t want to take responsibility for the actions I took when dealing with my rebellion, which, of course, is what put me in my current predicament.
Blaming Risen was wrong. I shouldn’t be blaming Risen for the issues I created. I’m the one that has to deal with things, and honestly, I haven’t. Will I? Sure. At some point, I’ll have a come to Jesus meeting in my head, but right now? Nope. For now, I’ll still avoid and hope that everything works out. Sure, I may not have had a relationship worth caring for with my mother, and I may have taken advantage of the love I was given from my father, but I’ll chalk it up to being young, stupid, and reckless.
I loved my dad with everything I had. It still feels wrong that he won’t come through the door to tell me to get my ass on the track with a mile-wide smile and a helmet hanging from his fingers. Every ounce of his love I felt whenever he’d help me, train me, or would teach me a new trick. It may not make sense to anyone else, but to me, that was his greatest form of love, showing me how to be a great achiever. And how am I repaying that wealth of knowledge? I’m avoiding the one thing he taught me, and that’s to love unconditionally.
I’m being a fucking pussy.
“Get the fuck up on that bike, Doll.” Expecting a glorious and epiphanic answer, nothing falls from the sky. There’s no great meteor of amazingness. There’s nothing. It feels like nothing will put this Humpty Dumpty back together again.
My soul is split. The insides are torn down, leaving bare edges that are susceptible to frequent bouts of despair and self-pity for letting this get the better of me.
I’ve never been the pussy ass girl that cries, wails, or becomes wrapped up in emotions. As tears pull at my lashes, I wipe them away dramatically. I just can’t get a handle on things.
“When did I become afraid?”
“That’s what I’d like to know,” Risen remarks from behind me in a tone that freaks me out, but also turns my ‘fuck you’ into overdrive.
Harrumphing a few times, pushing tears away from the edges of my vision, and sucking back on my good old Californian pride, I raise my ass up off the ground and face off with the man who seems to have enough balls to test a pissed off woman.
“Did no one ever tell you it’s rude to sneak up on people? Or to intrude on a private moment?”
An enigmatic smile crests his features, and I feel bad for the way I’ve attacked him. “Yeah, probably. But I was never one for following the rules of etiquette.”
With a comment like that, how do you stay mad? Turning from him as he sits on the steps, I stare out at the elusive blacktop. “Risen, I’m okay, really. I don’t need you.”
“Didn’t you notice already, I get you don’t need me, you big, tough girl, but I like being here. Call me a glutton for punishment, but I think I’m really good at taking on lost causes that have nothing to do with me.”
Fucker. “What I mean is, why are you out here chasing me down? Not, why are you here in general? That’s been assumed after seeing your mug living here for three whole weeks.”
“I didn’t see you denying the attention last night, China, or this afternoon. So what’s the issue right now? Is it that I see you?”
I ponder that. There’s not much I can say that won’t ask for further conversation. The last thing I was looking for was conversation. “I was alone for a reason.”
Sitting beside me and turning my face toward him, he says, “Because no one else can.”
Shit, he did read it right. “Yeah.” I deflate, and feel a fuck ton worse for the self-deprecating pity party. “Does that seem wrong to you? That I feel better alone, because I am alone?”
He huffs a frustrated breath and lays his hands back on the step behind him, so he can lean back to absorb the sun’s warmth. “Maybe. Or maybe, I understand you way better than you think. Maybe, just maybe, I think you don’t want to be alone. That being out here has you feeling more together than it did inside that house and that possibly, it makes you feel closer to them when they’re gone.”
“You know you suck at this, right?”
With a shrug of his shoulders, Risen leans back so that his elbows lay flat. He looks up at me with a shit-eating grin. “I don’t suck at it, Doll. That’s the reason you’re mad at me.” Raising up, he leans in close, breathing on my neck, leaving little nips on my ear as he whispers, “I get you.”
Leaning against his shoulder, I accept the touch. With the fire he pulls from me, I forget about the sadness that was attempting to grab hold of me. “China, the track is you, and you’re a part of it. Staying away from it is only going to hurt you.”
A lone tear attempts to escape. I suck in the air to keep it at bay. “You see me better than anyone.”
“I’m here, and even though others can’t be, I’ll try to help.” Pulling the edge of my tank top down, Risen puckers the skin of my shoulder between his teeth, pulling it between his lips, then flicking his tongue across the skin before pulling it tight again.
Moaning, I laugh to myself. “Is this supposed to be how you help.”
“If I have to.”
“Mmm, I don’t know if we should be doing this out here. Someone might see us.”
“We just justified there is no one. Let me make you feel better.” Jesus. What I wouldn’t give for him to completely let me get lost in my own head as he lights my insides on fire. But we shouldn’t.
“We need to stop. Risen, we really need to stop this.” Lifting off the stair, I straighten out my shirt. I need to move away.
The pout on his face seems so out of place because I know he doesn’t mean it. He’s not disappointed, he’s enticed. “So, what’s the plan then, China? Care to show me your paddock?” With a wiggle of his eyebrows, I know it’s trouble, no matter how I answer.
“How about I show you the garage where the bikes are, and we’ll start off lightly on what you think you know about me.”
His answer is nonchalant, and his smile is mischievous. Rising to join me, he stands, and danger lights his features. I’m excited.
Brushing off his shorts, he reaches out, asking for my hand. “Care to lead the way, Miss Crown?”
“Mr. Mason,” I respond, falling in step beside him.