Supercross Me (Motocross Me #2) (5 page)

I shrug and step into the closet. This room is fully covered in drywall and there are a few power tools on the floor. “He’s cute,” I say, just to appease her. “Maybe a little too tall.”

She turns and leans against the back of the closet, crossing her arms over her chest. The sunlight doesn’t reach in here very well, so she just looks like a blurry ghost, but I’m pretty sure she’s glaring at me. “Okay, so don’t hate me or anything,” she says, walking forward and taking the cupcake box from me. “And maybe I’m crazy for thinking this because I am, above all else, my brother’s biggest supporter, but maybe . . .” She retrieves my half-eaten cupcake and takes a bite. “Maybe you should go on one date with Lincoln. Just for fun. You don’t have to fall in love with him—just go out and have fun for the first time in forever.”

“Since February.” I look down. “It’s only been three months. I don’t think I’m ready.”

She frowns. “I get that. I just want you to be happy, my precious best friend.” With that, she runs a hand down my cheek in this sarcastic but hilarious way, and I take my cupcake out of her hand and press it against her face. Only a little bit of icing gets on her cheek and she swipes it off and licks it. “You should at least try to move on,” she says, her expression turning serious now. “Go on one date and see what happens. If it sucks, then at least you tried.”

I give her a noncommittal shake of my head. “Fine,” I say, dragging out the word. “I’ll go on one date with him.”

“I think it’ll be good for you to get out of the house.” Shelby’s phone goes off and she reaches to her back pocket to silence it. “If anything, maybe it’ll make Ash jealous and then he’ll finally come to his senses and ya’ll will get back together.”

“Now that’s the first good idea you’ve had all day,” I say. I turn around and walk out of the closet, back into the master bedroom whose wall of windows is letting in the setting sun. Footsteps sound across the foundation. A scream catches in my throat as I realize we are not alone in this house—a pair of navy blue eyes stare at me, just as startled as I am.

I am frozen on the concrete. Ash regains his senses before I do. He was always the one with his head on his shoulders while I was falling apart. His hand lifts in a little wave. “Hey.”

I can’t find it in me to say anything. All of the words I might come up with just don’t feel adequate. Hello? Hi? No, those won’t do. Ash wears a black T-shirt with a dark blue Yamaha logo across the chest. I stare at that instead of meeting his eyes again. I’m not stupid enough to catch his gaze when I’m in a state like this.

Why is he so gorgeous?

And why do I fall apart when I’m in the same room as him?

Probably only a few seconds have passed, but a chill runs through my veins and my throat is dry and time seems to stretch on forever. Shelby barrels past me, knocking into my shoulder in her rush to get to her brother.

“You’re home early!” she says, throwing her arms around him.

“Yeah, thought I’d surprise you. When you weren’t in the house I figured you’d be here.”

“Holy muscles!” she says, still holding on to her brother. “What happened to you?”  She takes a step back to survey Ash’s amazing rock-hard supercross body and, like a devoted sister, follows it up with a, “You’re like a weird statue now.”

He chuckles and his eyes lift to meet mine while they hug. I force my lips to twist upwards in a kind gesture that—if all goes according to plan—will look like I’m a normal person giving him a normal smile that isn’t laced with two dozen heartbroken emotions.

“What have you been up to, Hana?” Ash asks as soon as Shelby releases him. He scratches his elbow and pretends to look around the room, a quirk I remember from back when we were soulmates. “The house looks good.”

“Nothing,” I say, followed by, “Yeah it does.”

His naturally dark skin is three shades tanner, which I guess will happen to a guy who mostly lives in California when he’s not home. I don’t need to hug him to know that he’s gained a lot of muscle since I’ve last seen him. I remember him talking about how all there was to do between races was hit up bars and workout. I guess he’s been doing the latter.

I wonder if the blue clay bead I made him in sculpting glass is still hanging on to that one dread behind his left ear. I let myself wonder, but I refuse to look for it. I don’t want to know.

“You want to come to dinner with us?” Shelby says, grabbing Ash’s arm. “We were just about to go out for pizza.”

No we weren’t. In fact, we are completely full on cupcakes. I give her a look, which she ignores as she tugs on his arm. “You’re hungry, right? Let’s go.”

“Yeah, I’m always hungry,” Ash says in that voice of his—the one that melts hearts and rips open old wounds. It’s lethal, but I still want to hear more. “I should go shower really quick though. I smell like airplane.”

I think he smells amazing, but I am not allowed to think that anymore.

