Open Wheel

by Shey Stahl

  “Probably,” I replied, removing my hoodie and jeans so I could wear his t-shirt to bed. As soon as it was over my head, loosely hanging on my body, I sighed in a sense of relief. The smells of sweet methanol and dirt had me smiling. My boy was all over this shirt and it was wrapped around me.

  When we were both in bed, Rager reached over and drew me closer to him, his arms wrapped around my waist, lips at my ear. In the darkness, his hands barely brushed my body and my nipples betrayed me, tightening, recognizing the touch.

  Not surprisingly, his hands were touchy feely and I knew where it was going. Especially when his mouth joined forces.

  “Six weeks,” I told him, moving his hand from my breast.

  “That’s impossible.” He tried to put his hand back, this time between my legs. “That’s just a myth or something.”

  “No it’s not.” I made the mistake of trying to push him back away from me with my ass. “I need time to heal down there.”

  Rager groaned at the contact of my backside rubbing against his erection. “From what?”

  “Uh…there were two babies that decided to go down a slip and slide,” I pointed out.

  “So? I don’t think we need to wait six weeks.”

  “Surely longer than a week though. We need to wait. Besides, I’m still bleeding.”

  He grumbled words I couldn’t hear into my hair, as if this would be an impossible task for him to follow through with. Flopping over onto his back, his hands scrubbed down his face. “I’m never going to make it. Can you at least give me a blow job?”

  Laughing, I couldn’t believe he was this worked up. But then again, I could. We went from having sex every couple days—sometimes every day—to nothing for the last week.

  “Not with the babies in here.”

  “Why not?” He tried again, reaching to run his hands up my shirt. When they reached my tender, engorged milk-filled breasts, I slapped his hand away. “They won’t know.”

  “I will. No way.” It certainly wasn’t easy to deny him. Thankfully, I couldn’t see those blues I loved so much. “We’d scar them for life.”

  “What about a hand job?”

  “No!”

  Determined to have the last word, he opened his mouth to speak again and I held up my hand. “If you so much as start to say ass, even the A sound, I will straight up punch you in the dick.”

  Taking the pillow that was behind his head, he slammed it into his face. “You’re impossible.”

  We had our first fight as parents that night.

  The next morning, I gave him a blow job while Rosa changed diapers. Took her fifteen minutes. Took me two. Apparently, either I was that good, or he was worked up.

  Setup Sheets – Documents with recorded setups from different tracks under varying weather conditions. Teams use this baseline to adjust setups when they arrive at a track.

  IN THE BEGINNING of June, I found myself on a plane to Vegas with the boys of JAR Racing for Casten’s bachelor party. When Hayden had Ryder Christopher a few weeks back, she finally agreed to marry him. She teased him that she only agreed because she was high on pain pills. He didn’t waste any time and planned the wedding for the small break we had after Knoxville.

  That left us on a plane. To Vegas.

  Casten being in Vegas was a horrible idea.

  Willie and Tommy being there, even worse.

  Though I didn’t want to leave Arie and the kids, I missed these crazy guys.

  The kids were growing like little weeds. They were now four months old and developing personalities. Pace was the moody one. Everything made him mad. If you didn’t have his bottle ready in time, he cried. If you waited to change his diaper, he cried. Much like his cousin Savannah, they cried together a lot.

  Bristol, she was just about the sweetest thing around. There was a softness about her, every motion and sigh she made was tender and delicate.

  Axel—who was asleep in the row in front of me—probably held the same feelings as I did surrounding a baby crying at two in the morning. It was quite possibly the worst sound in the world.

  Withdrawing my phone from my pocket, I checked my last message from Arie with the babies in her arms as she played in the grass with them.

  Though Arie held fear for being a mom, she was great with the kids. The first few months were an adjustment. Not only did we have kids, but we were also living together now.

  Besides my parents’ house and crashing at Lane’s house, I’d never lived with anyone.

