31. Kiara
thirty-one
Kiara
O n Sunday, Colton brings a Road to Heaven to my place and announces he’s taking me to the racetrack for our third date. “I know you gotta be tired to the bone,” he says—and I am—“but you said you wanted the date to be all about me. So it’s gotta be today.”
We don’t take his truck, but one of the low cars he tinkers with endlessly at his garage. “I need to show some guys there a couple of things with this car,” he says. At least we’re not in his truck towing a race car. I don’t think I could watch Colton risk his life in what’s pretty much a tin can and be okay. And I want to be okay.
I fight the urge to run my hand in his hair. After we came back from Annabel's, he dropped me off at Sunrise Farms, saying he had something to do at the garage before turning in for the night. The way he said it, I knew he was lying, and that’s okay. He doesn’t want to become physical yet—it’s an endless tease he’s drawing out. I know it. And I know he knows I know.
It’s part of the game we’re both playing, having agreed to the unspoken rule that Colton holds the key to our physical progression after my massive fuck-up of asking him to pop my cherry. We don’t need to have a conversation about it for me to understand this is what’s going on. I’ve had time to process what I did, and I have to say, I’ve put Colton through a pretty messed-up ringer. First the V-card thing, then preferring a dating app to him. It’s time I concede defeat and let him take the lead.
My physical attraction to him is reaching unbearable limits, and if he doesn’t do something about it soon, I can’t answer for myself.
How does he do it? He wants me, yet he kissed my cheek when he dropped me off. Okay, there was a little hand action on my lower back, but that’s it.
Maybe I need to take some initiative. I’m already wearing skintight jeans and the super soft sweater I wore at Eloise’s birthday party. Maybe that helped the kiss.
But maybe I need to do a little more. Jumpstart this action.
“Thanks,” I tell him softly, then lean toward him to kiss his cheek. I trail my fingers behind his nape, run them lightly under the collar of his leather jacket, the others playing briefly with his hair.
He clenches his jaw, shifts gears, and I sit back into my seat.
“For what?” he asks gruffly. The way he moves in his seat, there’s a good chance he wasn’t immune to that chaste kiss. Just like I wasn’t to his, the past two dates.
“For taking me to the races. Showing me a part of you I didn’t know.”
He shrugs and glances at me, a smile tilting his mouth. “You asked for it.”
That’s the best. He is, genuinely, doing this for me because I asked for it, not because he wanted to go to a race and decided to drag me along. This isn’t a two-for-one kind of situation for him. “Thanks for indulging me,” I say.
On impulse, I decide this is good time to listen to music, but this car has the bare minimum equipment. No entertainment center in sight. I’m going to take a wild guess and say that whatever Colton wants to show his friends is underneath the hood.
“Tell me about this race we’re going to see,” I say.
“Ice racing,” Colton offers. “I started going before this track was legal. Made some solid friends there. It was a way to blow steam.”
“Is this a race car?” I ask, suddenly worried. “Please tell me I’m not going to be in a race.”
He gives me a lopsided grin and says, “You’re not gonna be in a race, sweets.”
I ask Colton a few questions about the technicality of ice racing, and to my surprise time passes quickly when I’m listening to him talk about something he’s passionate about. And I get to learn a few things about driving on ice, which might come in handy one of these days. Like driving on the edge and listening to your tires—knowing that when they whisper, they’re about to lose traction and it’s time to ease on the gas or adjust steering. Or how left-foot breaking can prevent swinging out during a turn.
“Would you show me?” I ask.
“Absolutely. We can do it after the race, on the frozen lake. Much better than on the road—best way to not get hurt.”
My heart is pumping with stupid excitement as Colton pulls up to a random gathering of people tailgating on the side of a lake. There are barbecues smoking up the air, country music blaring from pickup trucks, and a festive atmosphere that’s plain awesome.
Colton parks next to a line of trucks, then he helps me out the low seat, and I’m reminded this is a date-date . An opening-doors-for-me kind of date.
When he lets go of my hand, he slides his arm around my waist, pulling me close to him as he walks to a group of people huddled around a seriously souped-up pickup truck.
A man with a beard and a backward cap detaches himself from the group. As he calls out, “Colt!” smiling faces turn to us, curiosity tinting their features as they take me in. There are maybe eight to ten people, women mainly on one side and men on the other, save for two couples holding hands. Jeans tucked in lined boots, faded ski jackets, and beanies are the uniform attire—one where I fit right in.
Colt introduces me as his girlfriend, and when conversations resume after they all greet us, he turns his attention back on me. He lowers his mouth to me but kisses me in the tender space right at the angle of my mouth. Before I can turn my head to meet him entirely, he’s moved onto inhaling deeply into my hair. With a squeeze of his hand on my nape, he asks, “You good?”
“I’m good.”
He gives my waist another squeeze—a thank-you—then without warning, plops me on the truck’s tailgate, giving me a seat and a better view.
As the first race starts, he brings me a hot cider from someone’s gigantic insulated dispenser, then talks me through the different stages of the race we’re watching and each racer’s merits. His energy and enthusiasm, his knowledge of all the cars and their drivers, is contagious, and I’m quickly almost as excited as Colton.
But as we both watch the race, him standing at my feet, me sitting on the truck bed, he leans against the truck, curls his arm around my butt, and places his hand on my thigh, talking all along like he’s not submitting me to the most excruciating tease right in front of everyone.
Like we do this all the time and I don’t even notice it anymore.
I could never stop noticing Colton’s hand on my hip. Not if he did this every day for the next fifty years. Even if he’s talking about something not sexy at all, like ice car racing.
