Chapter 41 - Dean
FORTY-ONE
DEAN
At the track in Atlanta, the night before qualifying and practice, Regan consumes my thoughts every free moment I have.
From the drive here, to the meeting I just had with Steve and the crew for tomorrow.
I need to get her out of my head. I wanted to just hang out with the guys tonight to try and do just that.
I asked for a guys game night at Chase’s place.
Except Taylor ran into Regan on the way here, and he invited her, who also brought Leslie.
So, here we all are: Chase, Taylor, Ian, Regan, and Leslie all playing Mario Kart in Chase’s RV. The tension here is thick, and I don’t think that it’s just about Regan and I by the way Leslie keeps avoiding Chase.
I do my best to keep my distance from Regan, play it cool, act as though I haven’t seen my rival naked—and loved every minute of it. That’s all I’m thinking about now, how I can get her alone to taste her perfect pussy again.
I’m already sporting a semi and I don’t want to make it worse. I do my best to adjust myself without anyone noticing. I can’t get turned on now. There are only four controllers, so we’ve been switching off throughout the night. Taylor has just won the last round against Ian, Leslie, and Chase.
“Damn it!” Chase hollers as he crosses the finish line in second place.
“Never underestimate the power of Yoshi,” Taylor exclaims. He gets up and grabs another round of beers from the fridge, passing them out. “Who’s up next?”
“Me, Regan, and whoever else wants to play,” I say, handing a controller to Regan.
My fingers brush against hers, and a rush of pink tinges the light skin of her cheeks.
I give her the smallest wink, just to tease her, and her flush turns brighter.
Though I wanted to get her out of my mind, since she’s here, might as well have a little fun.
Taylor is still handing out beers and offers one to Regan, but she declines it.
“I’m done for the night, thanks,” she says, picking her character, Toad. Of course she’d pick Toad, she’s not a Princess Peach type of girl.
“Probably for the best,” Taylor says. “Unlike the time that Dean took us all out drinking before Martinsville and got drunk enough to take that chick home.” They all start laughing, Ian gives me a knowing smirk, Leslie and Regan are stone faced.
The race on the screen is about to start, and Regan’s head turns so fast that I think she’ll get whiplash.
“What?” she asks, her tone flat, but her eyes are telling me a different story.
She’s angry. No—scratch that. She’s livid, with a touch of hurt in her hazel eyes.
“We all went out, he got so plastered, brought a chick home, and was late getting to the track the next day.” Taylor laughs even harder. Regan’s lip begins to quiver as she is holding back her tears. I want to reach out to her, to explain, but there are too many people here to do so.
She drops the controller on the couch and gets up. Everyone is looking at her, not knowing what’s going on except Leslie. If looks could kill, let’s just say I wouldn’t be racing tomorrow.
“I just remembered that I need to do a thing. I’ll see you guys tomorrow.” She leaves the RV without much protest, and without thinking, I get up and follow her.
Regan is already halfway down the row before I’m able to catch up to her. I grab her elbow. “Regan, wait, let me explain.”
Is there anything to explain? What Taylor said is what happened.
Obviously, it’s about the timing of when it happened, and the fact that I didn’t tell her about it.
It made me realize that I want to explore things with Regan more, and sure, we didn’t establish the exclusivity until after the gala, but that doesn’t negate the fact that I hurt her by lying by omission.
Fuck. I should have just been honest with her.
I should have told her everything that happened that night.
I was just so focused on keeping her for myself that I didn’t take her feelings into consideration.
And with what she told me about her loser cheating ex, I didn’t want to give her any reason to cut me off.
“Explain? Explain how we got together, or hooked up, or whatever, and then you fucked someone else, and then agreed to be exclusive without telling me you were with someone else? How can I trust you when you hid this from me?” she shouts, tears clinging to the edges of her eyes, begging to fall, but she’s fighting to keep them in.
“I mean…” I rub the back of my neck, not knowing what to say. “I didn’t want to hurt you. I thought not telling you was the better option. I didn’t want to risk losing you.”
“You lied to me, Dean! Even after I told you what happened with my ex, you still didn’t tell me,” she wails. The hurt coats her words and they blast through me like an arrow through my chest.
“You’re right, I did. I lied to you by omission, and it was wrong. I just wanted you for myself, and I thought telling you would make you run.”
“Well, you were right about one thing, Dixon.” She spits out my last name like it’s a curse, and it hurts far worse than I ever thought possible.
“Please, just let me do something, anything to make it up to you.” I reach out to her, but think twice about it and drop my hand mid-air.
