Page 38 of Crashed (Driven 3)
He wraps his arms around me and pulls me in. “Yeah, I was out.” He laughs pressing a kiss to the top of my head. “But no more headache so all is good.
“I can’t imagine why you’d have any type of pain with the amount of beer you two put away.”
“Smart ass.”
“I’d rather be a smart ass than a dumb ass.”
“Aren’t we feisty tonight?” he says as he tickles my rib cage. “You know what feisty does to me, baby, and I sure as fuck could use it right now.”
I squirm out of his grasp. “Nice try, but we most likely only have a couple more days and then I’ll be any kind of feisty you want me to be,” I say with a raise of my eyebrows as his fingers ease up and smooth down my back.
“Don’t promise shit like that to a man as desperate as I am, if you’re not going to deliver, sweetheart.”
“Oh, no worries, Ace,” I say, snuggling back into him, “I’ll deliver truckloads of feisty as long as I know you’ll be okay.”
Colton doesn’t say anything, rather he makes a non-committal sound in response. We settle into a comfortable silence for a while, and I welcome it because this is the first time in the past few days where there isn’t that inexplicable tension vibrating between us. As the sun sinks and the ocean waves sigh into the oncoming night, my mind begins to wander back to my conversation with Becks. And being me, I have to ask, have to know Colton’s thoughts about racing again.
“Can I ask you a question?”
“Mmm-hmm,” he murmurs into the crown of my head.
I hesitate at first, not wanting to bring up any thoughts if they’re not there already, but ask anyway. “Are you scared to get back on the track? To race again?” The words rush out and I wonder if he can hear the underlying trepidation in my tone.
His hand pauses momentarily on its trek up my spine before it continues, and I know I’ve touched on something he’s not completely comfortable talking about or admitting to. He sighs out into the silence I’ve given him. “It’s hard for me to explain,” he says before shifting so that we’re side by side, our eyes meeting. He shakes his head subtly and continues. “It’s like I fear it and I need it all at the same time. That’s the only way I can put it.”
I can sense his unease so I do what I do best, I try to soothe him. “You’ve figured it out with me.”
Confusion flickers in his eyes. “What do you mean?”
I had no intention of taking the conversation here, making him feel uncomfortable in talking about the “us” that was there before the crash. The “us” he raced and doesn’t remember. I reach out and rest my hand on the side of his stubbled jaw and make sure I have his attention before I speak. “You feared and yet needed me …” My voice fades.
He draws in a breath as emotions flicker through his eyes. His lips purse momentarily. The silence mixed with the intensity in his eyes unnerves me. I can hear the hitch of his breath, the sound of the ocean, the pound of my heart in my ears, and yet silence from him. He looks away and I prepare myself, for what I’m not sure. But when he looks back at me, a slow, shy smile curls up one corner of his mouth, and he nods his head in acceptance. “You’re right, I do need you.”
Parts way down deep sag in relief that he’s finally acknowledging our connection. Accepting it. And I don’t care that he isn’t telling me he races me, because this, the fact that he needs me, is more than I could ever have hoped for.
He brings a hand up gently to cup the side of my face and br
ushes his thumb over my bottom lip. He leans in and whispers his lips over mine tenderly before kissing the top of my nose. When he pulls back I see the wicked grin on his face. “Now it’s my turn.”
“Your turn?” I ask as his fingers play over the buttons of my top.
“Yep. It’s question and answer time, Ryles, and it’s your turn in the hot seat.”
“I’d like a turn in your hot seat,” I say back to him, earning the lightning fast grin that pulls on every hormone in my body like a magnet.
“Watch it, sweetheart, because I’m a walking case of blue balls that wants nothing more then to be buried in that finish line between your thighs.” As he speaks, he leans forward, close enough to kiss but doesn’t grant me one. Talk about sweet torture. When he speaks next, his breath feathers over my lips. “It’s best not to test my restraint.”
Every part of my body angles into him—wanting, needing, daring him—but he proves he still has control when he chuckles out a pained laugh. “My turn. Why haven’t you seen the boys yet?”
Of all of the questions he could have asked me, I had not expected this one. I must look a little shell-shocked because he’s right. I do desperately want to see the boys, but I don’t know how to see them without bringing the circus with me. The circus that their already fragile lives don’t need and can’t handle.
“You need me more right now,” I tell him, not wanting to give him the exact reason, so that he doesn’t have something besides recovering to worry about.
“That’s bullshit, Ry. I’m a big boy. I can be left alone for the night. Nothing is going to happen to me.”
But what if it does? What if you need me and no one is here and something horrible happens? “Yeah … I just,” I trail off, needing to say it and at the same time not wanting to offend him. “I don’t want your world to collide with theirs. They don’t need cameras in their faces telling everyone they’re orphans—that no one wanted them—or any of the fallout I’m sure would come with it.”
“Ry, look at me,” he says as he lifts my chin up to meet his eyes. “You and me? I don’t ever want it—me, the craziness around my life, the press, whatever—to come between you and the boys. They are what’s important, and I understand that more than most.”
