Rocky Road Read online

  The path to happiness seemed clearer now than ever.

  I stood and wrapped my arms around Mom, giving her a tight hug. I didn't do this often enough. I would do it more.

  I would do a lot of things more now that I was free.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  KRYSTA

  I hadn't been out in far too long. It was just too much trouble loading and unloading the van. And since the spring was quickly turning to summer in Florida, I and anyone helping me broke out into a sweat. I kept off most of my friends for this reason, but Ty was relentless. Once I returned, he asked and asked and asked me to go, and finally, I agreed to go to a sushi place for an early bird dinner.

  He lifted his martini glass to me. "To being able to drink again. And to you crawling out of your cave."

  "Here's to no more painkillers." I clinked my fruity Double "O" Cosmo against his glass and quickly slurped the liquid as it spilled over the side. We sat in what was obviously once a Chick-fil-A, now decked out in flashing neon lights and various Asian artwork. In a former life I would have thought the restaurant tacky, but now, I appreciated wide open spaces where I could easily roll my chair. The neon lights did bring a certain—excitement—to the night as well.

  "Did you hear?" Ty asked.

  "Hear what?"

  "Do you want to hear?"

  "How would I know that without knowing what you want me to hear?"

  Ty leaned forward. "It's about your lady lover."

  "I don't have a lady lover," I said, sipping the cranberry drink, already feeling the effects of it even after a drinking so little. It had been a long time since any alcohol had entered my system

  "Don't be coy with me." He pursed his lips, folded his arms, and shook his head. "I know you were banging that Indy driver."

  "Banging is a strong word with busted feet." I lifted my feet under the table. I'd gained whole inches since I'd returned, and I liked to practice whenever I could to remind myself I had functioning legs. Though the thought of Billie in bed shorted my pleasure. We could have been experimenting with my new range of motion. Instead, we were a whole lot of nothing.

  "Come on. You can't tell me you didn't get her the night of that race? I know you, sweet viper. You licked your way right into her—"

  "Enough." I pinched my nose, hoping to stop the memories. Memories I'd fought so hard to keep at bay since I'd returned from Long Beach. Like a flood, they came anyway in short flashes. Billie, between my legs. Billie, holding me tight. Billie's hair splayed across a pillow. The soft skin on her wrist and her rose tattoo. Her nails short, bitten to the quick. Fuck. "Ugh, why did you have to bring her up?"

  "Because you still didn't tell me what happened and why you disappeared for so long. You told me you were leaving. I saw the posts from you on social media, and then they stopped and you came back. Something happened. Tell me what."

  I shrugged, acting more nonchalant than I felt. "She loved racing more than me."

  "How is that possible?"

  "This is what I'm saying," I said, taking another long swig of my Cosmo and ending with a smile. Like a cherry on top. Back to good old joking me. "I was tired of competing for attention."

  Ty pursed his lips. He looked like the cat who ate the mouse.

  "What are you up to lately?" I asked. Ty loved to talk about his work as a personal trainer, and I could use the break from thoughts of Billie.

  He took the bait, leaning forward excitedly. "I got a new client."

  "Oh yeah?"

  Without further provocation, Ty launched into a story about his client, but I couldn't listen. I kept thinking about what he had to tell me. He had obviously wanted to, so it had to be something good, something different.

  "… and she was bending down to pick up the weights and her shorts split right down—"

  "Sorry, Ty. I can't focus. Can we go back to Billie? What do you know?"

  Ty smiled smugly. "Well," he said, leaning forward. "You heard she walked off the track during qualification at Long Beach, right?"

  My fingers tightened on the stem of my glass as I pretended not to react to what he was telling me. My heart didn't listen to the pretending. It hammered on my chest wall. "No. What happened?"

  "They said it was a mechanical issue with her car, but there's speculation she went a little crazy. Some blame it on her crash the week before."

  "Why would people think that?"

