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what she was doing.

    He dropped the cigarette on the ground, stubbed it out with the toe of his boot and walked back into the hospital. His relatives were starting to disperse and he hugged everyone and told them he’d call as soon as they heard anything else. Uncle Steve was going home for a few hours’ rest and would be back later in the morning. Soon it was just Annie, Mom and him.

    He sat down between the two of them, putting his arms around their shoulder.

    “Finally, some quiet,” Annie said.

    The Jenners were a big crowd. His dad was one of four boys. Dave had fifteen first cousins on his dad’s side. And since they were in Daytona, his mom’s cousins, the Daltrys, had come as well. They lived in Deltona, only an hour away. All totaled Dave thought they’d had close to twenty people in the waiting room.

    “It was nice to have them here. To have their support,” his mother said.

    “Yes, it was,” Dave agreed.

    Silence fell between them. He could only guess at what was going on in his sister’s and mother’s heads. His own was filled with endless regrets and possibilities. The things he hadn’t said to his father that he wanted to say.

    He didn’t like the ache that was still near his heart. Couldn’t close his eyes and rest despite the fact that Annie did and his mom pretended to.

    He wanted his father out of that bed and wrapping all of them in his arms. Brandon Jenner was a legend. Bigger than life and invincible, he thought. And he wanted his dad to wake up and cast that long shadow he always had. The one that Dave knew he was lost in.

    But tonight had made all those feelings seem insignificant. He was almost ashamed of how many times he wished that he wasn’t his father’s son, thinking stupidly that life would somehow be easier.

    Tonight he’d realized that life wouldn’t be easier without Brandon Jenner as his father. Life would be stark without his father there. And he thought maybe he needed this to happen to make him understand that wanting the NASCAR NEXTEL Cup Championship and needing to be his own legend weren’t the same thing.

    Annie curled closer to him. And he was so glad that she was there. So glad that she’d finally put Malcolm and the life she’d lived in Europe behind her and returned to the world that she belonged in.

    He tipped his head back, feeling the weight he’d been carrying around for too long—the worry for his twin. That anxious fear that she’d never be the smiling girl he’d once known. But tonight with Jared MacNeil, of all men, he’d caught a glimpse of the girl he remembered.

    And that was a good thing because he’d almost forgotten the boy he’d been. He’d gotten lost somewhere between his dreams of becoming a NASCAR driver and his quest to get out of his father’s shadow.

    He didn’t like the man he was becoming. He’d always prided himself on being a gentleman, on being the kind of man that would live up to the Jenner name. And in the last few years—hell, last year—he’d started to realize that he wasn’t that man anymore. He’d changed and gotten lost somewhere. But sitting here in the waiting room with his father recovering, he found the path back to himself.

CHAPTER FIVE
    ANNIE HAD ALWAYS liked Southern California. For the first time since Sunday night she was thinking not about her father and his recovery, but about the race coming up and her job. And there was something about a track lined with palm trees and VIP boxes filled with Hollywood’s biggest stars. As a teenager she’d been able to meet some of her favorite Hollywood hunks thanks to her dad’s popularity as a driver.
    It was nice to be back to work instead of sitting at her parents’ house watching her dad looking too pale in bed.

    Fontana was a driver favorite. The track was a regular oval and not an odd shape, as some of the others were. The surface of the track was smooth, which made for good driving.

    Walking through the infield, Annie told herself she