The Legend by Shey Stahl Read Free Book Online Page A

breaking her
heart. Neither one of them realized what they were doing to each other until it
was too late.” He sighed looking over at me. I glanced at him but focused on
the road in front of me while he talked, “he was an idiot in the beginning and
went about it the wrong way. I think at that point, when he broke her heart, it
broke him worse than her. He knew he was in love,” he smiled.
    “Mom broke
my dad’s heart?”
    “He’d
never admit it, but he fell hard for her and when she left, it shattered him,
and his hauler.”
    “So what
happened then? Did it take a while for them to get back together?”
    “If
there’s one good thing I can say about your dad’s stupidity at times, he’s
determined and dangerously so. It took only a few days and he was crawling back
on his knees. You know kid, a love like that only comes around every once in a
while. They were lucky to find it at such a young age and keep it.”
    “Do you
think it’s too hard to keep it?”
    I was
thankful for the night masking my apprehensiveness. I never talked about my
relationship with Lily other than with my parents and mostly with my mom.
    Grandpa
nodded, “I think you’ll did find it. That Lily is a nice girl, Axel. If you
treat her the way she deserves to be treated, you’ll do fine.”
    I knew
that already. This was something both my parents instilled in me when I
expressed my intentions of marrying Lily when I was eight. She’s always been
the one for me. Not many people understand me. They think there’s something
wrong with the way I only ever think of racing. But both my dad and my grandpa
are like that. There’s nothing wrong with thinking that way and Lily understood
that. Her dad was the same way.
    “I
honestly believe that your parents wouldn’t have survived without each other,”
Grandpa added. “As weird as that sounds, the bond they have is even weirder to
describe. It’s like nothing I’ve ever seen before.”
    “Not even
with you and grandma?”
    “No. I
mean I do love your grandmother with all my heart and have for forty-five
years. She’s been the only woman I’ve ever loved. If something was to happen to
me, grandma is strong enough she’ll go on, as would I. We both know eventually
your time runs out.” His brow furrowed in concentration as he looked out over
the passing street lamps in the distance. “But Sway and Jameson are different,”
his eyes shifted to me. Feeling him looking at me, my eyes drifted from the
road, “did you ever hear about Darrin Torres?”
    “A little,
he and dad got into it a lot his first season in cup and he hurt mom when she
was pregnant with me, right?”
    “Yeah,
something like that. Well he hurt your mom and at
first, we weren’t sure if she’d make it ... or
you. Seeing Jameson broken like that is something I never could have imagined
seeing in that little boy who was sure he was above second grade because it
wasn’t where the clay met rubber. If it hadn’t been for Sway, he would have
walked away from racing all together. And now look at him, well on his way to
becoming a legend in a sport that never wanted an open wheel kid from Elma.”
    “So you
think if she would have died then, he would too?”
    “In a
sense ... yes. Without her, there’s no Jameson. As I
said, the bond is strange but vital. I don’t mean that it’s perilously
unstable. I mean, it’s just that strong.”
    I thought
I understood but to say I truly understand, I didn’t. No one could.
    “Have you
ever seen twins and the way they react to each other?”
    “Yeah, you
mean like Lucas and Logan or Noah and Charlie?”
    “No, both
bad examples,” he said immediately shaking his head disgusted. “Both sets are
fucking assholes. I mean normal twins. The ones that have a connection to one
another,”
    “Well,
aren’t they supposed to have some kind of ESP?”
    “Yes,
exactly,” he nodded. “They share a brain. Your parents share a brain.”
    “That’s
weird, right?”
    “You