“There’s nothing you can do. You fucking lied. I can’t trust you anymore. I’m not making that same mistake twice.” She turns on her heel and storms away. I want to go after her, but my feet hold me in place, my heartbeat still drumming in my ears.
Fuck! I should have just told her. I thought that I could have something for myself, and I fucking ruined it just like I do with everything.
On the grid the next day, practice has an awkward haze over it from what happened the previous evening. Regan won’t even look at me. I wouldn’t even know what to say to her if she did want to talk to me.
I’m leaning up against my car, waiting for my practice run, watching Regan climb into her own car to get ready for her run. I must be lost in thought, because I don’t even hear Chase come up to me until he’s waving a hand in front of my face.
“Hello? Earth to Dixon,” he says. I blink out of the trance I’ve been in and turn to look at Chase.
“Bro, you need to stop staring. It’s not a good look,” Chase chuckles.
“I wasn’t staring. I uh—” I fumble, trying to find a good excuse, but come up empty. I don’t mean to stare. I just want to be able to make things right with her because I’ve realized all I want is her. She is the piece I’ve been missing; I’ve just realized it too late.
“So, you weren’t just staring at Brady after she stormed out last night after finding out about your drunken hookup?” Chase questions.
I open my mouth, then close it like a gaping fish. There’s nothing else to say to that, when that’s exactly what I was doing. Chase has always been a good friend to me. Accepted me immediately when I joined SCORS two years ago. I’m really grateful for his friendship.
“Are you going to tell her?” Chase asks.
“Tell her what?” I ask. I’m not sure where he’s going with this.
Chase folds his arms across his chest, giving me a look of really?
“There’s nothing to tell her,” I say in a higher pitch than normal, proving I’m a complete fucking liar.
Chase shakes his head at me. “For the past two years I’ve known you, I’ve never seen you anything less than focused and determined. Don’t lose out on something good because it scares you to lose focus or keep the ruse of a rivalry that isn’t there anymore.”
I let Chase’s words soak in. He’s right: nothing, and no one, has thrown me off the way she has. She has thrown everything in my life off its axis, and it’s in a better way than I could have ever imagined.
“I can’t,” I finally say. “She won’t even look at me, Chase.”
“Give her time. I’ve seen the way she looks at you.”
“Just like how you look at Leslie?” I only bring it up because I know something went down between them, he just won’t tell me what. And I can tell he’s torn up about it, he’s just been better at hiding it than I have as of late. He shifts on his feet.
“Yeah, something like that,” he says and walks off, leaving me to my own thoughts as I climb into my car. Adjusting my helmet and five point harness, Steve walks up to the window to give a pep talk.
“You ready?”
“I’m ready.” Or as I’ll ever be. This is just practice, I remind myself. Though what transpired the previous night and my conversation with Chase are still pulsing through my mind.
“You got this. Ease into corners three and four and get up to speed. The track is hot, so there is a lot of grip out there.” I give him a fist bump, and he puts the window netting up before climbing to the top of the pit box.
I roll off the grid and ease onto the racing surface and start to pick up my speed as Steve said, trying to focus on the task at hand, but my mind keeps wandering back to Regan.
I need to figure out a way to get her to listen, to understand that I never meant to hurt her. That I want her to be able to trust me.
I’m so lost in thought that I enter a corner too fast and it boggles the car, tapping the wall with my rear quarter panel.
Damn it.
I can’t believe that Regan has this kind of control over my thoughts.
That I can’t focus long enough for a practice run—almost wrecking my car in the process.
Hell, I could have done enough damage by tapping the wall that it’d fuck with my race day performance.
Steve is going to be pissed that my head isn’t in the game.
Before I can even climb out of the car, Steve is already at my window, and his face is red as a tomato. “What the hell happened out there?” he shouts.
I take my helmet off so that I can better answer him.
“Nothing, got loose,” I lie. More fucking lies.
I climb out to stand in front of him and take whatever verbal beating he’s about to give me.
I just stand and take it as Steve goes off about the championship and how close we are to the Cup Series and yada, yada, yada.
After Steve has finished his rant, I head back to the infield.
I hate this feeling. Feeling like I’m letting Steve and the crew down, failing them, failing myself and failing Daniel.
And I’m not just failing, I’m falling, spiraling out of control with everything with Regan.
Everything stops when I run into someone, and they hit the ground with an oof.
Blinking back to reality, Regan is on the ground, rubbing her ass as she angrily stares up at me.