Pace Laps (Racing on the Edge Book 10) (18 page)

I STOOD IN the waiting room of the emergency room when they told Axel Jack had passed away. That sensation, the pain coursing through my veins had to be nothing compared to what Axel went through in those seconds the graveness hit him.

I knew what I went through, but to his father, it was completely different. He helped bring him into this world and had to watch him leave it in such a brutal way. This wasn’t something where he died in his sleep; he bled to death in my arms. I was covered in that reality.

As Axel’s body trembled and he leaned into the wall for support, Sway and Lily came around the corner. I wasn’t sure what was said. I was in too much shock to decipher anything at that point. It seemed I wasn’t even in my body, let alone watching the devastation unfold around me, my family fall apart.

I’d had so much experience with death, but never directly. When Charlie died, I wasn’t there. I was racing, and Sway had to deal with it on her own until I was able to fly home.

When the plane crash happened, it was the aftermath I dealt with.

When Ryder died, I wasn’t there. I heard about it a day later.

And when my dad died, I was unconscious, and it saved me from the pain I would have endured then.

But this… I was right in the middle of, watching my son tell his wife their first-born died at the track, bled to death in my fucking arms.

Breathing in deeply, shaking and inconsistent, Sway wrapped her arms around me, crying into my chest. I had no idea how to comfort her like a husband should have because all I kept seeing was Jack’s face and the blood on my hands.

This, above all else, would change our perspective on life.

My dad once told me, and this advice became legendary over the years, “It’s hard to see past the speed when you’re going two-hundred miles per hour.”

Those words were never truer as our world had come to a complete halt. We were forced to see what was right in front of us: grief, loss, devastation. It was one long inescapable moment.

“Did you see it happen?” Sway whispered, gasping at my bloody clothes as we stood alone in the hallway.

“Not really.” I couldn’t look at her. Instead, I stared at her hands on my waist. “I saw the car do a wheel stand on the backstretch. He… died in my arms.”

THE HEADLINES A few days after the accident were enough to make me physically sick.

They wanted to say how dangerous our sport was and that it should be illegal to have kids in the pits. The fact of the matter was, he was out of the way of the track, and it was a freak accident. No one could have predicted that would have happened.

Who was to say he couldn’t have been hit by a car walking down the street? That happened all the time, but because it was a race car, people went crazy and placed the blame on the sport.

So if I were to die in a car accident, people would still drive cars. They wouldn’t outlaw them.

But if I died inside of a race car, they wanted to ban them and put restrictions on everything.

People were so fucking ignorant. They also wanted someone or something to place the blame on.

Sometimes you couldn’t. Shit just happened.

They blamed us for what happened.

Why?

Because they weren’t there. That was why.

Because a child died and they found it necessary to blame someone. The fact of the matter was it was a horrible fucking accident.

Within a day, we were getting reports that tracks all over the states had immediately implemented new rules to the pits. No kids under sixteen allowed while cars were on the track. If they were racing a premier show, like the Outlaws, anyone under sixteen had to be in the stands before cars could be on the track. It would certainly make it hard on the families traveling with young kids.

There was a pain in the world that would never touch another pain. It didn’t even come close.

A child’s death.

Our family would never be the same again. This changed us all. Sure, we’d experienced heartache, but never like this.

This could destroy us forever. No one wanted to lose a child. It was unimaginable and avoided in conversation.

The friction it put on everyone was the hardest. Much like Sway’s cancer, it created an anger impossible to control, bled a hatred difficult to stop. Only worse.

The thing was, if we collapsed as a family, we wouldn’t be honoring Jack’s memory. Collapsing seemed selfish and I didn’t want that at all.

Everyone wanted to tell us that things happened for a reason. Well, fuck them! This shit should never have fucking happened. Kids weren’t supposed to die.

I had no idea what to say to Axel and one look at him that morning, I knew he didn’t want to hear anything I had to say to him. He didn’t want to hear from anyone.

IN THE MIDST of planning the funeral, Axel decided that having helmets line the top of his casket was what Jack would have wanted. He would have said, “That’s so cool!”

We wanted to have all of them up there, but sadly, he was small, so only four helmets would fit. So we chose his favorites: one of Jimi’s with the American flag on it, mine, Axel’s, and the helmet his parents gave him for his seventh birthday.