  "Because of the way she stepped out of her car. She threw her helmet down and her race radio and just… walked off."

  "And that couldn't be because she was angry about the malfunction of her car?"

  "Sweetie." Ty set his hands on the table around his drink. "Must you take all the drama out of the situation?"

  "No." This wasn't just an entertaining story for me. It meant more. "I'm asking seriously."

  "She missed the next two races. She was on the schedule and she missed them."

  I frowned. "Maybe her concussion—"

  "That's what I said earlier. I think she's having some issues associated with that. But wait… wait… oh, my God, I can't believe I didn't see this before."

  "What?" My mind barely resided in the conversation any longer, filled with worry about Billie.

  "You left her, didn't you? You came back the same day of that race."

  "She couldn't have known." Oh, no... She could have. She was racing multiple times that day for qualification. She had time to see that I was gone. Maybe she'd even spoken with her father. Had she…?

  "Sweetie. Your face has that blank thing going on. It's not attractive."

  "It couldn't be," I said, working through it in my head.

  "I'll bet you anything it was. I'll bet you she knew you left and it destroyed her. How romantic."

  I pushed away from the table and tugged my bag into my lap and rummaged for my phone. If this was true, I'd done exactly what I hadn't meant to do. I'd let her father get under my skin, and why? Tanya's words came back to me.

  I had been scared.

  If there was a chance Ty was right, I could be responsible for the downfall of a racing queen. I could be responsible for her loss. That was exactly what I hadn't wanted to do. A text seemed insufficient as an apology. Fuck. Fuck.

  Not even the neon lights and Ty's ridiculous stories could bring me out of my head for the next hour. All I could think of was how to make it up to Billie without ruining her life again.

  Don't get involved, was the clear answer. If she was upset to the point of leaving racing, she was already healing. I knew what it was like to heal. It took time, but if you let it, it would progress at its own pace.

  What wouldn't help was reopening the wound.

  ...

  When I arrived home, an envelope was waiting for me on the floor. I picked it up with the mechanical claw Tanya had bought me and examined it. It didn't look like a bill. The writing on it was cramped and small. The return address was from a town I'd never heard of in New Hampshire. Who did I know in New Hampshire?

  I ripped open the envelope, and a letter fell out. When I opened the letter, a lanyard and a pass slipped from inside.

  I miss you. I'm sorry. Come to the Indy 500. Billie.

  My hand flew to my mouth. She had thought about me. She was apologizing to me. The information from Ty layered over this note in my mind. If she had walked off the track, and she had really done it because she was upset about me leaving, maybe she hadn't acted out of pity, after all. Pity didn't produce that kind of drastic action.

  Now a whole new potential story opened up to me. What if she had just been having a bad day? What if I'd made it all up? What if it hadn't been pity, but a serious outlook on her job? Did she think I couldn't deal with that since I'd left her?

  I picked up my phone to call Ty or Tanya or maybe even Billie, but something stopped me.

  I'd been so afraid of what Billie thought about me, about the potential for pity, that I'd let it get the best of me. I'd let my pride get in the way. Before I did anything furt
her, before I contacted her, I was going to have to get a handle on that. To tease out what I was really feeling.

  I'd taken the first step—admitting it. And I was going to take another, and another.

  Not for Billie or for anyone else, but for me.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  BILLIE

  The Indianapolis 500 arrived with as much fanfare as usual, and even more for me since this was my triumphant return. As I walked into our transporter in the paddock, Amanda smothered me with a huge hug.

  A laugh bubbled out of me, surprising me. I hadn't known I was still capable of laughing. "What are you so happy about?" I said, pulling away. "You just lost your racing place."

  Amanda pulled away. "But I had a racing place thanks to you. Thank you so much for recommending me and giving me a chance when you took your leave. I think I impressed Ed, and if he isn't impressed then there were some other team owners watching as well in the past month."

  "That's amazing, Amanda, though I'll be sorry to lose you on my team."

