Raced Read online

  Just want it to be her and me back in front of that mirror. Just want to be man enough and not fucked-up enough that when she says those words to me, I don’t cringe. I don’t feel the blackness swallow me whole and smother the air in my lungs, but rather look in her eyes and smile.

  Accept.

  Reciprocate.

  Love.

  Her voice breaks through my haze of regret. “If you were done with me … had your fill of me … you could have just told me!” Hurt fills her eyes and trembles across her lips.

  And now that I’ve done it—now that I’ve pushed her away and hurt her with my callous comments—all I want is her back in my arms, my life, at my side. Because done with her? Does she really think that?

  As if a single taste of her will ever be enough.

  “I’ll never have my fill of you.” I say the words but see the disbelief still warring in her eyes so I give into the ache. Show her the only way that I know how. Search for the balm to soothe my aching soul and the bleach to purify my blackened heart.

  My mouth slants over hers. Takes and tastes and demands. I accept her struggle, accept the fact that she hates me because I hate myself too, but I can feel the need vibrate between us. Can sense that this hunger will never be satisfied. That I’ll never want it to.

  She keeps struggling, keeps wanting to hurt me. And I want to tell her to do just that. Hurt me like I deserve. Hurt and love are equivalent to me. The only way I know that love is supposed to be.

  But I see it in her eyes. The pain I’ve caused. And yet I still feel the love from her. Still feel like she wants this. Wants me. And even despite all of this … all of the hurt and confusion and spiteful words we spit at each other, I want her desperately. Have to have her desperately.

  And I plan to take. I have to get us back to where we were. Where we need to be. To the only place my soul has felt at peace over the past twenty-odd years.

  Back to Rylee.

  “You want rough, Rylee?” And despite the contempt in her eyes, I do the only thing I know how to reclaim her. “I’ll give you rough!”

  My lips connect with hers and I do the only thing I can: I take what I want so desperately. What’s mine.

  To save myself.

  This chapter was originally written completely in Colton’s point of view (the scene below), but after some discussion with my beta readers, I decided that using Colton’s voice here took away from the impact in the next chapter. I rewrote the scene through Rylee’s eyes and published that instead.

  I explain this scene to people as the little boy inside the damaged man chapter. Colton breaks my heart here. He’s recovering from the accident but knows no matter how extreme that pain was, it won’t hold a candle to the hurt he’ll feel when he pushes Rylee away. He gets it now, gets that he not only wants her, but needs her too, and yet he’s trying to protect her.

  You may have read this one before in the Crash D.A.S.H. posts.

  The turbulence jars me awake. Scares the fuck out of me really, seeing as I was having that damn dream again about the crash—the dream where I can’t remember shit except for the dizzying, sickening feeling in the pit of my stomach and the out of control feeling in my head. Add to that the jolt of the plane, and my mile-high wake up is a hell of a lot more stressful that the one I’d really like to have with Ry.

  God, how badly do I want to take that for a ride. I’m fucking hard as a rock as I’ve been for the past three days when I wake up but one, doctor’s fucking orders. Two, we’re constantly surrounded by other people, and three, after overhearing her conversation with Haddie the other night when she thought I was asleep, how can I touch her when all I’m going to do is end up hurting her.

  I don’t want to do that to her. Don’t want her to live life always waiting for the worst to happen. I don’t mind the car, don’t mind what a crash could possibly do to me because the shit I lived through was much more painful than hitting a concrete barrier.

  Impact can kill your body.

  What my mom did to me killed my soul.

  I shake the shit from my head and lift it up from the chair Ry insisted I adjust to recline. I look around to see Nurse Ratchet, the hospital approved medic sent to monitor my flight home, sit up at attention when she notices that I’m awake.

  Leave me the fuck alone.

  I’ve had enough prodding fingers and concerned eyes looking at me to last a fucking lifetime. Oh and then there were the fucking ludicrous sponge baths. Grown men sure as fuck are not supposed to have someone wash their nuts unless it’s to be followed by a blowjob in the shower. On a bed with a sponge? Fucking ridiculous.

