Hard and Fast (32 page)

“I’m glad you told me,” she said sincerely, feeling guilty. She did want the truth, and it couldn’t have been easy for him to reveal his secret. “And I think you are a smart, amazing man, and I do love you.”

His expression softened. “Thank you. I love you, too.”

“And now that I know, we can talk about ways to help you. There’s no reason you can’t be taught to retrain your brain so you can read. You could even get your GED if you wanted to.”

She hadn’t meant to be anything other than helpful; after all, why couldn’t he learn how to read and make life easier? But Ty not only sat straight up in bed, he pushed the covers off and climbed out, his expression stormy.

“What?” she asked, puzzled.

“I don’t need to retrain my brain, thank you very fucking much. I do just fucking fine as it is. Do you know how much goddamn money I make? Do you know how hard I work day in and day out for that money? Do you know that if I wasn’t a risk taker, I would never have had the balls to leave home and hit the race circuit with nothing but a hundred bucks and tenacity in my pocket?”

Uh-oh. She hadn’t anticipated this sort of reaction. Trying to find words to calm him down, she opened her mouth.

But he wasn’t finished.

“I am successful because of my brains and my guts, put together, and I don’t need some fancy-ass degree from a bunch of sweater-vest-wearing pricks who haven’t gotten laid since Bush Senior was president. So maybe being a stock car driver isn’t saving the world, but it’s entertaining millions of people. What impact does writing about whether dating manuals work or not have on the world either? You can read, you’re brilliant, and you’re wasting your time moldering in some teaching position in an academic field no one gives a shit about. Do you know who studies sociology? People who would rather observe life than live it.”

Imogen felt tears sting her eyes as his last words hit her like a resounding slap. It was her worst fear verbalized. “Is that what you really think of me?” she asked in a whisper. Then she regretted even speaking. Shaking her head, she held up her hand, not wanting his answer. She’d had enough honesty for the night. “Never mind. Never mind. Just get out. Go home.”

Ty was already pulling on his jeans in angry tugs. “I’m going.”

“Fine.”

“Is that the best you can do?” he asked, yanking his shirt on over his head. “I have a better exit. ‘Well, you are a rare parrot-teacher. ’ ”

Oh, no, he didn’t. He had just compared her to a squawking parrot who was trying to instruct those around her. Imogen picked up a pillow to throw it at him.

Ty grabbed his shoes and bag off the floor and said, “That’s
Shakespeare
, by the way!”

As if she didn’t know. Imogen launched the pillow, hitting him in the back of the head. Now, that was sickly satisfying.

He paused at impact, but didn’t turn around.

Then he was out of her bedroom, out the front door. The angry slam made her jump in bed, her heart racing.

What the hell had just happened?

 

 

 

WHAT the fuck had just happened?

Ty threw his car into reverse and gunned it down the street way faster than was appropriate for two in the morning in the suburbs, but he didn’t give a shit. He was furious and, well, hurt, damn it.

He had trusted Imogen with his problem, and somehow he felt like she had just totally insulted him. Looking at him with pity while suggesting he take a class. Take a class. Like that was the frickin’ answer to everything. It was her answer.

Okay, so he had been a little insensitive with his assessment of her career choice. But he thought it was true—she studied other people because she had spent her life being an observer, not a doer. He thought in that way, they were good for each other. He brought her new experiences, coaxed her to step outside of her boundaries. In return, she gave him logic and organization and a loyalty and love he had never before experienced.

But somehow they had wound up screaming at each other and she’d nailed him in the back of the head with a pillow. He hadn’t seen that one coming, literally.

Picking up his phone—coded with pictures, thank you very goddamn much—he found Ryder and clicked Send.

“Oh, my God, do you have any idea what time it is?” Ryder said in a groggy voice after Ty dialed him three times in a row when Ryder didn’t pick up. “I’m going to kill you.”

“I think Imogen and I just broke up.” Ty got on the highway and shifted gears, loving the speed of his car. It wasn’t the track and he couldn’t break the law, but it still felt good.

“What? You just got engaged twelve hours ago!”

