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I burst out laughing and showed her. Caden sent me a text.
Caden: Kinsley can’t answer her phone right now. She’s busy with reciprocating motions. Wink wink.
“I’m assuming that means yes, it works.” I took my phone back before she could send any more messages.
After another five minutes, Hayden sighed. “You’re not really mad at me, are you?”
“No, not really,” I admitted, having calmed down. “But don’t do that again.”
“Relax, they probably thought it was funny.”
“But what if they didn’t?”
“They traveled around the country with a bunch of carneys. Pretty sure they were used to us.”
“Used toyouand Casten. Not me. I don’t ask things like that.”
That one earned me a glare. “Oh, bullshit.”
“Okay, I wouldn’t have asked Caden that. Not after everything they’ve been through.”
“What if that’s exactly what they need?” she asked, watching me. “You know what Lily told me bothered her the most after Jack died?”
“That she lost her son?”
“Well, yeah, that, but what she hated the most was how everyone walked on eggshells, afraid to talk to her about anything. Even us. We distanced ourselves because we were scared to say the wrong thing, remember?”
“Yeah, I guess we did.”
“We can’t treat Caden and Kinsley any different, regardless of the situation. It’s not fair to them, or us.”
She had a point. I hadn’t even realized I was doing it, but I was. Unintentionally, I’d been doing it. I made it a point to make sure I called or texted Kinsley every day. I wouldn’t let our friendship be collected with this one wreck.
Single Step Response Time – The time required for the motor to rotate one step and settle at that position; a measure of system performance.
TWO WEEKS UNTIL KNOXVILLE NATIONALS
MOORESVILLE, NORTH CAROLINA
Time out of the car moved unbearably slow for me. Recovery took even longer. And mentally, fuck, that might never come back. I could barely stand to look at my wife without thinking, what if I had been paralyzed? What if I hadn’t made it? What would that do to her?
I couldn’t talk to her about it either. I didn’t want to scare her.
How did you move on from something like this? You didn’t. Or, at least I didn’t think I was capable of it. For never fearing anything, I didn’t know who I was with that particular emotion. Sure, I’d felt anger, sadness, regret… but fear? I had no idea how to process it. And suddenly, looking at the pictures of the cars on the wall of the Pig Pit, I feared getting back in one.
I sighed and looked down at my hands. They offered me nothing in return. No answers, but anything to avoid eye contact with Jameson. Here he had given me a chance of a lifetime and how was I repaying him for that? Didn’t exactly scream team ownership if you asked me. “I think I’m failing at this.”
Jameson set his phone on the bar, his eyes on Rosa making his drink. How she had been allowed to make drinks was crazy if you asked me, especially Jameson’s drink. “What makes you think that?”
Picking at my pork sandwich, I snorted, as if it hadn’t been obvious. “Well, for starters, I haven’t been in the car since May, and Caden was well on his way to a championship and now he’ll never walk again. He has me to blame for that.”
This one earned me a laugh, but still, he kept his attention on Rosa. For good reason. “You don’t think I had years like this?”
“No.”
He leaned back and crossed his arms over his chest, frowning. “I did. And I’ve been where you’re at. I was in that wreck with my dad.”
His words sunk in. It was true. He wrecked with Jimi at Frost Nationals that year and Jimi died instantly. To this day, I bet he was carrying around the same kind of guilt I couldn’t let go of.