Open Wheel

by Shey Stahl

  “Arie!” Bailey knocked again. “Get your ass out of bed.”

  Rager groaned, flopping over on his back and taking a pillow from beside him and putting it over his face. “She’s so demanding.”

  “You really need to go.” I sat up, a little panicked when Bailey wiggled the door handle impatiently. “She can’t see you here.”

  Rager removed the pillow to peek at me with one eye. “Why not?”

  “I haven’t told anyone about Easton asking for a divorce. I can’t yet. He wants to wait.”

  “Why?” He sat up, the pillow that was over his face tossed aside carelessly. “He asked for a divorce, didn’t he?”

  Nervously, I nodded, inhaling the rich scent of his skin that was all over me. He smelled like methanol and dirt, always. My chest panged with panic, desperate for him to not read into my words.

  When I spoke, I concentrated on slow and steady breaths. “Yes. We’re legally separated.”

  He stared at me, a war conflicting behind his carefully drawn together brow. “Well, then I don’t see what the big deal is. Bailey knows about us already.”

  Reaching for his shorts, I tossed them at his chest. “Don’t do this right now. I just need you to go and we can talk about this later.”

  Snorting, he sat up and then turned his head toward me, frowning. His eyes met mine, then my lips, and back to my stare as his body hunched forward a little, shoulders slumping as if I’d just ruined everything that happened between us.

  “What was all this then?” he asked, a pang of guilt hitting me with his words. He was obviously not pleased with my response.

  “It was everything,” I breathed softly, my stomach clenching with the thoughts that he would think it was anything besides amazing.

  Standing in a rush, he reached for his shorts and boxers, pulling them on, and then his shirt draped over the candle sticks on the fireplace mantel.

  When he was dressed, Rager stood there, squeezing the back of his neck, exhaling through his nose, like he wanted to say something else, but he didn’t. He trapped me inside his hostile silence, his breathing heavy but still controlled.

  “I’m sorry. I’ll call you later,” I said, motioning to the back door.

  “My truck is still at her house. She knows I didn’t leave last night,” he pointed out, trying to convince me, holding my gaze for a beat longer than I wanted him to.

  If I could have figured out a way to be less stubborn, I would have. But I wasn’t ready to tell everyone about what was really going on in my life right now.

  He didn’t even blink as he stared back at me, waiting for my reply.

  “I’ll call you.”

  His body stiffened, and when I didn’t say anymore, his expression was so intense, his mouth opened like he was going to say something.

  Only he didn’t. Shaking his head, he turned to walk out the back door, his keys in his hand.

  I watched him walking away and the stretch of his t-shirt over his broad shoulders.

  What have I done now?

  My tears were building, blinding me when Bailey knocked again. “Listen, I’m going to leave if you don’t answer soon!”

  Running toward the door, I was halfway there and realized I was naked. So I ran back, threw my clothes on and then opened the door to Bailey standing there with her running shoes on and a coffee for me. She gave me a once over and then frowned. “Go get your running clothes on.”

  I darted upstairs when she started looking around at the destruction that was my house and the broken frames.

  When I was back downstairs, Bailey was in the kitchen staring at the eggshells from the scrambled eggs I made Rager at two in the morning and the broken lamp in the family room. “What happened?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Bullshit.” She gave a nod to the door when I had my sneakers tied and one hand on the door handle.

  “Nothing.” We stepped over puddles as we walked down the driveway, last night’s storm evident in the air and ground, branches and flower pedals covering the blacktop.

  “Bitch, you better tell me.” When we were at the end of the driveway, Bailey shoved my shoulder lightly.

  Just then, Rager drove by, his window down. Bailey waved to which Rager raised his hand, but never smiled.

  My breath caught, my thighs shifting as we stood there. It was clear I was extremely sore and walking today was going to take some effort. It was noticeable right away.

  Bailey snorted. “So he slept in his truck, or in your bed?”

