36. Jax #2
Dad moves closer, and I see it now—the fear in his eyes isn't anger. It's terror. Pure, parental terror.
"We pushed you away."
Mom's voice is barely a whisper. "We were so scared."
"After Tommy, every time you got in a car, we saw you dying." Dad's hands shake as he wraps the shop rag around them, needing something to hold. "We thought if we could make you quit, make you safe..."
"We lost you anyway." Mom's tears are flowing freely now.
They weren't punishing me. They were trying to save me.
"I thought you blamed me for Tommy."
"We blamed ourselves." Mom steps around the desk, moving toward me like she's approaching something that might bolt. "For letting you boys race. For not stopping it."
Dad's voice gets rough, catches on old pain. "We blamed God. We blamed the bike. We blamed everything except you."
"But we acted like we blamed you." Mom reaches out, stops just short of touching me.
"I killed him." The words rip out of my throat. "I went first, showed him it was safe—"
Dad grabs my shoulders, fingers digging in with desperate strength. "You were seventeen. SEVENTEEN."
His voice cracks completely on the repetition, and suddenly I'm seventeen again, bloody and broken in a hospital bed while my parents fall apart in the hallway.
They were scared. This whole time, they were just scared.
Mom breaks first. Pulls me into a fierce hug that smells like lavender soap and coffee, the scent of every morning of my childhood. Dad joins, and we're a tangle of arms and tears and thirteen years of unspoken pain.
The sobs rip out of me in gasping, graceless waves.
Snot and tears mixing, chest heaving like I can't get enough air, the kind of crying that makes your whole face swell and your throat raw.
My knees buckle and Dad catches me, all three of us sinking onto the worn leather couch that's been in this office since before I was born.
I'm home. After thirteen years, I'm finally home.
Mira stands apart, watching something she's never had with those eyes that catalog everything—the photos on the walls, Tommy grinning at my eighth birthday, all of us at the beach the summer before everything changed.
Mom reaches out toward her. "You too, dear."
Mira takes a step back, arms crossing automatically. But Dad's voice goes gentle, the same tone he used when neighborhood strays needed coaxing.
"You brought him home."
He stands, opens his arms, patient. Waiting.
She doesn't do hugs. She doesn't do any of this.
She looks at me—mascara smeared, face swollen, completely wrecked—and something shifts in her expression. She steps forward, lets herself be pulled into the embrace.
Mira Knight is letting my parents hug her. What universe is this?
Four people holding each other in a tiny office that smells like motor oil and old coffee and home.
Coffee steams from mismatched mugs—mine still says "World's #1 Son" in faded letters, Mira's advertises a parts supplier from the 90s. The ancient Mr. Coffee machine wheezes its last drops while we figure out how to exist in the same space again.
Same mugs. Same coffee maker. Like time stopped in here.
"The shop's doing good." Dad settles into his desk chair, the squeak familiar as breathing. "Got three mechanics now. Luis is almost as good as you were."
"Almost?" I manage a watery laugh.
"Nobody's as good as my boy with engines." Pride in his voice that I haven't heard in thirteen years.
His boy. I'm still his boy.
Mom hovers by the coffee maker, adding sugar to everyone's cups whether they asked or not—her nervous habit. "Your old room's still the same if you ever..."
Her voice trails off, hope and heartbreak mixing in the unfinished sentence.
They kept my room. Three years of nothing and they kept my room.
"I'm based in San Francisco now. Work keeps me busy."
The light in Mom's eyes dims slightly, and guilt punches through my chest.
"But Thanksgiving." The words tumble out before I can think. "We'll come for Thanksgiving."
Mom's whole face transforms. "Promise?"
I look at Mira, who's studying the wall of certifications and family photos with that intense focus she brings to everything.
"I'll make sure he's here," she says without looking away from a picture of Tommy and me covered in grease, grinning like idiots.
She's claiming responsibility for me. In front of my parents.
Dad turns to her with genuine curiosity. "You keep him grounded?"
Her mouth quirks in that dangerous way. "I'm definitely keeping him. As for grounded..." She glances at me. "I try. He makes it difficult."
Dad actually laughs—a real laugh that makes his whole belly shake. "That's my boy."
That's my boy. Twice in five minutes. Maybe I haven't lost them completely.
We talk about safe things. The mechanics he's hired.
Mom's book club. The neighbor's kid who wants to learn about cars.
They don't ask about the scars they can see on my hands or why Mira checks the exits every few minutes or what kind of driving instruction requires the kind of hypervigilance we both radiate.
They know something's off. They're choosing not to ask.
"Remember when you and Tommy tried to rebuild that Camaro engine in the back bay?" Dad gestures toward the service area with his coffee mug.
"Took us three weeks to figure out why it wouldn't turn over." The memory hits with surprising warmth instead of the usual stab of grief.
"Because you set the timing marks wrong." Dad shakes his head, smiling. "Cams were completely out of sync."
Mira raises an eyebrow. "He let teenagers rebuild engines?"
"Supervised," Mom clarifies. "Mostly. When they weren't sneaking in after hours."
Tommy picking the lock. Us working by flashlight. Getting caught at 3 AM.
"We were fifteen and thought we knew everything." I can smile about it now, here, with them.
"Some things don't change." Mom's teasing tone makes something loosen in my chest.
Twenty minutes later, we're walking toward the car. The afternoon sun stretches our shadows long across the parking lot, and I'm emotionally wrung out in the best possible way.
Quick hugs at the door, promises to call more than once every three years. Mom squeezes extra tight, lips against my ear forming the words "I love you" while her hand rubs circles on my back like when nightmares woke me at six years old.
Thirteen years of ice melting in three words.
Dad shakes Mira's hand with both of his, oil-stained fingers gentle. "Take care of each other."
"We will," she says, and means it.
She means it. This woman who trusts no one just promised my father she'd take care of me.
Outside, before either of us gets in the car, I hold out my hand. "Keys."
She studies my face, reading whatever's written there in the exhaustion and relief. "You sure?"
No. But if I don't do this now, today, while I'm already cracked open...
"Please. One more stop."