Even if the shadows couldn’t hide my breasts, hopefully, they hid my blush.
“Maybe.”
His quick, harsh laugh surprised me. The faintest flash of a smile on his face seeming as unlikely a sight as the aurora borealis before it was gone.
“I have work to do,” he declared, his eyes drifting over me again with a mind of their own.
With a low grunt, he turned and walked away.
“G,” I called after him, but he didn’t respond. Hell, he didn’t even pause. “Garret.”
That time, he froze and a shiver scaled my spine. He didn’t want to be called that, and I didn’t know what punishment would come from using his name, but I needed his attention.
I needed to know.
“What is your problem with me?” I demanded again.
I shouldn’t care.
I didn’t want to care.
My whole body vibrated with how angry he made me—so angry I was ready to grab his shirt and shake him. To shake the stony scorn from his face and disrupt the disapproval that dripped from his lips. To scream that I belonged here, behind the wheel, just as much as anyone.
Garret Gallagher made me angry, but the thought that I still wanted his good opinion was the most infuriating part of it all.
“There are few people I like in this world, Miss Snyder. None of them will ever come from this sport, and none of them will ever be pretentious, emotional little girls who throw a fit when something doesn’t go their way,” he replied without even having the decency to look over his shoulder before he disappeared into the back room, shutting the door decisively behind him.
I stood for a moment before picking my jaw up from where it had toppled to the ground, knocked out of place by his harsh insult.
Pretentious.
Emotional.
Rage doused the lust in my veins as I spun and stalked back upstairs, closing the door rather than slamming it like I had the urge to because it would only prove him right.
Garret
“HOW IS SHE?”
Janet, Claire’s mother, turned as I approached. Her face was the same ashen white to match her white-washed blonde hair. She was a specter in this place—a specter in life ever since my brother died, haunted by ghosts and invisible diseases alike.
Even though Hembry Children’s Hospital popped with splashes of color and cartoons in the rooms and along the halls, to the adult eye, the decorations were nothing more than Band-Aids over the gaping bullet hole that we dealt with walking through its doors: cancer.
“Okay,” she replied and returned her gaze to the window into Claire’s room. Janet’s answer never varied to the question and yet, it still felt like an obligation to ask.
It was early. Or maybe late.
The difference was indeterminable to someone who’d been up all night trying to piece together a damn engine and not thinking about the infuriating partially-clothed woman who’d interrupted me.
I was going to have a word with Renner.
Kacey Snyder couldn’t stay above the garage. Not when I was coming and going at all hours to get my work done around the time spent at the hospital. Not when another late-night run-in would be the death of me.
Even now, the desire she’d ignited still burned hot in my veins like a self-generating fuel, driving my need for her dangerously close to the edge of my control.
Using the pump on the wall, I sprayed some hand sanitizer into my hands.
I’d already stopped at the bathroom at the end of the hall to wash them, but they never felt clean enough. A mechanic’s hands. Always dirty.
Except the stains on mine were tattooed into the lines on my palms—the lines that lore believed told past and future—as a reminder of all the ways I’d failed. And all the ways my punishment would never be enough.
“Where is she?” I asked, seeing the bed was empty.
“They took her for some bloodwork. She should be back any minute,” she replied wearily. “Since you’re here, I’m just going to go grab a coffee. I’ll be right back.” She winced.
“Ye alright?” I gave her a once-over, my jaw tightening. “Why don’t ye grab some breakfast, too?”
Anyone could see how a belt was the only thing holding her jeans up, and the long sleeve shirt she wore draped like she’d purchased it two sizes too big. But even mentioning how little she was eating wasn’t enough to bring any color to her cheeks.
“I’ll see what they have.” Her voice was about as hollow as the weak promise.
“Claire’s already fightin’ for herself, Janet. Don’t make her have ta fight fer ye, too.”
She folded her arms across her chest, glancing to the empty room once more.
“It’s not a good day,” she murmured, and the pain she strained to hold back became more evident.
Two months before getting Claire’s diagnosis of Acute Lymphocytic Leukemia, Janet had been diagnosed with fibromyalgia—a diagnosis by elimination. Like many things in life, there were good days and bad days for the pain that put her body through the wringer.
Unfortunately, it became immeasurably harder to have bad days when your daughter was fighting off cancer.
“And I just can’t lose someone else.” Her voice was hardly intelligible, the emotional trials she faced wore her down to where her own disease had no trouble taking advantage.
“She’s goin’ ta be okay. She’s a fighter,” I said gruffly, focusing on the facts—that ninety-percent of kids diagnosed with ALL would be cured.
Janet didn’t respond, her hollowed gaze creating a vacuum as she turned and walked away, and I knew she’d only return with her coffee.
“Uncle G!” The excited squeal drew my attention, and I turned to see Claire being rolled in my direction by her nurse.
Just like the bright pops of color didn’t fit with the hospital, neither did the seven-year-old’s sunny disposition.
