Nico
NICO
The evening sun glinted off the metal overhang that shaded the viewing platform. From my spot in the pit lane, I could just about make out Everly standing slightly apart from the other three sets of parents, her eyes trained on Rhett’s kart out on the track. The kid had natural talent, the kind you couldn’t teach. Instinctual. A feel for the car and its capabilities. I could tell all this, even on his first outing. Experience gave me a sixth sense about these things. If we could divert his anger into determination, his frustration into focus, he’d make a cracking little racer.
How far he went would be up to him or, more likely, his mother. Every day, hugely talented racers fell by the wayside for one reason or another. Causes ranged from a lack of motivation to limited funds, or sometimes they simply grew out of their love of cars. On rare occasions, none of these things happened, but they gave up anyway, usually to allay the fears of an overanxious parent.
I understood Everly’s worries, but at the same time, I wanted to pry her fingers off the tight hold she had on Rhett and see how he reacted to the freedom. I’d had my doubts whether she’d even bring him here today, not least because of how I’d spoken to her after our impromptu dinner at Archie’s. Yet when she’d broached the subject with me, the words I wanted to say—namely, “I apologize”—wouldn’t come. I didn’t want to give her false hope that something might happen between us, but hell, as she’d passed by me and her arm had skimmed mine, I’d had to dig my fingernails into my palms to stop myself from pushing her up against the door and banging her as if my life depended on it.
I wanted her so fucking much.
And I couldn’t have her.
Actually, that wasn’t true. I could have her. Easily. She’d made no secret of her attraction to me, and without sounding arrogant, I knew that if I clicked my fingers, she’d let me take her to bed. But I didn’t want that. A woman like Everly deserved more than a quick scuffle between the sheets, and I didn’t have it within me to offer more than that to her. I couldn’t avoid seeing her completely, but I was an adult. I could deny my urges, regardless of how strong they were.
It was better this way.
For both of us.
Patrick called a halt to the first session, and the karts filed into the pit lane. I stepped forward and unfastened Rhett’s seat restraints. I didn’t usually hang around the track with the little ones, but I couldn’t seem to stay away from this kid, which was a problem considering I was trying like fuck to stay away from his mother.
They came as a package deal.
“You did great, little man,” I said, ruffling his hair, damp and sticking out at all angles from being crammed inside his helmet.
“That was amazing! When can I do it again?” he asked, his eyes bright and full of life.
Looking at him got me right in the gut, so much so that I pressed a hand to my middle. This was why racing meant so fucking much. One half-hour session out on track and this kid already looked like a different child from the one I’d met only a few days earlier. Not for the first time, I was so damned proud of my partners and myself for starting this school and giving these kids a chance to learn all sorts of skills, regardless of whether they ended up with a lifelong love affair of racing or not. The things we taught them here were transferable skills—passion, fearlessness, confidence, determination to succeed—that they’d find useful in whatever career path they chose.
“In a few minutes,” I said, pointing at Patrick standing off to one side, clipboard in hand, ready to give the kids a little coaching. “You need to go see Patrick first.”
Rhett pouted, and his bottom lip wobbled. I gave him a look, one that spoke volumes. Lose your temper and you won’t see another minute racing today. He caught on fast and trundled off, head down.
Once Rhett and the others headed out for their second, and final, session, I found myself hobbling up to the viewing platform, despite the promise I’d made to myself to avoid Everly. There was something about her that resulted in an inevitable pull, a magnetic force I couldn’t resist.
She caught sight of me out of the corner of her eye, but apart from the tiniest movement of her head, her eyes stayed locked on the track. Only as I got closer did I see the cords in her neck and her clenched fists, and how she kept biting her bottom lip.
“He’s doing great,” I said, standing next to her but careful to leave enough space so that our arms didn’t touch.
“Is he?” she asked, her eyes still dead ahead. “Did you talk to him when he came off the track?”
“Yeah. He’s buzzing, Everly.”
She looked at me then, head tilted back, a hand shielding her eyes from the setting sun. “You can say it.”
I frowned. “Say what?”
“That you were right, and I was wrong.”
“I wouldn’t dream of it.”
Her lips twitched, and I wanted to bend down and kiss the corner of her mouth. She refocused her attention on the track, but despite my reassurances, her shoulders remained stiff. My fingers itched to massage them, to help her relax. I could just imagine how that would look to the other parents lined up along the railing watching their kids out on the track, and so I stuffed my hands into my pockets instead.
“He has natural talent,” I said, giving in to a desire to keep the conversation going. “If you allow him to keep coming, we can hone his innate abilities.”
“Why wouldn’t I let him come?” she asked, her eyes tracking Rhett’s kart as he drove around the track.