“Okay, but hurry,” Shelby says, grabbing him and shoving him toward the unfinished doorframe that leads back out into the living room. My hands long to touch him again. My cheeks even burn as they remember what it felt like to rest my head against his chest. But I am just an ex-girlfriend now. I don’t get to touch. I don’t get to hug or comment on his muscles.

All I can do is stand here and be cordial while holding a mint green box of cupcakes. I kind of wish this half-built house would collapse on me right about now.

We follow him out into the dirt of the future driveway and Ash heads back toward their mobile home. “See ya’ll in a bit,” he says, waving over his shoulder.

“Hurry up, we’re starving!” Shelby calls after him.

We stand here in silence until he’s far enough away and then I turn on my heel and level a glare at my best friend. She smiles in return. “This will be fun.”

I shake my head and shove the cupcake box into her hands. “I’m not going.”

“What?” A breeze blows her golden hair over her eyes and she swipes it away. “Yes you are. We’ll go to Magic Mark’s, they take forever to make pizza anyway, and we’ll be hungry again by the time it’s ready, I promise.”

“How could you do this to me?” I whisper-yell, my hands clenching into nervous fists at my sides. “You just told me to move on and to go date Lincoln and
blah blah blah
. Now you’re forcing me to be in the same room with your brother?” I kick at the dirt. “I can’t go, Shelby. I just can’t. It hurts too much being around him.”

Shelby draws in a deep breath, choosing her words before she speaks. “Hey,” she says, nudging me until I look up at her. “You don’t have to go if you don’t want to. But the second he saw you I knew I needed to do something to make you two to spend time together.”

“Why? Are you suddenly an evil sociopath?”

She rolls her eyes. “No, Hana. It is totally obvious by the way he looked at you that he is
so
not over you.”

The lump in my throat swells to epic proportions. “Are you serious?”

She points to her eyes. “Ash and I have that freaky twin connection thing, remember? Do you even have to ask if I’m serious?”

A warmth spreads across my heart, rolling outward until my fingers tingle. I can’t find a way to process the words she’s saying or the way it makes me feel. “I just—I—” I let out my breath quickly and try again. “The breakup just felt really final.”

She glances toward their house where Ash has already disappeared inside. “I would never do anything that would hurt you or my brother, Hana. I have a hunch here, so let’s just have a friendly dinner and see what happens. If Ash is really over you, then I’ll eat my words and spend the rest of my life making it up you.”

I hold up my pinky. “Swear it?”

She hooks her pinky finger to mine. “On this box of cupcakes, which I love more than I love myself, I swear it to you.”

Eight months ago - Halloween

“Knock, knock.” Ash said the words in addition to tapping on my bedroom door. I froze, eyes wide as I stood in front of the mirror inside of my closet.

“What?” Shelby said, looking at me as if I’d grown another head.

“He can’t see me like this,” I whispered. “I’m not ready!”

“You are so weird.” Shelby capped her mascara and left my closet, pulling the door closed behind her. I could hear the bedroom door open and Shelby said, “You have to wait in here because your princess of a girlfriend isn’t ready yet.”

“You two have been in there over an hour,” Ash said. “What more could you possibly have to do?”

Shelby opened my closet door just wide enough to slip her body in, and she stuck her head outside. “We’re getting pretty, so you’ll just have to wait as long as it takes.”

“Uh, you’re zombies,” Ash said with a laugh. “I don’t expect either one of you to be pretty.”

That was kind of the point of tonight. For the first part of the night, we were attending a Halloween party at the track that was mostly for little kids. Ash, Shelby, and I would hand out candy with Molly and then head off to a real Halloween party later in the night. I’d only lived in Mixon since the summer, and all of my friends were motocross people. But some local guy and his friends, none of whom raced at the track, were throwing this party so we decided to check it out.

I’d never been to a Halloween party, or any party really, but I’d seen enough movies to know that girls dress as sexy as possible for stuff like this. Shelby had no intentions of following in this tradition, and I was too nervous that I wouldn’t be able to pull it off, so we went with the zombie idea. I wore ripped up cutoff jean shorts smeared with fake blood and a white tank top also covered in blood. A fake slimy intestine I’d bought at the Halloween store hung out of my back pocket for extra grossness. Shelby and I took turns leaving blood handprints on our legs and arms, and after an hour of makeup and messy-hair styling, we looked like we’d not only been taken down quickly in the apocalypse, but that we’d been zombies for some time.

