At least, that was the case until Quentin met Merry and she managed to tie his tongue up in knots and stop his brain from functioning. But that was a different situation. I’d experienced countless instances watching my brothers just walk up to women and openly hit on them, seemingly unaware of the possibility of rejection. Even when they were rejected, which admittedly wasn’t very often, they just bounced right back. It was just another thing that happened during the course of a day. That wasn’t me. I couldn’t just be so casual and forward.
Except when it came to Kelly. For some reason, when it came to her, I was ready to leave my normal shell and go outside my comfort zone. I would do what I needed to do to get her attention and let her know what I was feeling.
“I kissed Kelly,” I told him.
“You kissed her?” he asked. “That’s what’s getting you all googly-eyed?”
“Yes,” I said, not feeling like I should have to justify it, but knowing he wouldn’t leave me alone until I said more about it. “She and I said we were going to be just friends. We agreed that it was a good thing for her to be working at the complex, but we were going to stay totally professional and not have to acknowledge anything that happened between us. But you know as well as I do, I didn’t feel professional about her. As soon as she walked back into my life, I knew I wanted to pick right up where we left off. Then after what happened with Greg, all I could think about is how short life is.”
“Definitely not enough time on this Earth to be pussyfooting around and not going after what you want,” he commented.
“Exactly.” By that point we’d made it over to the giant tires, and I hefted one. “Seeing him go down scared the shit out of me. What if that had been me and I never had the balls to tell her how I felt about her? Or what if something happened to her? It’s not unheard of for people in the pit to get hurt during races. It might seem easier to just put the past behind us and not acknowledge it. It would obviously be more comfortable for the people around us if we just kept our heads down, didn’t think about anything that we felt for each other, and stayed totally professional.”
“Fuck everybody else,” Colby said, instructing me to the next set of exercises. “This isn’t about them.”
“I was going to try to make that a bit more eloquent, but there’s no real point in that. You’re right. Fuck everybody else. And fuck being professional. I want Kelly. She is everything I’ve ever wanted. She’s things I wanted that I didn’t know I wanted. When I realized that, I decided I wasn’t going to hold back anymore. I kissed her and let her know that was just the opening salvo. If she didn’t want anything else, she could have said something about it right then. But she didn’t.”
I grinned at him, and Colby gave an approving nod.
“You did good. I’m proud of you for finally taking that step,” he told me. “Now that you’re on your way to that whole thing happening, maybe you’ll pull your head out of this funk you’ve been in.”
“Definitely.”
He wasn’t kidding when he said he was going to beat my ass into the ground with that morning workout. I barely felt like I could move when it was all over, and I stood in the hot shower for almost half an hour waiting for my muscles to stop feeling like liquid. But it was a fantastic workout, and by the time I got to the complex, I felt energized again. Despite that, it was a good lesson to not miss my morning workouts with Colby. When I first started working out with him, I told him not to give me any excuses and that I needed to put everything into this. He took the responsibility of holding me to that extremely seriously.
My first stop when I got to the complex was the bank of lockers right outside the garages. That was where the team kept their personal belongings during the workday. There were locks on each individual unit, but they were almost never used. It wasn’t like there was a tremendous risk for theft among the close-knit group. There was, however, risk of tampering, which I suppose was what I was planning on doing. Looking around to make sure no one was nearby watching, I went to Kelly’s locker and opened it. There was nothing inside, which meant she hadn’t yet gotten to work that morning.
I realized as I stood there staring into the empty locker that I hadn’t even bothered to ask her about the mysterious phone calls or the possibility she had someone else in her life before I kissed her. I just went for it. But she hadn’t resisted or said anything, so I could only assume either she wasn’t dating anyone, or it didn’t matter. I was hoping for the former, but I’d take the latter if stealing her away from someone meant having her for myself.
The bag of kettle-cooked potato chips I set inside was from my favorite company, and I added a container of mixed nuts, a couple of the pressed fruit bars Merry had discovered and become obsessed with in the last two months, and an assortment of four chocolate-covered sea salt caramels. She was always working so hard she rarely stopped to take a breath much less give herself a pick-me-up. The rest of us kept food and
