by Emilia Finn
The car beside me is older than mine, and I doubt it has as much money or expertise under the hood. He manages to keep up, his skill outdoing mine, but my engine is practically brand-new and Tucker-maintained, so as I push into third gear, then fourth, I pull ahead by inches.
“This is so much fun!” I squeal.
My shoulders ache from holding the wheel so tight; not something I expected, but that’s what half of my brain focuses on. My taut stomach, my aching shoulders, my hands wrapped around the wheel until my knuckles are white.
And Rob’s hand on my thigh, clutching so tight that, when I go to bed tonight, I’m certain I’ll see him there, marked into my skin.
My stomach tingles with that thought, and strangely, my core warms at the primitivity of what we’re doing. Not the racing, but the death defying – we’re exercising the ride-or-die of our friendship, and the fact doesn’t escape me that he has no damn clue if he’s going to survive this, but he sticks by my side to the end anyway.
His hand is bigger than my face, which means he covers a whole lot of my thigh, and when we approach a bend in the track, and I nudge my wheel just a little to the left – not too far, for fear of spinning out – he holds tighter. His grip hurts, but instead of me slapping him away, my heart splats, and my underwear becomes slick with something that would make us both blush.
“Nearly there,” Rob chants. “You’re ahead, and we’re nearly there.” He doesn’t touch my music. He doesn’t do anything at all except hold on and chant. “He’s falling back, EmKat. Keep it steady and you’re home free.”
“I’m gonna win!”
I enter the final straight and push my foot to the floor. I’m using up every single horse that Mercedes Benz thought to give me, and when the finish line comes into view, and my brother – so big and strong and protective – places himself on the side, close, but without getting in my way, tears sting my eyes.
I’m getting emotional! About a frickin’ race.
“I’m gonna win, Fart. I’m whipping his ass.”
“Keep it steady,” he murmurs. “No sudden turns. Don’t fuck it up.”
“I got this.”
I count it in my mind. The finish line is five seconds away. Four. Three. My smile grows wide with premature victory. Two seconds. One. I open my mouth to celebrate, to declare myself the winner, but then the car I’m racing slams against the back of mine.
My victory cry turns to a scream of terror. The other car barely taps me, it would hardly be more than a scrape on a regular street, but at this speed, on dirt, it sends my back wheels spinning out until the dirt is no more, and my car races in the air. I cross the line first, but we spin, around and around, and straight toward a group of people.
The crowd scrambles like cockroaches in the light, tossing drinks and screaming in sheer terror as they charge into each other, stampede their fellow onlookers, and leave the weaker and slower to fend for themselves.
My throat turns hoarse from screaming, and my leg burns from Rob’s steely hold. The view out of my windshield spins and dips, making me sick from the round-and-round, but he doesn’t release me. Not for a single second.
For some strange reason, my hand whips to the clip on my seatbelt. Like momentary insanity is telling me to unbuckle, but Rob’s other hand slams down onto mine, and when my eyes snap to his, despite the world spinning outside of us, he holds my gaze and shakes his head.
“Brace yourself.” His words are so calm, so polarizing compared to everything going on around us. “We’re gonna stop in a sec. Don’t let your head smack the window.”
He leans over me, holds on as the frame of the car creaks and groans, and when my left wheels leave the ground completely and threaten to send us flipping, he leans further into my space, twining a hand into my hair to brace my head close, like his two hundred pounds will help put us back on the ground.
I scrunch my eyes closed and throw my arms around his shoulders. There’s no point holding the steering wheel. No point working the pedals. We’re hostages to the speed with which my car flings through the air. But the engine still roars anyway, and my wheels still spin with sickening speed.
I grit my teeth and rest my face on Rob’s shoulder, and in return, he rests his on mine. The car spins, spins, spins and teeters, but we slow. It’s inevitable. We must.
When we slam back to four wheels, dirt plumes up and fills the inside of the car, crushing and suffocating as if it was smoke, though thankfully, my nose assures me it’s not. There’s no emergency. We didn’t even flip.
My breath races, and my heart pounds, but the world eventually turns silent.
