It was guilt.
Why would he feel…
The breath stalled in my lungs. He hadn’t hit someone else’s car. I sensed it in my gut.
But if he hadn’t done that, then there was only one reason for the guilt shining in his eyes.
Icy talons raked down my spine.
Don’t say it, I silently begged. Please don’t say it.
“I was racing,” he said quietly. “Against someone from my old team. He was behind, but halfway through the race, when we were rounding a bend, he purposely rammed into me. My car went over the guardrail and crashed through a fence.”
My nausea returned with a vengeance.
I was racing.
The confession clattered to the floor and rolled to my feet like a live grenade. My earlier relief exploded into fragments of images-Asher behind the wheel, two sports cars hurtling through the dark streets with reckless abandon, the impact of one slamming into the other the way a car had slammed into my taxi half a decade ago. Only this time, it wasn’t an accident; it was planned. Malicious.
The fragments splintered further, detailing the flip of the car as it careened over the railing and the scrape of twisted metal against its hood.
I squeezed my eyes shut.
“I didn’t do it for the thrill.” Asher’s voice hoarsened, turning the sentiment into an excuse rather than an explanation.
He told me about what Holchester did to his favorite car and how he confronted them at the Angry Boar. He told me about Bocci’s racing proposal and how he’d promised they would let bygones be bygones if Asher won.
Technically, I heard what he was saying. Part of me even understood his reasoning. But the actual words took a backseat to the phantom screech of tires and promises from the past.
I won’t race anymore. I promise.
Memories of my accident mixed with Asher’s crash and our first night in Japan. They twisted and turned, drilling into my brain with ruthless determination.
“It was my one chance to put the bad blood with Holchester to rest.” Asher’s voice sounded as if it was coming from underwater. “I didn’t…”
The rest of his sentence was eclipsed by the war raging inside me.
I knew he had a history of racing. I knew he’d crashed cars before. I even knew he’d raced right before we got together because he told me he had. That was what’d led to our conversation and his promise in Japan in the first place.
But the knowledge and the terror that came with it had always seemed abstract, like a parent worrying about someone kidnapping their child or a surfer worrying about a shark attack. The threat was present, but it wasn’t there because I’d never witnessed the consequences.
Now I had.
Asher was lucky enough to have escaped serious injury, but it could’ve easily gone the other way. I could be in a morgue right now instead of the hospital, and the realization that he’d put himself in this situation when he was fully aware of the danger made me go cold all over.
“You promised you wouldn’t race again.” The words came out thick and swollen, like I’d tried to pack a lifetime’s worth of emotion into nine syllables.
The beeps from the monitor thundered in the ensuing silence.
Asher’s hands fisted the sheets, his face leached of color. “I know.”
The soft acknowledgment shattered something deep inside me.
I should be grateful he was alive-and I was. No matter how many promises he broke, there would never be a version of me that didn’t care whether he lived or died.
But I couldn’t look at him without imagining what could’ve happened, and I couldn’t imagine what could’ve happened without feeling sick.
This was about more than the race or even a broken promise. It was about who Asher was at his core. He was a good person, and I loved who he was, but he also possessed a streak of impulsive recklessness that verged on self-destructive.
If he destroyed himself, he destroyed me, and once upon a time, I’d vowed never to put myself in a position where a man would have that type of power over me ever again.
Except I had, and he did, and that was on me.
“I’m so sorry, Scarlett.” Asher’s eyes were bleak beneath the fluorescent lights. “I swear, I didn’t mean to break my promise. The last time I saw Bocci, he challenged me to a race, and I refused. Today…” He swallowed. “My emotions got the better of me. But it was going to be-it is-the last time. I’ll never race again.”
I wanted to believe him so badly that I ached with it, but he’d said the same thing once before, and here we were.
However, this wasn’t the place or time for this conversation. He was injured, the paparazzi were frothing at the mouth downstairs, and our friends were right outside in the hall. Plus, I was exhausted from tonight’s wild swings in emotion. I couldn’t think clearly, and I didn’t have the bandwidth to sort through my muddled thoughts.
“I’m glad you’re okay,” I said. A weight pressed on my chest and strangled my supply of oxygen. “Really, I am. But I can’t-I need-” His face blurred as the weight pressed harder.
I wanted to spend the night by his side and pretend everything was okay until we could have a proper conversation. But because of the paps, I had to “pretend” every time I stepped out the door, and I couldn’t do it tonight-not with Asher, the only person I’d never had to put on a fake face for.
I wouldn’t be of any consolation to him in my current state anyway. The specter of his race would hang over us, casting a shadow over everything we said and did.
I tried to put my thoughts into words, but nothing came out. There was only the sound of my breaths and the monitors beeping.
I took a small step back without thinking.
“Scarlett.” I felt Asher’s agony more than I heard it. It traveled through my entire body and reverberated in my bones, making them ache worse than any flare-up.
I hated that I was the cause of it when he’d been hurt enough that night, and I hated that I couldn’t comfort him even more.
We all have ugly feelings sometimes. It’s a part of human nature. But it’s what we do with them that counts.
I was drowning in those ugly feelings, and I needed to get out of here before I said or did something I regretted.
“I need air.” I turned so I didn’t have to see the devastation etched into his face. “I’m sorry. I have to-I just need some space. To breathe.”
I ducked my head and rushed out, the world a blur of pale linoleum and alarmed voices as I barreled past my brother and friends.
I couldn’t draw in air fast enough or deep enough to sate the strain in my lungs. I hadn’t had a full-blown panic attack in years, but I was on the verge of relapsing.
However, I still possessed enough presence of mind not to rush downstairs and straight into the arms of the paps, so I rushed to the nearest lavatory and locked myself into the corner cubicle.
I made it just in time for my earlier nausea to overtake me.
I fell to my knees, leaned over the toilet, and threw up the entirety of that day’s meals. Tears pooled in my eyes as the gag-inducing sound of my own retching filled the empty room.
My throat burned so terribly I was sure I wouldn’t be able to speak after this. Even so, a tiny voice inside my head tried to convince me I was overreacting. It was one race. One promise he’d broken out of the dozens he’d kept.
But every chain reaction started somewhere, and I worried tonight was only the beginning.
I was in love with someone who didn’t love himself, and I didn’t know where that left me. Where that left us.
New Book: Back Home to Marry Off Myself
Loredana’s father left the family for his mistress, leaving them to fend for themselves abroad. When life was at its toughest, her father showed up with “good news” after 8 years of absence: To marry off Loredana to a paralyzed son of the wealthy Mendelsohn family.