He sits close to me, his warmth seeping into my own body. The roar of the cars is muffled by the snow and rings tinny in the cold air. At some point he leaves and brings me a hotdog and a beer.
“You’re not having anything?”
“Later,” he says, smiling quickly at me, then focusing back on the track. A few minutes pass, then he leans over me and kisses the crown of my head. “Be right back,” he whispers. “Stay right here.”
“You excited?” a female voice says next to me. She sits up on the truck next to me, her inquisitive glare briefly on me, then fleets back to the frozen lake.
“Yeah,” I answer, looking at her pretty profile. She’s tall, with jet-black hair that falls in lush waves from her knitted hat onto her shoulders. She doesn’t wear makeup—she’s beautiful enough not to need any. A tiny stud shines on her upturned nose.
“It’s my first time here,” I inform her, hoping that’ll start some small talk.
She glances at me. “Yeah, I noticed,” she says, then directs her attention back on the track. “You’ll be fine. He knows what he’s doing.”
I don’t have time to process what she said. My slow understanding is sped up by the announcer calling Colton’s name for the fourth race, and my blood freezes as I watch the car we drove in roar onto the icy expanse under the cheering and clapping of the crowd.
The girl next to me stands on the truck bed and shrieks as the cars jolt into a slippery start.
I hold onto the truck, my knees too weak to carry me. I know Colton races. I just didn’t… fully understand it. And also, I was unprepared for this . For seeing him stuck in a metal box, hurtling across slippery ice and snow. The screeching sounds of fighting cars. The smell of burned plastic and fuel and oil. The animal excitement all around me.
My stomach bottoms as the cars reach the first curb, Colton’s seeming to be glued to the rear left of the one in front of him, the two leading the pack. They’re coming our way now, and it’s hard to tell why Colton isn’t passing. It seems he could. I want to scream for him to do it, but no sound comes out of my mouth. Just a tiny little wail.
Three cars behind, someone skids and leaves the track, and the cars behind it avoid it by some miracle. One of them tailends, the others swerving again, narrowly avoiding a collision. By the time they’re back in the race, they’re way behind Colton and the other car. The announcer calls the final round, and I clap for Colton to get ahead, convincing myself that second isn’t too bad either.
It’s better than in a pile of soft snow, like the other dude back there looking dejectedly at his car. Better than the rest of the pack fighting mercilessly for third, trying to pass each other.
The girl next to me is yelling at the top of her lungs. “Don’t let him! Don’t let him!”
I’m vaguely confused and maybe even a little threatened by how involved she seems to be in Colton’s victory.
“No! No! No!” she yells, and I instantly tense up as Colton detaches himself from the car in front, seeming to lose a foot in the last stretch before the arrival.
The commentator is going nuts on the loudspeaker, but I can’t understand a word he’s saying. It only adds to my tension. I’m standing by now, on my tiptoes, so I can see better.
Colton springs ahead of the car in front of him, and I swear I can distinguish the roar of his engine from the other racers. “Go!” I scream, jumping up and down.
He crosses the line in a roar of applause from the group around the truck, the commentator’s voice an uninterrupted string of yelling where Colton’s name pops in at intervals. As the other cars cross the line, my gaze follows Colton’s as it disappears behind a thicket of woods, closely followed by the car that came in second, then both reappear next to us. The girl next to me hops off the truck and saunters in their direction.
I feel off balance for a moment. He said to wait here, right? I don’t feel like waiting .
And then I see Colton march toward me, totally rocking his black leather jacket, eyes on me, the girl behind him clutching another guy. He joins me at the truck, tucking himself between my legs. “You liked it?” he asks.
Did I like it? My cheeks are hurting from smiling, my heart is swelling from pride. But mostly, I’m so relieved he made it out alive.
I jump off and wrap my legs around his waist. Closing my eyes, I pull his head to me, my mouth finding his. Surprised at first, he lets me kiss him, then takes over when my tongue meets his. Grunting, he places one hand under my butt to pull me closer then takes his tongue on an erotic exploration of my mouth. His tongue is demanding, his lips are claiming, a thirst I didn’t know we both shared being exchanged.
He gives our lips some breathing room. “That’s not how I saw our first real kiss going,” he rumbles against my ear, his stubble grating my skin. He strokes my butt, making me wiggle tighter against him.
“Get a room,” the guy next to us jokes.
“You win the race, I’ll kiss you that way,” his girlfriend with the awesome hair says.
Colton smiles slightly. “That why you’re so horny, sweets? Cos I won?” He peppers my neck with a trail of kisses. I’d moan, but we’re in public.
Instead, I breathe heavily in his ear. “Cos you’re alive, Colt. Just please stay alive for me.” I knead his strong shoulders, his warm nape, everything under me vibrating with strength, yet so fragile. “I don’t think I could survive if anything happened to you.”
Colton’s breath catches. Pulling us slightly apart, his gaze bores into my eyes, something indescribable passing between us. He leans over to take my mouth, long and slow and tender this time, his hand that’s not under my butt messing with my hair. Then, with me still in his arms, he walks us to his car while the next race fills the air with its roar and fumes.
Once he sets me down, he faces me and says, “What you said up there… you really meant that.” Before I can answer, he adds, “Just want you to know, I’d never put myself in harm’s way. ’Specially with you watching.”
“I know… that’s not—”
He cups my jaw in his hand. “How long you been feeling that way about me, sweets?”
Funny how just a few weeks ago, the answer to that question would have been some sarcastic refutation. But with my walls finally down, the answer is simple.
Since you knocked on my car window and didn’t call me a bum or a whore. Since I could tell you liked me but didn’t try to take advantage. Since you gave me what I needed at the time: trust; a place to stay; work.
And respect. So much respect.