He drew up short, releasing the grip he’d had on Devin’s shirt and dropping him onto the pavement. He spun around and stalked past me, pausing only long enough for me to scramble after him.
Jordan was slinging tools around the trailer, stomping around like an angry minotaur. He had to get rid of the adrenaline, the anger. Since I’d stopped him from pummeling Devin, this was the next best thing.
Aiden and I both waited several feet away for the storm to pass. When it finally did, Jordan turned to us with a shake of his head. “That piece of shit better be glad she stopped me.” He pointed at me. Then used the same finger to gesture me into the trailer. “C’mere, Rae.”
I went to him, let myself be wrapped in trembling[ muscled arms. Jordan held me for a few minutes before Vic’s voice broke in with a rap of his fist on the side of the trailer.
“It’s time to roll.” The race wouldn’t stop because the two drivers had fought. If anything, that made it more exciting for everyone else to watch.
Aiden held his fist out at Jordan. “Time to settle it the way you always do.”
Jordan thumped his knuckles against Aiden’s and gave a slow, snarl. “Let’s do work, son.”
After Jordan strapped in, I handed him his helmet, pulled his belts tight, and kissed him. Even angry, his lips softened against mine. He held me there, one large hand on the back of my neck, far longer than usual. As he kissed me the tension slowly left him, a sure sign he was calming down.
I stood with Vic as Aiden lined Jordan’s deep blue Malibu up. The smells and sounds were the same as every other time we’d raced. Though everything looked the same, smelled the same, sounded the same…this race was different from all others. This race had more than pride or money on the line. Devin wanted to beat Jordan at something, anything, but here is where he would think he could do the most damage. For Jordan it was about showing Devin his role, teaching him to know his place.
They both had something to prove.
“Devin put more power in it!” I barely heard Vic. “To beat Jordan!”
“There’s no way he can hold it “ I yelled over the idling roar of dueling engines. Devin wasn’t the driver Jordan was, he didn’t have the experience or talent of half the guys here. More power to a slick surface?
There was no way he could keep the car under control. Panic welled up in my chest. “Who let him do that?”
Vic inclined his head to where Joe Hance stood on the start line behind Devin’s Camaro. My stomach did a hard roll, reached up and clutched at my chest.
Both cars wheelied at the flashlight, front tires coming up off the pavement. Jordan pedaled the throttle, the powerful growl of the engine eased slightly bringing the front end down. That quickly, he was on the gas again, the Malibu roaring back to life within a heartbeat.
Devin’s line wasn’t straight and he started to fishtail at a hundred feet. It was an eighth of a mile race, their speeds were already dangerous at such a short distance.
Everything that happened next happened in slow motion, my world toppled from its axis. We all hung suspended in disbelief, unable to move, our hearts pounding in our ears. Devin’s car broke loose and crossed the centerline. The black Camaro caught Jordan’s fender and turned him. Jordan lifted from the throttle as he spun.
Devin must have tried to wheel himself out of it. He couldn’t. The car started to roll hard and launched itself over Jordan’s rear end as the Malibu slid sideways and off into the weeds.
There weren’t any weeds on the other side. Devin rolled over the top of the guardrail, flipping violently end over end…once, twice, three times. It seemed to go on forever, pieces of the car flying all over the place in a hail of metal and carbon fiber. I ran with the crowd before the Camaro came to a stop, even as the squawk box demanded we all stay out of the way for emergency vehicles.
Nobody listened.
It was Jordan who got to the wreckage first. How he’d managed to climb from his car and sprint across the track before anyone else could get there, I’ll never know.
I stopped screaming when pain registered on Jordan’s face. I stopped breathing for a few beats when he pulled Devin’s limp form from the now flaming car.
Jordan carried Devin down the track in the flashing black and white images of a nightmare. Mentally, I tried to stop the reel, but it kept playing, flickering in and out as my feet pounded on the pavement.
Jordan pulled the helmet from Devin’s head and cradled his friend’s body in his arms, a silent scream echoing down the track. Then the reel stopped, the flashing stopped, and the world stood still as Jordan’s eyes met mine across the distance. I knew then, without a doubt, that Devin was gone.
I hit my knees as people rushed by. Everything spun the wrong way around me, sickness clenched at my gut. I was horror stricken, as the smell of burning race fuel singed my nostrils. My chest was tight and my hands ached from my fingernails digging bloody crescents into my palms.
I was suspended in grief and terror, unlike anything I’d ever known before.