She was all smiles and warmth and light, even though her body fought off something dark and deadly. It didn’t fit to see a child who should be outside running around confined to a wheelchair. It didn’t fit to see a child in a hospital gown, her head wrapped up because the drugs caused her to lose her strawberry-blonde curls, her wrists decorated with intake bands and tags rather than regular bracelets, and her arms littered with the remains of needle sticks rather than the flakes of those temporary tattoos she used to love.
Claire Gallagher was a rebel—a fighter.
She’d always been that way, and some days, I swore she was the only one of us strong enough to handle her diagnosis with the resolve she did for only being seven.
“Hey there, Bear,” I greeted her, bending down to press a kiss to her forehead and sucking in a deep breath. “Where’ve ye been? I thought maybe ye’d tried to escape,” I teased.
She giggled, and I took her chair from her nurse Gwen, whose personality was a perfect match to Claire’s, and pushed my niece into her room. “I didn’t escape! I had to give blood, and look!” She extended her arm where there was a fresh Band-Aid attached at her elbow. “Gwen got me checkered Band-Aids! Just like the racing flag!”
My stomach tightened at her giant toothy grin, her smile a mix of different shapes and sizes now that she’d started to lose some baby teeth.
Claire loved racing. She loved it from the moment she learned her dad had worked on race cars.
Danny had died before she was born. He’d died before Janet knew she was pregnant. Some days, I wondered if that would’ve made a difference in his decision to take his own life.
Then again, maybe it was better not knowing because I worried I wouldn’t like the answer.
Claire loved racing because it was the only way she knew how to love her dad now that he was gone.
“Very cool.” I examined her prize. “No wonder yer all smiles today.”
“I’m always all smiles,” she replied. “It’s better to be all smiles than all frowns like you and Mommy.”
I winced; insults from a seven-year-old stung—especially
when they were pretty-well true. “I’m not all frowns,” I insisted as I lifted her into her bed.
She huffed and rolled her eyes. “You are.” She stared at me. “And you’re not even the one stuck in a bed with no hair.”
“Yer right, Bear,” I conceded. “I’ll have to work on my smiles. I think I’m out of practice.”
“Well, I can help you if you want.” She offered with unabashed honesty as she reached for her teddy bear. “Did you finish your car?”
“Not even close.” I sighed with a small smile. “But I’ve got some time.”
“You know the race is in May, Uncle G. There’s not that much time.”
“Thanks for the reminder, Bear.”
She sent me a wide toothy grin. “Do you think I’ll be able to go?”
Here was where it was hard to smile. It was hard to know what was going to happen and where she would be and how she would be feeling.
“Well, I need ta finish the car first,” I told her. “Ye don’t want to go if my car isn’t going to be there, do ye?”
“Yes!” she squealed. “I definitely do.”
“But I thought ye wanted to see my car?” I probed, taking a seat on the edge of her bed.
“I want to see Kacey Snyder!” She bounced with excitement.
I froze. My eyes snapped from where I’d been adjusting the blanket on her bed up to the bright brown eyes looking expectantly at me.
“How do ye know she’s going ta be there?”
“It was on the news this morning.” She dramatically but gently smacked her palm against her forehead. “How did you not know, Uncle G? They had her picture next to the car and everything!”
My jaw tensed.
Looked like those photos had made it into circulation. Renner wasn’t wasting any time.
“Are they letting ye watch the news again?” I demanded with a low voice. Even the local news wasn’t something I wanted Claire watching.
“Gwen left the button on the table.” She gave me a wide smile. “So, I changed it when she went to get me breakfast.”
“What am I goin’ ta do with you?” I sighed and shook my head. “Can’t ye just watch cartoons like the other kids?”
“No.” She crossed her arms with an adorable scowl. “I’m not like other kids, and I won’t pretend to be.”
I reached out and squeezed her leg. There was no arguing that. “I don’t want ye ta pretend ta be anythin’, Bear,” I rasped. “I just don’t want ye watchin’ the news all the time. It’s not pleasant.”
I told her the truth because, even at eight, her situation had matured her in many of the hardest ways.
“It was just the racing channel.” She reached forward and patted my hand as though to reassure me. “How did you not see it?”
I grunted. “Well, I didn’t have time to watch anythin’ this morning before comin’ here. And if I did, then ye wouldn’t be able to give me all the updates.” That seemed to satisfy her tiny fraught form.
“Do you think I can meet her?”
I cleared my throat.
Aside from the fact that I wasn’t sure whether or not Kacey would be a good influence on my niece, having her meet Claire would involve spending even more time with the headstrong, desirable woman. And I was already having enough trouble escaping the thought of her as it was.
The firm warmth of her arms underneath mine.
Kacey looked soft, but to touch her was anything but. She was all muscle. Firm and strong and capable of handling a car going over two-hundred miles per hour. To know the physical shape one had to be in to drive a race car was one thing, but to hold her, to feel her body just inches from mine, the perfect combination of fierce and feminine was intoxicating.
She’d awoken something in me.
Lit a match in the massive pitch-black pit of the person I was. The tiniest flame illuminating so much I’d tried to hide—so much I tried to hide from. And now so much that I couldn’t ignore.
“Uncle G?”
I blinked and my attention returned to Claire’s waiting gaze. “Yeah, Bear?”
