by Anne Calhoun
“Breathe,” Conn advised.
“Wow,” Cady said, then gasped in air. “Just … wow.”
“Nice job.”
“My shifting was weak,” Cady said.
“You’ll get the hang of it, newb.”
“I should give you your hat back,” Cady said as she crept around the turn to taxi back to the starting pole.
“You got a hood on that coat?” Conn said.
“No,” she admitted. She was wearing Emily’s design, and the longer she wore it, the more she liked it. She was both warm and looking very, very fine.
“Keep it, or Chris will have my ass.”
“He’s not going to … it’s already on Instagram, isn’t it?”
“Yup,” Conn said.
“Great. Just great.” She reached in her pocket and checked for texts. Two from Chris.
Goddammit Cady. Followed by a string of frowning emojis.
“Go again,” Conn said.
She ran once more, already getting the hang of the test strip, improving her shifting and her time by half a second. Then she drove off the track and parked by Shane’s trailer, where Conn’s car was running. Finn was sitting half in and half out the driver’s seat, listening to the rumbling engine with an attentive ear. He gave Shane a questioning thumbs-up, one Shane returned with a definitive thumbs-up.
“Why is it so loud?” Cady shouted.
“The exhaust stops right after the manifold,” Conn said, his voice also raised. “Mufflers are great for making cars run quietly, but every inch of exhaust pipe reduces performance.”
“Oh.”
Finn hoisted his lean frame out of the car, then leaned through the open window after Conn got in, explaining something Cady caught only in snatches and didn’t understand anyway. Conn tossed her a vague salute as the car rolled toward the waiting line.
Cady wandered toward the chain-link fence. The stands, normally full on a Saturday night, were all but empty. The canteen was open, one bored-looking girl alternately serving up the occasional coffee or hot cocoa and flirting with the various crew members. Finn was among the guys at the counter, nursing a cup of coffee. Shane walked to the canteen, hands shoved deep in his pockets. Cady wondered if he’d picked up the habit from Conn, or vice versa. He ordered a cup of coffee, then walked over to stand beside her.
“Conn asked you to keep an eye on me, didn’t he?”
Shane just smiled at her. “I don’t usually get to watch the races,” he said in answer. “Usually I’ve got two or three cars I’m tuning up between runs.”
“You don’t want to drive?”
“Sometimes I do. But I don’t feel about it the way Conn does.”
She turned back to the track. Conn was second in line for the warming strip, staring straight ahead. She took the opportunity to watch him. His eyes resolutely turned forward, his jaw set. Something struck Cady.
“He doesn’t look like he’s having fun,” she commented before she could fully think through the stupidity of that statement. Of course it wasn’t fun for him. Maybe it was a different kind of fun, the kind that comes from a depth and breadth of experience, a total immersion in a hobby or sport. Conn knew cars and racing inside and out. She’d had a couple of moments of exhilaration. He had two decades of racing in his brain and body.
“This isn’t much fun for Conn anymore,” Shane agreed, to her utter shock.
She looked at him. “Why not? Why is he still doing it?”
“You’ll have to ask him that,” Shane said.
Cady thought about this. In her experience, doing something after the fun was gone meant you were either in something for a profound love and fulfillment or you were stuck in a rut you needed to hop out of. Based on the expression on Conn’s face, she was leaning toward the latter.
He rolled up to the starting lights. They counted down from red through amber to green. The Camaro shot off the starting line.
“Good shifting,” Shane commented. “It’s trickier than you’d think.”
“I figured that out after one run,” Cady said. Conn had some serious driving skills.
They watched the car rocket down the runway, then turned in unison to see the time flash up on the LED display: 10.00.
“Damn,” Shane muttered. He blew out his breath. “All we need is two hundredths of a second. I’ve got to figure that out.”
“Figure what out?” Cady said. She felt like she’d been dropped into act three, maybe four, of a family drama. “I thought the point was consistency.”