  I shrugged, watching my feet and knowing I wasn’t going to last long without needing a nap today. “I wouldn’t say much sleeping went down.”

  “You dirty little whore.” Bailey covered her mouth in a fit of giggles. “Tell me everything!”

  “We had sex.”

  Her eyes went wide. “You and Rager? You’re married.”

  I shook my head. “We’re separated. The divorce will be final in February.”

  I never intended to tell Bailey, but it all sort of spilled out. Maybe it was because I saw the commercial, or the incredible mind-numbing sex with Rager, or it was that look of defeat he gave me when I asked him to leave.

  Bailey smiled, barely able to control the shock on her face. “Is he responsible for that mess in your house?”

  I couldn’t help the smile that graced my lips; it pulled at my cheeks even when I begged it not to. “Yeah.”

  When we were at the end of the road, Hayden joined us. She took in our smiles. “What’s up?”

  “Arie slept with Rager last night.” Bailey blurted out right away.

  “Bailey!” I shoved her back, into Hayden.

  Hayden smiled, pulling her hair up into a bun. “How big is he?”

  I gave her a look like she’d lost her mind. “Why would you ask me that?”

  “Because he’s mysterious. He’s the bad boy and I need to know.”

  “Bailey probably knows.” I was trying to divert the conversation, get them away from talking about Rager’s dick because it only made the images from last night return and I wanted to call him, beg him to come back and spend the day in bed with me.

  “How the hell would I know?”

  Reaching down, I picked up a stick and threw it aside, only I tripped in the process because of how weak I was.

  “See…” Hayden pointed at my lack of stability on my own two feet. “He must be if you can’t even walk today.”

  “I don’t see why you two care.” Standing, I dragged myself up out of the dirt, and I brushed off my legs. “You’re with Lane and you’re with my brother. It’s weird that you want to know.”

  The two of them considered that, and shrugged at the same time. “It’s not any different from wanting to see Zac Efron naked,” Bailey noted. “I’m happily married but if I saw him naked, I’d look.”

  She had a point.

  But I still wasn’t dishing the details.

  And then I thought of him, again, and why I kicked him out this morning. Would it be so bad if everyone knew about us?

  Yes. It would because once my family knew, aside from Bailey and Hayden, I wasn’t sure how all of this would look. I already felt like I’d failed on so many levels.

  Bushings - The bearing surfaces of sprint car torsion bars turn within bushings which are inserted into each end of the torsion bar tubes. Sprint car bushings are made of bronze, aluminum, or nylon. Once inserted, the bushings need to be reamed to ensure the torsion bars turn freely without being too loose.

  THERE WAS THIS girl once. Just a girl at the time, nothing more.

  I used to sit and watch her in the stands. I didn’t know her name, couldn’t tell you if she was here with a racer, a driver’s daughter, sister, or just a fan lucky enough to be watching from this view.

  Sitting in the pit bleachers during qualifying was something I did a lot growing up. I’d wait until the very last moment possible to get in my car. I did that so I could see what lines other drivers were running.

  T
he summer before I started running the World of Outlaws, I was making any race I could with them and barely making it at that. It wasn’t for the lack of trying, or even my ability as a wheel man, I just couldn’t get a car capable of finishing in the top ten.

  Most of the time, a girl in the bleachers wouldn’t have caught my eye. But this one did. It wasn’t that she was beautiful, because I couldn’t tell you if she was or not with her back to me. It was the way she watched the cars on the track. The way she was captivated by their mere presence.

  The girls I grew up knowing couldn’t give a rat’s ass about these cars. To them they were just noise and cars that flung dirt in their hair.

  But this girl, nah, she didn’t think that way.

  Leaning back against the weathered wood behind me, my legs kicked up and feet crossed, I did the same with my arms over my chest, my attention on qualifying. On the track was the black number nine of Jameson Riley.

  That name stuck with anyone who’d ever been around open wheel racing because, well, he was an icon. A legend. A man I looked up to in many ways.