  "Aww," Amanda's cheeks pinked. "You'll find someone awesome to replace me, I'm sure."

  Once again, Amanda's enthusiasm impressed me and made me feel… tired. Old. I had never been like her, I didn't think. I had always been too quiet. Too reserved. I didn't have that fire. But today, I would leave it all out on the table. Today I would show them what I did have. Determination.

  I had taken a chance in sending Krysta that note. Not only would this be the biggest race of my life, but if she showed up it could be the biggest day of my life. I was ready for both.

  After a grueling test run, I managed to qualify for the pole position in the race—the best starting position. It was the first time a woman had done this at the Indy 500, and a rush of reporters closed in on me as soon as I stepped out of my car. At our press conference before the race the next day, they asked me about my crash.

  "I had a mechanical problem and was frustrated, but I never should have walked off the track like that. I can promise it won't happen again."

  "How are you feeling?" someone yelled.

  "Better than ever," I said, smiling. It was true. The concussion headaches had gone away and I was taking charge of my life for the first time ever.

  "Do you think you'll win today?"

  "We have a great team. I'm not going to lie, I hope I win. It's been a dream of mine since I was a little kid. Speaking of my team… I'm going to get back to them and give the mic to someone more important."

  The reporters laughed. I pushed away from the table and walked out of the fabricated press room, happy no one had asked me about my future in racing. I wasn't sure I was ready to answer. Though I knew what I had to do, it still wasn't going to be easy.

  Every time the door opened to the transporter, my head whipped around. Each time, I was disappointed. Every person registered as not Krysta in my head.

  Then, another person registered. My father. He walked in, his hands stuffed in his pockets, his jaw working through some issue or other.

  It was the first time I'd seen him since I'd walked off the track at Long Beach, and he still couldn't quite look at me. But I didn't care. I didn't need him to look at me any longer.

  I patted the seat next to me. "I have a question."

  "O-kay," he said, his tone suspicious.

  I waited, seeking out his eyes before I spoke. Though I didn't need his approval, I did need to see his eyes when I asked him the question. "Did you say something to Krysta the day of the Long Beach qualification?"

  My father leaned forward, his gaze on his hands. He let out a sigh. "That girl wasn't good for you."

  "That's not what I asked," I said. Though it was an answer, it wasn't the one I was looking for. I needed to hear what he had said to Krysta so I could figure out if there was anything left to fix.

  "That's the truth."

  I sucked in a long breath, steeling myself for battle. "What. Did. You. Say to her?"

  My father shifted in his seat. "I don't know. How am I supposed to remember?"

  "You remember everything, Dad. You remember the number of my go-kart in my first race. You remember this. What did you say?"

  He shrugged. "It doesn't matter now. You don't want to distract yourself with this on race day, do you? Especially after what happened last time."

  The fucker. He was trying to make me feel guilty. He couldn't do that to me any more. "What did you say to her?"

  He stood, throwing his hands out to the side. "I just told her the truth. I told her she could be responsible if you got hurt. That she was a distraction for you."

  The image of my father as my idol crumbled like an ancient statue made of sandstone. He looked small, inconsequential. He looked like just a man. "Why would you do that?"

  "Because it was the right thing to do."

  My breath hitched in my throat. Ever since I'd admitted how I'd felt about Krysta, my emotions ranged more freely in my body. It was as if admitting I loved her, even to myself, opened up the floodgate of all the other emotions. Just then they fought for dominance. Anger, sadness, disappointment—all roiling around in the pit of my stomach. "You shouldn't have tried to manage my life like I was a child.

  "Don't let this get under your skin," Dad said evenly, like it was no big deal.

  "I didn't let it get under my skin. You did this. You," I said, letting the anger take charge, the part of me that wanted to throw blame. I'd never challenged him like this, and it made me shake.

  "You can only race for so long. There will be other women for you."

