Chapter 7
Cam
Race season’s off to a great start. – caption from Cam’s social media post – a picture of Sadie kissing his helmet just before the race , March 3rd
“Morning, boss,” I say, walking into Luke’s motorcycle shop, Voyeur Motors .
He lifts his chin toward me in greeting, then continues with his work.
Leaning back on his worn leather couch, I check the text from my contact at Incite Energy .
Ian: What’s going on with this Sadie person? Seems like a really good move.
Me: Dating her. Living with her. If it helps my rep, that’s great, but she’s my girl.
Ian: Love to see it. Keep up what you’re doing.
It’s working. Sadie and I pretending to date is having the exact impact on my image that we’d hoped for.
The changes are slow, but I can already see a shift. Normally, I’d have to strip down to my boxers and do a wheelie obstacle course to get the kind of reaction I’m getting off one photo with her. It’s refreshing how many people want to see me happy.
There is a small, loud subset who would rather see me reckless or hurt. I made a career attracting douchebags, and dropping them is a fucking battle in itself. As long as their hate stays pointed at me, and not Sadie, I don’t care.
Her ex is skirting that line pretty dangerously, though. He’s been in my direct messages talking all kinds of shit. Normally, I wouldn’t engage with things like that, but I’m close to breaking my own rules for that little fucker.
Some days, I wish I could scrap my social media altogether, but my online presence is key to staying in racing. It’s funding this season and setting me up so that next year, I’ll be on the Incite Energy team. I doubt I’ll ever be free of it, but at least I’ll be able to scale it back so it’s not a second full-time job.
Ian: Looking forward to meeting her at a race soon.
Me: Can’t wait to introduce you.
If she comes to any more. I still don’t know what happened with Sadie at the race yesterday. She didn’t show up by the pit board until halfway through, and she wouldn’t talk to me about it last night or this morning when I asked how the race was for her. Something isn’t right.
Slipping my phone into my pocket, I step over Luke’s sleeping pit bull, Betty, and find a spot at his workbench that gives me a perfect view of Sadie—who brought her work to Turbine Café today .
“I think I finally get it.” I point through the wall of windows separating Luke’s motorcycle shop from Allie’s coffee shop.
He continues porting the intake he’s been working on for the last fifteen minutes, but I know he’s listening.
“You want to be close to her, keep her safe, talk to her whenever you want, and obviously, it’s awesome to be able to see your girl all the time,” I say, leaning across the worn wooden surface.
That grabs his attention away from the disassembled engine long enough to find his girlfriend through the glass, mouth turning into a half smile.
Sadie combs her fingers through the pink-tipped ends of her hair over and over as she reads something on her screen. Must be something she does when she’s concentrating.
“But I never thought about how it would be to watch her work,” I tell Luke. “I like learning her habits.”
Luke nods, but the movement turns into a shake a few seconds later when my words register. He stops his work and stands up from his stool. “Are you talking about how nice it is to stare at Allie?” His voice is a mixture of confusion and irritation.
“Don’t make it weird.” I scoff, spinning the screw on a Crescent wrench, opening and closing it as I continue to watch Sadie. “I’m not staring at her . She’s my best-friend-in-law.”
He shakes his head. “That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard.”
“She came up with it.” I shrug, pointing the wrench toward Allie.
He looks through the glass at her, then back to me. “Alright,” he grumbles. “Not the dumbest .” He starts toward his stool but stops again. “Who are you talking about?”
Betty—still mostly asleep—huffs a breath and rolls her heavy head onto my foot. Maybe she thinks it’s as ridiculous as I do that he had to ask. Sadie kissed me at the race. She kissed me. Actually, my helmet, but that’s almost more significant.
“Sadie,” I answer.
He abandons his work altogether and moves over to block my view. “We talked about this.”
Tilting my head, I ask, “Did we?” Even though we have. Multiple times . He knows I’m into her, and he warned me not to get into anything casual with her. I haven’t.