Soon people blocked my view of the aftermath. Try as I might, I couldn’t see through the throng of onlookers. Someone pulled me from the path of the ambulance. My savior was faceless, as everyone else that ran by was, until she spoke my name. “Raelynn?”
The last time I’d seen my sister’s striking dark eyes they’d been filled with anger. Now, her anger had been replaced with shock and fear. Our lifetime together told me she wanted me to tell her it was okay, she wanted me to play the part of the reassuring big sister.
I couldn’t.
It wasn’t going to be okay.
None of the things she needed me to say would change anything. We had lost him.
We hadn’t lost him until tempers cooled or until he found someone else to love. We’d lost him forever, and Jordan had been racing him.
He’d been completely helpless. When I thought of Jordan, of the hell he must be going through, bile blistered my throat.
“Jordan,” I croaked and pushed past Breanna.
Someone stepped into my path, talking to me as if I could hear past the roar of the bomb that had exploded in my head. It took a moment to realize it was Vic who led me toward Jordan’s truck. There was no use fighting him, no use fighting against the crowd of people that pushed against us. They all wanted to see it, all wanted to see our pain. It made me angry, far angrier than I had been before the race.
I climbed into the door Vic held open for us as Aiden quickly unhitched the trailer. Both Vic and my brother flickering away in the stop action nightmare.
Jordan jumped into the driver’s seat, still wearing his fire-retardant race jacket. I sat frozen at his side as the engine turned over, unable to look away from the blistered skin on Jordan’s hands. His gloves were made from the same material as the rest of the race suit. He must have taken them off before grabbing Devin.
My brother, Vic, and a handful of others climbed into the bed of the truck. I wondered, still in shock, if they knew how dangerous that was.
Then the cold set in, and I didn’t think much of anything, feel much of anything.
The dire urgency of the situation hit me as we sped behind the ambulance on the highway. My mind was suddenly assaulted with all the noise when my hearing came back in a rush.
I sucked in a deep breath as the sirens wailed away. A cold, soft hand slid into mine and gripped tightly. I looked over at Bree, her beautiful face was grief twisted in such a way that I knew she understood.
Devin was gone. Yet, still we rushed onward, toward the hospital, toward our last hope.
To my left, Jordan’s face was stoic, cut from granite as he drove. He pushed the limits of the truck, flying behind the ambulance as its sirens blared and lights flashed. I swallowed the lump that had been building in my throat, battled it down as I battled down the panic in my heart.
Jordan threw the truck into park beside a curb at the emergency room, paying zero heed to the red zone signs. We all ran after the ambulance. A stretcher was hurried through doors to a place we couldn’t follow, doors slammed shut in Jordan’s face.
He spun around, pain and terror stricken. Big, strong Jordan was as helpless as any of the rest of us. When he finally looked at me, really looked at me, I saw all the guilt, all the fear, and the pain a man like Jordan would feel. All those emotions hit him at once. Tears filled his eyes, and I went to him.
I wrapped my arms around his middle, because I couldn’t do anything else.
He enveloped me, his body shaking with sobs though the tears never spilled.
Breanna’s tears did spill, silent streaks down her face until there wasn’t makeup left to leave tracks in. If she wasn’t shadowing me, clutching my hand, she sat with her arms wrapped around her middle staring off into oblivion.
I held her while Jordan’s hands were cleaned and bandaged in a triage room. Even as my sister’s body trembled against me, I worried for Jordan. His hands weren’t the part of him hurting the most. He was loyal to a fault, the guilt alone would eat him alive.
When he came back, clean white bandages covering his knuckles, he couldn’t sit still. He paced the waiting area like a caged lion, desperately searching for our ever-elusive hope. Whenever he stopped long for me to touch him, to offer comfort, I did.
At some point, as I let Jordan hold me, my sister left the hospital. She was out the sliding doors with their mechanical hiss her only farewell. Vic, Aiden, and the others all sat slack-jawed, pale-faced, and red-eyed. No one managed to move to follow her.
I don’t know how long we stood there and waited, but it seemed like an eternity. At some point, Devin’s parents arrived, they were joined by a crowd of people I knew but couldn’t remember. Friends and gossip mongers alike.
I tried to hold on to hope, prayed to every god I could think of, begged and pleaded, but, I knew. Before the doctor walked out and spoke privately with Devin’s parents. We didn’t need to hear what was said. We didn’t need to hear his mother’s wailing. Because we already knew. Jordan had known the entire time. Hope is a fickle creature, so difficult not to reach for even when you know better. We’d all reached for it until that moment.
But, it all came crashing down around us. Devin was dead.