“I wish I could, but I’ve got club stuff on all day.” I could hear, clear as day, his regret, but Renee wasn’t taking it in.
“How am I supposed to clock up the hours you want me to if no one will take me driving? Mum can’t do it and she can’t afford to pay for lessons, so you’re pretty much it,” she said, staring at him with a hard expression.
“I can take you,” I offered. “I can finish work early today.”
Nitro moved so he could look at both of us. “No. I’ll figure something out.” His voice was firm, leaving no room for me to misunderstand that he didn’t want me driving with his niece.
His words were like a slap in the face. “You don’t trust me to take Renee driving?”
He grimaced. “Fuck, Tatum, it’s not that—”
“Well, what is it?”
“It’s—” he started, but Renee cut him off.
“He doesn’t trust anyone else on the road, Tatum. It’s not you. But I would like to say that at some point, you’re gonna have to let me out there, Nitro, so it may as well be with someone you do trust.”
Trust.
As we stood watching each other, my breathing slowed. If anyone understood how hard it was to give trust to someone, it was me. And yet, I desperately wanted Nitro to give me his. I wouldn’t hold it against him if he wasn’t ready yet, but I realised how much I wanted it.
He rubbed the back of his neck as time ticked on. It felt like minutes had passed when in reality it was only moments. Finally, he said, “Okay, you take her today.” His words came out haltingly, but he did give me his consent, and that meant everything.
* * *
“So, you and Nitro, where’s that heading?” Renee asked later that day as we sat in traffic. We’d been driving for almost half an hour and she’d avoided all talk of my relationship with her uncle in that time. I’d been waiting for it, though.
“I honestly don’t know,” I admitted.
She glanced at me quickly before turning her eyes back to the road. “Really? You don’t know what you want?”
I loved her bluntness. “If you’d asked me at first what I wanted, I would have told you I didn’t want a relationship. Now, I want that, but what I don’t know is what Nitro wants. So who knows where it will all end up.”
She grinned. “I can tell you that I’ve never seen him date a woman. You coming for dinner and meeting us all was huge.” She waved her hand in the air. “Well, I know we’d already met, but it was different at dinner. And he smiled a lot that night. He never smiles.”
“So what you’re telling me is that I’ve got half a shot.”
Her grin turned into a laugh and she looked at me again for a moment. “You really have no idea, do you? I think you’ve probably got less than half a shot of getting rid of him.”
Her words settled in deep. They felt good. This felt good. I liked Renee and I liked spending time with Nitro’s family. “What was it like growing up with him for an uncle?” I imagined Nitro to have been completely overprotective and overbearing, but I wondered what it felt like for her.
She was silent for a beat, thinking. “Nitro was the best dad I ever had,” she said simply, but those words told me everything.
I smiled. “Have you ever met your biological father?”
“No. Mum was so young when she fell pregnant. They were both kids. Nitro took on that role from the beginning. I mean, he practically raised Mum, too.”
I frowned. “I thought they lived with their uncle?”
“They did until Nitro got them out. Mum was only thirteen then. Nitro was almost eighteen. He got them a place to live and put food on the table. He also made sure Mum and Dustin finished school.”
I fell silent, lost in my thoughts. Nitro was the kind of man you thought you knew when you met him. He gave the impression of being unemotional and very cold. But truth be told, he wasn’t that person at all. Underneath the layers of moody and bossy and distant, was a man who cared very much.
“You know, Mum would be dead by now if it weren’t for Nitro. And I wouldn’t care about living as much as I do unless he’d taught me that. He always said that it didn’t matter how much I wanted to give up, I couldn’t. That even if I felt like no one cared whether I existed, there was always someone out there who needed me. He made me believe I was born for a reason.” She paused for a beat, and took a deep breath before adding, “I had a lot of shitty thoughts about my birth, that I was a mistake and probably not even wanted, but Nitro took the time to help me see otherwise.” Her voice cracked a little, and I saw a vulnerable side to her I hadn’t seen before.
I touched her arm gently. It felt weird to do it, because the only person I was touchy feely with was Monroe, but at the same time, I couldn’t deny the urge. “He’s right.”
She smiled and nodded. However, the moment was broken when the car behind rear-ended us.
“Oh my, God, Nitro is going to kill me!” Renee yelled in a panic. She was driving his ute and although he hadn’t said anything to either of us, I knew she was focused on returning it to him with no scratches. She wanted to prove to him that she could be trusted on the roads and with his car.
“Pull over to the kerb and I’ll get out and speak to them,” I said, craning my neck to see who had hit us. The car behind, however, had heavily tinted windows so I couldn’t get a look at them.
After she pulled over, I exited the car and made my way to the back to inspect the damage. Before I had the chance, though, a deep voice called out my name. Looking towards the car behind us, I saw Nitro’s uncle leave it and head my way.
What the fuck?
I stared in confusion.
Why is he here?
All the things Nitro had told me about this man rushed at me. And when he stood in front of me, I felt the evil rolling off him. He oozed it. In the way he watched me, in the twisted smile he gave and in the way he held himself, towering over me as if he could crush me. But I stood straight and didn’t show my feelings. Something I was good at.
“Joseph,” I greeted him.
“I see that Rhys has told you about me.”
I ignored what he said and cut straight to the chase. “What do you want? Because I’m taking it that you hitting us was no accident.”