“Tell me about it. Can I stop by for a beer? I need to vent.”

“Sure.” There was some rustling. “I’m not alone, but that’s okay. I can leave her sleeping and we can hang out by my flat screen in the living room.”

Ryder was with a woman? He had just returned from Texas, too. The idea of whining about his chick trouble while Ryder had a warm body in his bed a dozen feet away held no appeal. “Never mind. I don’t want to interrupt.”

“No, it’s okay.”

“No, I’ll just catch you tomorrow. Thanks, man.” Ty hung up the phone and stared at the yellow lines in front of him. For half a second he thought about calling his mother, but he knew what she would say—that he had been a total dickhead to Imogen. Besides, he’d already gotten an earful from her on the phone earlier when she had called to cuss him out for not telling her he was going to pop the question to his girlfriend.

Lord only knew what she’d say when he told her he didn’t think there was going to be a wedding after all.

That thought kicked him in the nuts, the gut, and the lungs all at once.

Holy shit.

He had lost Imogen.

He’d found the love of his life, and just like that, she was gone.

 

 

 

TY was gone, and Imogen cried herself to sleep.

The next morning, she woke up puffy-eyed and sick to her stomach, running through their argument over and over again in her head. What had she done wrong? How should she have handled it differently? Those questions rolled around and around until she had lost all ability to focus on anything other than her agonizing heartbreak.

When she ran a red light on the way to school, after noticing she was wearing two different shoes, she gave it up and turned around and drove home, her hands shaking from anxiety.

Dialing Suzanne, she tried to get a grip on her emotions. How did she feel? Was she upset because she had lost Ty or upset because perhaps she’d never had him in the first place? Maybe their vision of a future had been a fantasy right from the onset of their ill-fated relationship.

“Hello, Whores R Us,” Suzanne said as a greeting.

“I hope you knew it was me,” Imogen said, despite the fact that she was devastated and emotionally drained. She just couldn’t fathom answering her phone that way.

“Of course I did. Welcome to the twenty-first century. You have your own ringtone and your picture pops up. Like I’d say Whores R Us to just anyone other than my special friends.”

Imogen winced as she made a right turn. “Right.” And her overreaction just proved Ty’s theory—she was uptight. She knew that, she’d always known. It was the one flaw that she feared, the one thing she had known all along would drive him away.

“What’s up? Are you spending the morning in engaged bliss? I kind of thought you would need to sleep in. I figured you had a late night celebrating, wink wink.”

Bursting into tears, Imogen pulled into the parking lot of the doughnut shop. “We broke up!” she wailed with a drama she hadn’t shown since middle school and a poor choice involving her hair and blond highlights.

“What? You’re joking!”

“No. I’m not. We . . . we said terrible things to each other, he got out of bed and left, and I hit him in the back of the head with a pillow.” For some reason, the pillow seemed pivotal. It was so unlike her to resort to that kind of childish action, and she couldn’t really explain it.

“You hit him with a pillow? Wow, you must have been pissed. What did he do?”

“He kept something secret from me. Something important.” Imogen wasn’t about to reveal what that secret was—Ty had trusted her to keep his confidence.

“Oh. That sucks. Is it a major thing?”

“Yeah, pretty major. It affects who he is. But it’s not really that he kept it a secret, it was more the realization that we don’t know anything about each other. How can we get married?”

“Honey, nobody ever knows someone completely. You have to just enjoy what you do know and have faith in the rest.”

“Do you really think so?” Imogen stared at the doughnut shop, wishing a jelly-filled would walk itself out to her car and land in her mouth as she swiped at her eyes. Maybe she had just panicked. Maybe she had totally overreacted. “But he called me uptight and said I am an observer in life, not a participant.”

“Well, that’s a rude thing to say, even if it might have some truth to it.”

Great. Suzanne thought she was uptight, too. “Am I really that annoying?” she asked in dismay.

“Oh, shit, come on now. I never said you were annoying, and I’m sure Ty doesn’t feel that way either. The man asked you to marry him! But you have to admit, you like to people-watch, not dive into the fray yourself. It’s not a flaw. It’s not like you’re living in a bubble. It’s just your personality. If he doesn’t like that, he can go fuck himself.”

