Free Aflame (Fall Away #4) by Penelope Douglas Page B

already tipping their drinks as they stumbled around the track, and I held back my little grin, not for once feeling bad that I never joined in. Ben wanted me to. He craved the happy girlfriend who could ease in and out of social situations without complication.
    After all, if I was determined to race, why not enjoy the atmosphere and the hype?
    But Ben was far too late to make an impression on my personality. I learned back in high school that I was who I was, and I slept a lot better at night when I didn’t make apologies for that.
    I didn’t need them, and I didn’t even need the win.
    I just need this,
I thought as I gripped the wheel and the stick. The blood in my arms felt like it was dancing under my skin, and I was ready.
    Yes
, Madoc was right.
    I was stronger when I stood on my own. And when Jax encouraged me to take up some racing at the Loop, I’d found there was one thing that I did by myself—one thing I owned—that put strength in my veins.
    There was no guilt, no pressure—just silence. And I would keep that going when Jared showed up tonight.
    Which he would.
    I hated to admit it, but he’d put a nice little rush in my blood today. And it wasn’t just because of how good he’d looked. Beautiful ink covered more of his arms than it had two years ago, but he still had the same smooth, toned chest that now looked even more incredible, tanned by the West Coast sun.
    And of course, all it took was a look for him to get under my skin.
    At ten years old, Jared was my friend. At fourteen, my enemy; at eighteen, my lover; and at twenty, my heartbreak. I’d known him more than half my life, and although the roles had changed, his impact was always all consuming.
    Always.
    I leaned over, digging my mom’s
Leaves of Grass
out of my backpack. Tossing the pack into the backseat, out of the way, I opened the paperback, pressing my thumb over the edges of the pages as I fanned them, the soft breeze of the flutter wafting across my face.
    Finding page sixty-four, I headed straight for the lines my mother had underlined on verse twenty of Walt Whitman’s “Song of Myself.”
    I whispered, holding the book close to me. “I exist as I am, that is enough.”
    There were many lines underlined and many poems dog-eared in this old paperback, but I always came back to the ones my mother did herself. Maybe she marked them for herself, or maybe she knew I would need them, but they were always right there being the voice for me she couldn’t be anymore. Even though she died of cancer more than ten years ago, I never stopped needing her. So I carried the book everywhere.
    Leaning in, I pressed my nose into the crease and inhaled the scent of old paper as my eyes fell closed.
    “Dude,” I heard Madoc’s voice. “Kinky.”
    I opened my eyes, letting out an aggravated sigh at his big head sticking through my driver’s side window.
    You would think Madoc was my boyfriend, as much as he hovered, but it was useless to try to get away from it. He’d texted three times to make sure I was showing up tonight. I’d never missed a race, but I knew exactly why he thought I might duck out. The moron thought I had no self-respect.
    “I don’t want to talk about it,” I warned, tossing the book into the glove compartment—which I always did for good luck—and then climbing out of the car.
    “Okay.” He nodded, stuffing his hands into his gray cargo shorts. “But if I see you sleeping with your books, I’m staging an intervention.” He jerked his chin to the backseat, littered with all of my texts for school.
    I shot him a look and walked around the back of my car to attach the GoPro Jax had given me. “I got behind on my summer reading because of my shifts at the hospital,” I explained, bending down to affix the camera, “and I want to get through these footnotes by the time school starts.”
    “You’re reading the books in the footnotes?” He looked at me like I was wearing head-to-toe orange.
    I stood up, placing