Rob’s coarse stubble burns my shoulder, and though he means no harm, his hug is crushing, painful and tight.
“We stopped.” I don’t know why I say it. Why I feel the need to verbalize something so ridiculously obvious. But it’s all I can manage. It’s all my brain can grasp onto as Rob slowly inches away.
His breath bathes my shoulder, then my jaw, then, because he remains close and studies my eyes, it burns down into my lungs.
“EmKat.” He breathes my name, so soft and full of everything he won’t say. His eyes are large, dark, and penetrating. “Fuck.”
I burst out laughing as adrenaline surges through my blood, then tears spring free as relief follows. “We didn’t die.”
“I think I shit my pants.”
I throw my head back and laugh. It’s loud and ridiculous, bordering on hysterical, but when I bring my gaze back down, it cuts off just as violently as it began when Rob’s eyes are pinned to my lips.
He’s a mere two inches away, perhaps not even that, so the air we breathe – the dirt and hormones and electricity – is all the same air. What was in his lungs is now in mine. What I expel, he steals.
“You speak of kings and queens like you know,” he murmurs, breathy and deadly serious. “Like you know—” He stops. Swallows. And scrunches his eyes closed.
“Like I know what?” I prod when he doesn’t continue. “Rob?” I demand. “What do I know?”
“That I want to…” His eyes flutter open as he leans closer, closer, and tucks my hair back behind my ear when we’re nothing more than a hair apart. His lashes are so long, so pretty and dark that they almost tickle my cheek. “I’ve wanted… Always…”
“Rob…” I want to close the space. I want to do this thing that will forever change what we have. But despite the adrenaline in the air, I’m scared. I’m more scared of kissing him, than I was of crashing and dying. “Rob, please just—”
Before he can close the space between his lips and mine, my door is torn open with such force that the entire car rocks on its chassis. Just a second after that, strong hands reach in and unsnap my belt, and I’m torn away from the arms whose hold I crave before my brain has a moment to process.
From inside my dusty car, where the music’s still playing, to outside, in the dark but for the spotlights, and the dust that has yet to settle, I’m swept up and then crushed against Bry’s chest while he kisses my cheek, my forehead, my cheek again, and his hands scour my body.
“Are you hurt?” Bry’s hands do damage as he searches. They bruise me as he prods my hipbone, my ribs, my arms. “Fuck, Emma! Are you hurt?”
“No. I’m not— I’m—” I try to spin in his arms, to turn away, to escape and race to the passenger side of the car, but then I catch a glimpse of Tucker yanking Rob from his seat.
Bry and Tucker are a million shades paler than me and Rob. They frantically search us for injury, possibly doing more damage because of how rough they are.
“Rob!” I call out for him. We stand only the width of the car apart, but it may as well be miles. Deserted islands, neighboring, but without passage between. “Fart!”
“I’m okay.” Rob shoves Tucker back. “I said I’m fine.”
He pushes away from the mechanic, then around Maddi as she sprints toward us. He stalks around the car, grabs me from Bry’s hold, and stuffs me into the space against his
chest where I’ve always stood.
He wraps me up tight, molds my body to his, then he looks to Bry over my head and growls, “He clipped us.”
“The racer?” Bry demands. “He clipped you?”
“Just before we crossed the line, he bumped us.”
If it was possible to hear someone’s temper snap, I suspect I just heard it.
“On purpose?”
“No, stop.” I try to pull out of Rob’s hold. “You guys need to—”
“On purpose. He was losing, so he clipped us.” Rob presses a noisy kiss to the top of my head, then pulling back, he meets my eyes for just a second. Just a fast study. A type of farewell, my heart and brain insist. Then he tosses me at Maddi and spins on his heels. “He tried to make her crash.”
“Stop!” I fight Maddi’s steely hold. “Rob! Bryan, don’t—”
“We’re going to take care of business.” Rob walks backwards for just a second and studies my body from top to toe. “You’re bleeding, EmKat. Up here.” He touches his brow.
Confused, I bring a hand up, only to gasp when it stings, then pull my fingers away and study the garish red coating the ends.
