There was no way I could pull out of the race. Dad would have my neck if he knew I’d let myself get distracted. According to him, I should be so focused I was keeping my bike in control and pushing myself to the front of the pack I shouldn’t notice anything else around me. It wasn’t just about winning, though that was the point of the race. Instead, it was about preventing me from becoming the next one to skid across the track. If I let myself be distracted by Greg going down, I could take my attention away for the wrong fraction of a second and lose control, hitting the bikes on either side of me or simply letting go of my balance and ending up on the ground.
I had to trust that the team was there for Greg. They would make sure the medics got him off the track and to safety and would take care of him however he needed. There was nothing I could do, anyway. I tried to focus on the track and the bikes in the pack with me. But by then I had already lost ground, and there was no way I was going to be able to pick it back up. The race ended with me shooting across the finish line in second place. At that point, I really didn’t care. All that mattered was the race was over and I didn’t have to think about it anymore. I barely paid attention to the prize ceremony and the congratulating of the racer who came in first. Running off instantly would have made me look like a poor sport, so I stayed long enough to shake his hand and get a few pictures before rushing back to the team tent as fast as I could.
Just inside the tent, Dad, Quentin, Vince, and Kelly were all gathered around the motorcycle. It lay on its side like a wounded animal, and my stomach lurched. That was a lot of damage. Far more than I would have anticipated. From what I saw of the crash, he hit the ground hard and skidded across the track, spinning out but managing to avoid being piled on by the other bikes. That in and of itself was fairly miraculous and had given me some hope as I made my way to the tent. Often crashes during races resulted in one bike smashing into others and then falling, becoming a domino effect that ended with several men hurt. Or even worse.
The way Greg’s bike looked, it was obvious the impact was more severe than I thought, and he went through a more intense tumble than I saw in the brief moment I was able to watch him. In that moment, I honestly didn’t know how Greg could have walked away from it. Placing in the race didn’t mean anything. I didn’t care about the money I’d just won or the added tick on the list of my accomplishments that would likely earn me more sponsorships and commissions for the custom bikes. That didn’t matter to me at all. I could only think about Greg and the fact that he wasn’t there in the tent with the others.
Dropping my helmet on the top of the rolling toolbox in front of me, I grabbed Dad’s shoulder to get his attention. He turned to look at me, and I immediately noticed the concern in his eyes.
“Where is he? How is he?” I asked.
“He was awake when the medics got to him. Cussing up a storm. But he wasn’t in great shape. They checked him over when they got him back into the tent, but it was too much for them to take care of here. They transferred him to the local hospital. It’s just a few minutes down the road,” Dad told me.
“Why aren’t you with him?” I asked.
Greg didn’t have a family, and to be honest I’d never even heard him talk about any friends away from work. It was just us, and I hated to think he was completely alone while going through this.
“They told us they were going to have to bring him directly in to be checked out and get the full scope of his injuries. None of us are related to him, so we wouldn’t be allowed to go back with him. He told us to stay here and finish up with the race. As soon as we finish up here and get packed up, we’re going to head up there to check on him and make sure he’s all right. From what I saw, it looks like he’s going to be out for a while. Our team might be back down to one rider for the rest of the season.”
That made my stomach sink even deeper. Greg had just started racing with us. He was originally part of the team just helping out around the complex, doing whatever work was available and assisting the mechanics. Then I noticed him trying out one of the bikes he’d just fixed and was impressed by the way he controlled the bike around the practice track. I asked him about his experience and found out he used to do amateur racing, which essentially amounted to a bunch of boys racing their bikes through the woods or out on back roads and hoping not to get caught by the cops.
I asked him to help me practice by acting as a fake competitor and got out on the track with him. Over time he got more confident, and when Quentin saw how good he was, he was on board with training him to race alongside me. That day I saw Greg happier than I’d ever seen him, and I knew just how much being able to compete in these races meant to him. The thought of his entire season being snatched away from him like that was awful. It made me feel a little sick, and all I could think was that it shouldn’t have happened.
“I’m glad he was awake and they got him to the hospital, but I still want to know what happened,” I said.
Kelly gestured at the bike. “It looks like a small ignition. Sparks from his bike hit gas on the track.”
I nodded at the explanation. It made sense. That was one of the hazards of racing. Bikes often threw out gas, especially after a minor accident or if it wasn’t properly maintained. If there was enough gathered on the surface of the track, a small spark from one of the other bikes could create a flash that instantly derailed the bike and distracted the rider. It was extremely dangerous, and it looked like it got the best of Greg.
Dropping down on a fold-out chair, I let my shoulders droop, then hung my head. Rubbing my eyes with the heels of my hands, I drew in deep breaths to try to calm myself down. I’d been so worried from the moment I saw the impact, and now I needed to make sure this never happened again. We needed to be even more thorough about our examinations of the bikes and create any protective measures possible to stop another dangerous accident like this from happening.
Most importantly, I just wanted to go see Greg and find out what was going on with him.