  Believe it or not, I was a mama’s boy and enjoyed living at home. I wasn’t around much because of my schedule, so living at home was ideal. And it made my mom happy. Being an only child, I think she feared the day I left home for good. Surprisingly, when I did, she was okay with it because she had grandkids now.

  “I’ve had enough,” Tommy groaned.

  Tommy, who was beside me, reached for the flight attendant when she rushed passed us. “Can I have a Jack and Coke, hold the Coke?”

  Confused, she looked at Tommy, his hand placed on the back of Axel’s seat. “So…just Jack?”

  “Well, don’t say it like that.” Tommy glared, his voice hushed. “You’re making me sound like an alcoholic.”

  Leaning forward from across the row, Casten glared. “Just get him the drink, for your safety.”

  Ten minutes later, and another Jack, hold the Coke, the flight attendant returned to claim the empty cup and Tommy motioned her forward with two fingers. “Stop putting ice in my drinks. It’s taking up too much room.”

  Standing up straight, empty plastic cup in hand. “Why don’t I just bring you bottles of Jack, instead of wasting the cups?”

  “Now we’re talking.”

  Ten minutes later, he was asking for another and flirting with the flight attendant who was less than pleased.

  “Just tell him you’ll meet him in the bathroom,” Casten suggested, sensing his opportunity to fuck with Tommy.

  “I’m not having sex with him.”

  “Not like that,” he groaned, a twinkle to his eye. “Just make him wait for you.”

  So she did, and I had to give her credit because she played it up pretty well and got the drunk bastard in the bathroom.

  HEAT HIT ME as soon as I stepped out of the airport and into Las Vegas, like stepping into an oven.

  Casten was lit already, having taken advantage of the flight attendant who found out he was the groom-to-be. She was looking for something all right, but Casten was the wrong guy to tempt. He’d make a fool out of you for even trying.

  “All right, who put her up to that?” Tommy asked, drink in hand already. Cool thing about Vegas was you could walk the streets with alcohol if you wanted. And we wanted.

  “I did,” Casten confessed, raising his drink above his head as we walked to the car Jameson rented.

  When we arrived at Encore, the hotel we were all staying at, Casten was literally ready to party right then.

  Uninterested in strippers, Lane, Axel, Jameson, and I hung back at the bar.

  “You guys are pussies.” Casten downed his fifth shot in the last hour. “We’re in Vegas.”

  “So what?” Jameson scoffed, his eyes on the television. “I’m not interested in some crack whore shaking her titties in my face.”

  “They’re not all crack whores. But regardless, they show more than titties here.”

  “Says who?” Jameson was messing with him now, but Casten could barely even stand up. I wondered if they’d even make it to the strip club. He had a tendency to fall asleep when he was drunk.

  “The guy on the street. He said you see bush here.”

  “Doubt they have bush. Most shave,” I pointed out.

  “Even better.” He had an answer for everything.

  Rolling his eyes, Jameson turned back around, facing the bar with his arms on the table. Widening his eyes, he gave that look like he was ready to shove his own son away from him. “Just go, Casten. I’m not going.”

  Contemplating for a minu
te, his arms wrapped around Lane and me, sitting on the other side of Jameson, he said, “What about you fools? Get off your asses.”

  “I’m not interested,” Lane told him, shrugging off his arms.

  “You guys suck. We came here to party and your pussin’ out.”

  I understood why he wanted everyone to go with him, just not enough to actually go.

  While they argued, I snuck up to the room I was sharing with Lane and Axel to call Arie and check on her and the kids.

  Back in the bar, Jameson sighed, setting his fourth beer down. “We better go hang out with them. He’ll be pissed if we ditch him.”

  Casten would. He wanted all his family there for this.

  We met them at Cheetah’s up the road.

  Since we were in Vegas, I understood there’d be a good amount of drinking. What I didn’t like was the strippers. It wasn’t my first time going to a strip club.

  What I wasn’t expecting was to run into someone I kinda sort knew.

  Because really, there were millions of people in Vegas. What were the chances that I would run into model girl in Vegas?