“You’ll have to ask him that,” she and Shane said in unison. “Got it. Good thing I like a mystery.”
“It’s not much of a mystery,” Shane said easily. She liked the way he smiled at her, despite the serious look in his eyes. “Pretty common story, truth be told. But it’s Conn’s to tell, and I’m betting you’re the right person to hear it.”
Cady wasn’t so sure about that. She and Conn were involved in a freakish, spur-of-the-moment relationship that was about sex and a total absence of privacy. They’d been thrown together because Chris thought she was in danger and Conn needed to be shuffled aside while Hawthorn tried to find out who’d beaten a man to a pulp and was trying to frame Conn for it. It was hardly something to write a song about. “What makes you think that?” she said, absently. Conn’s car had crawled up the return runway and angled into the back of the line for another run.
“He’s never brought another woman to the track,” Shane said.
“He has to bring me to the track,” she said, exasperated. Shane and Finn were acting like Emily and her BFFs, parsing every situation for meaning where there was none. “It’s work.”
“No, he doesn’t,” Shane replied. “You could be back at your house, or in a safe house, or in your car driving the back roads if you needed some variety. He’s protected this place for as long as I’ve known him.”
Trying to ignore the flicker of pleasure that the thought of being special to Conn brought her, because one hormonal teenage girl in her family was plenty, thanks very much, she thought back to their earlier conversation. She suggested a drive. Conn suggested the track. One glance at his face told her the second run held no more appeal for him than the first.
“Okay. I’ll ask him,” she said. Now the whole situation felt like a dare, except it looked like Conn’s soul was on the line.
Conn’s second run came in at exactly the same time as the first, which matched the runs she’d seen the last time she was at the track. “He’s consistent,” she said.
“Yup,” Shane answered without humor.
Conn pulled through the gap in the chain link, the car growling like a junkyard dog. Finn wandered back from the canteen while Conn parked by Shane’s trailer, slung himself out of the Camaro, and slammed the door hard enough to rock the car on its frame. Apparently the pull of male bonding and the car trumped the pretty girl behind the counter. “Hey, Conn,” he said.
“I’ll take a look at the timing,” Shane said. Finn already had the hood up, the smell of oil and gas dense and acrid in the cold air. “Maybe it’s off. You might need a new—”
“It’s not the car,” Conn interrupted. He shrugged out of the fire-retardant jacket and tossed it through the open window. His hair and shirt were plastered to his body with sweat, and the sight of steam rising from his shoulders sent a hot zing through Cady’s body. “We both know it’s not the car. Just forget about it for a while.”
Anger and frustration radiated off Conn like the heat off the car. Finn dropped the Camaro’s hood and took a step back. “Sure,” Shane said. “You guys done?”
One eyebrow lifted, Cady looked at Conn. “We’re done,” Conn said. “Let’s get out of here.”
Cady waved goodbye to Shane and Finn, then got into the passenger seat of her Audi. “I think you need to drive more than I do,” she said.
The fact that Conn didn’t argue about it spoke volumes to his state of mind. He turned over the engine and whipped the car in a tight semicir
cle, then squealed out of the lot.
Cady waited until they were on the highway before starting the conversation. “That didn’t look like much fun for you.”
“It wasn’t.”
“Then why are you doing it? Loyalty to Shane?”
A muscle popped in his jaw. “He’s got a waiting list a dozen names long for guys who want to drive with McCool’s Garage sponsorships. He keeps me out of loyalty to me, not the other way around.”
“Conn. Why?”
“When my dad ran that car, his best time was nine point nine-nine. He ran that multiple times. I’m trying to beat his time.”
Cady digested this for a second.
“I know it’s stupid,” Conn started.
“It’s not stupid,” she said tartly. “I was just trying to think of the right thing to say.”
