“He’s wearing the same clothes as he was when he dropped me off and drove away in a hurry.” She swings her angry stare to Max who’s unperturbed and calmly stirs his coffee with a small smirk on his face. If I was the blonde, I wouldn’t be able to resist smacking it. But this has nothing to do with me. So I push up from the table and pull some bills out of my back pocket.
“As nice as this was, I’ve got better things to do.” I set the bills down on the table and push my chair in. “See you at work, Max.” He sits upright, ready to follow me out.
“I’ll drive you,” he offers.
“That’s okay, I’ll walk to my bike. Looks like you’ve got your hands full here.” I wink and his face falls; that wiped the smirk off his face.
As I walk past the window of the diner, I see the blonde has taken my space and is talking his ear off, though it doesn’t look like Max is listening. He’s too busy watching me, and I offer him a wave as I walk down the street.
I can’t believe that I practically threw myself at Max Morgan. He’s too dangerous to be around. I can’t think straight when he looks at me or touches me or breathes on me. And when he kisses me, argh, it’s worse. We need to get back to what we do best, which is annoying the hell out of each other. I promised myself a long time ago that I would steer clear of him. Now, I need to just stick to it and not do anything stupid like fall for him.
Yeah, good luck with that.
Chapter Nine
There is no sound of the TV coming from my dad’s room as I approach. He’s not grumbling at the nurse; there is nothing but silence. I find him sleeping, his breathing labored, and he looks worse than he did when I first arrived. Leaving him to sleep, I go in search of a nurse.
Nurse McCartney is at the nurse’s station and smiles as I approach.
“Have you been to see your dad yet?”
“Yes, he looks worse than he did last week.”
“He’s had a bit of a setback.”
“What kind of a setback?” I reach for her arm, unaware that I’m gripping it tightly. She pats my hand and I realize that I am cutting off her circulation and ease up a little.
“A few of his ribs and the break in his collarbone are still causing him a lot of pain, and the doctor is worried about his concussion. I’m afraid his recovery is going to take longer than we first thought.”
My eyes start to fill with unshed tears, unable to speak past the lump in my throat, I nod before quickly walking back to his room. Sitting on the chair at the side of his bed, I hold his hand even though he’s either asleep or out for the count. My forehead rests against the back of his hand and I let the tears that I’ve been fighting stream down my face. Nothing can happen to Dad; he’s all I’ve got. It’s just the two of us, we’ve always been a team, and I don’t even want to think about what it would be like without him. Never have I ever felt so alone. When I was growing up, my dad and his family made sure that I never missed out on not having a mother around.
Losing Uncle Donnie in a car crash while he was racing was just the start. After months of fighting, my mom decided she’d had enough and wanted out. She was tired of coming last after me and racing; she wasn’t cut out to be a wife or a mother.
Although I had been sent to my room, I was an eight-year-old girl who never did as she was told. I could still hear the argument from my room and sneaked to the top of the stairs. I’ll never forget the look in my dad’s eyes as my mom said those words. Initially, he looked wounded, but in front of my eyes, he pulled himself together and anger transformed his usually relaxed, cheerful face. I have never been scared of him, but in that instant, I was afraid and shrunk back as he pulled himself up to his full six-foot-two height, towering over my mother, who wasn’t a small woman.
“You walk out that door, on me and that little girl, and you lose any right to come back. Got it?” Without hesitation, she nodded and walked to the door, picked up the suitcase, that I’d somehow missed when I was being sent to my room, and walked out the door without a backward glance.
As if he knew I had witnessed everything, my dad called out in a soft voice, which was totally at odds with the roaring one he’d used minutes earlier.
“Storm.”
I walked down the stairs, and he scooped me up in his arms as though I was a toddler instead of a gangly eight-year-old who was all skinny arms and legs. We sat in his armchair for a long time, not speaking, but I know my dad was crying. It was the only time I’d known him to cry. Whether it was because my mom had left or because his best friend, my Uncle Donnie, had died, I didn’t know.