Crashed

I try to control the hitch in my breath and wavering in my voice but I have to ask. “What do you mean?” I’m a horrible liar and I know he can see right through my feigned confusion.

He chuckles a quiet laugh and leans in to brush a tender kiss against my lips and then the tip of my nose before leaning back so he can look into my eyes. He darts his tongue out to wet his lips and says, “I race you, Ryles.”

My heart melts and my soul sighs at hearing him repeat those words I’ve used like glue to bind the broken pieces the crash created. Even though the words bring me peace, I can hear nerves shake his voice, can sense the anxiety in the bottom lip he worries between his teeth. And now I’m starting to get nervous. Did he say the words and now doesn’t feel the same way he did then? I know it’s a ridiculous thought, considering what happened between us moments ago, but the one thing I’ve learned about Colton is that he is anything but predictable.

“Yeah,” I sigh, meeting the temerity in his eyes. “Those words … are you saying them now because you’ve reclaimed the memory or because you still mean them?” There. I’ve laid it out on the table, given him the option to say it’s the former and not the latter—an out in case he no longer races me. In case the accident has changed how he feels and this—us, me and him—have reverted back to a just casual status.

Colton angles his head and studies me a moment, eyes beseeching but lips motionless. The silence stretches as I wait for the answer, as I wait to see if he’ll rip me apart or be the soothing balm to my healing heart.

“Ry … don’t you know I never forget a single moment when I race … on or off the track?” It takes a moment for the words to register, for the words and what they mean to sink in. That he remembers and that he still feels the same way. And the funny thing is now that I know—now that all of this worry can go away and we can move forward—I’m frozen in place.

We’re naked, leaning against a door that a hundred or so reporters are on the other side of, the man I race has just told me that he races me back, and yet all I can do is stare at him as my soul realizes the hope filling it, is finding its permanent home.

Colton leans in so his mouth is a whisper from mine, hands framing my face as he looks into the depths of my soul. “I race you, Rylee,” he says to me, mistaking my silence as not understanding his prior statement. Little does he realize I’m so head over heels in love with him, right here, right now—body naked and heart bared—that I’m robbed of the ability to speak. So instead I accept the brush of his lips over mine in a kiss that’s soft and reverent before he rests his forehead against mine. “Don’t you know?” he asks. “You’re my motherfucking checkered flag.”

I can feel his lips curve up in a smile as they brush against mine, and I let the laughter that bubbles up fall free. It feels so good to suddenly have that thorn removed from my side.

To know the man I love, loves me in return.

To know he’s caught my free-falling heart.

Colton’s hands start the descent back down the line of my spine—the tremor of his right hand so slight now I barely notice it—and then back up as I feel him start to harden again against my lower belly.

“I take it you’ve been cleared from the doc?” I ask, my sated body already thrumming with newfound desire.

“Yeah I did, but after my day,” he says, kissing my forehead and pulling me back into the comfort of his arms, “it didn’t fucking matter if I got the okay or not, I was taking what was mine.”

“What was yours, huh?” I tease him despite the words warming my heart.

“Yep.”

And then the words he said before register and have me pulling back to search for an answer. “What was wrong with your day?”

I see something cloud his eyes momentarily before he pushes it away. “Don’t worry about me,” he says, and I’m immediately concerned.

“What else happened, Colton? Was there something you remembered—something that—”

“No,” he says, quieting me with a press of his lips against mine. “I only remembered what was important. Some voids are still there.” Ever the master of deflection, he continues, “It seems I’ve been neglecting you as of late.”

So whatever is bugging him, he doesn’t want to talk about. Okay … well, then on the heels of the past twenty minutes, I will most definitely give him the unasked for space and not push. “Neglecting me?”

“Yes, not treating you properly,” he says as he slaps my butt; the sting it leaves has nothing on the shock waves that ripple through the hypersensitive flesh between my thighs. “You’ve been taking care of me—of everyone else but yourself as usual—and I haven’t properly taken care of you.”

“I do believe you did just take care of me … and quite properly,” I tease, wiggling my naked body up against his and earning the hum that comes from deep within his throat. “If that’s considered not taking care of me—neglecting me—Ace, then please…” I nip at the skin on the underside of his jaw “…neglect me some more.”

“My God, woman, you test a man’s restraint,” he groans as his hands run down my spine and clasp together against my lower back. “But, that was just a minor sidetrack to—”

“Minor is not what I’d call it,” I quip with a raise of my eyes and another wiggle of my hips that causes him to laugh out loud. “I’ll take one of your sidetracks any day.”