Crashed (Driven, #3)(25)
“Just give me a sec,” he murmurs against my lips. I just nod my head slightly against his because I’ll give him a lifetime if he asks.
“These headaches come on so quick it feels like a sledgehammer hits me,” he says after a moment.
Concern douses the flames of lust instantly. “Let me get the doctor.”
“No,” he says, pounding his left hand against the bed making the rails shake. “This place brings me back to being eight.” And the argument that was about to roll off the tip of my tongue dies. “Everyone looking at me with worried eyes and no one giving me answers … except this time I’m the one who can’t give answers.”
He laughs softly and I can feel his body stiffen again with the pain. “Colton …”
“Uh-uh. Not yet,” he says again, stubbornly, as he rubs his thumb back and forth across the bare nape of my neck trying to soothe me when it should be the other way around. “I remember my interview with ESPN. Eating my Snickers bar.” He gets a rather odd look on his face and averts his eyes momentarily. “Kissing you on pit row and then nothing for a bit,” he says, trying to distract me from wanting to get the doctor.
“The drivers’ meeting.” I fill in. “Becks was with you then.”
“Why would I remember eating a candy bar but not the meeting?”
And I draw the connection in my own mind with the missing information that Andy had filled in. Because the traditional good luck Snickers bar is tied to his past—the first chance encounter he had with hope in his life. “I don’t know. I’m sure it will all come back to you. I don’t think—”
“You were next to me during the anthem. The song ended …” His voice fades as he tries to recall the next events, while mine catches in my throat. “I watched Davis help you over the wall, wanting to make sure you were safe while Becks started last minute checks … and I remember feeling the weirdest sense of being at peace as I sat at the start/finish line but I’m not sure why … and then nothing until waking up.”
And the lingering tiptoe of unease that I’d felt earlier turns into a full-on stampede.
My heart plummets. My breath hitches. He doesn’t remember. He doesn’t remember telling me the phrase that’s glued the broken pieces of me together. It takes every ounce of strength I have to not let the unexpected slap to my soul show in the stiffening of my body.
I didn’t realize how much I needed to hear him say those words again—especially after thinking I’d lost him. How knowing he remembered that defining moment between us would mend together the last fissures in my healing heart.
“Do you?” His voice breaks through my scattered thoughts as he kisses the tip of my nose before guiding my head back so he can look into my eyes.
I try to mask the emotions that I’m sure are swimming there. “Do I what?” I ask, forcing a swallow down my throat over the lie that clogs it.
He angles his head as he looks at me and I wonder if he knows I’m holding something back. “Do you know why I felt so happy at the start of the race?”
I lick my lips and mentally remind myself to not worry my bottom lip between my teeth or else he’ll know I’m lying. “Uh-uh,” I manage as my heart deflates. I just can’t tell him. I can’t force him to feel words he doesn’t remember or make him feel obligated to repeat words that make him recall the horrors of his childhood.
… What you said to me—those three words—they turn me into someone I won’t ever let myself be again. It triggers things—memories, demons, so f*cking much …
His words scrape through my mind and score a mark that only he will ever be able to heal. And I know as much as I want to, as much as it hurts me to suppress my need to hear it, I can’t tell him.
I force a diminutive smile on my lips and meet his eyes. “I’m sure you were just excited about the start of the season and thinking that if your practice runs were any indication, you were going to be claiming the checkered flag.” The lie rolls off of my tongue, and for a minute I worry he’s not going to believe it. After a beat one corner of his mouth lifts up and I know he hasn’t noticed.
“I’m sure there was more than one checkered flag I was focused on claiming.”
I shake my head at him, the smile on my lips beginning to tremble.
Colton’s face transforms instantly from amusement to concern at the unexpected change in my demeanor. “What is it?” he asks, bringing his hand up to cradle the side of my face. I can’t speak just yet because I’m too busy preventing the dam from breaking. “I’m okay, Ry. I’m going to be okay,” he whispers reassurances to me as he pulls me into him and wraps his arms around me.
And the dam breaks.
Because kissing Colton is one thing, but being encircled in the all-encompassing warmth of his arms makes me feel that I’m in the safest place in the entire world. And when all is said and done, the physical side to our relationship is earth shattering and a necessity no doubt, but at the same time this feeling—muscular arms wrapped around me, his heated breath murmuring reassurances into the crown of my head, his heart beating strong and steady against mine—is by far the one that will carry me through the tough times. The times like right now. When I want him so much—in so many ways—that I never realized were possible. That never even flickered on my radar before.