“Give up.” Conn huffed out a bitter laugh. “That’s the right thing to say. Just give up and accept that my reflexes aren’t as fast as my dad’s. The car is the same weight. I’m the same weight. His was more beer gut than muscle, but pounds are pounds. The weather is nearly identical. It’s down to me. To my reflexes.”
“Why are you trying to beat his time? Not that I discourage people from having goals,” she added hastily. “Goals are good. But … why?”
The sharp white light from the dash cast Conn’s face in planes and shadows. “He skipped town when I was in the fifth grade. My mom died a couple of years before then. He kind of fell apart when she died. Started drinking. It’s nothing earth-shattering. It’s not even that uncommon.”
“That doesn’t make it any less difficult. I’m so sorry,” she said. “How old were you?”
“Ten.”
“Who raised you?”
“I bounced around,” he said, eyes firmly fixed on the road in a way that told her he wasn’t seeing it, but rather an endless round of new rooms, packed bags, and different schools. “Extended family mostly, although I stayed a couple of times with a friend of Dad’s when I got older and my aunt and I had a fight. I learned to make myself at home in other people’s houses way earlier than the search module at the academy.”
Cady all but gaped at him. He was so calm about it. “Conn, I can’t even imagine. When Dad walked out on us, Emily was devastated. She alternated between screaming fights with Mom and sleeping in her bed. She’s still suspicious of people.”
“Why aren’t you?”
She thought about that for a moment. “I was a little older, able to understand Mom when she promised she’d never, ever leave like Dad did. And I had music. That’s when I set my goal of being a singer-songwriter. If I lose that…” Her voice trailed off. Right now, losing music was a real possibility. She’d heard of dry spells lasting for months. Years. “Mom keeps what’s hers,” she finished.
“Maybe that’s why you can be the way you are. You know she won’t ever give you up.” He smiled at her, rakish and so heartbreakingly vulnerable all at once.
She wanted to look away, but couldn’t. She knew how he felt. In some ways, an unreliable parent was worse than one who cut out on you. Abandonment gave you something to push against. Unreliability kept your hopes up until you refused to hope anymore.
She and Emily couldn’t trust their father, but at least they had their mother, who was the picture of reliability. Conn had no one. His mother died. His father treated fatherhood like something he could walk in and out of like a revolving door. But Conn didn’t behave the same way. He did a job that at its most basic was a commitment to show up when called at the worst time in people’s lives, day after day, year after year. He looked after Shane’s nieces and nephews like they were his own. Conn expected people to duck out on him, with a glance, with their lives. So she met his gaze without flinching, and found that meant letting him see deep inside her, too. She wanted to look away, but couldn’t.
Because she was falling in love with Conn.
“Why aren’t you afraid of me?” he said, out of the blue.
She laughed, shifted her weight, rested her elbow on the door panel and her temple on her bent fingers, the better to look at him. “Because you’re not that scary.”
He looked at her, one hand on the wheel, the other loose on his thigh, eyes heartbreakingly dark and vulnerable. “Most people are.”
“Then they don’t really see you.”
“And you do?”
“I think so,” she said, well aware that the dark cocoon of the car, the night, their unreal circumstances all contributed to an intimacy that might not stand the bright light of day, much less real life.
“I’m terrified of me.”
“Why?”
“I’m capable of what you saw in that picture.”
She considered this. “We all are. Pushed the right way, by the right person, we all are. But you don’t act on it.”
“No,” he said quietly. “I don’t. But I have that temper.”
“And a fairly long fuse,” she replied. “You’ve got people in your face all day, every day.”
“Don’t try to make me a better man,” Conn said. “Don’t idealize me.”
That stopped her. She thought carefully before she spoke. “I’m not,” she said at last. “All I can speak to is what I see. You have a shadow side. That doesn’t make you bad. It makes you human.”
They were on the long, straight highway out of town, heading for Whispering Pines. “How do you do that?”
“Do what?”
“See the shades of gray.”
