“I’m sorry… I really am.”
She struggled to get out of bed, her voice shaking.
“If it weren’t for me, Tucker wouldn’t have been hurt this badly.”
“I didn’t mean it. It’s just that earlier today… someone spread rumors about me—really ugly ones. My brother heard them and got so angry he wanted to hit someone.”
“He said he couldn’t let people hurt me like that, but I stopped him. I was afraid he’d get hurt.”
“Then that man provoked him, asked if he dared to race.”
“So my brother agreed.”
“He said that if I sat in the passenger seat and helped guide him, he would definitely win.”
My fingers tightened suddenly.
A navigator is someone a racer entrusts their life to on the track.
I had wanted, countless times, to be Tucker’s navigator.
For his one sentence—I trust you—I learned routes, wind speed, track rules. I stayed up late memorizing maps, running simulations again and again.
But every time I brought it up, he only refused.
“It’s too dangerous. Don’t get involved,” he’d say.
Now, Kelsey—who knew nothing—had easily taken that seat beside him.
She even rode with him into a rollover, nearly costing him his life.
And no one blamed her.