“He did it on purpose,” Rob declares. “Now he pays for it.”
He turns back before I can argue, walks with Bry, and within seconds, Chuck catches up as they reach the small group surrounding my opponent’s car.
They’re like bowling balls, tossing pins aside. Bry picks a guy up and throws him. Rob does the same. My opponent remains in his seat, so when he sees his crowd disappearing, and death barreling straight toward him, he hurriedly winds up his window and attempts to restart his engine and shove the car into drive, but Rob is faster. More determined.
He slams his hand through the window, tears the keys out of the ignition – horrifyingly taking some of the column and wiring with it – then he unlocks the door and pulls the guy through it.
My stomach lurches… from watching Rob toss a guy to the ground like he’s nothing more than a rag doll, and possibly from the spinning of my car finally catching up with my brain. My knees turn to jelly, and my stomach whooshes, then Rob drops down onto my opponent’s hips and slams his fist against his face, and I lose it. My lunch. My dinner. Whatever I ate last – I don’t remember what it was – comes up with a violence that makes Maddi squeak and jump back.
Boiling bile splashes against the dirt ground so that mud now bounces back and hits the toes of my boots. My stomach clenches and releases, and vomit burns my throat and nose. But despite how gross I am, it takes Maddi only a second to step back in and rub gentle, soothing circles against my back that somehow make it all worse.
I’m not a newb to seeing people fight. And hell, I know Bry and Rob can do what they have to do without causing serious damage – we all know the risks of fighting outside of the gym, and both are much too controlled to mess it up – so it’s not them fighting that makes me sick.
Maybe it’s the spinning. Or the near-death experience. The win – because, spinning or not, I was still the first across the finish line – or maybe it was the almost-kiss.
Whatever it is, it forces my stomach to violently rebel, and when I’m heard, because I guess I’m noisy about it, Rob’s head snaps up. Even from a hundred feet away, he hears me, or feels me. His eyes scour my body, but this time, there’s no anger, no lust, just pure, unadulterated fear. He hits the guy he sits on, blindly, without even looking, which means he hardly puts any effort into the strike, then he pops back to his feet and kicks dirt in the guy’s face.
He turns away with nothing but a disgusted shake of his head, grabs Bry when my brother thinks it’s his turn to beat on the guy, then the trio go from walking, to jogging, to sprinting in my direction, until they close the space between where they stood, and where I wait.
Rob slams against my body, uncaring that he might be standing in my puke, then he pulls me back into place again. “It’s okay,” he murmurs, crushing me close. He wraps one arm around my shoulders. The other hand, he twines into my hair and massages my scalp. “It’s okay, EmKat.” He repeats it over and over again, and accepts a bottle of water that someone shoves into our space. “I’m here. I’m not gonna let you get hurt.”
“I won.” My throat stings, like razorblades scraping over an already infected cut. I swallow down the disgusting bile in my mouth, and the painful groan that comes with it, then following it with icy cold water, I wipe my lips on Rob’s shirt, snuggle close, and let my eyes flutter closed. “I won my race.”
He exhales a nervous laugh, though it can’t mask the heavy thudding of his heart against my ear. “Yeah, you won.”
“Do I get a trophy or something?”
“Um… you get money, I think.” He presses a kiss to the top of my head, over and over, just above where I’m bleeding. “Maybe the dude’s car.”
“I don’t want his car.” I pull back and search for his eyes. My vision is blurry, and hell, but that’s not normal. “If I take it, I’ll have to explain to Mom and Daddy where I got it.”
“We’ll take care of it.” Bry stands over us, still searching for injuries, still freaking out, but he doesn’t take me from Rob’s arms. He knows his place, knows the hierarchy when it comes to the men in my life. “We’re taking that motherfucker’s car,” he growls, “then we’re giving it to his schoolyard enemy.”
“No more hitting him,” I tell them both. “Maybe he didn’t even bump us on purpose. And even if he did,” I cut in when Rob opens his mouth to speak, “it’s done. We’re fine.”
