Pace Laps (Racing on the Edge Book 10) (13 page)

IT WAS THREE hours into the surgery when a doctor came out. Couldn’t tell you what he looked like because all I heard was the word complication.

Sitting up, my uncertainty made my voice harsh and demanding. “What the fuck do you mean complications?”

His eyes widened as he stepped back. “She’s fine. It’s just taking a lot longer than we anticipated.”

“Well say that,” I shot back, a heavy dose of sarcasm in my tone. “Don’t fucking come out here saying there’re complications when it’s just taking
longer
.”

What kind of fucking doctor was he?

“You don’t have to swear, sir,” he balked, clearly offended by my sharp response. “And please keep your voice down.”

Was he serious? Did he think I would?

Leaning forward, I stood so I could be eye-level with him when I said, “Fuck. You. Get. Back. In. There. To. My. Wife.”

Arie pulled me back to her, waving the doctor off. “I’m sorry. Ignore him.”

Sitting down, I confessed my frustrations for this place and their lack of grace when it came to dealing with families. I mean, who said that? “These doctors are ridiculous,” I complained, my heart pounding as I ripped the words out impatiently. “Who says that shit?”

“I’m sure they’re trained to say that,” she told me, trying to hand me a sandwich she’d bought for me.

“Well, fuck them,” I grumbled, rolling my eyes and pushing the sandwich away. “They need better training.”

I stood to leave, tossing the sandwich aside only to have Casten follow me. “Wait up, old man.”

“She’s going to be fine, dad,” Casten told me, seeming confident in his answer.

“You don’t know that,” I mumbled from my place on the floor in the hallway. “Shit goes wrong all the time.”

“Yeah, but this is Mom we’re talking about.”

I stared at him, waiting for him to explain, but this was also Casten. Maybe he was trying to get me to understand by his cryptic bullshit he always pulled.

“Think about it.” He sat down with me. “This is the same woman who at eighteen packed up and traveled an entire summer with you, jumping from town to town, race to race and never even batted an eye. The same woman who was assaulted and pushed down a flight of stairs while pregnant and still managed to not only survive but deliver a healthy baby. I’m not saying Axel isn’t a little different at times, but still healthy.”

I snorted, shaking my head at his reasoning.

“Oh, and don’t forget when she sat by your bedside for weeks not knowing if you were going to live or die. And when you did wake up, she was the one who stood by you through all of your recovery and rehab.” Casten laughed once, his head resting against the wall. “And believe me, it was difficult. You were a real asshole then.”

I glared at his remark but couldn’t help the smile. He had a point.

“Mom survived the death of both of her parents, lost friends, watches her husband and sons risk their lives every weekend on a track. And hell, let’s face it, being married to you for all these years hasn’t always been a picnic. There’s no way something like cancer is going to beat her now.”

Casten was right. Sway was the strongest person I knew and if anyone could beat this, it would be her.

“THE DOCTOR CAME by,” Arie told me as I returned to the waiting room.

“Which one?” I looked over at her only to stare at the wall beside her. “The one I don’t like?”

She snorted. “That doesn’t really narrow it down. There’s like a hundred you seem to hate.”

Rolling my eyes, I slouched in the chair. “What did they say?”

“That it was taking longer, they took more than planned and now they’re starting the reconstructive surgery.”

I couldn’t sit down after that. Standing, I paced. I felt trapped. The room seemed to close in on me and I had to escape.

With my head in my hands, I prayed again. At that point, I wasn’t even sure what I was praying for anymore.

I couldn’t sit here again.

Storming back out of the room, I roamed the hallway until I found a vending machine. I didn’t know why but I had my mind set on Skittles. I guessed I just needed something else to focus on if even for five minutes and finding Skittles seemed like a good idea. Unfortunately what I didn’t realize until I found the damn machine was I didn’t have any money on me. Not even a fucking quarter.

“Damn it!” I yelled as I punched the front of the machine. Stupid soft glass. It broke instantly. But feeling my fist go through the glass brought me a sense of satisfaction I hadn’t had all day. With all the frustration and fear I was carrying around, I needed an outlet and punching that glass gave me it. And Skittles.

“Shit, Dad.” Casten rushed down the hall. “What did the machine ever to do you?” Casten laughed as I picked up the bag of Skittles.

“I didn’t have any money.” It was the only explanation I had.

“Well, all you had to do was ask.” He stared down at the broken glass at his feet. “I would have given you some. You didn’t have to go and kill the damn thing.”

I shrugged, not caring blood dripped from my knuckles where the glass had cut me.

Casten took one look at my hand and his eyes widened a bit. “Um.” He nodded behind him. “Maybe we should go downstairs. You might need some stitches.”