The conversation with Ian was just another reminder that I need this to work, but Sadie needs it to work too. She needs the confidence boost of letting her ex and everyone else know she’s moved on. She needs to prove to herself that she can do risky things and pull them off.
We need this to work, and if our friends don’t know, it won’t. She’s nervous they’ll figure out the truth and keeps telling me I won’t be able to keep a secret from Luke because he knows me too well. And if Luke knows, Allie will know. And if Allie knows, everyone will know.
Her mind works like that—in dominoes. One small, fairly reasonable thing knocks down another small, fairly reasonable thing, and then another, and another, and eventually, it’s a giant, unmanageable pile of things that are no longer fairly reasonable. Every time I see her start to spiral like that, I want to hold her and tell her she doesn’t have to feel that way. I want to pick up all her dominoes, but I haven’t figured out how yet.
“You know she’s fresh out of a relationship.” Luke’s voice pulls me from my thoughts. “That asshole really did a number on her. She’s not ready for—” he huffs a breath almost identical to the one Betty just let out, “—whatever it is you think you want from her.”
“Not ready?” Frustration I rarely feel with my best friend heats my neck. “She tell you that? Do you often ask Sadie how she feels? Do you ask her what she wants?”
“Do you?” he counters.
“Yes,” the word comes out loud enough that an elderly woman sitting at a table on the Turbine Café side of the glass looks up at me. I give her a sheepish smile and shrug.
“She’s vulnerable,” Luke says.
Making sure to lower my voice, I say, “Sadie is wounded, but she’s working hard to heal. She has healed from so much of it already.”
“And you think getting involved with you— her roommate —is helping with that?”
Now is my opportunity to sell this to Luke, so Sadie’s dominoes can work in our favor. If Luke believes it, Allie will believe it, and then everyone else will follow. I spin the screw on the wrench up and down, up and down. Truth is, I don’t know if it’s helping her to be attached to me. But I saw an opportunity to make her mine—in a way — and I had to take it.
“Sadie deserves a man who knows how special she is. Have you heard Allie describe her as ‘sunshine personified’?” Luke tilts his head in acknowledgment. “She’s right. Sadie gives warmth and brightness to everyone . She spent years giving it to that fucking guy in Portland, and she got nothing back. But I can give it back to her.”
Luke is stone-faced, giving me the harsh end of the protective big brother treatment I’ve seen him hit everyone else with over the years. Whether it’s his actual little sister or anyone else who seems like they need someone to look out for them, Luke is a protector. Not sure when he decided to adopt Sadie as his own, but it’s not surprising.
“I want to listen to her,” I continue, “make her life better. I don’t want to take anything from her. I want to be the man she deserves.” Convincing Luke shouldn’t be difficult because every word of my confession is true. And he knows it . “We’re good together,” I add when he continues staring at me without replying.
“And she likes you?” he finally asks.
The question stings for a second. The idea that someone like Sadie would be interested in slutty, wild Cam Hacker was hard for me to wrap my mind around at first. The thing is, she’s not . She’s just pretending to be . But I need Luke to believe it’s real. Leaning over so I can look through the window at the woman in question, I answer. “Hard for me to believe, too.”
Luke has never judged me for my past. He stood beside me while it was all happening, and he doesn’t judge me now, either. “Allie was right.” He shakes his head. “I’ll never hear the end of this.”
“Allie was right about what?” I ask, trying to find a way to shift my position without disturbing Betty. My foot is falling asleep.
“Yeah,” he grunts. “She’s been telling me for months that you two are meant for each other.”
Months? “Maybe next time you should believe your girlfriend.”
“Yeah, maybe,” he says, returning to the disassembled motor on his workbench.
I lower down and lift Betty’s head off my foot as carefully as possible. “Sorry, babe. I’ve got to be able to walk out of here.” She huffs and returns to sleeping on the concrete floor.
When I stand back up, Luke claps me on the shoulder. “Good for you, man. I can tell you’re happy.”
Happy as long as this lasts, anyway. I’m setting myself up for a thorough heartbreak, but every time I look at her—every time I get to claim her as mine—I can’t bring myself to be cautious.