“Let’s pack up and we’ll go over this at the garage. Come on, I’ll help. We need to get to Greg. He hates hospitals,” I said.
Everyone agreed and we went to work loading up the trucks. Less than an hour later, we were headed to the hospital. The entire team swarmed into the emergency room lobby, and Dad and I approached the desk. He gave Greg’s name, and the woman behind the desk assured us when the doctors said he could have visitors, she would let us back.
We reluctantly took over an entire section of the waiting room and sat in the blue plastic-cushioned chairs. A television bracketed up in the corner played some sort of competition show, but the volume was so low I couldn’t follow it, which didn’t really matter considering how jumbled my thoughts were. It felt like it took forever, but finally the woman at the desk called us back up and said two of us could go in at a time. Dad and I going first was the obvious option, and we rushed to the door for them to let us through into the ward.
Greg looked like a hot mess when we got into the room. One leg was already bandaged up and strung up in a sling to keep it steady and prevent blood from pooling in it. Even from where I was standing, I could see he was covered in road rash, but he still managed a smile when he saw us get to the door.
“Hey,” he said. “How’d you finish?”
They had obviously given him some medication to help him with the pain because his words were slurring. But he was speaking, and that made everything less terrifying.
“I came in second,” I told him.
He smiled. “So, you got the position you would have gotten anyway if I didn’t get knocked out of the race.”
“If by second, you mean first, then yes,” I told him.
Greg managed a hint of a smile before the pain medication took him off to sleep.
18
Kelly
The team was at the hospital with Greg late into the night. We were all so worried about him that we barely even noticed the time passing. By the time I got home, it was close to m
orning and I was beyond exhausted. It took every bit of strength I could muster just to get into the shower and wash away the smell of the race. That wasn’t something I wanted to bring into my bed with me. Though at that point, I was so exhausted I might not have even cared.
But once I got out and felt how nice it was to have clean skin and slip into fresh pajamas, I was grateful I’d managed to scrape together the energy to bathe. There wasn’t a whole lot left, just enough to get me to my bed where I crawled beneath the covers and fell asleep before my head sank all the way into the pillow.
The morning of the race, Willa woke up when I looked into her room. The next morning, she did me one better by waking up well before my eyes were open. Granted, they’d only been closed for a couple of hours when the sound of her laughing, clapping, and mumbling broke through my sleep. I woke up still tired, but it wasn’t like I could just sleep all morning. I dragged myself into my daughter’s room and saw her sitting in the middle of her bed, surrounded by her stuffed animals. It still hurt my heart a little bit to see the big-girl bed rather than her crib. The mesh railings along either side still made it similar to a crib, but there was no mistaking my little one was growing up.
But at least in that moment I could stand at the door and watch her happily mumble to her stuffed animals and live in her own imagination. Willa finally noticed I was standing there and grinned up at me.
“Mama!” she said happily, then held up her animals.
“I see,” I told her, walking across the room toward her bed. “You have all your animals. Are they having a party?”
“Race,” she said. “Rrrrrooom rrrrroooom!”
I crouched down beside her bed and kissed her. Despite all the disappointment and worry of the night before, seeing her so happy immediately took all the negativity away. It always made me feel good to see her so happy, and that day, I needed the boost.
Close to the head of the bed Pam sat in a rocking chair, a blanket draped over her lap and folded arms as she slept. I felt bad seeing her that way. I vaguely remembered interacting with her when I got home from the race before I got into the shower. I didn’t remember the exact conversation, but she reassured me it was perfectly fine how late it was, and she appreciated me checking in with her earlier to tell her I was at the hospital with Greg. She told me to go on to bed, that everything would be fine and not to worry. At the time, I figured she was talking about Greg and didn’t want me to stress out thinking about him being hurt and what was going to happen moving forward.
Now I realized she was actually talking about Willa and comforting me, reassuring me even if I needed some extra sleep, she would be there for both of us. She had willingly slept in the rocking chair I got at my baby shower just so I would feel confident enough getting the sleep I needed. I walked over to her and gently shook one of her shoulders.
“Pam? I’m awake. You should go on home and get some real sleep,” I said.
Pam finally opened her eyes and looked at me, seeming a bit dazed.
“You’re already up?” she asked, glancing at the gold watch on her wrist. “I figured you would be out for much longer than this.”
“Willa had different ideas,” I told her. “Thank you so much for staying here with her.”
“I’m fine if you need to lie down for a little while longer,” she told me.
“No,” I said. “That can’t be comfortable. You deserve to get some real sleep in your own bed.”
“All right. If you’re sure,” she said.
“I’m sure.”
“So, how did he do?” she asked as she put on her shoes.
“Who?”
“The one you talk about all the time,” she said with a smile.
I was going to try to deny it, to pretend I didn’t know what she was talking about. But that would have been futile. Nothing got past her. Though I hoped she hadn’t caught on to the truth behind my move yet. I would tell her. When the time was right. But that wasn’t now when I was still working on getting my eyes all the way open.