“You’re not allowed to race anymore,” Rob declares. His jaw ticks, and his eyes sparkle – maybe he’s feeling emotional too. “It’s done, you can tick it off your bucket list. Now you’re done.”
“Yeah, I’m done.” I reaffirm my grip around Rob’s torso, but I look into Bry’s eyes and hand him my bottle of water. “Danger aside, that was fun.”
Despite the rage he feels, he cracks a smile and shakes his head. “It’s in the blood. And we’re not telling Mom and Dad about this. I’m calling it right now; we are not telling them.”
“Agreed.”
I burrow into Rob’s chest and sigh as the swirling in my stomach slowly abates. My breath tastes nasty, and my head is throbbing with a headache that’s going to be a million times worse an hour from now. But I’m safe, and so is he. And maybe, just maybe, if we weren’t interrupted in the car, maybe there would have been something else.
A kiss that I’ve been waiting for. A declaration.
“Can we go home?” I speak only to Rob. I want to leave with him, to go home with him, and if Luke isn’t in their room, maybe I can slide into bed with him too. Just to sleep. Just to rest my eyes and be hugged by this man who somehow has the power to slow down time, even when we’re spinning out of control and racing toward possible death. “Rob?” I rasp past my aching throat. “Please? I’m tired.”
“Yep.”
He takes a step away from our little huddle, but stops again at the sight of Tucker bent in half under the hood of my Mercedes. Rob’s arms remain around my shoulders, but he steps forward until I’m presented with an engine – I know nothing about those – and a whole heap of dust.
“Is it fried?” he asks.
“Nah.” Tucker does something with his hands. No tools required, he adjusts something with his fingers alone and shakes his head; I abused my car, and he thinks of engines the way normal people consider dogs. If there was a humane society for engines, Tucker would be making a call tonight.
“It’s actually mostly fine,” he concedes after a moment. “Drive it home, it’ll be okay.” He looks to me and smiles, halfway between proud and sympathetic. “And those pukes? That was adrenaline leaving your body. You did good, Em. You won, you didn’t die, you didn’t kill anyone else. But now you’re retired.”
He pushes to stand straight and closes the hood with a satisfied click. “You’re fine to drive this around, but bring it to the garage in the next few days so I can smooth out the rou
gh edges.” He reaches across and chucks my chin. “You won against a seasoned racer, Em. That motherfucker has been tearing up the dirt out here for years.”
“He thought he was taking Kincaid money and wheels tonight,” Bry chuckles. “He’s tried for mine a million times… never could get it over the line.”
“And now he lost to a girl.” I reaffirm my arms around Rob’s waist and snuggle in. “Sucks to be him.”
“Let’s go.” Rob walks me around to the passenger side, past the small dent in my back bumper, and lifts his chin in farewell when my ‘crew’ backs away and makes their way to their own vehicles.
Bry made a deal with Maddi that he would no longer race, and while Tucker is yet to retire, he has a girl at home who doesn’t much like it, so he slides into an SUV now – not a bike, like he usually rides – and waits while Bry helps Maddi into their car.
They were here tonight purely for me, and now that I’m done, so are they.
Three races be damned. I’m retired.
Rob stops with me at the closed passenger door, and twining his fingers with mine, he waits while I stare at my brother’s car. While Bry helps Maddi inside. While Bry runs around to his side and jumps in. And then as he starts the loud engine and scares a dozen people who stand too close.
“Are you feeling okay?” Rob’s voice barely penetrates my hazy brain, and when I say nothing, he places a hand under my chin and brings my gaze up, slowly, until I stop and stare. “EmKat?” His voice is deliciously deep and protective. “Are you still a little sick?”
“No. I’m…” I swallow and study the slight bend in his nose. The scar just above his brow. Another scar at his hairline – ironically, the same place I’ll likely have a scar after tonight. These marks on his face are like lines in a tree. They’re markers in our history: fun times, dangerous times, silly times.
“Em?”
“I’m not sick.” I shake my head once more, an effort to dislodge the fog inside my brain. “I think I’m a little in shock.”
“Because we spun out?”
