Page 148

I expect a caution about taking it easy. I’m totally unprepared for what follows.

“I’m proud of you. Beyond proud.” He reaches an arm around my shoulders, and I hesitate before leaning into him. “Just when I think you can’t get any better, you prove me wrong. You’re smart and capable and caring. In case I don’t say it enough…you’ve always been the best thing to ever happen to me.”

I blink, my eyes burning even before he continues.

“I wanted to make your life easier, especially since the first few years were so full of pain and grief. I thought keeping the truth from you was a gift, but I’ve realized you’re not the child who needed protecting anymore. Which is why I need to tell you this.”

He takes a deep breath and I straighten, my shoulder blades stiffening as I take him in.

“I’d been working on the grid for ARI for five years when Luca called me one night—he’d hit another car on a back road and didn’t know what to do. His car was barely damaged, but the other one flipped.”

I wrap my arms around myself, fingers digging into my biceps. “Dad, you don’t have to—”

“I told him to stay put and called the ambulance. But by the time it arrived, he was gone.” Dad rubs his chin, his face pale. “It wasn’t until the next day I learned your parents didn’t make it. You were taken to the hospital with non-life-threatening injuries.

“I confronted Luca. He figured I would take his side, but I wouldn’t. Not on this. He had been going through difficulties in his personal life, grappling with his team who wanted him to retire. He offered to pay me to make it disappear.”

My stomach is roiling, but he keeps talking.

“I should have brought what I knew to the police, but I wanted to take care of you. I offered to take you in. You didn’t have any family, and I couldn’t stand the thought of you alone going into the system.

“Luca pulled some strings to help make it possible, but I told him that after this, we weren’t friends. We never would be. The last thing I did was make him put the money he tried to give me into a trust for you, one you can access when you turn twenty-one.”

Next year.

I’d only ever had half the picture of what happened with my parents, filling in the gaps myself. Fitting in these new truths alongside what I thought I knew feels like trying to repair a bone that already healed crookedly.

“I understand if you blame me,” Dad says. “I couldn’t bring them back, but I wanted to take care of you. This was the best way I knew how. I know now that it wasn’t right.

“When you took an interest in cars as a child, I thought, what father doesn’t want his child to follow in his footsteps? But the closer you got to the industry, to Ashford, the more I realized it was dangerous. I tried to stop you. I tried so many times.”

It makes sense, in a way. How angry he got when I wanted to pursue racing. It was fear underneath.

A question lurks at the back of my mind that I don’t want to ask, but I can’t stop myself.

“How much is in the trust?”

“Half a million dollars.”

The air whooshes out of my lungs.

That’s more money than I’ve seen in my life. It should be harder to say what comes next.

“I don’t want it.”

“Shay,” he goes on cautiously at my expression. “It’s enough for you to start over doing anything you want. Forget starting a garage with me or working for ARI. You could go to any college in the country. Buy a house in a new town. Go anywhere. Be anything. Think about it, honey.”

I don’t want to think about it.

I’m spared having to respond when the doorbell rings and Dad heads through the door to the house to answer it.

I turn back to the Mustang to deal with my feelings.

Luca paid for my silence. Or my future, depending on how you see it. There’s a whole world of possibility now. But it was paid for in blood.

Winning at all costs is a romantic idea, until you’re the one paying the price.

“Shay. Door.” Dad’s wearing a strange expression.