“The night she agreed to marry me, we decided to celebrate. We dressed up and I took her out to a nice dinner, but Nora wasn’t your average girl. She was a tomboy who liked fast cars and cheap thrills. She was the perfect fit for me. No, don’t,” Jon said, stepping back when Patricia reached out to touch him. He couldn’t allow it, not now. He didn’t want her contaminated by him.

She didn’t push the issue, just resumed her quiet stance on his front stoop, and watched him with sadness blanketing her face.

“To celebrate, we got all our closest friends together and went up to the track. It was on the outskirts of this old farm we’d found years before, hidden from the main road by an enormous pole barn and about an acre of mile high weeds.

“Nora loved the races. Sometimes I think she loved them more than I did.” He smiled at the memory of her shouting her head off, jumping up and down as they watched the cars speed around the loop, kicking up clouds of dirt everywhere.

“Whenever I raced, she rode shotgun and she always screamed for me to go faster. That night wasn’t any different, except that soon we would be tied together by more than just a promise. But I got careless that night. One of the guys had just bought a new car, and he’d put a lot of time in under the hood, but he couldn’t drive for shit. We thought it was a done deal, an easy win.” Jon met her eyes and grimaced. “We were cocky about it.”

That was the one thing he knew never to do was get cocky about a race, because that was when you made mistakes. Patricia knew it, too. He could see it in her eyes.

“We were right. On the first and second lap, we left the guy in the dust. He could barely control his car. I guess he wasn’t used to handling it on anything other than hard concrete. But at some point, he started getting the hang of it, and I decided to toy with him a little, give him false hope. So, I slowed down a bit, let him get his nose in front of mine, knowing I had already won. But then in the last stretch, I remember thinking it was time to get serious. I floored it, and so did he. Even though he had a handle on the terrain, he still didn’t have enough experience to account for everything, and as we came around the last bend, he didn’t drift when he was supposed to. Instead, he tried to punch it, and he ended up losing control.”

Jon could still smell the stench of gasoline spilling on to the ground. He could hear the shriek of protesting metal, of Nora screaming hysterically. The curious thing was, even though he’d shattered one of his legs and broken several bones in the other, he never felt any pain.

“Oh, baby.” Patricia was suddenly there, and wrapping him in her arms, while making soft shushing sounds. Jon hadn’t even realized he’d started crying.

It felt so good to have her hold him. He didn’t pull away like he knew he should. Instead, he wrapped his arms around her shoulders and rested his cheek against the top of her head.

“I woke up in the hospital a few days later with a concussion, half of my body was in a cast and I was hooked up to all kinds of wires and tubes,” he went on, seeing every memory before him as fresh as the day it happened. “My parents told me what happened, that Nora didn’t make it.”

Patricia pressed closer, tightening her hold around his waist. “I’m so sorry, Jon,” she sniffed. “What about the other driver?”

“He lived, but the swelling on his brain was bad enough that he isn’t the same anymore. I got lucky. All I had to do was relearn the basics and I walked out of there with a clean bill of health. After that, I decided to do what Nora and I had always talked about: open a publishing company. She was going to be our first top-selling author,” he said, smiling sadly. “But obviously that never happened.” Standing tall, Jon released Patricia and stepped back.

She wrapped her arms around herself and stared up at him. “So that’s why her parents hate you so much, because they think you took their daughter away from them?”

“They don’t think it, they know it,” Jon returned. “If it hadn’t been for me, she’d still be alive today.”

Fire flashed in her eyes. “You can’t do that, Jon. You can’t take all the blame. It’s like your parents said, it was an accident.”

“An accident that never should have happened,” Jon volleyed back. “I knew the risks and I recognized the warning signs when that kid couldn’t keep his shit together, but rather than stop the race, I chose to take the easy win.” He jabbed his finger into his chest. “It was my fault. I killed her.”

“Then it was her fault, too. She knew all of that, and she didn’t say anything. You said it yourself, Nora liked the cheap thrill.” She tried to come to him, but Jon backed away further, shaking his head.

