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Her eyes were so fucking wide, and I just wanted to pick her up and swing her around. I hated that she wasn’t in this world anymore. I’d do everything I could to get her into VANT Racing too. I didn’t give a shit if it was like, insider benefits, or whatever. She deserved everything the world could give her and more.
“Ari Rome! I thought he’d retired. Oh my god, what I’d give to work with Ari Rome. Did you know when he was a driver, he won the most back-to-back championships in history? He still holds the record…”
As she rattled off more racing facts, her face all lit up like there was a supernova burning inside her, a fragile thing in my chest awoke, and I knew I’d do whatever I could to make her happy forever.
TEN
TALLY
Jesse had found several rotting floorboards in what was the laundry room, which meant that we had contractors coming in to fix the subfloor. Which worked out, because today, I needed to buy a car. At Jesse’s insistence—and Hayes’s too, if I was honest—I’d kept some of the race winnings to prepare for the baby. I wouldn’t see any money from the sale of the house for at least six months, and babies were expensive. First thing I needed was a car, though, because getting to appointments on the bus was tedious as hell.
Hayes came with me, because who better to take to look at used cars than a NASCAR mechanic? I mean, I knew a bit; you couldn’t drive cars professionally without knowing about them. I knew enough not to be ripped off by an unscrupulous salesman, anyway. But Hayes could pop the hood, eyeball the motor while it was running, and tell me exactly what was wrong or what was wearing down. You didn’t turn down that kind of help.
We took Jesse’s banged-up pick-up truck, because we needed to pick up several cans of paint and other stuff from the hardware store on the way back, and Hayes refused to even consider putting that in his baby.
“What about a minivan?” he asked me, and although his face was completely neutral, his eyes were laughing.
“How about you get a minivan, asshole,” I grumbled back, and he burst out laughing. Man, such a good laugh. The kind that made you happy. “I want something a little cool. But also extremely safe.” I had complete faith in my own driving skills, but I shared the road with a lot of other people, and some of them were idiots. The fact was, every person would likely make one stupid or reckless decision on the road at some point in their life, and I wanted to know that my baby would be safe.
Which also reminded me that I needed to talk to Willy and Colin about what would happen if anything happened to me during the birth. If I died, I’d want them to have the baby. But that was definitely something to have a conversation about first.
Man, being pregnant made you morbid and practical. Adulting sucked.
We climbed out of the car at the used car lot. “All right, Hayes. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to find the best car we can get under five grand. You in?”
He raised his eyebrows at me. “Let’s do this shit.”
An hour later, we hadn’t found a car that suited me, and the salesman was loitering around like a vulture over a dying rabbit. Frustrated, I eyed an oversized SUV. It would be safe, and it was within budget, but it would be expensive to run. I was getting hungry and tired, which made me more than a little snappy as the salesman tried to tell me that it was the car chosen by most expectant mothers.
I wanted to punch him.
“You know what? We might come back later, I think,” Hayes said as he checked out the engine. The salesman looked panicked, like his commission was leaving.
I pouted, then hated myself for pouting, and then I felt like crying, because this wasn’t going right. Definitely hangry.
The salesman shook his head. “Pregnant wives, am I right? It takes their already naturally emotional selves to a whole new level of irrationality,” he joked to Hayes.
I blinked at the guy. “Excuse me?” The guy suddenly realized he’d fucked up, when Hayes didn’t laugh and agree like a good old boy.
Oh, man. I was about to show this asshole irrationality.
“Listen here, you little weasel. My ability to make a decision has nothing to do with my pregnancy and everything to do with this car lot’s policy of shining up turds and trying to tell me that they’re gold bars. You think I’m emotional now? You’re about to see a whole new emotion, you stupid son of a bitch.”
I stepped toward the guy, about to charge him and slap the crap out of his smug face, but Hayes grabbed me under my arms, carrying me away. I furiously flipped the salesman off with both hands.
“We won’t be back, fuckface!” I yelled. Maybe that was a little over the top, but screw that guy.
Hayes put me on my feet and led me back to the truck. I was so enraged that I was huffing and puffing.
“How dare he? I was a world-class fucking race car driver, and he was calling me an overly emotional little woman. Aw, gee shucks, what could she possibly know about cars?’” I mocked in the salesman’s smarmy voice, and Hayes swallowed down a snort as he let me rage. He opened the side door, so I could climb in. “I know more about cars now than that fucker has ever known in his entire damn life.”
“I know, Tally,” Hayes said soothingly, reaching over to help me with my seatbelt after I futilely jammed it into the wrong clip over and over.
“I was a fucking champion. I was someone, you know? My face was in magazines. Little girls asked me for my autograph. And now…” I hiccuped and realized I was crying, like the irrational little woman that guy had suggested I was. “And now I’m going to be a single mom, scraping by, and I’m already fucking it up. I resent the baby, do you know that? Last night, I thought about how I could be back on the circuit if it wasn’t for it. That makes me the worst person in the world, because how could any mother think that about their child?”
Hayes unclipped me and pulled me back into his arms. He hugged me so tightly that it felt okay to break down. For the first time since realizing I was pregnant, I let myself feel all the things.
Fear. Worry. Joy. Regret. Wonder. They all spread through me one after another, like the shuffling of tarot cards. How could I do this, without giving everything up that I’d worked so hard for?