“He’s did great. Finished second,” I said.
She looked at me with questions in her eyes, then nodded, standing.
“Tell me about it over lunch. I’ll be back later,” she said.
I smiled, happy to hear she was going to come back soon. It would be good to talk to someone who wasn’t there and wasn’t involved in the company about what happened. With the rest of the team, I still had to maintain some semblance of professionalism and felt the urge to not get too emotional, to respect they’d known him longer than I had. Almost as though that gave them some sort of possession of him and it would be too much if I was upset or too worried. Besides, it wasn’t like I could pour out to the others how afraid I was for Darren. It would come off as odd and possibly tip my hand before I was fully ready to show it.
I got Willa and me breakfast, then spent the next couple of hours playing with her. The extent of her imagination never ceased to amaze me. She was so tiny, but there was so much personality and individuality packed into that little body. We played with her stuffed animals, then with her doll, then with her stuffed animals again. Eventually, I started thinking about lunch and knew I needed to decide on something good enough to thank Pam for all she did for me.
Moving Willa into the living room so she could play while I was in the kitchen, I went to work gathering all the ingredients for a delicious meal. As bacon crackled in a pan ready to be transformed into toppings for amazing salads I planned on serving as restitution to my stomach alongside decadent croque madame sandwiches, I got out my phone and called Gus. He was also surprised to hear from me so early. I wondered what that said about me and their expectations of how I would respond to the pressures of a race. I made a mental note to figure out what it was about me that seemed frazzled and to fix it before the next race.
“I was just calling to check in on Greg. Is he doing any better?” I asked.
“He’s doing as well as can be expected. He’s in a lot of pain, obviously, and they are doing everything they can to control that. They want to keep an eye on his leg through today and then check it again when the swelling is more under control to decide if they need to do surgery,” he said.
“Oh, no. I certainly hope they don’t need to. That would be awful,” I said.
“It definitely would. Surgery would incapacitate him for a good while. It would be a long road to rehabbing it until he could race again. Hopefully they’ll see it will heal all right just being in a cast. All in all, though, he’s in pretty good spirits. I think he’s just happy to be alive.”
“Well, yeah. That was a nasty wreck. It could have gone much worse.”
“Speaking of wrecks, Darren is not handling this whole thing well. He’s had crashes before, of course, but nothing this serious. He feels guilty,” Gus told me.
“Why would he feel guilty? He didn’t do anything wrong. It’s not like he clipped him or anything,” I said.
“No, but he’s the one who encouraged Greg to race, and he feels like maybe they didn’t pay enough attention to Greg’s bike before this race,” Gus told me.
“So, he thinks it’s my fault,” I said.
“No, that’s not what I’m saying at all,” Gus quickly covered. “He’s worried Greg overlooked issues with his bike because he’s not as experienced. He wouldn’t know to tell the team about them because he didn’t know they were a problem.”
“But this wasn’t his first race,” I pointed out.
“It wasn’t, but he’s still green. He’s still learning.”
“Well, this was a hard lesson to get through.”
“You got that right,” Gus agreed.
We ended the call, and my fingers tingled to pick the phone back up and text Darren. Just to check on him, make sure he was doing all right, and reassure him he wasn’t to blame for this. That was a completely valid thing for friends to do. But I chickened out before I even typed the first word. I was still shaky, still disturbed by the idea that it coul
d have been him. That reaction left me with a lot to think about, and I needed to do that before I contacted him. As I continued to put together lunch, I developed a set of very mature plans that involved not thinking about anything I should have been thinking about until after I spent some time with Pam and possibly called Kira to beg her to move down here.
It was all very adult.
Pam arrived for lunch just as I took the second grown-up grilled cheese sandwich out of the pan. Smeared with fig jam and stuffed with caramelized onions that melted right into the gooey mozzarella cheese made them the perfect accompaniment to the salads. She was carrying a pitcher of sangria and did a little dance as she came into the kitchen. I laughed, deciding right then I was more than all right being a stand-in daughter for such a cool lady.
We carried the salads and sandwiches to the table and set them out. I brought over a regular grilled cheese for Willa and a plate of chopped vegetables.
“So, what happened at the race?” Pam asked.
“There was a wreck, and one of our riders was injured. It looked really bad. If I just saw the bike, I would have thought he was dead, or very close to it. Fortunately, he just broke his leg and got ground up a little. They might have to do surgery, but even if they don’t, his season is over.”
Pam’s hand covered her mouth, muffling a gasp, and I nodded. It was really terrifying to think about. I changed the subject as quickly as I could, wanting to talk about something else. After lunch, we spent a while on the couch drinking the sangria and talking about life. As Willa started nodding off, Pam left, and I brought my little girl into her room for a nap. Taking advantage of the quiet, I took out my computer and went to work on the most recent mechanic manual because in that moment, doing anything that would keep me from thinking about telling Darren about Willa.
Millionaire Daddy: A Secret Baby Romance (Freeman Brothers Book 2) Page 10
