Page 63 of Forbidden to Fall

He put his hand over mine. “Go!”

I let off the gas, shifted into first, then started to accelerate.

But we were rolling back.

I screamed. We rolled more.

“Brakes! Brakes!” James said.

My right foot, instrument of chaos and our one hope of salvation, hesitated as we gained speed in the wrong direction.

James’s hand left mine as my foot searched for the brake pedal. There was a loud cranking sound, and we jolted to a stop.

It was utterly silent except for the sound of our ragged breathing and the low hum of the engine as we both stared ahead. My heart was pounding a thousand beats a minute, but the car was still. Blessedly still.

I let out a shaky breath, keeping my feet on both the clutch and the brake so they were flush with the floor. This truck would not be moving an inch if I had anything to say about it.

James still gripped the hand-brake, his white knuckles slowly regaining color as he let out a breath of his own.

“I am so sorry,” I said, my entire body shaking.

“It’s fine,” he said, his voice steady.

I stared at him, this man who’d offered to teach me how to drive stick shift and almost died in the process—and was somehow still calm.

A breathy laugh formed in my chest. Out of relief. Out of embarrassment. Out of the ridiculousness of it all. It bubbled to the surface.

James looked at me in surprise.

It only made me laugh harder.

His mouth drew into an uncertain smile, and the smile turned into a laugh. It was gentle at first, but as our gazes held, it grew until it matched mine, loud and unrestrained. Two people laughing in a truck stopped on a hill.

Before I knew it, I was wiping tears from my eyes and holding my stomach as my abs ached and my cheeks hurt. Apparently, this was my reaction to a near-death experience. Every time I thought of those moments on the hill, with me scrambling to find the right pedal and James begging me to find the brakes, a fresh wave of laughter rolled over me.

“Whew,” I said, blinking away the last tears as we crawled our way out of slaphappy. “Ready to switch places?”

He shook his head, wiping his own eyes. “The lesson isn’t over.”

I gaped at him. “You’re kidding, right? I almost killed us.”

“But you didn’t.” He wasn’t joking.

The man was ready for round two.

How in the world did he trust me after that debacle?

“James,” I argued, “it’s okay. You tried. I tried. We did our best. Sometimes, it’s okay to give up.”

“No. It’s not.”

My comment had been half-joke, but his response wasn’t.

“I don’t give up on people,” he said.

I swallowed. It felt like this might be about more than my learning to drive stick. Was there a chance he was thinking about Lily?

That would be crazy, right? She was married. To my brother. She had a daughter—and a son on the way.