She shrugged. “I’ve been thinking about this lately. Love songs are easy. Songs about hooking up and dancing in clubs and broken hearts, all easy. Ramp up the beat and no one pays much attention to the lyrics. I’ve got an album ready to drop that’s nine songs about all of those things, with nothing new or different or unique about it. It’s got all the right collaborators and all the right beats. It’s slick and shiny and about as human as slick, shiny things are.”
He cut her a glance. “It wasn’t that bad.”
“It’s not bad. It’s just not what I want to be doing. We get one life, you know? One human life. I don’t know what to do. One thing lights me up inside. The other makes the most sense, capitalizing on momentum, fame, more money. All the big voices in my life are telling me to drop the studio’s album.”
He aimed the clicker at the gate. “Who are the small voices?”
“Mom. The voice inside me.” The road to her house was dark, silent, only a few porch lights dotting the darkness, far fewer of them than the stars overhead.
“Add me to that list,” Conn said.
She parked the car inside her garage, leaned over the console and kissed him. It was the least practiced kiss she’d given since high school, landing awkwardly on the corner of his mouth and obviously startling him. But then he turned to her, pressing his lips to hers and returning the kiss. His lips urged hers open, his tongue sliding in to rub against hers. She tightened her grip on his rough, flattened sheepskin collar and added the strength of her right hand, fisting her fingers in the front of his coat.
His hand grazed the top of her head, sliding his hat from her hair in a shower of staticky sparks visible in the car’s dim interior. His hand cupped the back of her head, holding her mouth to his like she might get away. But she wasn’t going anywhere. She couldn’t get enough of Conn’s lush mouth, his deft tongue sliding against hers, the soft, rough noise that escaped his throat when she nipped his lower lip, then licked the spot to soothe it.
The hand not in her hair snaked between her waist and the seat to haul her over the console, into his lap. She twisted as she moved, her bottom cradled against his warm thighs, her feet still in the passenger seat. It was awkward, but now she could cup his face as she kissed him, sliding her fingers through his hair. More importantly, he now had access to her body, his palms seeking out her breasts.
“I can barely feel that,” she moaned when he squeezed the tender flesh. “Too many clothes.”
He jerked up her sweater, onl
y to find another sweater underneath, then a thermal undershirt under that. “How many layers are you wearing?” he grumbled.
“Four, I think,” she said, twisting on his lap. She needed more, the hot visceral glow of skin-to-skin contact. “Keep going, there’s one more—oh, God,” she gasped.
He’d found her silk undershirt, the bottom layer except for her bra—barely any defense against the rough heat of his palm. She arched, desperate as he fumbled with her bra cup, then solved that problem by shoving her bra up. It was the least elegant look ever, three sweaters and a bra bunched around her collarbone, but the sensation when he pinched her nipple made her arch so strongly she banged her head on the driver’s side window.
“Ow … no, don’t stop, don’t stop,” she said.
“I can think of better places to do this than the front seat of your car,” Conn said, but his hand didn’t stop moving, squeezing and pinching, then gathering the silk to graze her nipples into a hyperaware state. “Or the backseat. You should have bought the bigger sedan.”
She clamped her hand around the back of his neck and pulled his mouth to hers. The light in the garage door opener flicked off, leaving them in total darkness. “Shit,” Conn said, and slapped his hand against the dash until he found the push button start and activated the interior lights. A soft pinging filled the air.
Cady looked into his eyes and saw nothing but a thin ring of iris around his pupils. Her brain said standard response to dim lighting. Her body said aroused male and triggered the desire to writhe against him, something she wanted to do naked and horizontal. “Inside,” she said.
He opened the door and caught her in one bulky arm before she fell backward to the cement floor. In a move worthy of any of the Dukes of Hazzard she gripped the doorframe and lifted herself out and up until she could get a foot on the floor, kicking Conn soundly in the thigh in the process. He grunted, but followed her out, waiting with the car door open until she’d opened the door leading to the mudroom. Light spilled from the kitchen into the garage.
