Aflame (Fall Away #4)

His eyebrows pinched together, and I winced.

Shit.

“You watch?” he asked in an amused tone, looking at me like I’d been caught.

I pursed my lips and redirected my attention back to painting. “Of course I watch,” I grumbled.

I heard him laugh under his breath as he started painting again, too.

“It’ll still mean some travel,” he continued, “but less than what I do now. Plus, I can build the business back here if I want.”

Back here?

So he might want to come back home, then? I looked away, liking the idea of him moving back, and I wasn’t sure why. It wasn’t like I was going to be here anymore, anyway.

He let out a sigh, regarding his work on the wall. “I love the wind out there on the track, Tate. On the highways.” He shook his head, looking almost sad. “It’s the only time you and I are together.”

I looked back down at him, a lump swelling my throat.

I saw his Adam’s apple bob as he swallowed. “I never wanted other women.” His thick voice was practically a whisper. “I left so I could be a man for you. So I could come back to you.”

I dropped my eyes, slowly stepping down the ladder.

That was what had been so hard to understand. He had to go off and find himself—cutting me out of his life—by breaking up with me under the guise of not wanting to hold me back while he took however many years to get his shit together?

I locked my eyes on his dark ones and looked up at him, seeing a man who was so much the same, and yet, so different.

But maybe it hadn’t been a guise after all.

Maybe I was lucky, because I always knew where my direction pointed me, and I had it figured out. Maybe Jared had had too many downward spirals, too many distractions, and too much doubt to know what truly drove him.

Maybe Jared, like most people, needed the space to grow on his own.

Maybe we had just started too young.

“And what about the next time you need to shut me out, Jared?” I asked, licking my parched lips. “It was three years in high school. Two years this time.”

He put his hand on my cheek, his thumb grazing the corner of my mouth. “It wasn’t two years, babe.”

I eyed him. What was he talking about?

He bent down, wetting his paintbrush some more. “I came back at Christmas that same year. You were . . .” He hesitated, rolling the paint onto the wall. “You had moved on.”

I averted my eyes, because I knew right away what he was talking about.

“What did you see?” I asked, fiddling with the brush. I shouldn’t feel bad. I had every right to move on, after all.

He shrugged. “Only as much as I could handle. Which wasn’t a lot.” He glanced at me, holding my eyes.

I could tell he was trying to keep his temper in check.

“I showed up one night,” he started. “I’d just gotten started on the circuit, racing and making connections. I was feeling good and”—he nodded—“really confident, actually. So I came home.”

Six months. Only six months.

“I knew you were mad at me. You wouldn’t talk when I called or text back, but I was finally a little proud of myself, but I was never going to be truly happy without you, too.” He dropped his voice to nearly a whisper. “I showed up, and you were with someone.”

He blinked a few times, and I felt my stomach roll because I’d hurt him. I wanted to throw up.

Is that what Pasha had been talking about? The time she saw him almost cry?

But I shouldn’t feel bad about this. Jared had had sex with numerous women before we were together, and I’m sure plenty since we’d been apart.

“It was six months, Jared.” I grabbed some paper towels and turned to him, cleaning up the paint on his hands. “I’m sure you had been with someone else by that point.”

He stepped closer, reaching up to play with a lock of my hair. “No,” he whispered. “I hadn’t been with anyone.”

My eyes shot up. “But . . .” I winced, my gut clenching. “I saw you. I saw girls everywhere around you. At the tracks, hanging on you in pictures . . .”

I hadn’t moved on because I thought he had, but I never thought he was holding back, either. I assumed . . .

He let out a hard sigh, turning back to his painting. “The girls come with the crowd, Tate. Sometimes they want pictures with the drivers. Other times they just hang around like groupies. I never wanted anyone but you. That’s not why I left.”

A flutter swarmed through my chest, and I knew that my heart still wanted him, too. No one else had even held a candle to him.

“It was so hard living without you, Tate.” His voice sounded weary. “I wanted to see you and talk to you, and I’d lived so long with you as the center of everything, I just . . .” He hesitated, his voice turning thick. “I didn’t know who I was or what I was going to offer you. I relied on you too much.”

I looked down, realizing that he’d been wiser than me. Jared left because he knew he needed me too much. I hadn’t realized how much I needed him until he was already gone.

“I relied on you, too.” I choked over my words. “I said it in my monologue senior year, Jared. You were something I looked forward to every day. After you left, I constantly felt as if the wind had been knocked out of me.”

In our final year of high school, when I’d finally had enough of my childhood friend bullying me, I stood up in front of the whole class and shared our story. The loss, the heartbreak, the pain . . . They didn’t know what they were hearing, but it didn’t matter. I was only speaking to Jared anyway.