I helped Shelby pin a severed ear into her hair and then we packed up the makeup and fake blood. All of our work was done and we were ready to go, but I hesitated. I wanted to see Ash because I was crazy about him, but I was also nervous that he’d take one look at me and decide he’d rather have the sexy Halloween pin-up girl instead. I was always second-guessing myself around him.

Ash was the best. He was kind and considerate and of course, gorgeous. He’d forgiven me for royally screwing up things with Ryan last summer, and he never said a word about it or held it over my head. I should have been happy, and I was most of the time. Yet even with all of the romantic dates between his racing schedule and the stolen kisses in the driveway, I was still absolutely petrified that he’d get bored with me and want someone else. Someone better.

Fate has a cruel way of giving you exactly what you want, only to leave you worrying that you’ll lose it forever.

In the end, I finally mustered up the energy to emerge from my closet, and Ash made a big deal about how horrendously perfect his sister and I looked as zombies.

The party was held in a barn that had been repurposed as a guest house, but like, if your guests were people you hated. It was huge and had an open floor plan. The crappy little kitchen was built out of discount cabinetry, was full of stuff they probably bought in the clearance aisle at a Home Depot. The furniture was falling apart, smelled like livestock and was probably fifty years old. I didn’t even want to know what the bathroom looked like, so I made sure I didn’t drink much that I would have to find out.

Shelby met up with Jake as soon as we arrived, and they disappeared into the crowd of people. Ash held my hand as we wove our way through the party, saying hello to people we knew. We weren’t drinking and mostly everyone else was, so in a way it felt like we were the only two people here.  Ash was dressed as Dracula, with a cape his mother had sewn and those plastic vampire teeth that never really stay in place when you talk. Ash fielded a ton of questions about why he didn’t dress like Bob Marley because of the dreads. After about the fifth time I heard him answer, “Who the hell is Bob Marley?” I pulled him aside.

“You know who Bob Marley is, right?” I asked.

He looked toward the unfinished roof and let out a long breath. “Yeah. I’m just sick of being compared to him because of my hair. We have like nothing in common besides the dreads, especially since I don’t smoke pot.”

“Well you play guitar and sing so . . .” I said, poking him in the stomach. “You have a little in common.”

His frustration melted into a warm smile of appreciation as he looked me over, somehow seeing past all the makeup and taking me in as I normally am. “You’re really beautiful,” he whispered, taking both of my hands in his.

“I guess I did a terrible job of looking like an animated corpse,” I said, squishing my lips to the side. “I’m supposed to be grotesque.”

He leaned down and kissed me and then cradled my face in his hands. “You smell like Sephora, not the walking dead.”

I laughed a little and reached my blood-covered hands around his silky vampire cape. I let myself get lost in his dark eyes and let all of the party noise fall away as I stared at him. We’d only been together a couple of months, but they were the best months of my life. “I’m so glad we’re both home for Halloween,” I said, lacing my fingers together behind his neck.

He gripped me around the waist and pulled me into a quick hug before meeting my gaze again. Something in his expression shifted and a knot formed in my stomach. “What is it?”

His tongue ran across his bottom lip, slowly, as if he was thinking about something. Finally, his lips parted and he shook his head slightly. “Nah . . . it’s—nothing.”

My brows pulled together. “Ash Carter. You’re clearly keeping something from me.”

He grinned, his eyes crinkling in that way that always made my heart melt. “Yeah, I am.”

I crumpled my face into a pout. “That’s mean. I thought you were a nice boyfriend.”

He grabbed the sides of his cape and wrapped them around me, pulling me against his hard chest until we were in our own little black satin world. “I am a nice boyfriend,” he whispered into my ear. The stubble on his chin tickled my cheek and I tilted my head, letting it nuzzle against his chest, right in between his neck and collarbone, the place I fit perfectly when we were together.

The radio started playing a slow song with a deep bass beat and Ash began to sway to the music, letting his chin rest on top of my head.

“You should tell me what you’re thinking,” I murmured into his shirt while we rocked slowly to the beat. He smelled so wonderful I’m not sure why I ever let myself get more than a few inches away from him.

“I will, Hana.” I felt his lips press onto my hair. “I’m just not sure a dumb Halloween party is the best place to tell you that I’m completely in love with you.”

I lifted my head and pulled back a little so that I could look at him. My heart was beating so fast it made my nose feel numb. “What was that?” I asked, aiming for coy and flirty, not shy and nervous.

Ash ran a hand over his dreadlocks and gave me this knowing look. “Oh it’s nothing it’s just . . . yeah,” he said, taking out his plastic vampire teeth. “I’m in love with you.”