“I don’t know, Everly. You tell me.”
This time she turned around. “You confuse me.”
I nodded, smiling wryly. “I confuse a lot of people.”
“You don’t fool me, though,” she said, looking away once more. “You act all grumpy and rude on the outside, but no man who shows the kindness to a child that you’ve shown to Rhett is all bad. Far from it. You can push me away all you like, but I see you, Palmer.”
Air escaped my lungs in a whoosh. I stepped back, needing space. I ran my hand over the back of my neck, unsure of what the hell to say to a comment like that. Her fingers brushed my wrist, and then she put her hand inside mine.
My first instinct was to yank my hand away, but the second of hesitation brought on a warmth I couldn’t deny. That I didn’t want to deny. It felt too good.
“See, that’s not so bad, is it?” she asked.
I closed my eyes and shook my head. “I’m not the right man for you.”
“And I’m not the right woman for you, as you told me so eloquently earlier this week, but don’t pretend, . There’s a spark here that I don’t understand, and clearly neither do you. It doesn’t make it any less real.”
I sighed, shaking my head for a second time. “It’s unethical. Your son is a student at my school. Even if I wanted to have a fling with you, it wouldn’t work.”
“Why?” she pressed. “What are you afraid of? That you’ll lose your impartiality with the other kids here? Don’t you trust yourself, ? Besides, if you don’t try, you’ll never know.”
This time I withdrew my hand and stuffed it back into my pocket. I had to put a stop to this, right now. “That’s just it, Everly. I don’t want to try.”
I turned away and left the viewing platform. Somehow, I had to get a handle on my emotions around her, control them and suppress them until they went away. Rhett was all that mattered, and me fucking his mother and then dumping her wouldn’t do that kid a bit of good. Whatever she said now, when passions were high, she’d end up feeling bitter, and no matter how hard she tried, that acrimony would spill over, and Rhett would be the one who’d suffer.
“, I did it!”
Rhett tore off his helmet and came running toward me. I dropped to my haunches and held out my arms, caught him, and then powered to a standing position and swung him up in the air.
“You did, buddy. You nailed it.”
Over the last six weeks, Rhett’s early promise had begun to bear fruit. His confidence grew every time he got behind the wheel, and he had this instinctual balance between risk and reward that, from experience, I knew to be rare. Lots of factors could knock him off course, but if the stars aligned, and this kid stayed the distance, I could be looking at a future racing champion. It was early days, but that didn’t stop me from dreaming.
And that wasn’t the only thing that’d changed. Now, when Rhett turned up for his twice-weekly visits to the track, there was a light in his eyes that hadn’t been there when he’d first arrived. I’d love to find out if Everly was seeing improvements outside his visits here, but to know that, I’d have to ask her. Asking her meant talking to her, and I’d managed to avoid that particular activity for the last few weeks. I made sure that when she arrived with Rhett, I was already down at the track, and I stayed there until she left.
Some might call that kind of behavior cowardly. I called it sensible. Every time I caught a glimpse of her, I ached, and I wasn’t only talking about my balls. I got a pain in my chest, a kind of heavy weight that sat there and remained for a few hours after she left. I’d even started dreaming about her, and sometimes I’d wake with a raging hard-on and a bereft feeling the likes of which I hadn’t felt since I woke up in that damned hospital and Jared told me my career was over.
I knew that if I spoke to Everly, breathed in the heady scent of her perfume and the trace of lemon left behind by what I assumed was her bodywash, I’d lose control, shove her up against the nearest wall, and fuck her.
And afterward, she’d hate me for it, and I didn’t want her hating me.
“I think I can go even faster,” Rhett said, drawing me out of my head. “Can I go again?”
I shook my head. Tempering his exuberance and preventing confidence from tipping over into recklessness was paramount to his development. “That’s it for today, buddy.”
Rhett stamped his foot and folded his arms over his chest, and for that brief moment, I caught a glimpse of the boy he’d been just a few short weeks ago. His lip came out in a pout, and his eyes swam with tears, ready to fall.
I shot him a look, one that usually worked, and held my breath, knowing that if he threw a tantrum, I’d come down on him hard. I believed in discipline if it led to self-discipline. Someone with a temper was not only a danger to themselves but also to others. Race car drivers had to remain calm under pressure and learn to channel their anger into more positive traits. That wasn’t to say I hadn’t lost my temper over the years, but even when rage boiled my insides, I still managed to maintain control.
Control was everything.
He must have seen the challenge in my eyes, and instead of launching into a fit, he blinked away his tears, locked up his disappointment at not getting his own way, and gave me a wavering smile.
“Okay.”
