Ignoring the stab of hurt, I nod. “Okay. I get that.”

“No, you don’t.” He turns onto the highway, slipping into the fast lane with expert ease. “I liked the way you looked at me when you defended me. Maybe a little too much. When you realize I’m not worth your outrage, I run the risk of never seeing that again.”

The pain remains, but it’s transferred to him now. “It can’t be that bad,” I whisper.

We drive in silence for a few minutes. I sit very still in the passenger side, afraid if I move, it will sway his decision to confide in me. I want to know what put that note of sadness in his voice and I think I’ll be crushed if he decides against telling me. When I got off the plane in Dublin, I didn’t want to get close enough to anyone to feel this emotionally invested. I came here to repair myself and my broken heart, not this family. Just this one final thing, I tell myself. Just to put the curiosity to rest.

Shane’s voice startles me, cutting through the darkness. “I was in Malaysia in March, getting ready for the second race of the Championship. Hadn’t spoken to my father in months. But he called me. Just as I was suiting up for the qualifying round. I didn’t even look at the caller ID, just answered, assuming it would be anyone but him.” Shane isn’t completely there with me in the car anymore, his voice sounding far-off. “He’d hadn’t even let me past the front door of the inn last time I was in Dublin, so when he asked me to come home immediately, I didn’t understand. I asked if Kitty and Faith were all right. He said yes, but I needed to come home and see to my legacy. It had to be that same day.”

As he gets further into the story, a bad feeling settles on my shoulders, tingling in the back of my neck. Before I can analyze my actions or tell myself it’s a bad idea, I settle my hand over his on the clutch. He looks at our touching hands a beat before continuing.

“When I think back to the phone call, I don’t know how I missed it. He kept calling me by my name, which he never used to. Shane, it’s important that you listen. Shane, your mother and sister need you. No mention of him. None.” He steers the car off the highway and takes a turn, beginning the ascent of a semi-steep hill. “The next day, I placed in the top three. Not my first time, but it was a difficult track. I had a voicemail from Faith…”

He has to stop. The moment feels so fragile that any misplaced word or movement will shatter it like glass. I don’t want to hear the rest. I’ll die if I don’t.

“I went out celebrating. Didn’t even listen to the voicemail until the next day.” His voice has turned bitter, full of self-hatred. “He died during the race. He was trying to tell me to come home. Must have known what was coming. It was so obvious, I just didn’t want to fucking hear it.”

My chest rises and falls rapidly, every breath I manage to draw into my lungs more painful than the last. I try to imagine the guilt that goes along with what he’s telling me and I can’t even fathom it. I feel that I can at least partially relate, because as awful as my nonrelationship is with my mother, if something similar had happened with Valerie…if she died after begging me to come home, I would still be swamped with self-loathing. I can only imagine the magnitude of Shane’s. It’s visible now, in every line of his body, the white-knuckled grip he has on the clutch.

“So? Am I still the type of person you would defend?” Finally, he looks at me and I want to wither under the haunted expression he hits me with. “Or are you wishing you’d never gotten into this car with me?”

I inhale slowly, ordering myself to think clearly. Maybe I wanted to avoid this position, but my curiosity has landed me here and now I get the sense that I’m needed. That my response is important. More than that, it’s important to me that it leaves no room for doubt. “Yes, I’m defending you, Shane. I’m saying your father didn’t make it clear enough. He was too stubborn to come right out and tell you what the hell he wanted to say. He didn’t say, ‘Shane, I love you, I’m sorry, I’m dying and want you to come home.’ Instead, he left you with a lifetime of guilt. That’s shitty. And you’re making it shittier by imagining hints he probably never dropped.”

“Why would I do that?”

“Because you’re the one that’s still alive.” I realize I’m practically shouting and lower my voice. “Someone has to shoulder the guilt you both felt. It didn’t die with him.”

He stares at me hard for long, torturous seconds where I worry my honesty went too far. Then he leans back in his seat, staring out the front windshield. “I have to go back to racing. I have to win or it was all for nothing. I will have alienated him, my family, for nothing. Can you understand that?”

Better than I thought. “Yes,” I say, even though the word feels like it’s being scraped from my throat with a spoon. It’s a complicated and difficult goal, but that’s Shane. Complicated and difficult. People like us, he’d said to me the night we kissed in the office. We must be cut from the same cloth, because this quest he’s on is something I fully grasp. Maybe even something I would do in the same position.

“Selling the inn will ensure Faith and Kitty don’t have to work anymore. That we can afford care for Kitty. I can help them far more that way than staying behind, slowly turning into my father.”

He pushes open his door before I have a chance to respond. I feel anchored to my seat by what he said, but when he pulls open my door, I force myself to climb out of the car. Shane takes my hand without asking for permission and leads me up a path. It’s dark, and I have no idea what remote location he’s brought me to, but I can smell moss and saltwater. I open my mouth a little, and I can even taste it on the drifting wind. Trees line either side of the path and I sense we’re getting closer to the water the more the wind picks up, rustling the leaves. It’s dark, but the moon is enough to see where we’re walking. Shane’s hand tightens around mine when we come upon uneven earth. I trust him, I realize. In this moment, after the way he opened himself up to me…I trust him.

I can feel the tension in his grip, left over from our conversation. Part of me wants to bring it up again, talk it to death. Talk until he stops feeling pain over something he couldn’t prevent, until no more words exist on the subject. It’s so unlike me. I’m the type to ignore a pebble in my boot until it gives me a blister. I’ve made ignoring problems an art form. Maybe it’s his own reluctance to talk about it that’s giving me the urge to create balance. Balance him.