I forgot all about Liri going to see her dad this weekend. I was going to offer to go with her for moral support. I know all about fucked up families.
“Guess I won’t be able to track her down until Monday.”
“You know where she is. It’s Friday night in Hinkley.”
“The Dragway.”
Liam gives me a fist bump. “I just need to change the air filter then you are back in business.”
“Let’s go get our girls back.”
Hinkley is a piss ass poor town where racing on a Friday night is bigger than football. Racing isn’t a pastime it is a religion where I come from. My father was a big contributor to making that happen. Him and my mom were high school sweethearts and we had the perfect life and the perfect family. Until he threw it all away for some ass. My father was everything to me. I wanted to be like him. Dillan and I would follow him around the garage carrying buckets of tools around while he’d prep for his next race. Eventually he got noticed. Went to the big time. He was living large and around Hinkley he was king. Then Mom noticed a lump on her breast. She was in her early thirties, and it was unheard of for a woman her age to have cancer, but she did. Had to have a double mastectomy.
Susie, fucking ready to help, ready to save the day, swooped in like a real friend should. She got Dillan and me off to school. Hell, she even helped us with our homework. She quit her job to take care of mom around the clock. Dillan didn’t notice the little things I did because he was too busy sniffing up Noelle’s skirt. Susie’s little darling of a daughter. A slut like her mother.
She was screwing my brother and Susie was fucking my father. Mom had gotten an infection and had to be hospitalized. Dad was supposed to be in Georgia for his next race. I was late getting home from school because Dillan was supposed to take me to see Mom, but he ditched me for Noelle.
I had missed the bus and had to walk home in the rain.
The house was dark, but I could hear their moans and the slapping of their bodies as I came in through the mudroom that was right off the garage.
“Dillan?” I called out my brother’s name to give them fair warning. I figured I was gonna go in and find him with Noelle, but I didn’t. I followed the noises to the kitchen. There was my father, pants around his ankles with Susie bent over the kitchen counter where I made cookies with my mom. His fist was wrapped up in her hair and she was begging him to go faster and harder.
I vomited right there on the floor.
My father turned and when our eyes met, he was pissed at me. Yelled at me because I wasn’t where I was supposed to be. “What the fuck are you doing home?” He snarled, pulling up his pants.
I couldn’t speak. I ran out of the house and grabbed my bicycle. Riding fast to the hospital to get to my mom. I would later learn that my father hydroplaned while he was out searching for me. He went over an embankment and into the river. He nearly drowned and his right leg got pinned and crushed. That was the end of his racing career and his marriage.
Mom couldn’t handle the truth. Her best friend and the man she loved had betrayed her in the worst possible way. They had fallen in love.
Dad moved in with Susie and took Dillan with him. I stayed with my mom and did my best to look after her. I forgot to lock up her pain meds one day and she found them. Took over thirty painkillers. I came home from school and there she was laying on the kitchen floor in front of that stupid counter. When the ambulance drove away with her, I was sure she was dead, and I took a sledgehammer to that counter instead of my father’s head like I had wanted to.
I couldn’t understand why I wasn’t enough for her. Why Mom couldn’t be happy with it being the two of us. We were a family. We didn’t need Dad or Dillan. I didn’t know it was the other way around and none of them needed me.
I was alone all this time until Liri.
She’s the first person who has gave a damn about the real me.
To everyone else outside of Liam, I’m just a good looking asshole with a fast car who likes to get laid.
She made me think I could be more.
That she saw me as more.
The way she looked at me when Jackie told her that I paid for her abortion gutted me.
I have to win her back.
I’ll tell the world she’s mine. That I’m her boyfriend. I’ll do whatever she wants as long as she’ll come back to me.
Chapter 29
Liri
Hinkley Dragway is a lot different from the drag race I went to with Killian. There is a long strip of blacktop with two lanes. We have to purchase tickets to watch from the stands and there is even an announcer. It is on the up and up and I doubt these men and women race for gas or ass. When I hear the engines revving a thrill shoots through me, and I find myself wishing I had called Killian and put an end to our fight. I miss him but that still doesn’t excuse the lie he told or that he was willing to throw Liam under the bus to protect his secret. Every time I think about it, I get mad all over again.
Hayley and I grab some sodas and find a seat on the bottom row by the start line. The races won’t start for another twenty minutes or so. They are still working out the lineup and making sure the driver’s are legal. “I’m glad we came.”