  When he snagged fast time for the night, having been out of a sprint car for something like two years, I couldn’t believe he could come out to the local tracks and be competitive after such long breaks.

  As his car pulled off the track, the next roaring thunder behind him, the girl with the red trucker hat stood, glanced up at me, and then away. I said nothing, no hello; hell, I barely made eye contact with her.

  By the innocence in her face, she looked to be maybe thirteen, if that.

  And then the moment was gone.

  “Rager,” my dad called out, waving his hand at me. “You’re almost up.”

  I stood, stepped down from the bleachers and walked to my car where my dad was checking tire pressures.

  The girl walked by again with a can of soda in hand and candy. This time she talked to me. “Tops thin.”

  I smiled, a little, one that barely touched my lips and faded just as quickly, but the fact that she knew what the track was like by watching qualifying entertained me.

  She was most definitely related to a racer or raced herself.

  To my left, a fellow driver, the son of the legend, walked by. “Arie, Mom’s waitin’ on you.”

  I didn’t look back, but I knew then she was his daughter.

  I didn’t fall in love with Arie the way most would think. It wasn’t sexual in the beginning. Far from that. I liked her from the start just because she was so full of it. You didn’t fuck around with her and get away with it. Being the princess of the Riley family, she was far from that.

  She was the boss man’s daughter. When I first met her, I was seven and she was three. No way she’d remember that. I kind of did, but not well. Had I not known she was Jameson's daughter, I wouldn’t have even recognized her.

  When I started racing for Jameson, I was seventeen. Arie was thirteen. First time I'd been around her was at Williams Grove.

  Of course, I didn’t have those thoughts about her. I noticed she was pretty, but it never went anywhere. I wasn’t a creep or anything.

  Every year she was older and it just happened over time. I remember the first time I thought, wow, she is fucking beautiful; when did that happen?

  I couldn’t believe she was grown up.

  One night, she was handing it to Tommy, pissed off at the world in her wild ways and screaming at him. I’d never met someone like her, so ready to give everyone her opinion, yet gentle in her own way. She was withdrawn, hiding in the shadows of what her legendary dad had created, but if you asked me, she was in the spotlight more than she knew. The summer she turned fifteen, I started having thoughts about her. Thoughts I had no business having, considering I was eighteen at the time and here was this kid, wearing low-cut shirts, cussing at drivers and kicking dirt in your face if you stared at her ass.

  She never did that to me, but I wasn’t so obvious about it. I liked to think I was never caught looking until the end of that year.

  She came up to me after a race and smiled, then shoved me into the side of my hauler when no one was looking.

  The fact that she fucking shoved me was a turn on in itself.

  “Like what you see?”

  I wasn’t sure how to answer that at the time.

  I wanted to say, “Fuck yeah, I like what I see.” But I didn’t.

  Age mattered to me back then. And the near four-year gap between us wasn’t something I took lightly.

  I didn’t say anything to her, and that seemed to make her nervous. She squinted at me, ready to tell me off, but then turned to walk away. Reaching out, I grabbed her hand, intending on saying something, but the mere touch of her hand and the feeling between us made me stop myself.

  The following year, Arie was sixteen and going on seventeen. One night, in the heat of celebrating a win, I kissed her. Couldn’t tell you what the fuck I was thinking, but I did it.

  Maybe it was my protective side but from that moment on, I felt that innocence she possessed beyond the aggressive and I wanted to protect it. I wanted to look out for her.

  Two months later, she came inside my hauler after a race, locked the door, and gave me head. I wanted to stop her, but a girl like Arie wasn't stopped easily. And, God, was she fucking perfect in every way.

  Months later, I took her back to my place, intending to have sex with her. She'd be seventeen in a few months, but I couldn't make myself do it.

  July 2021

  “Do you wanna come with me?” I asked, wondering if she would or not.

  She’s too young for you, man. Stop it.

