His legs spread apart allowing space for me. “Come over here, honey.”
I wanted to, God did I, but was it too soon? Could he handle this? “Rager, we probably shouldn’t. Your ribs.” My heart flipped in my chest. We’d barely kissed since his accident and it’d been way too long as far as I was concerned.
His jaw tightened and he pulled his hand from inside his shorts. “I don’t give a fuck about my ribs. I’ll break them again if it means having your pussy on me.”
Okay, well, shit. Kneeling before him, my knees pressed into the plush cream carpet beneath me. Slowly, I ran my hands up his thighs and his eyes fluttered. He licked his lips, shifting his position slightly, as if he couldn’t sit still.
His hands laid on top of mine, gently. “Don’t you see,” he whispered, his words shaking. “I’d go through any amount of pain if it meant I could have you like this.”
“Me too,” I said, swallowing hard.
I stared at his erection straining through his boxer briefs and practically drooled. Sex had been the last thing on my mind since the accident, but now that he was half-naked and obviously wanted this, my thoughts had shifted to us.
“Fuck me,” he begged, yanking on my hands for me to straddle him.
So I did. And he held onto me as if his life depended on it. To the point where it hurt, a little, but I didn’t dare stop him. With his arms circled tightly around my back, his face buried against my chest, he forced me down onto him every time I raised up.
“Does it hurt?” I panted in his ear when I heard him wince, but his grip didn’t ease.
“Yes,” he breathed, his mouth on mine. “But don’t you fucking stop.” And then he raised his hips, meeting me bounce for bounce on him.
Within a few minutes, he came, hard, a guttural sob rolling through him as his body shook. His touch lessened and he laid back against the mattress, still inside me. I caught myself from falling forward on top of him, my hands on either side of his head.
He stared up at me, a ghost of a smile surfacing. “I’m sorry if that wasn’t good for you.” Reaching up, he touched my cheek.
I leaned into his touch. “It was everything.”
IT WAS FIFTY days from the date of the accident before Caden was finally released from the hospital. That day I drove to Ohio to be there for them.
Rager was at the shop meeting with Dad and going over him returning to racing for Knoxville Nationals. It was a month away, which I thought was too soon, but Rager was driven. He refused to take no for an answer, and when one doctor told him no, he’d go to another.
Hayden and I made the drive to help Caden and Kinsley get situated in their apartment they had in Charlotte. He was in a wheelchair, had a neck and back brace, and a shaved head with a nasty scar. Along with the scars, he had metal rods in his neck, back, and hundreds of stitches.
Despite looking physically awful, I reminded myself, he was here, giving us shit and laughing with us the entire drive here. He even talked us into stopping at a gas station where he bought a hundred dollars-worth of candy. I didn’t think that was possible, until Caden.
We stopped off at the shop to get their clothes from the motor home. That was the saddest part of the entire trip. A month ago, we’d been traveling around the country, and now that part of their life was over. Caden stayed in the car the entire time. I didn’t think he wanted to go into the shop and be reminded of what he was missing. We also had both wrecked cars in there, and I knew he didn’t want to see that.
At their apartment, Hayden and I carried a box inside of deliveries they had waiting for them.
Caden laughed as Kinsley pushed him down the sidewalk. “I can carry that. I’m basically a hand truck.”
I laughed. “I got it.”
Caden, though extremely disappointed about racing, had kept his sense of humor up. At least around us. I was sure Kinsley saw the real heartache when they were alone.
Inside their apartment, you could tell they hadn’t had a chance to arrange anything. They still had everything in boxes from when they moved here over the winter from California.
“How’s he really doing?” I asked Kinsley when we were alone, grabbing the last of their clothes she had in their motor home.
“He’s… emotional. His therapist said it’s to be expected but he gets angry and frustrated that he can’t do anything for himself. And racing… you know.”
I nodded. “I can’t imagine what you guys must be going through.” Some people had a passion for racing. Others, it was their life and if you said to them, you couldn’t get back in that car, their life was over as far as they were concerned.
“Your dad offered me a job with JAR Racing.”
“I heard.”
“I want to take it. I’d love to still be a part of everything, but I can’t. I can’t take care of him, and the baby, without help,” she told me. “There’s a spinal cord therapy place in Atlanta.” Kinsley walked with me and when we got to the door, she stared at Caden holding the baby on his lap and smiling at her. “Caden’s mom is going to go with us.”
Though I didn’t want her to leave, I understood her reasoning and it got me thinking about what I’d do if this had happened to me. What if Rager had been paralyzed? Would I continue to travel with my family? Would I even want to be a part of the racing world anymore? When my Grandpa died, I couldn’t look at a sprint car for months without thinking it was a death machine. When Jack died, I