Not waiting for me to answer, he grabbed me by the arm and led me toward the elevators.

“Hold on one minute. Don’t move.” Casten ran back to the vending machine and grabbed a couple of bags of Skittles and some chocolate bars. “Okay, let’s go.”

“WHAT DID YOU do?” the barely eighteen-year-old doctor girl asked in the emergency room as I sat there with my knuckles splayed open.

I stared blankly at the girl stitching up my hand. “Put my hand through a vending machine.”

“Uh, why?”

“Have you ever done stitches before?” I growled when she dug the needle in and practically hit the bone. “This isn’t home economics class. Pay attention.”

“I’ve done plenty of stitches.”

Sure she had.

“Why did you punch a vending machine?”

She seemed hell-bent on getting it out of me, so I said, “I wanted Skittles.”

Her eyes darted from left to right, and then at me. “So put money in it.”

“Why didn’t I think of that?”

It took for-fucking-ever to have her stitch my hand up but thankfully, the time passed and the pager in my pocket alerted me Sway was in recovery, and I could see her.

Though she was groggy, Sway perked up when I came through the curtain in the recovery area. Seeing her smile at me, even though it was obviously a drug-induced goofy smile, I could finally breathe again. She was here and she was going to be okay.

“Look!” And there went the gown.

That same nurse—the one I threatened bodily harm to—came back in as Sway was showing me her bandaged chest. You couldn’t see much, and I wasn’t too thrilled about her being so anxious to just whip them out, but damn, Sway seemed in a good mood so I let it go.

“You gotta stop that. I don’t want everyone knowing what your tits look like,” Jameson said to me once the bandages were removed and I basically showed everyone who came in the room my new funbags.

Rolling my eyes, I stared at the ice water with those little round ice cubes I loved so much. “I don’t see why it matters. They’re not real.”

“I don’t fucking care. Stop doing it.” His aggravated tone drew my stare to his. “How would you like it if I showed everyone my dick?”

“What… are you just gonna start whipping it out?”

He crossed his arms defiantly over his chest. “Maybe I will.”

“Show me and let’s see.”

Yep. I used his line on him.

He surprised me when his reached for the button of his jeans. “Fine, I’ll start with you.” And then he literally showed me his crankshaft in the middle of the hospital room.

Even with all of the pain medication they had me on, my body responded to seeing Jameson with his crankshaft standing at attention like it was saluting me.

Unfortunately, Casten picked that exact moment to walk into my room.

“Hey, Mom, I brought you…. Oh Jesus! Oh fuck!” He screamed in such a high pitch that someone walking by would have thought it was a thirteen-year-old girl instead of a twenty-four-year-old man.

“Fuck, damn, fuck! I think I’m blind!” I couldn’t help but laugh because he was covering his eyes while trying to find his way out of the room. In the process he tripped over a chair and slammed into a wall.

“Damn it, Dad! Put that thing away. This is
not
okay. I am never going to be okay.”

Jameson stood in the middle of my room when Casten left staring at me like “did that just happen?”

Staring at his camshaft, I couldn’t help myself. “He seems… scared? Did Casten scare him?”

Of course my comment pissed off Jameson as he zipped his jeans. “Fuck off.”

After he tucked everything back in place, I motioned for him to climb into bed with me. I had this overwhelming need to be close to him and it seemed even when he was right next to me, he was still too far away.

Carefully snuggling into his side—the funbags were still pretty sore—I placed my hand over his heart. “I missed you,” I told him, trying to snuggle even tighter to his side. I couldn’t get close enough.

“Missed me?” He let out a breathy laugh kissing my forehead. “I was a wreck out there.”

“I know.”

Angling my face so I could look into his eyes, his expression of undying love made my heart skip.

“I know what you mean, though. All this time I was so afraid of the unknown. It was killing me to not be able to control the outcome. And while you were in surgery, they kept coming out and telling us it was taking longer than expected. I felt like I couldn’t breathe.”

“Is that when you decided to commit assault on a vending machine?”

He laughed lightly and I couldn’t help but smile because hearing his laugh was everything to me.

“I needed Skittles.”

“You and your candy.”

The room was quiet for a moment, the buzzing from the machines next to me the only sound besides our breathing. Jameson took in a deep breath, his chest rising and then falling slowly. “I don’t know what I would have done if you hadn’t made it through this.”

I knew what he meant because he wouldn’t have. I was like his torsion bar stop, holding him in a fixed place. Believe it or not, I could raise and lower his car by using an adjustment bolt. The same went for me. Together we knew the adjustments we needed to make and if that stop hadn’t been there, there was no telling what kind of setup we’d be left with.