I swallowed over the lump in my throat, hoping she wouldn’t ask again; I didn’t know that I’d be able to turn her down.
“Do you think I can be a race car driver?”
I groaned. Invariably she asked this question every time the topic of racing came up—which was frequently. “Do ye want to give yer mom and me a heart attack?”
“No!” She snickered. “I just want to race.”
“Racing is dangerous, Bear.” I didn’t want to tell her no, but there were so many complications for her even before she would step into a car.
“More dangerous than cancer?” she asked with a complete innocence that broke me.
I wished, more than anything, I could be as strong as she was. And it frustrated me that I wasn’t. Claire treated her illness like it was just another growing pain. Like something she had to push through rather than something she might not survive. Maybe it was just naivety. Maybe it was lack of comprehension because of her age.
Or maybe it was because she was so damn sure there was something she needed to do that nothing—not even Acute Lymphocytic Lymphoma—could stop her.
I shifted in my seat. I knew another woman like that—one I was trying very hard to keep my distance of dislike from.
I ducked my head before turning my gaze to the windows in her room. “A different kind of dangerous.”
“Oh.” She reached for her teddy bear that sat on her bedside table. The brown animal decked out in race gear. “Well, I’ll be careful. And you can build me a car, so it will be safe.”
I chuckled. “Let’s stick to one dangerous thing at a time, how about that?”
She sighed and sagged against the headboard. I could see her energy beginning to fade. They’d decided to up the dosage of her chemotherapy drugs this week, hoping to get a better response. She was a little older than a majority of children who ended up with this kind of cancer, so they’d warned us from the start that her battle might be a little harder…a little longer… a little more unpredictable.
Whatever it took, we’d told them. Hembry was an affiliate of St. Jude’s Children’s Hospital, so I knew she was getting the best care. I knew because I was paying for it.
“What’s wrong?” she asked, too perceptive and too inquisitive for any of my emotions to skate by, no matter how I tried to mask them.
I gave her a reassuring smile—the best that I could. “Just thinkin’ about work is all, Bear.”
“I would be excited to work on a race car every day,” she declared.
“I know you would.”
“Why aren’t you?”
I shrugged. I didn’t know how to explain to an almost-eight-year-old that the sport had almost cost me everything, and there was nothing that could drag me back into that world—nothing except for her.
“If you don’t like it, you should quit.”
I laughed. “It’s not the car.”
“Then what’s wrong?” She yawned, and I knew I should let her rest; Janet would be back any minute anyway, and she refused to talk about racing with Claire.
I grunted. “I don’t get along too well with some of the people I work with.”
“Maybe if you smiled more, they would like you,” she replied with the blunt, inoffensive honesty only a child could have.
My mouth thinned. “I don’t know about that.”
At this point, if I smiled at Kacey, I was pretty sure she’d assume it was some sort of underhanded insult. And it was better that way.
“I think you’re nice, Uncle G,” she went on, cinching her teddy tighter against her. “You just need to smile more. Also, if you say nice things to people, that will make them like you.”
Your personality isn’t winning you any friends.
I bit back a groan, recalling Kacey’s words.
Calling her pretentious and emotional was about as far from nice as I could get. And that was why I said it, because she needed t
o stay as far away from me as she could.
But Claire didn’t need to know that. She didn’t need to know why I pushed people away. She didn’t need to know why I’d sworn to never work in the racing industry again. And she definitely didn’t need to know that the only reason I’d broken that promise was because I needed the kind of money only racing and Renner could provide in order to pay for her treatment.
“I’ll have to try that,” I replied with a low voice. “But for right now, you should rest, and I should get back to work.”
She sighed, her eyelids growing heavy. That was the part she hated most about all of this—the loss of energy. Still, her smile never faded.
“Just practice your smile, Uncle G,” she murmured drowsily, not even hearing the click of the door to her room opening and closing as Janet came in with only a travel cup of coffee in hand.
I stood and leaned over her. “I’ll try, Bear,” I rasped and pressed my lips to the fabric covering her head.
“It’s a nice one.” She sighed. “You should share it with someone.”
I paused, glancing down at the little girl I’d do anything to heal, and my throat tightened at her words.
Somehow, sharing a smile felt too intimate when I hadn’t shared anything with anyone for so long.
And somehow, when I thought of sharing a smile with someone, the only person who came to mind was her.
Red hair. Emerald eyes. And a personality that was as fierce as a fire and just as stubbornly unable to be dampened.
Clearing my throat, I rose and moved away from the bed.
“This round is really taking a toll,” Janet said quietly, rubbing the outsides of her arms.
“Better that it takes a toll rather than cancer taking her life,” I reminded her.
She nodded hollowly, her eyes locked on her daughter whose face held shadows of a smile even in sleep. “How much more is it?” she turned and asked.
My jaw tightened. “Don’t worry about that, Janet.”
“Garret, I can’t just let you pay—”
“Dammit, Janet, you can and you will,” I told her roughly. “Danny was my brother. She’s all I got left of him, and I’ll be damned if I don’t do everythin’ I can ta help.”
Revolution: A Driven World Novel (The Driven World) Page 9