“I can’t talk to you about this anymore,” he said roughly. “Just please leave.”

Patricia shook her head. “No, Jon. I won’t let you push me away. I won’t let you beat yourself up and shoulder all the blame for something that was never your fault. Your parents said you were stupid kids. I agree. But you’re an adult now, and from the looks of it, I think you’ve paid enough.”

Furious with her rational thoughts and unwilling to process them, Jon grasped the door, holding it open. “I’ll decide when I’ve paid enough.”

“So you’re just going to kick me out?” Patricia asked, bewildered. “After all of that, you’re just going to turn your back on everything so you can sit here and wallow in self-pity?”

Jon’s lips thinned. He’d had enough self-analyzing for one day. “Yes, that is exactly what I plan to do. I’m going to ‘wallow’ all fucking day for the next month, or year, hell, maybe even the rest of my life if I want, and you don’t have a damn thing you can say about it! Now get the fuck out!”

Her bottom lip quivered, but Jon pretended he didn’t see it. All he had to do was get through another minute and it would be over. Patricia drew herself up tall and marched past him. The moment her foot touched the concrete, she spun around and pointed an angry finger at him. “This isn’t over. Not by a long shot. If you think you can toss me out of your life, then you’re sadly mistaken. You made me love you, Jon, and I’m not letting that go just because you decide to throw a tantrum. Got it?”

Jon stared at her, the words ‘You made me love you’ circling his head. He shook his head to dislodge them. “I hear you, Patricia, but you’re wasting your time, because I don’t love you.” With that, he closed the door on her stunned face and waited until he heard the growl of her car speed away.

20

Fed up and angry at the world, Patti floored it. She didn’t care about anything at that moment except feeling the sweet relief of leaving her worries, hurt, and fear trailing in her dust. She jumped lanes, went too fast, and dared anyone to say anything about it.

How could Jon just push her out of his life like that? How could he let his past determine his future? He didn’t even try to fight for them, and she was worth fighting for, dammit!

There was only one person she could rely on, and that was her daddy. The same in death as he was in life, he never rejected her, he never looked at her with pity, he simply listened, and sometimes that’s all a girl needed—unconditional love and undivided attention.

Like there was a magnetic pull on her heart, she knew where she was headed before she even made a conscious decision to go there.

At the speed she was traveling, the cemetery was only a few minutes south, so Patti cranked up her angry girl music and plotted her course to the only man who had ever shown her unconditional love. The only man who had ever proven to be reliable in her life.

Damn Jon. Damn him and all of his baggage.

He should have fought harder. Instead, he would rather close her out and make them both suffer in some misguided attempt at being noble when all he really was, was a fool.

Well screw him. He’d just proved what she’d known all along—she didn’t need a man in her life to be happy. She didn’t need him at all. He was right, it was better that they ended it now, rather than deluding themselves into thinking they could have a happy and fulfilling life together only to regret it later.

Yeah, it was better to get all the hurt feelings out of the way now so she could move on to greener pastures.

Except, Patti didn’t want to move on. She liked where she was at, she liked whom she was with, and she liked every stinking thing about Jon and the future he offered her. Without even realizing it, she’d begun to hope. He’d given her a glimpse into a world where men weren’t all scum who lied and cheated. Okay, so she’d only known him a few weeks, and as foolish as she knew it sounded, she knew Jon wasn’t that type of guy. Like her father, he was one of the good guys who cherished the women in his life, and damn him for making her see that and allowing her to believe that she could have it.

Just...damn him.

Ahead, Patti could see through watery eyes her exit was coming up. Overeager to get to her father so she could unleash some of her frustration, Patti wasn’t paying close enough attention to her surroundings. As the road began to curve, she steered with it, and the moment it straightened out, she jammed on the accelerator, bolting for the exit. For the first time in her life, she wasn’t as careful as she should have been. She didn’t check her mirrors or turn her head to account for blind spots as her father had taught her to do. She just jumped into the lane that would carry her to her destination and because of that, she didn’t see the oversized diesel pick-up until it was too late.