  Good riddance to the hospital and its torturous type of solitary confinement.

  Nurse Ratchet starts to unbuckle her seatbelt, and I just shake my head to tell her that I’m fine. I lie back down, angling my head to the right so I can stare at the sight across the aisle from me. Rylee’s sound asleep, curled up on her side so she’s facing me, no doubt so that she can watch and make sure that I’m okay.

  The fucking self-sacrificing saint.

  And I know she’s exhausted. She misses the boys desperately despite being on the phone with them every chance she gets. Add to that the nightmares she’s been having every night that wake me, allowing me to be the silent witness to the fucking agony I’m inflicting upon her. She shouts out Max’s name. My name. Begs for us to live. Begs to take our place so she can die instead. Begs for me not to race again. Screams for a car to stop and let me out. And I know this because I lie awake holding her while she trembles in her sleep. Holding her—holding on to her as I breathe in everything I can—so that I can live with the ghost of her when I finally bring myself to do what I need to do.

  Be selfless for the first time in my life.

  And the time has come.

  Way too soon—forever would be too fucking soon—but it has come.

  And the thought has every single fucking part of me protesting over the gut-wrenching hurt that’s to come. That I’ll be inflicting on myself. Pain I’m sure that will be a thousand times worse than these ear-splitting headaches that come and go on a fucking whim, because this kind will be from tearing myself apart, not from trying to put myself back together.

  Humpty fuckin’ Dumpty.

  She sighs softly, shifting in her sleep, and a curl falls over her cheek. I give into the need—the one that is so inherent now that I’m fucking scared to death of how I’ll be able to lessen it in the coming days—reach out and move it off of her face. I curse my fucking fingers as they tremble from the after effects of what we still hope is just swelling. They stop shaking and so I let them linger, enjoying the feel of her skin against my fingertips.

  What the fuck is going on with me? How is it I fought my whole life to not need, to not feel … and now that I do, I’ll gladly take the pain so she doesn’t have to?

  But the thought I can’t shake keeps tumbling through my obviously screwed-up head. If she’s my fucking pleasure, how in the hell am I going to bury the pain when I push her away? From pushing her away? I shake my head, unsure, and welcome the stab of pain from the action because it’s got nothing on what’s going to happen to my heart.

  But there’s no other option. Especially after overhearing her on the phone with Haddie last night when she thought I was asleep. Hysterical hiccupping sobs. Denials of how she's ever going to watch me get in a car again. Hearing the brutal reality of what she went through killed me, fucking ripped me to shreds as I lie with my back to her, remorse hardening my heart, tears burning my eyes, and guilt submerging my soul. Learning that her abrupt trips out of my hospital room are so she can throw up because she’s so sick with worry over it. How she’s eating Tums like candy to lessen the constant acid eating through her stomach from my need to return to the track. How she’ll support me, urge me, help me get back in the car, but will have to sneak out before the pace car is off the lead lap. How she won’t be able to hear the sounds and see the sights without replaying the images that
are etched in her mind. Won’t be able to look me in the eyes and wish me luck without thinking she’s sending me to my death.

  A shiver of recourse revolts through my body.

  And then there’s the other hint that I’m getting from her—that I can see in her eyes when she shifts them away—that tells me she knows something I don’t. She has one of my memories and is holding it hostage. But which fucking one?

  The hints swirl of what I’ve lost in the black abyss of my mind. Ghosts of memories converge, overlapping and all shouting for attention at once. They scream at me like fans asking for autographs—all begging for attention—faceless, nameless people all wanting something—yelling at the tops of their lungs—and yet all I hear is white noise.

  All I see is a blur of mixed color.

  Why is it I can still remember the shit that stains my soul but I can’t seem to remember the bleach I’ve found that washes it away? And I have a feeling that whatever Rylee is guarding is that important. That monumental. She wouldn’t be keeping it from me unless she was trying to protect me. Or her.

