A/N – I know this is a short chapter but the next one is full of action, promise!

Chapter 24

"Fuck." Vince so busy trying to get his head around the fact that he'd made Chloe cry that he didn't hear Leon's last question.

"Answer me, you bastard. Are you gonna leave Chloe or not?" Leon was fast losing his temper with Vince, he didn't know if he was being deliberately stupid or if he was just avoiding answering his question but he wasn't going to ask him again.

"Course I'm not gonna leave her, I've been trying to work out how to ask her to marry me."

"Then you'd better get your ass home and tell her that before she takes my advice and burns all your shit. She thinks you don't love her dawg."

Leon had barely finished his sentence before Vince ran to his car and screamed out of the carpark. How could Chloe think he didn't love her? She was the most important person in his life; he knew that he'd be dead by now if she hadn't come to the hospital to see him.

"CHLOE, CHLOE, WHERE ARE YOU?" Vince ran through the house trying to find Chloe. He loved her so much; he couldn't lose her, not now that he'd finally found the words to tell her how much he loved her.

"CHLOE, damnit will you answer me please?" Vince was starting to panic, he was making enough noise to wake the dead but Chloe hadn't answered him. What if she'd gone and he was too late? He didn't know what he'd do if she left him.

When Vince burst through the bedroom door he was stunned to see Chloe sitting on the bed staring at her hands.

"Chloe, baby what's wrong?" Vince was terrified; it was almost as if she was sleepwalking. Her eyes were open but he could tell she wasn't anywhere in the room with him.

"Chloe, baby please. Just tell me what's wrong." Vince carefully and slowly made his way over to where Chloe was sitting on the middle of the bed. "Chloe, please you're scaring me."

Chloe lifted her head and look at Vince, she seemed almost surprised to see him. "I thought you didn't love me any more. I thought you were going to leave me." Chloe's voice was barely a whisper but Vince heard every word she said. He could hear the pain in her voice and it nearly killed him to know that he'd hurt her so much.

"I'll never leave you baby, I love you. I need you. I'd die if I didn't have you in my life." Vince knew that this whole mess was his fault, if only he'd not spent so much time worrying about Chloe leaving him he wouldn't have made her think he didn't want to be with her anymore. He'd broken her heart and he'd spend the rest of his life trying to make it up to her.

"I know." Again, Chloe's voice was barely a whisper but this time she managed a weak smile.

"You know, what do you mean you know? Lee said you were crying in the office." Vince was really confused. Chloe had left the office in floods of tears convinced that he didn't love her anymore yet less than 30mins later she was telling him she knew that hew loved her.

"I found this." Chloe opened her hand to reveal a beautiful 3 carat princess cut diamond on a narrow platinum band.

"It was my moms, she left it to me when she died and told me to give it to the one girl I loved enough to marry." Vince moved off the bed and knelt down on one knee, "I love you Chloe and I want to be with you for the rest of my life. Will you marry me?"

Chloe didn't answer Vince straight away; instead she reached over behind her, picked up her phone and called the garage. When Leon answered she told him to get Brian and put the phone on speaker phone. Whilst Leon was getting Brian, Chloe switched her phone to speaker phone.

Once she was sure everyone was listening she lifted her hands to cup Vince's face and said,

"I love you too Coyote and Chloe Richards sounds perfect."

Neither Vince nor Chloe heard the cheers that came through the phone from the guys at the garage. They were too busy celebrating their engagement in a way that was starting to make Brian blush, until they put the phone down.

For the next few months R.O.A.M. built on their reputation for building and racing the best cars in LA. The team raced every weekend and soon became the dominant team. When they were racing cars that didn't come anywhere near the capabilities of the Skyline the team would race without NOS. Every week there were people queuing up to race them, there were always racers who thought they could beat them whether they used NOS or not and the team took great pleasure in wiping the floor with them. Vince had taken over organising the races and the team had taken over throwing the after race parties – it was almost as if Team Toretto had never existed.

Eventually the day came that no one on the team was looking forward to – the day the information for Race Wars arrived in the post.

Everyone had been through so much in the past 12mths and whilst they knew that they had to go back to Race Wars to confront a few demons no one was looking forward to it. With Samantha's help Leon was finally able to move on and leave behind his guilt over failing Jesse and Vince. Brian and Katy were still pretending they weren't serious about each other but as neither of them had even looked at anyone else in the time they'd been together and Katy had moved downstairs into Brian's room everyone knew it was only a matter of time before they stopped kidding themselves and accepted they were a couple.

Vince and Chloe had gone from strength to strength. Since he'd proposed the pair had spent many hours talking honestly about their feelings for each other. Vince loved hearing her say she loved him and Chloe needed the reassurance of him promising never to leave her. It seemed they both had emotional scars from past relationships and they needed time and understanding to get them to heal.

Since the confusion over how he felt for her Vince had promised that he'd never keep anything from Chloe ever again. A phone call from Hector prompted him to break that promise.

"Hey, Brotha, how's it goin'?" Hector wasn't looking forward to this conversation but he felt it only right to tell Vince what was going on.

"It's goin' man, its goin'. What can I do for ya?"

"I've just gotten off the 'phone with Dom, he's coming back for Race Wars man."

Vince felt his heart thud to a halt when Hector said that Dom was coming back, he'd always known he would but the longer he stayed away the more he allowed himself to think that he was never coming back to LA. He was coming back though, and he was going to be at to Race Wars. In 6 days he'd be coming face to face with the man he once thought of as his actual brother. He wanted to run, run so far away that Dom would never find him but he knew he couldn't do that to Chloe. She'd faced her worst nightmare when she saw her sister and ex husband at the races and it was his turn to face his. He was going to race Dom and win.