Crashed(book three)(31)

The road to recovery? Thanks, Captain Obvious—more like the speedway to Hell.

Faces fill my immediate space. Mom kissing my cheek, tears coursing down her face. Dad hiding his emotion but the look in his eyes tells me he’s a f*cking wreck. Quin beside herself. Becks muttering something about being a selfish bastard.

This must be pretty f*cking serious.

And yet I still feel numb. Empty. Incomplete.

Rylee.

After a few moments they slowly back away at my Mom’s insistence to give me space, to let me breathe.

And the air I’ve just gotten back is robbed again.

I turn to look at the vague blur I notice in my periphery, and there she stands.

Curls piled on top of her head, face without makeup, hollow, tear-stained cheeks, eyes welled with tears, perfect f*cking lips in a startled O standing in the doorway. She looks like she’s been through Hell, but she’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever f*cking seen.

Call me a *, but I swear to God she’s the only air my body can breathe. Fuck if she’s not everything I need and nothing that I deserve.

Her hands are fiddling with her cell phone, my lucky shirt hanging off her shoulders, and I can see the trepidation in her eyes as they flit around everywhere but at me.

Breathe, Donavan. Fucking breathe. She didn’t leave. She’s still here. The neutralizer to the acid that eats my soul.

Her eyes finally find and lock onto mine. All I see is my future, my salvation, my singular chance at redemption. But her eyes? Fuck, they flicker with such conflicting emotions: relief, optimism, anxiety, fear, and so many more unknown.

And it’s the unknown I focus on.

The unspoken words telling me all of this is tearing her apart. That it’s not fair for me to put her through this again. But racing is my life. Something I need as much as I need the air that I breathe—ironic considering she’s my f*cking air—but it’s the only way I can survive and outrun the demons that chase me. The black ooze that seeps in every crack of my soul making sure it can never be eradicated. I can’t be selfish and ask her to stand by me when all I want is to be the most self-centered bastard on the face of the earth.

Urge her to go but beg her to stay.

But how can I let her go when she owns every single part of me?

I’ll gladly suffocate so that she can breathe freely. Without worry. Without the constant f*cking fear.

Be selfless for the first time ever when all I’ve been my entire life is self-serving.

I should have told her—got over the f*cking fear that consumes my soul—but I couldn’t … and now she doesn’t know.

… I Spiderman you …

Words scream through my head but choke in my throat. The words I don’t know if I’ll ever be healed enough to say.

She robbed me of that all those years ago.

And now I’ll pay for it.

By letting my one f*cking chance go.

Then I hear the sob wrench from her throat. Hear the disbelief and torment in that singular sound as her shoulders shake and her posture sags.

And I know what I want and what is best for her are two completely different things.





Out of nowhere the sob tears from my throat at the sight of him, lucid and groggily alert. My damaged man that is the most beautiful sight I’ve ever seen.


My heart tumbles even further if that’s even possible. And we just stare as the noise and excitement in the room abates, everyone taking a step back and silently watching our exchange.

Yet my feet are frozen in place as I try and read the emotions racing rapid-fire through Colton’s eyes. He seems apologetic and maybe unsettled, but there’s also an underlying emotion I can’t place that has trepidation eating at the corners of my mind.