“That was poor judgment on my part,” Jon drawled. “Had I known it would mean so much to you, I would have left you at home.”
Patricia’s voice quavered. “That was a really asshole thing to say. Why are you doing this? Why are you being so cruel?”
It took everything not to reach out to her, but somehow, Jon managed. He held himself rigidly, his fingers biting into his own skin as he fought to keep his distance. In the end, she would thank him for letting her go.
“I’m not being cruel,” Jon told her. “I’m doing you a kindness.”
“How can you even say that?”
“Because you don’t know my past. In a few years, when you’re married and have little ones hanging on your ankles, you’ll be glad to have been rid of me. It’s best to end this now, before anyone gets hurt.”
“You’re hurting me now,” she croaked. A loan tear escaped, and she swiped it away angrily.
“That’s not my intention.” Every moment he stood there, watching her pain grow, Jon’s resolve not to go to her lessened. He needed to get this over quickly before he did something stupid, like kiss her.
“Well, you’re failing miserably,” she snapped back.
“I know.”
Suddenly, Patricia looked tired. “Tell me what happened yesterday. Can you do that at least?”
“Nothing happened yesterday except that I realized that this thing”—he motioned between them—“isn’t going to work.”
“But why,” she asked, pleading for answers. “Everything was going so well before those people showed up. Who were they, and why were they so mad at you?”
The last thing Jon wanted to do was rehash history. He’d done enough of that in the last twelve hours to last him a lifetime. Shoving off the frame, Jon took a step back and grabbed for the door. “I’m sorry I hurt you, Patricia, but we’re done here.”
When he tried to close the door, she jumped forward, slamming her palm against it and at the same time inserting her foot in the opening. “No, Jon, we are far from done. You owe me an answer.” Her light eyes held his in defiance. “I’m not leaving until you tell me why, so if you really want me to go, you had better start talking.”
Jon sighed heavily knowing his only chance to chase her off was to tell her everything. Opening the door wide, he filled the opening, and braced himself for the look on her face when he told her the truth. “Those people were Nora’s parents. Nora was my girlfriend.”
“And I gather from all the past tense references that she’s…”
“Dead,” Jon finished for her.
Patti nodded as if she’d already figured that part out. Jon continued, his thoughts traveling down that dark road once more.
“It was about five years ago that it happened. We’d been dating since high school, both heading into our second year of college, and we were totally in love. I was convinced she was the one, so I bought her a ring. It was just a gold band, nothing special, but to us it was everything.” He inhaled deeply, bracing himself for the hard parts to come. Thankfully, Patricia stayed silent, because he knew he wouldn’t be able to go on if he didn’t get it all out now.
“The night she agreed to marry me, we decided to celebrate. We dressed up and I took her out to a nice dinner, but Nora wasn’t your average girl. She was a tomboy who liked fast cars and cheap thrills. She was the perfect fit for me. No, don’t,” Jon said, stepping back when Patricia reached out to touch him. He couldn’t allow it, not now. He didn’t want her contaminated by him.
She didn’t push the issue, just resumed her quiet stance on his front stoop, and watched him with sadness blanketing her face.
“To celebrate, we got all our closest friends together and went up to the track. It was on the outskirts of this old farm we’d found years before, hidden from the main road by an enormous pole barn and about an acre of mile high weeds.
“Nora loved the races. Sometimes I think she loved them more than I did.” He smiled at the memory of her shouting her head off, jumping up and down as they watched the cars speed around the loop, kicking up clouds of dirt everywhere.
“Whenever I raced, she rode shotgun and she always screamed for me to go faster. That night wasn’t any different, except that soon we would be tied together by more than just a promise. But I got careless that night. One of the guys had just bought a new car, and he’d put a lot of time in under the hood, but he couldn’t drive for shit. We thought it was a done deal, an easy win.” Jon met her eyes and grimaced. “We were cocky about it.”
That was the one thing he knew never to do was get cocky about a race, because that was when you made mistakes. Patricia knew it, too. He could see it in her eyes.
“We were right. On the first and second lap, we left the guy in the dust. He could barely control his car. I guess he wasn’t used to handling it on anything other than hard concrete. But at some point, he started getting the hang of it, and I decided to toy with him a little, give him false hope. So, I slowed down a bit, let him get his nose in front of mine, knowing I had already won. But then in the last stretch, I remember thinking it was time to get serious. I floored it, and so did he. Even though he had a handle on the terrain, he still didn’t have enough experience to account for everything, and as we came around the last bend, he didn’t drift when he was supposed to. Instead, he tried to punch it, and he ended up losing control.”
Jon could still smell the stench of gasoline spilling on to the ground. He could hear the shriek of protesting metal, of Nora screaming hysterically. The curious thing was, even though he’d shattered one of his legs and broken several bones in the other, he never felt any pain.
“Oh, baby.” Patricia was suddenly there, and wrapping him in her arms, while making soft shushing sounds. Jon hadn’t even realized he’d started crying.
It felt so good to have her hold him. He didn’t pull away like he knew he should. Instead, he wrapped his arms around her shoulders and rested his cheek against the top of her head.
“I woke up in the hospital a few days later with a concussion, half of my body was in a cast and I was hooked up to all kinds of wires and tubes,” he went on, seeing every memory before him as fresh as the day it happened. “My parents told me what happened, that Nora didn’t make it.”
Patricia pressed closer, tightening her hold around his waist. “I’m so sorry, Jon,” she sniffed. “What about the other driver?”
“He lived, but the swelling on his brain was bad enough that he isn’t the same anymore. I got lucky. All I had to do was relearn the basics and I walked out of there with a clean bill of health. After that, I decided to do what Nora and I had always talked about: open a publishing company. She was going to be our first top-selling author,” he said, smiling sadly. “But obviously that never happened.” Standing tall, Jon released Patricia and stepped back.
She wrapped her arms around herself and stared up at him. “So that’s why her parents hate you so much, because they think you took their daughter away from them?”
“They don’t think it, they know it,” Jon returned. “If it hadn’t been for me, she’d still be alive today.”
Fire flashed in her eyes. “You can’t do that, Jon. You can’t take all the blame. It’s like your parents said, it was an accident.”
“An accident that never should have happened,” Jon volleyed back. “I knew the risks and I recognized the warning signs when that kid couldn’t keep his shit together, but rather than stop the race, I chose to take the easy win.” He jabbed his finger into his chest. “It was my fault. I killed her.”
“Then it was her fault, too. She knew all of that, and she didn’t say anything. You said it yourself, Nora liked the cheap thrill.” She tried to come to him, but Jon backed away further, shaking his head.