Page 69 of Your Fault

“Get in the car,” I ordered her between clenched teeth.

“Fuck that, Nicholas!” she replied, her arms cocked to shove me backward. I stopped her, grabbing her wrists. “Don’t you dare! Don’t you fucking dare give me orders!”

I pushed her against the Audi and squeezed against her, immobilizing her.

“I repeat: get in that car, and go back where you came from. You’ve got three seconds, hear me? I don’t care how mad you are, goddammit, you shouldn’t be here. Do I have to remind you what happened last time?”

Her eyes were burning, boring holes into mine. It was all I could do not to throttle her. It didn’t matter if I was there. No one was going to hurt me. There was nothing there I couldn’t deal with. But Noah? The fear that someone might see her… I turned instinctively to where Cruz was standing with his friends. He still hadn’t recognized her.

“Hell no, you don’t have to remind me! I was there,remember?” She was trying to wriggle away from me. I looked down at her dress… Was she trying to be conspicuous?

“Stop, dammit!” I ordered her, interlacing the fingers of one hand with hers while the other grabbed her chin and forced her to look at me. “This isn’t a joke, Noah. I need you to go.”

“There’s no way I’m going unless you leave with me.” With that, she jerked her face to one side.

I leaned my arms on both sides of her, pressing her into the car to shield her from the people gathering around us. I looked down at her, sniffed her, to try to calm myself down more than anything else. But instead of touching me, her hands hung dead at her sides.

“You shouldn’t be here,” I whispered in her ear. We both knew I was making her tremble.

“Neither should you.”

I noticed then that she was wearing makeup, that her short dress revealed her bare legs provocatively. She’d done that for me, and I’d left her in the lurch to enter a drag race.

“I’m sorry, Freckles,” I said, grabbing her around the waist. The fabric of her dress was so thin, it was as if I were embracing her skin. That, and her anger, which was also sexy in its own way, made me want to kiss her desperately and seek her forgiveness.

I bent over to try, but she looked away.

“I can’t have you lying to me,” she said.

“I won’t do it again.”

“I don’t believe you.”

Those words hurt, but I didn’t want to let her see that.

“This is the last race I’ll ever drive in, Noah. Ask Lion: I said the same thing to him this morning. It’s over, Noah… This is my last goodbye, and I’m only doing it because Lion needs me.”

“You can’t keep doing this stuff for him, Nicholas.” Her voice was worried, not angry. “I know you love him like a brother, butI talked to Jenna, and he’s not the same as before. You supporting him here is only going to make things worse.”

She was right. I kept moving ahead in life while he was digging his own grave. Either he would climb up out of the mud, or he would sink down in misery like Cruz or like his own brother, Luca.

I reached out and pulled Noah to me. I would never make her worry about me again. Those days were over.

“I’ll do everything I can to get Lion to leave this behind with me,” I said, and I was overwhelmed with happiness when Noah reached up and touched my cheek. That caress meant she’d forgiven me.

I stroked her spine and kissed the side of her face, rubbing my nose next to her ear.

“Go home, please. I’ll be there as soon as this is over.”

Noah didn’t say anything. But I took that as a sign of agreement.

I turned around and saw the three other drivers talking with Clark.

“I gotta go.”

She nodded. I kissed her on the lips and waited to go over to where the rest of the guys were standing until I saw her with Jenna next to her Audi and the two of them seemed ready to go.

“Good luck, everyone. See you on the other side,” I said to Lion. That was my go-to line before racing.