  But from what?

  In my dreams I hear her saying she can’t do this anymore. Is that it? Is she going to end this? Is she going to walk away and never look back? Break me into a million fucking pieces?

  What the fuck, Donavan? You’re going to do it to her. Walk away to save her from yourself. And you think it’s going to be any easier just because you’re doing it? Think that the acid-laced knife that’s going to barb through your heart is going to hurt any less because it’s by your own hand?

  Fucking crash.

  Goddamn prescriptions that I swear are messing up my head.

  Fucking voodoo pussy.

  My fucking Rylee.

  I watch her. Can’t move my eyes away from those thick lashes on cream-colored skin. Over her all-consuming lips and down over the swell of her tits. She’s arms’ length away but I still know how she smells. How she tastes and sounds and feels. It will forever be embedded in my mind.

  Irremovable.

  Irreplaceable.

  Yeah, my dick stirs to life—it’s Rylee, isn’t it? But so much more stirs and swells and hopes that I don’t even fight the tears welling in my eyes. For the second time in more years than I can count, I let the tears fall. Silent tracks of impending devastation staining my face.

  Who knew that doing what was right for someone else could feel so incredibly wrong? Could break the strongest man by weakening his heart?

  Will reduce me to nothing?

  I know she can give me what I need—quiet the demons in my head that torment my soul and parasitic heart—like the adrenaline of losing myself in the blur at the track, but I can’t do that to her. I can’t in good conscience hold on to her so tightly in order to lose my demons when it’s causing hers to invade her sleep. I can’t take the pleasure when it’s causing her all of the pain.

  Before, I could. I would have. But this is Rylee here. The selfless soul who means too fucking much to me. So, no I can’t.

  Not now.

  Not ever to Rylee.

  It feels so good to let it all out—the confusion, the loss of hope, the dying of my redemption—yet hurts so badly as the tears fight their way out and scorch my face. Singe my soul. Crumble possibilities.

  I squeeze my eyes shut and try to shut out the memories that I do have. The ones flickering like a strobe light through the haze of my time with Rylee. The tears turn to silent sobs and eventually even those dissipate into hitching breaths.

  When I open my eyes, violet pools of concern are staring at me with a mix of confusion and sympathy. “Colton?”

  Fuck. I don’t want her to see me like this. Remember me like this. Some pussified man bawling his eyes out for reasons she can’t fathom.

  I can hear the worry in her voice but all her face shows is compassion, understanding, acceptance. And that makes what I have to say so much harder. The words are there on the tip of my tongue and I fool myself into believing that I’m about to say them.

  Acid on my taste buds.

  Bile in my throat.

  The fracturing of my heart.

  She reaches out and cups her hand to the side of my face, her thumb wiping away the stains—just like her heart has brushed away vile memories—and a soft smile ghosts her mouth.

  I race you, Rylee.

  The words feather through my mind and another tear slips over.

  And I’ve never felt more exposed in my life.

  Guard down.

  Heart open.

  Soul needing.

  Accepting.

  Wanting.

  I’m so fucking lost right now. Lost even though I’ve been found. Even though she’s found me.

  And I get it now. Get why she can’t watch me get in the car again. Get why she’d be so selfless—encourage, push, help—even when it’s killing her. Breaking inside while pretending on the outside that she’s whole.

  But I’m nowhere near okay.

  Not going to be for a long time.

  If ever again.

  I open my mouth but I can’t bring myself to do it. I can’t bring myself to tell her this isn’t what she deserves. That I’m not what she deserves. That I could do so much worse—have done so much worse—and she can do so much better. That I understand she can’t go through this again. I’m not sure how to. I try to force the words off my tongue but they die, self-preservation at its finest. Silence is my only option. The only way to quell the guilt that eats at me every time she looks in my eyes and gives me the same soft smile she’s giving me now.