“I don’t know what he likes. I think he loves me.” She wanted to believe that, she really, really did.

“So wait for him to calm down and then go and work it out.”

“But maybe this is just a way to walk away before we both regret it even more further down the road.”

“So let sleeping dogs lie, then.”

“But I don’t know if that’s what I want.”

“You need to decide whether you’re willing to risk being hurt, plain and simple. You can go for it and have a wonderful relationship. Or you might go for it and crash and burn brilliantly. It’s up to you if you want to take that risk, up to you if it’s worth it or not.”

Her brain hurt. Her heart hurt. Her stomach hurt. Her vision blurred and she swallowed hard. “I don’t know.”

“So take some time and think about it. He’s not going anywhere, honey, and his feelings for you aren’t going to disappear overnight. You get your head on straight, and maybe he’ll do the same.”

“You think so?”

“Yeah. And if that doesn’t work, throw another pillow at him.”

 

 

TWO weeks went by, and each day sucked a little bit more than the last. At the beginning, Ty could have sworn that wasn’t possible, but by the time he was heading to the pits for qualifying in Miami for the final race of the season, he was amazed to find it was true. He hadn’t spoken to or called Imogen since their fight. Imogen hadn’t called him.

And every day the pain got a little deeper and he got a little crankier.

Especially every time someone congratulated him on his engagement.

Or asked where his beautiful fiancée was.

Generally, when anyone talked to him at all, he wasn’t happy about it.

Ty wanted to be left alone, to wallow, to reflect on his own stupidity, to contemplate a course of action. It wasn’t working because no one, no one, could ever seem to leave him alone.

“Ohmigawd, Ty, hi!” a chipper voice said to his left.

Glancing over, Ty tried to force a smile onto his face, no matter how much of a struggle it was. Then he saw it was Nikki and gave up the effort. “Hey. How are you?”

“I am awesome!” she declared, falling in step beside him in a sundress and high heels. She held her ring finger out for him. “Did you see my engagement ring? It cost fifty thousand dollars.”

Thinking that announcing the ring price was about the most vulgar thing he’d ever heard, Ty glanced over at the rock. Damn, it was ugly. That somehow made him feel better, though he couldn’t help feeling a tiny bit sorry for Strickland shelling out that kind of cash on a gaudy ring. It wasn’t even a diamond, the thing was yellow.

“It’s a yellow diamond,” she told him.

Wow. He didn’t even know they made those. “Very nice.”

“I heard you got engaged, too,” Nikki said, clearly not picking up on his lack on interest. “Congrats.”

“Thanks.”

“I can only hope that you’re as happy with her as I am with my snooky-wookums.”

That brought the closest thing to a smile to Ty’s face in days. He just might have to call Jonas Strickland
snooky-wookums
next time he bumped into him. Making a noncommittal sound, he glanced around. He wanted to be saved from this conversation. Ridiculous nickname aside, it was not feeling so great to think that Nikki was riding off into the sunset of her happily ever after and he had screwed his up royally.

He shouldn’t have called Imogen uptight. That was unfair and hurtful. Yes, she was logical. Yes, she was cautious. But she wasn’t uptight. She was willing to try new things like camping and a wide variety of sexual positions.

Anyone who could have an orgasm in an inner tube was not strictly an observer in life.

He should apologize. He should call her.

Beg for forgiveness.

Because goddamn, it sucked not having his Emma Jean in his life.

“How much did the ring you got for Imogen cost?” Nikki asked, holding her hand out and admiring her bling again.

Ty stopped walking and just looked at her, appalled. “I didn’t buy her a ring,” he said. “She’s not materialistic, and you can’t put a price on our relationship. I’m going to give her my grand-mother’s ring.” He didn’t know where the idea popped into his head from, but once it was there, he liked it.

Nikki sniffed. “Well, I’m sure that will just thrill her. It’s not like a boring professor has anywhere good to wear quality jewelry anyway.” Then she smiled. “I’ll send you an invitation to our wedding. I’m sure we’ll beat you to the altar. Bye!”