I tousled his hair. “Good lad. Come on, let’s get you out of those things. Your mum will be waiting for you.”
I hung around outside the changing area while Rhett got changed just in case he needed any help with buttons or laces. He didn’t. For a six-year-old, he was incredibly independent, which probably lent itself to his mature performance on the track.
“Ready to go, buddy?”
“Yep.”
He skipped on ahead of me. I heard the roar of an engine a split second before Rhett stepped into the pit lane without looking.
“Rhett!” I sprinted forward, catching his arm just in time as a single-seater exited the garage. “Hell, kid, you scared the bejesus out of me. How many times have I told you to look both ways? This is a dangerous area.”
His chin dipped to his chest, and he nodded, contrite. He rubbed his arm where I’d grabbed him. Fuck.
“Did I hurt you?” I asked, mortified. Sure, the end justified the means, but that didn’t make me feel any better.
He shook his head, but he didn’t convince me. I captured his hand and rolled up his sleeve, gasping at what I found. A huge, dark bruise on the outside of his upper arm that I hadn’t caused by a simple act of grabbing him. A prickling broke out over my skin. That didn’t look like he’d simply bumped into something either.
“Rhett,” I said, keeping my voice calm and even, despite feeling the complete opposite. “What’s this? Is someone hurting you?”
It couldn’t be Everly. She wouldn’t harm a hair on Rhett’s head. Anyone with half a brain could tell she’d throw herself in front of a train if it meant keeping her son safe.
He bit his lip and shuffled his feet. He wouldn’t look at me.
I tried again. “Bud, if someone is hurting you, you have to tell me.” I remembered Everly telling me he was being bullied at school a few weeks ago, but I thought that problem had gone away. Everly certainly hadn’t mentioned anything about the bullying escalating recently.
Dickhead, how could she? You’ve avoid her like she has leprosy.
Rhett’s eyes flitted to mine, then cut away immediately.
“Is it someone at school?”
The nod he gave was almost imperceptible, but I caught it nonetheless.
I dropped to my haunches. “Who?” I asked as gently as I could manage.
“I can’t tell you,” he whispered.
“Buddy, listen to me very carefully. It’s important you do tell me.”
Finally, he locked gazes with me. “It’s Brad. But you can’t say anything. His dad is mean.”
A flush of anger made me feel hot. How the hell did Rhett know the dad was mean? Had the son of a bitch dared to speak to Rhett? What the fuck was going on here?
I straightened and put my arm around him. “Come on, son. Let’s go find your mum.”
The surprise that crossed Everly’s face when I walked into the waiting area with my arm around Rhett sent a dart of shame through me. I was a grown man, not a teenager. Avoiding the mother of one of my students was a dick move. I fancied her, but I had more than enough control to tamp down my raging hormones. I was thirty-one, not seventeen.
“Hi.” Her soft voice jerked my dick into action. “It’s been a while. How’ve you been?”
I cocked my head. “Can I have a word? Adele will watch Rhett.” I shot a glance over at Adele, and she nodded, immediately rising to her feet.
“Come on, Rhett. How about a donut? Or maybe an ice cream?”
“Ice cream, please,” he said, grinning.
I headed for my office, my heart spiking with every click of Everly’s heels on the tile as she followed me. My self-imposed absence from her hadn’t cooled my attraction toward her one little bit. If anything, fire burned hotter in my stomach, and the one thing that would put out the flames was off-limits.
“What’s wrong?” she asked the second I ushered her into my office and closed the door. “Is it Rhett?”
I sidled past her, making sure we didn’t touch, and sat behind my desk. I pointed my chin at the chair across from me, and she took it.
“Is Rhett still fighting at school?”
She frowned, and all I wanted to do was kiss the creased skin between her brows, to feel the softness beneath my lips.
“No, he isn’t. In fact, Miss Carmichael, his teacher, said he seems to have settled down quite a lot. She’s really pleased with his progress, and I know it’s far more to do with coming here than anything related to the school itself.”
I nodded and scratched my cheek, wondering how best to approach this.
“Rhett almost launched into the pit lane while a car was exiting the garage, and I had to grab his arm to stop him.” She gasped, but I pressed on without allowing her to interject. “Immediately afterward, he rubbed it, and I thought I’d hurt him. I asked him about it and found he had a huge bruise on the outside of his arm.”
“Oh yeah, no, that wasn’t you. He did that at school the other day. He was playing baseball and a ball hit him on the arm.”
Well, fuck. One event, two very different excuses. Except instinct told me the version Rhett gave to me was the real one. I withheld a sigh. It looked as if I had no choice other than to get involved in someone else’s business.
“Sorry, but that’s not what happened.”