After kissing his way down my jaw, my neck, and my chest, he presses a kiss to each breast before lowering to his knees. Staring up at me in the dark, he slides his hand under my thigh. Lifting it, he places it on his shoulder. Parting me with his fingers, he presses his mouth to me.

My fingers sink into his hair on a gasp as his hot tongue laps at me. I look down at him, his head between my legs pleasuring me, my hips rocking against his mouth.

I love him. So much it hurts. And I can’t tell him. Because if I do, it makes it real, and if I lose him…

It’s all becoming too much to bear.

I close my eyes against the fear and love and confusion, and I focus on the way he’s making me feel right now. The escape to heaven he’s offering me.

Then, his tongue touches me in just the right way, and I shatter around his mouth.

Wordlessly, he gets to his feet. My fingers pull on the drawstring on his pajama pants. I push them down his hips, letting them drop to the floor.

He steps out of them, kicking them aside. Lifting my leg, he hooks it over his hip. Then, dipping his hips slightly, he thrusts up inside me.

“Carrick…” I moan, my hands gripping his upper arms as my head falls back against the glass.

Eyes on me, he kisses me, almost desperately, tangling his tongue with mine, as he takes me there, up against the glass where anyone could see us.

The sex is intense and deep…so very deep. We don’t speak. In the dark surrounding us, the only sound is our ragged breaths.

I’m shaking by the time I reach my second orgasm, my body tightening firmly around his.

Then, my name is growling from his lips as he pumps into me, filling me with all he has.

He rests his forehead to mine, panting, his breath touching and mixing with my own. “There isn’t a single moment in my future where I don’t see you in it.” His words are whispered, his fingers threading into my hair.

I’m choked by emotion, unable to speak.

And if I could speak, what would I say? Don’t bank your life with me. Yes, I want that, too, but I don’t see it like you do. I fight for it daily, but ultimately, I don’t know if I’m strong enough to stay.

I can’t.

So, like the coward I am, I say nothing and conceal my weakness. Wrapping my arms around his neck, I bury my face into him.

Lifting my legs, Carrick brings them around his waist, and he carries me back to bed.

Gently laying me down on the mattress, still inside me, he rests his head on my chest, and that’s where he stays for the rest of the night.

“I SHOULD BE DOWN THERE, doing last-minute checks.”

“Babe, relax, Ben and Robbie have got it. The car’s fine. She’s more than ready. You’re more use to me here.” He wraps his arms around my waist from behind. Chin resting on my shoulder, he stares out the window in front of us. “I like having you here with me before a race. You’re my new pre-race ritual.”

That should make me feel warm and safe, but it doesn’t. Nothing can penetrate the wall of fear that’s built up inside me.

I’ve been riding on nerves all day, nerves that I’ve been fighting to conceal from Carrick. I don’t want to put his focus off. I don’t want him worrying about me. I want him focused on his race.

I haven’t been able to eat all day. I hardly slept last night. After Carrick carried me to bed, I just lay there, watching him, as he slept on me. As I ran my fingers through his hair, my body was stiff from the weight of him, but I couldn’t move because I didn’t want to. I was scared that it could be my last night with him, and I needed him as close to me as possible. I needed to hold him.

I’m so scared that this race is going to take him from me.

I know I’m being irrational. But I can’t help it. It feels beyond my control now.

I wish I were different. Wish that I were stronger for him.

When did things get so bad for me?

The moment I fell in love with him.

My fear just keeps escalating, growing like a monster. And I just keep having the insistent urge to tell him to not go out there. To stay here with me forever. To never leave.

Each race has just gotten worse than the one before, and I wonder when it’s going to reach its peak and if that peak will be manageable. Right now, it’s barely feeling tolerable.

I feel like I’m on the edge of a cliff, staring down at the rocky bottom, with no choice but to fall.

“Babe…talk to me.”

My mind jolts back to him. “About?” I try to keep my voice even, light.

“About why your body is locked up tight even though I’m wrapped around you.”

I turn my head, looking at him. “I’m just a little nervous…about the race.”

“I’ve told you, there’s nothing to be nervous about. You’ve seen me race a hundred times before.”

“Not exactly a hundred times. And you weren’t the most important person in my life then.” The words fall from my lips. It was the wrong thing to say but the right thing to say for so many differing reasons.

His eyes fill with warmth and everything he feels for me, which I know is a lot. I just don’t know exactly how much.

Carrick hasn’t said that he loves me.

Even though I want him to love me, a part of me—the cowardly part—doesn’t want him to. If he did, it would make everything so much harder.

“You know that goes both ways, right? You’re at the top of my list…not that it’s a long list. Well, actually, there’s only you and my dad on it.”