Four generations of drivers.

I thought of him right then, in my father’s arms, watching us and smiling. The thought provided comfort in a time when I really just wanted to mourn the loss of my grandson.

The morning of the funeral, I was down at the lake sitting on the dock when Sway approached me, wearing the same despondent countenance everyone was.

She said nothing but sat on my lap. Her arms wrapped around my neck tightly. We sat in silence until her lips pressed tenderly to my temple, her tears flowing again.

It brought a surge of emotion over me as the dock rocked with a subtle wind. For twenty-five years we’d experienced more than most could ever conceive of enduring, but this woman in my arms had been through it with me. Cancer, death, plane crashes… retaliation… all of it.

Losing our Jack was by far the hardest.

My arms tightened around her, deep sobs racking the two of us. Words weren’t necessary. We both knew the impact this was going to have on everyone.

It was right then that I was reminded of my thoughts when my team plane crashed nine years earlier. I compared my thoughts to a reciprocating engine. It was similar to now. In an engine, there were moving pieces inside that engine, systems that keep it running, belts moving, oil flowing and spark. You could take one out of the equation, and the engine failed. You depended on those systems to keep everything moving.

“Jameson….” Sway’s voice brought me from my thoughts. “Are we gonna be okay?”

“I love you,” I told her over and over again because the truth was, I didn’t know if we would be okay. It seemed almost redundant to keep telling her, but after everything, it was the only thing I could say.

I told her because it’s what we needed to remember today. We needed to remember despite the pain and anguish, we could make it through this.

Tears streamed down our faces with an unstoppable force along with choking, bone-rattling sobs.

“I love you, too. You can be sure of that,” she assured me with steady palms cradling my face. “This sucks, it’s awful, but we have our family here to support us in this red flag.”

She was offering me anything she could to provide like she always did. But it wasn’t me she needed to comfort. It was our family I cried for the loss, the pain, and I tried like hell to detach myself from the memories, the flashbacks of the night but I just couldn’t.

“It’s going to be okay,” she whispered to me.

“Sway,” my voice cracked, remorseful tears falling from my eyes. “I don’t know what to do....” My eyes shut, trying to stop the few tears that slipped by. “How are we ever going to come back from this?” I continued, unable to hold her stare.

“I don’t know,” she finally replied, her voice carrying with the wind.

The truth was, neither one of us were sure anymore.

Nosing Over – When a race car's performance “flattens out” or doesn’t pull down the straights anymore. Poor tuning or exceeding the engine's power range causes this.

It was as if my life was going wide open down a backstretch with a corner approaching after Jack’s funeral in September. The season ended with little celebration and Rager winning the championship for the World of Outlaws.

Christmas was quiet, our family struck by devastation and unable to enjoy the time of year, a vast difference from our time spent in Vail. We talked about going back, to remember when we had fun, but nobody wanted to celebrate at the time. I couldn’t blame them.

“He lives his life in the fast lane,” a reporter once said about me during a championship speech. It stuck with me for some reason.

Life in the fast lane.

What did that even mean?

When he said I was living life in the fast lane, he was right because it seemed regardless of how many times I tried to slow it down, it didn’t work. One thing was for sure, my speed had flattened out, and I wasn’t sure how much longer I could run like this. I had no power left.

Casten came inside the house brushing grass clippings from his shorts. “Sorry. I crashed a riding lawn mower into your garage.” Opening the fridge, he glanced at me going over schedules at the kitchen table. “No hard feelings?”

“At least you didn’t set it on fire,” I mumbled, trying to figure out how I was going to get sponsors for Axel’s car this year. Since he backed out at the last minute, I lost two of them, so we had to pick up an extra twenty grand if we were going to make it work.

“Yes, there’s that.”

Taking out a beer, Casten then left. “I’ll go fix the garage door now.”

Shaking my head, a small smile tugged at my lips. Casten was different lately. Part of him still felt guilty over everything that happened with Jack, when in reality, he had no control over that night, which in turn made him grow up a bit. Ordinarily, if he crashed into my garage door, he’d laugh it off and make me fix it.

Now he was offering to do it.

When he was out of sight, I looked over the NASCAR schedule. Easton had just won the Daytona 500 and was off to a great start. While that was all good, it made for a slightly busier month for me.