  Well, I did. On the way to the strip club in the lobby of the hotel.

  “Hey, Rager,” she breathed, hands on my chest, eyeing me with that look that said, fuck me up against the nearest flat surface. From the time I first met Genevieve Paris back in February, I knew she wasn’t the kind of girl who was with just one guy at a time. And I doubted Easton was that dumb to think that either.

  I didn’t say anything, not even hello when she slipped her room and cell phone number in my pocket. Reaching inside, I gave it back to her. “No thanks.”

  “Oh come on, baby. You’re passing this up?”

  I pointed to Tommy beside me, who was standing there with Willie, giving her the look that screamed, “Why can’t she pick me!”

  “I wouldn’t fuck you with his dick. And that’s saying a lot.”

  As we were walking away, Tommy leveled me a look that said, good man. “She needs to eat more.”

  Willie was quiet as we walked, and then stared at me when we came to a stoplight before crossing the street to the strip club, as if he wanted to ask me something.

  “What?”

  “You used to be my inspiration,” he stated conversationally, in the way he always spoke. Willie was that guy who was friends with everyone, talked to them like he’d known them for years, even if it’d only ben ten minutes. “Now I don’t like you.”

  “Why?” I laughed, not understanding where this was going, but pretty sure it had to do with sex.

  “Being around you now…it’s depressing. It’s like a child with a broken arm and your friends are swimming and you can’t get wet.”

  I had to laugh, again, shaking my head as the light turned green and we crossed the street. “And by wet, you mean your dick, right?”

  Willie rolled his eyes. “You’re so inappropriate. But yes…my dick isn’t getting wet.”

  With a shake of my head, we entered the strip club where I was handed lap dances and everything else I could have dreamed of, had I been single. But I wasn’t. As far as I was concerned, I never wanted to be single again. I passed up the lap dances and stayed back with Jameson at the bar while the guys lived it up.

  Don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed the occasional binge drinking and bad decisions as the next guy, but now that I had kids, I would rather have been with them. Every day they did something new. These guys did the same crazy things all the time.

  THE NEXT DAY, Jameson arranged for us to blow shit up, try out some machine guns, take trophy trucks through the desert and drive a tank. That was my kind of party.

  Being in the desert was fucking hot for one thing, and not somewhere you wanted the boys of JAR Racing. Think about it.

  Guns, tanks, weapons… all a bad idea. Especially after a night of drinking in Vegas and partially impaired brains already.

  Willie stared at the cactus and frowned, remembering his arrest last year for cutting down a cactus in the desert. It was illegal. Supposedly.

  “Fucking Dave.”

  Casten laughed. “That was your own fault. Who cuts down a cactus anyways?”

  “Me,” Willie pointed out. “I do.”

  Jameson stood next to a man dressed in all black combat gear, explaining how the guns worked. The man—was initially impressed he was spending the day with Jameson Riley—took one look at us standing around and probably feared for his damn safety. He kept giving us that side-eye look, like he thought we were a bunch of shifty motherfuckers.

  Shooting the guns went fine. Everyone maintained the correct safety measures.

  The tanks? I couldn’t say that went as well.

  “Do you think these things can jump a car?” Casten asked, curiously looking around inside the tank I was in with him. Only because he was the groom to be, he was driving a Russian T-55 Main Battle Tank. Stupidest idea ever.

  Willie was in the lookout and pointed to a car. “Jump that one!”

  They had a row of cars you could smash.

  So Casten did. Without even thinking it through.

  If you’ve never jumped a tank, or I shouldn’t even say jump, because they don’t jump. They roll over things, smash them to pieces like a damn pancake. Anyways, I don’t suggest doing it. Mostly because of my forehead I was going to have stitched up later. Probably should have worn a seatbelt.

  Standing there holding a towel to my head, Jameson stared at Casten. There were times when Jameson surprised the hell out of me with his calmness. Now wasn’t one of those times.

  “What the fuck?” he yelled, his face red and scrunched up in annoyance.

