“Nothing to think about? I just lost Cole, my family, probably my job. I need time to figure out what I’m going to do.”
I know things aren’t over between Cole and me—they never are. I doubt they ever will be. But I still don’t know what will happen and now I have no safety net in place, at all.
“You did not lose Cole. The man is like Pepe le Pew chasing you around the world. There’s no getting rid of him.”
“What is Pepe le Pew?” Klara asks.
“He’s a French skunk,” Makenna answers. “He’s forever chasing a lady skunk around even though she pretends she doesn’t want him.”
“That’s not exactly accurate,” I argue. I’ve always wanted Cole. I can’t say it aloud, but there’s a single neuron in my brain right now admitting that I like it when he chases me.
Maybe it’s my way of seeking revenge on him for leaving. Making him prove that he wants me.
Maybe it just turns me on.
I hate that Cole knew that about me before I was aware of it. And that he called me out on my bullshit. For being a control freak and needing to have everything planned and organized, I feel like I’m being swept out to sea right now.
“He smells bad? Like a skunk?” Klara asks, still confused about Pepe le Pew.
“No,” I can’t help but laugh a little. Cole most certainly does not smell bad.
“Your mom tried calling me last night, by the way,” Makenna lets slip like it’s an afterthought.
My smile falls. Now Ava’s going to harass Makenna, manipulate her? What’s next? Maybe she can try to run Makenna out of my life, too.
“I didn’t answer, then I blocked her ass,” Makenna adds. “Rotten witch.”
“Fitta,” Klara sneers. If I understand her correctly, she just called my mother the c-word, in Swedish.
I don’t argue with her.
“I still don’t understand it all.” And since I’m not speaking to my mother, the Major General, or Cole, I may never understand it all.
“Why don’t you just ask him for the whole story?”
“Because I don’t trust him. I don’t trust any of them. They’ve all been lying to me for years, in cahoots. How can I ever trust any of them again?” I wrap a throw blanket around myself and try not to break down again.
I focus on the race instead.
“Oh look, Dante’s in third,” Makenna claps, and the television cuts to a shot of the Imperium garage cheering.
I catch a glance of Liam and Mila on screen, big smiles and high-fives going around. I miss them. I miss Edmund. I even miss Dante, as immature and ridiculous as he is.
There’s only a couple of laps to go.
Cole’s doing it, he’s going to win. He’s going a million miles per hour, putting his trust in his engineers, his mechanics, his team.
The irony is not lost on me that I am not doing the same.
I look at the phone in my lap and re-read the last message he sent me yesterday.
Cole: Don’t think Em, just feel. Your brain is big, but your heart is bigger, let it lead. Just this once.
And then he attached the video we made in his kitchen, but I’m obviously not sharing that with Klara or Makenna. Too much information, indeed.
With one lap to go, Klara, Makenna, and I grow silent then explode into cheers when Cole crosses the finish line. He did it again.
I hold my breath as he lifts both hands off the steering wheel and pumps them into the air, the car still flying around the track.