  “Yeah, I’d love to.”

  Fuck. Now what?

  At my parent’s house, in my room, I had her on the bed, naked and on top of her. Reaching for the condom in my nightstand, my hands shook. I wanted this so bad I couldn’t keep from fucking trembling. It was like I’d never been with a girl before. In reality, I’d never been with anyone this young. Ed Sheeran floated through the room, hot whispered kisses, sweaty bodies and grasping hands, I wasn’t about to stop.

  And then reality had a way of slowing me down.

  She’s sixteen, man. Sixteen.

  When I saw it in my wallet, and the poster tucked behind it, the memory of my hero, I knew then I couldn't do it.

  Arie had no idea what this meant if we went through with this.

  What if her dad found out? Was I really ready to tell him? What if I lost my ride, then what?

  I didn’t have to fight as hard to get a ride as most of the west coast wheelers did, but I had to fight pretty damn hard. And now, that would be for nothing if I gave in and slept with her.

  And it was fucking illegal. She was underage. Jail wasn’t something I wanted. I left that shit up to Tommy and Willie.

  And then she got hung up with Grady and then Easton. I never had my shot again.

  Some thought I was some kind of player. Handed a lot of pussy. Sure, it was there. Sometimes I took them up on it; others, wasn't interested. Just wasn’t my thing. One-track minded growing up, I wanted to be the best at what I did, so my focus went into that, much like most racers. Never dated either. It never came up. Never invited girls back home to meet my parents or even asked a girl out before. In a lot ways, I had no idea how to act around Arie.

  From lack of experience, I was almost nervous acting at times. Hell, I hadn’t even held a girls hand, aside from Abigale.

  I didn’t know what it felt like to kiss someone I was in love with.

  I didn’t know what it felt like to see my mother’s eyes light up seeing her only son in love.

  What I did know was the rush I was raised on.

  I knew the feeling of being handed a championship trophy.

  I knew the feeling of racing for my hero.

  At some point, my obsession with Arie had the best of me, and I wanted more. What guy wouldn’t?

  WHEN I GOT to my truck after walking through the fucking woods behind Arie’s house, Lane was outside washing his truck
. He’d bought a new truck a few months ago and was obsessed with keeping it clean.

  My clothes were soaked still from last night, so I hit the alarm for my truck, hoping I had something clean in there.

  She was separated.

  That thought kept repeating in my head. It was something I knew since back in February, but she had refused to tell anyone, and the way they still pretended to be the happy couple at times left me damn confused.

  I knew being separated could mean a lot of things, but the idea that she didn’t want anyone to know about us had never crossed my mind. I’d finally, in the heat of the moment, let myself believe we could be together.

  My thoughts were consumed with having sex with her in hopes of sating my obsession over her.

  It wasn’t just about the sex, never was with her. And if anything, it only solidified those obsessive tendencies regarding her. Became my reason for being.

  “You keep washing that, the paint will fall off…” I said to Lane as I past by him, opening the door to my truck and removing my shirt. Tossing the wet one inside, I reached for a clean one I found in the backseat.

  “I know.” He seemed bored with his response, and when I twisted to look over my shoulder at him, he smiled.

  “What are those from?”

  “What?”

  Lane gave a nod to my back, bringing my attention to the stinging claw marks left on my body.

  Smiling, I shook my head, not answering him.

  Lane groaned and set the hose down, his hands raised dramatically over his head in victory. “Thank fuck! Finally you fucked her, didn’t you?”

  I couldn’t stop myself from smiling because, though I knew this wasn’t going anywhere, I held out hope and Lane knew it.

  Who do you think controlled my drunk arrogant ass all these years? He did. If anyone understood my obsession with Arie, it was Lane. Mostly because he’d been the brunt of my mood swings.

  I didn’t say much to him in the form of words, just that I would see him on Thursday before we left for Jackson. He knew I wasn’t going to indulge on the details. Wasn’t my style.