  Casten thought it was a good idea to point out that he misunderstood the purpose of a tank. “I thought we could jump it.”

  “Yeah? How?” Raising his arms in the air, he demanded answers. “The fucking thing weighs like a million pounds.”

  “Sorry.” Casten could barely keep from laughing. “They said we could smash cars.”

  “That was our rental car.” Jameson growled and then gestured to the row of cars you were allowed to smash. Clearly nowhere near the rental pancake we now had. “Those cars. You were allowed to run over those ones.”

  “Whoops.” Casten eyed the car, what was left of it. “Oh, look at that, it was the rental car, huh?”

  Tommy inhaled a deep breath and wrapped his arm around the instructor who handed Jameson a waiver to sign releasing them from any liability on the rental car mishap. “Hey, don’t forget about us when we leave. We can fuck up anything.”

  “Ain’t that the goddamn truth,” Casten remarked, clapping his hands together. “Now how about those trophy trucks?”

  Jameson gave the form back to the instructor and then stared at Casten like he was smoking Cole’s stash. “How do you even suppose we get there? You smashed the rental car.”

  “Oh, right…” Casten dug his cell phone out of his pocket. “I’ll call a cab.”

  Lift – To raise or lift your foot off the gas pedal. Commonly used when drivers have to "lift" after an unsuccessful pass attempt to slow down and get back into the racing line.

  WHEN CASTEN AND Hayden planned their wedding, most understood what they were getting into. I was surprised to see Hayden in a white dress and Casten all nice looking with his hair combed and wearing a tux.

  Emma and Aiden expanded the Pig Pit again, adding a forty by forty room for parties in the back. Or weddings.

  Gray and Jacen were the flower girl and ring bearer, walking down a path lined with flowers, only Gray refused to toss the flowers out and dumped them all on Jacen, and then wore the basket on her head down the aisle to where her parents stood.

  Everything went normal.

  Where it seemed like the typical Hayden/Casten craziness was when the song “Rack City” by Tyga came over the stereo system in the Pig Pit restaurant; the faces of the wedding party was priceless. It went from shock, amusement, pride, you name it and you saw it.

  Under
standably, Dad wasn’t pleased and covered Bristol’s tiny ears as she sat on his lap, sleeping. “You can’t be serious.”

  Giggling, Grandma Nancy covered her mouth and then rubbed Jameson’s shoulder. “I think it’s catchy.”

  Standing behind Hayden, grinding into his new wife, Casten acted like he was going at it doggie style with her garter on his head. Hell, he even pushed her head down and made her hands hit the floor.

  It was so inappropriate, but that was my brother. Their wedding dance was amazing if you asked me. It was clearly choreographed and reminded me of something out of a movie.

  Rager leaned forward beside me, elbows on his knees, rocking Pace in the car seat at his feet when he began to stir from all the screaming. “How long do you think it took them to plan that out?”

  “Probably not long.” I laughed, holding a sleeping Bristol in my arms.

  “Did he really just push her head down?” Grandma, who was holding Savannah while Axel and Lily were dancing with the boys, tipped her head to the side, confused.

  “Oh, so now you’re offended?” Dad eyed them, shaking his head and put his arm around Mom. “Okay, let’s be real. It’s Casten.” He finally pointed out, watching them. “We knew this wasn’t going to stay PG.”

  Mom covered her blushing face with her palms. “I can’t watch my baby boy doing that.” Turning into Dad’s chest, her face was shielded when Dad shrugged.

  “At least you didn’t walk in on them in the making of Ryder. I did that.”

  Mom stood, reaching for the twins. “I’m taking the kids to a safer area.”

  SPEECHES WERE BY far the most entertaining part for me. Mostly because of Noah, who wasn’t around much these days, had found himself a girlfriend.

  “Congratulations, man.” Noah waved his drink around, splashing his dad beside him. “I test drove her for you.”

  Surprisingly, Casten and Hayden laughed. I didn’t know it, but Noah had apparently slept with Hayden back in high school. With any luck, Noah would still have that girlfriend by the end of the night.