Crashed (Driven, #3)(45)

Am I that f*cking desperate that I’m talking to my dog about sex? And the doc says my head’s not f*cked up? Shit, I think he’s taken one too many right turns on an oval track.

Baxter stands and jumps off the bed. “I get it, use me and then leave me,” I say to him, and Rylee’s words to me the first night we met resurface. Fuck ’em and chuck ’em. Fucking Rylee. Pure class, gorgeous as f*ck with a defiant mouth and feisty attitude. How the f*ck did we get from there to here?

I swear to God life is a f*cking series of moments. Some unexpected. Most not. And very few inconsequential. Fuck if I would have ever expected a stolen kiss to lead to this. Rylee and me.

Motherf*cking checkered flags and shit.

Blowing out a breath as the headache starts, I roll over on the bed to grab my pain meds from the nightstand. It feels like my head explodes with a bright burst of white—a flash of memories from the drivers’ meeting hits me like a f*cking sledgehammer—and then disappears before I can hold on to more than a tenth of what flickered.

“Goddammit!” I shove up and out of the bed, the dizziness not as bad as yesterday. As the day before yesterday. I feel restless as I try to force myself to remember, to make my f*cked up head recall all that I’d just glimpsed. I pace, my mind drawing nothing but f*cking blanks. I’m frustrated, feeling f*cking confined, unsettled.

More f*cked up than not.

I don’t feel like me anymore. And I need that right now more than f*cking anything. To be me. To be in control. To be on top of my f*cking game.

To still be Colton f*cking Donavan.

“Aaarrrrggghh!” I shout because f*cking is most definitely what I need right now. What will help me find the f*cking me I need to be again. I may be pacing in front of my bedroom window, but my dick is hard as a rock and my balls are so f*cking blue I’m gonna turn into goddamn Papa Smurf if the doc doesn’t clear me soon.

Pleasure to bury the pain, my ass. When you can’t have the pleasure, what the f*ck do you do with the pain?

And f*ck me if it’s not the worst—sweetest—f*cking torture sleeping next to the only woman I’ve ever ached for. I can’t take another damn day of this. Even though it aches like a bitch, just the thought of her has me reaching down to palm my dick, make sure it didn’t shrivel up and fall off from lack of f*cking use.

Yep, still there.

And then my hand trembles. Shakes so that my fingers can’t even hold my own dick anymore.

Motherf*ck, cocksuck! I’m f*cking shaking with frustration right now. At me, at f*cking Jameson for crashing into me, at the f*cking world in general! This confinement is suffocating me. Making me lose my shit! I’m going f*cking crazy!

I pick up the pillow next to me on the couch and chuck it at the wall of glass in front of me before flopping down into a chair. “Fuck!” Squeezing my eyes shut, I suddenly feel like images zoom and collide at a rapid pace slamming against the front of my mind. The bright flash of white returns with a vengeance, crippling and freezing me at the same f*cking time.

Go, go, go. C’mon, one-three. C’mon, baby. Go, go, go.

Too fast.

Fuck!

Spiderman. Batman. Superman. Ironman.

I jolt my eyes open as memories lost to me rush back in high definition color.

My stomach tumbles to my feet as the forgotten feelings hit me. Fear strangles me as I try to piece the crash together from the Swiss-cheese sized holes still in my memory.

The anxiety attack hits me at full force and I can’t shake it. Dizziness. Vertigo. Nausea. Fear. All four mix like a Long Island Iced Tea I’d kill to f*cking gulp down right now as my body trembles with the tiny bits of knowledge my memory has chosen to return.

I feel like I’m on a roller coaster, mid free fall as I struggle to draw in a f*cking breath.

Suck it up, Donavan. Quit being such a *! Fuck me because all I want right now is Rylee. And I can’t have her. So I rock myself back and forth like a goddamn puss to prevent myself from calling her on her first full day back with the boys.

But f*ck if I don’t need her, especially because I get it now … get her now. Understand the claustrophobia that cripples her, because right now I can’t even function. All I can f*cking do is lie flat on the floor with the edges of my vision blurring, the room spinning, and my head pounding.

And in a moment of lucidity amidst the strangling panic, my mind acknowledges that if I didn’t feel like myself before, then I most definitely hate this f*cked-up pussified version of myself—falling to pieces, lying on the floor like a little bitch because of a few memories.

I close my eyes as my mind swims in a f*cking fog.

… If it’s in the cards …

More memories graze my mind, but I can’t reach them or see them long enough to hold on to the f*ckers.

… Your superheroes finally came …

I push the memories back, push them down into the blackness. I’m so f*cking useless right now. As much as I need to remember, I’m not sure if I can handle them. I’ve always been a balls-to-the-wall kind of guy, but right now I need motherf*cking baby steps. Crawl before you walk and all that shit.

I close my eyes to try and make the room stop the f*cking Tilt-A-Whirl it’s become.

Thwack!

And another flash of a memory hits me. Five minutes ago I couldn’t remember shit and now I can’t f*cking forget. Fuck being broken or bent, I’m a motherf*cking scrap yard of parts right now.