The Race

Chapter 12

Chapter 12

When I woke up, it felt like I hadn’t moved in a really long time.  By the soft leather seat underneath me, I knew that I wasn’t lying on the concrete floor of the checkpoint garage anymore. 

I could hear rain softly falling and the sound of an engine.  I shifted in the seat that I was sitting in and groaned when my head started pounding. 

“You okay, Lennox?” a voice asked.  I couldn’t tell who the voice belonged to over the pounding in my head. 

“Ow,” I said, lifting my hands to my head.  “Ow, ow, ow.”

There was a deep chuckle and then I felt someone push back my hair from my face.  Opening my eyes, I knew I was in one of the cars and sitting in the driver’s seat right next to me was Kier.

“Finally, you’re awake,” he said, smiling over at me. 

“Hi,” I said. 

“That’s all you’ve got to say to me?” he said, laughing again.  He sobered up a moment later and looked over at me every few seconds with worried eyes as he continued to drive.  “After you scared the shit out of me by showing up all covered in blood?”

“Well, I couldn’t help it!” I said, my voice rising.  And with it, my head started to pound even more. 

“Lennox,” Kier said, reaching over and grabbing my hand.  “Calm down.  You’re going to do more damage to yourself than you already have if you keep this up.”

I closed my eyes, taking a deep breath.  I calmed myself down enough to realize that Kier’s fingers were threaded through mine so naturally, like we’d done it a million times before. 

Why was it that this boy – well, he really wasn’t a boy – could send my heart pounding just with one look or one small gesture like holding my hand?  Something like this had never happened to me before and I really didn’t know how it was supposed to go.  All I knew was that I loved being with him.  No matter what we were doing, I always had a smile on my face when I was with him. 

“I really missed you, Kier,” I said, opening my eyes to look back at him. “Talking to you at night just isn’t the same as being beside you.”

He looked over at me with a thoughtful look on his face.  And then a moment later, his beautiful, crooked smile went into place. 

“I missed you, too, Lennox,” he said. 

“So what time is it?” I asked, sitting up slowly in my seat.  I looked over at the dash and then outside.  “Ten in the morning or night?”

“Night,” Kier said, peering out the windows at the sky.  “It’s been like this for the past few days.  Well, I guess you really wouldn’t know that, would you?”

“No,” I said, shaking my head.  

We were quiet for a moment and I could tell Kier was just itching to ask what had happened with me.

“You want to know, don’t you?” I asked him.

He took a deep breath.  “Yeah,” he said, nodding. 

“Okay, well,” I said, shifting in my seat.  And I told him everything that happened. 

I watched him as I spoke.  He kept his eyes to the road, but I could see them narrow when I told him about the guy beating me up while I was hanging up in chains all the way up until I told him about getting to my bike. 

“I don’t really remember how long it took me to get to the checkpoint garage where you were waiting for me,” I said, finishing up.  “So, how long were you there for?”