  She has to be wondering why I’m crying. Why I’m being such a chick, but she doesn’t ask. Instead, she sits up slowly and looks around the private jet before rising and closing the distance between us. She gives me a look as if she’s asking if it’s okay and before I can even answer, she’s settling in my lap, nuzzling her head under my chin, wrapping her arms around me as best she can.

  The soothing balm to my aching soul.

  She doesn’t say a word, but just holds on, easing whatever she thinks is wrong with me by her mere presence. And of course now the tears well again like a fucking broken faucet and I hate it. Hate myself right now.

  And I am so wrong.

  I thought I could live with the pain—manage—but holy shit I feel as if my body is broken—fucking shattered into a million pieces, and I haven’t even told her yet. Haven’t even taken a step away but holy mother of God, I’m already knocked to my knees.

  Already struggling to breathe when the air is cocooning me.

  It’s time to hit the concrete barrier head on without a seat belt, without my lifeline.

  How in the fuck am I going to do this?

  The almost but not quite sex scene in CRASHED. The racing term sex scene. Whatever you want to refer to it as, this was an often requested scene to read in Colton’s point of view.

  He’s had this big accident, pushed Rylee away earlier in the night, and yet he wakes up and here she still is. She’s scared and he’s scarred and yet she’s still fighting.

  It was fun and challenging writing this chapter from a male perspective. I had the constant fear I was making him sound too soft, too hard (no pun intended here, ladies … I’m talking about emotion—emotion here—get your minds out of the gutter), too crass, or not crass enough. I think I nailed it (ha, couldn’t resist), hope you think so too.

  … dragons live forever, but not so little boys …

  The lyrics filter into my head, my own dragons—and not the playful, puffy kinds—are front and fucking center, but that’s not the problem. The problem is I’m not a little boy and yet I’m still living with this shit.

  I slowly ease awake and can’t believe how nice it feels with her arms wrapped around me instead of that soul-jarring, mind-fucked moment when you wake up alone with only your demons lurking in the dark corners to keep you company.

  I close my eyes for a second, accepting that she’s still here after everything I’ve put her t
hrough.

  “My dad used to sing that to me when I had nightmares.”

  Her body jolts at the sound of my voice as I put my arm around her and pull her closer, skin to skin. My own personal balm to coat the inked reminders on my torso that reflect the stains on my soul.

  “I know,” she whispers, “and you were.”

  I press a kiss to the top of her head and leave my mouth there, breathing her in. Trying to wash the dream from my mind. Needing to.

  I think of how I’d much rather dream about the crash than him. How almost dying, going headfirst into a wall, is ten times easier to cope with than the smell of the musty mattress, the feel of his hands on me, the taste of anticipatory fear.

  I need to talk, to scavenge some of the thoughts from within and release them so I can start to breathe again. I pick the one she knows the most about, the one that won’t make her look at me and think I’m weak for succumbing to its clutches.

  “I was scared. I remember the vague sense of being scared those last few seconds in the car as I was flipping through the air.” I don’t know why that’s so hard to admit to her.

  She runs her hand over my chest. “I was too.”

  “I know,” I say evenly but hate myself for putting her in that position. Loathe that she fears anything because of me. I reach down, my hand sliding beneath the band of her panties to cup the curve of her ass and pull her up so she can look into my eyes. I hate rehashing shit, but I owe her this ten times over and then some. “I’m sorry you had to go through that again.”

  Her eyes glisten with tears and now I hate that I’ve made her cry bringing it up, but when she leans forward and brushes her lips against mine, all thoughts are lost but one.

  Take.

  And hell if it’s the emotion of the day, needing to erase my dreams, or simply being so fucking relieved to be alive, but I do just that.

  I squeeze her ass in my hands so her tits rub up against me, and every part of my body begs, craves, and is starved for more of her. I need to hear that sigh she makes, need her taste on my tongue, and I don’t hesitate. I slip my tongue between her lips and don’t even realize the groan is coming from me.