  Something hit me then, tangential to my father's words. Racing. I was an idiot. Everything was about racing. I'd figured that out on the farm, yet I'd still invited Krysta to the race. It was still all about me. Even sending her the ticket was about me. I wanted her on my turf.

  How dumb could I be?

  I needed to think about this more. To think of what my next move would be if she didn't show up. But first, I had to shed some of my heavy weight. I stood. "Dad, I want to thank you for your time as my manager."

  "Excuse me?"

  My anger leveled out, replaced with a cool calm, like I had applied salve to it. "I'm firing you. Please leave."

  Dad's face went blank, his jaw settling into jowls that trembled. "Don't do this."

  I shrugged. "It's time."

  "We have a contract."

  "Find a way out of it." I leaned over and picked up my phone, wrapping my ear buds around them. "Isn't that your specialty?"

  "Don't be impulsive, Billie."

  "I'm not being impulsive." I was staying remarkably calm. All this time I'd been fighting the realization of what I needed to do. This was one of the hardest steps, but one I needed to take. "If you want to remain my father, you will stop being my manager. It's as simple as that."

  Dad blinked. "Why don't you sleep on it and we can talk tomorrow?"

  "No. That's not necessary."

  "It's time for you to come out, Billie," Ed said softly from the door. How long had he been standing there listening?

  "I'll be there in a minute." I stood and walked to the doorway. "And Dad? If you ever go behind my back and try to control my life again, I will stop talking to you forever."

  Dad sank back into the chair.

  "Do you understand?"

  Dad looked listlessly at his hands.

  "Do you understand?"

  "Yes," he said, his voice choked.

  As I walked to my car and settled into the seat, I tried to notice every moment. This was it. This was my last chance to show the world what I could do. I was capable. I was strong. And I had finally taken control of my life.

  ...

  KRYSTA

  I'd had a thought that I might avoid even the mention of the Indianapolis 500 the day of the race, but as soon as I woke up, it flooded my mind. I tried avoid the TV, but something drew me to it. That something was a five-foot-two dark haired goddess. While I'd decided not to attend, I couldn't not see what happened to Billie. I coul
dn't stop rooting for her, even if it was from afar. I hoped she was too busy winning to notice I hadn't come. I hoped she would understand why I couldn't.

  Tanya came over to watch the race. Today she was here as a friend, as a support. She was the only one who'd witnessed what happened between me and Billie, and she was the only one who would understand.

  We made a party out of it. We popped popcorn and slurped drinks this time since I was off the medication and my liver could tolerate it. Tanya did her best not to mention the huge elephant in the room. I appreciated her effort, but I wasn't sure I wanted to avoid the conversation about Billie any longer. I kind of wanted to have it.

  But we didn't get to it before the festivities started.

  During Billie's press conference, I watched her every move, trying to determine what she was thinking and how she was feeling. Through the TV, she was at once familiar and strange, like a fictional character on a TV show. Except a fictional character that had become real to me, so real that as I watched her, my pulse sped. As she gestured, I could almost imagine her hands on my face. I could almost feel them there. But they weren't. The realization left me breathless.

  "She seems more relaxed, doesn't she?" I asked, after recovering slightly.

  "I was just thinking the same thing," Tanya said, leaning forward. "There is something different about her and I can't quite pinpoint what it is."

  "I know what you're saying."

  We both stared at Billie as she spoke, as she rose from the table with her usual air of confidence. It wasn't a weakness or sadness I was seeing, just a sense of calm, of peace. My stomach twisted at the thought of her experiencing that without me, then twisted again as I thought about how selfish I was being. This was her day. It wasn't about me.

  A commercial came on the TV, and I laid my head back on a pillow.

  "We need to talk, Krysta girl," Tanya said.

  "Hm?" I said, lifting my head.

  "You remember that guy in Phoenix?" Tanya played with the pillow on the armchair in which she sat. She wouldn't meet my eye.