Full Throttle (The Burnout Series Book 3)

Prologue

Twenty-Seven Years Ago

The blonde boy was my favorite.

I’d only been on this planet for seven years (I told Mom I come from Jupiter), and I’d never seen a human like that. He was so pale; his hair remained me of snow in the sunshine. His eyes were the most beautiful of all, a winter blue that made me want something warm to drink. The boy next to him, his brother (I think), wasn’t pale. In fact, his skin was kissed like the sun, much like mine and Mom’s. Dad told me that all I’d have to do to get the sun to kiss me was to stand outside for five minutes, and I’d come back in with a “glow.”

The boys were playing outside, the pale one standing under the tree as his brother threw a football to him from the middle of their front yard. I tugged my teddy bear closer to me as I heard a woman shout from the inside of their sad looking house. It was the smallest on the street, with nothing but dirt for a yard, toys and two bikes taking up most of it. I watched as both boys jumped at the sound of the woman’s voice, the pale boy dropping the ball immediately.

“Dominique,” Mom called from behind me, her echo bouncing off the walls of the mover’s truck.

The boys next door both looked in my direction. I didn’t pay much attention to the dark-haired one, even though I could feel him giving me a nasty look. My focus remained on the blonde, his pretty eyes staring back at me as his pale brows came together, a frown on his lips shortly following.

“Hi!” I shouted, waving at them.

Mom said this move was going to be a fresh start for us, that we had to make the best of things. She told me I needed to make new friends, because we were going to be here for a long time.

Both boys continued to stare at me, and the hand I’d been waving slowly dropped.

Dad said that boys were going to be weird around me because I was a girl, and boys my age didn’t know what to do with girls. When I asked Dad how he knew, he smiled and replied, “Because a long time ago, I was a little boy. I know these things, Nikki.”

The woman from inside their house started yelling again, and this time, I heard what she said.

They weren’t nice words, and I hoped she wasn’t saying those words to the boys. I bit my lip as I watch both boys run inside, climbing up the porch steps, yanking the broken screen door open. When they were gone, I felt a hand land on my shoulder.

“Dominique, I’ve been calling for you,” Mom said as I looked up at her. Her brownish-red hair was twisted up in a big clip, a few strays hanging around her sweaty face as her green eyes scolded me.

“Sorry, Mom,” I muttered. “I was just trying to make new friends.”

Mom looked over to the neighbor’s yard, inhaling a deep sigh as her eyes assessed the state of it. “I see. Come inside. We’ve gotten all your boxes out of the truck.”

I groaned. I hated packing up my old room, and I knew that unpacking it would be just as fun. “Can Dad do it for me?” I begged.

“No, he went to get some lunch.”

My ears perked up. “Pizza?”

Mom turned me around. “Gosh, I hope not. I’m getting tired of pizza,” she muttered as we walked up the driveway, passing the mover’s truck.

“But Dad and I love it,” I stated plainly, as if she didn’t know that we thought pizza was the greatest thing on the planet.

“Yes,” she drawled. “I know you do.”

Hours later, after I’d eaten two slices of the cheesiest pizza ever, I went back up to my new room. Pushing open the door, I ignored the low groan of the hinges as my mess greeted me. My teddy was on my bed, propped up against the mountain of Buzz Lightyear pillows. I wasn’t really interested in princesses. I wanted to know about the stars and planets. I also really loved Toy Story. Mom didn’t like that I liked it, but Dad told her it was okay. My clothes were piled on the end of my bed alongside a basket of coat hangers for me to hang everything up in the small closet across the room. It didn’t even have a real door, just a sliding one. I thought that was weird. Our old house had real closet doors.

“We have to forget the old house,” I mumbled, kicking my soccer ball lightly as I walked to the bed. Those were Mom’s words.

She’d been different ever since Dad got fired. I may only be seven, but I knew what that meant. It was a surprise, and Mom didn’t take it very well. She went for a walk for a really long time that night. Dad made me dinner, and then we’d watched a movie. She came back right before my bedtime, but she didn’t kiss me goodnight.

That was two months ago.

Now, Dad has a new job, in a new city. Detroit.

Mom said we”re going to be happy again, that everything is “fresh.”

It sucked moving, and I’d miss my friends, but right now, I really missed my old bedroom.

It was big—not too big—but bigger than this. I didn’t have a lot of room to play, my furniture was taking up most of the space.

“Hey, kiddo,” Dad whispered from behind me.

I whirled to fine him in the doorway, leaning into the room, with a smile on his face. He had a baseball hat on his head and his beard was coming in. “Hi, Dad,” I said, turning back to my clothes. I was about halfway done with putting the shirts on hangers.

I heard his big feet move across the old wooden floors, and then he was beside me, taking the shirts and moving to the closet. He hung them up one by one as he said, “Thank you for being cool.”

A laugh came from me. “Cool, Dad?”

He gave a crooked smile. “Yeah? What? Dads can’t have cool daughters?”

I shrugged. “I’m just hanging up shirts, Dad. Nothing cool about that.”

The look on his face changed then, and when he spoke next, his voice sounded funny. “You have no idea how cool it is, kiddo.”

I blinked. Sometimes (okay, a lot of times) since Dad lost his job, he acted funny. He would get all…weird and thank me for random stuff. I didn’t know what to say, so I just went back to hanging up my shirts. He cleared his throat. “Nikki?”

“Yeah, Dad?” I didn’t look at him. For some reason, my brain didn’t want me to.

“You know, you can be a seven-year-old.”

I didn’t understand what he meant by that. I was seven. How could I be something other than that? Out of the corner of my eye, Dad crouched down to get to my level. He did that a lot. Once he told me he did it because he never wanted me to feel looked down upon; I didn’t get that either, because Mom never knelt down.

“Nikki, look at me,” he whispered, put his hand on my back.

Come on, brain. We have to look at him now.

I looked at Dad, bracing for whatever he was about to say. He smiled again, without teeth this time. “You have your mom’s eyes, you know that?”

I nodded.

“Thank you for being my girl this week. Thank you for helping out when asked and for taking all of this so well. I know it”s a big change for a kid. Moving, I mean.”

“Did you move when you were a kid?” I asked.

He nodded. “Yeah, though I was a few years older than you are now.”

“Why did you move? Did Grandpa get fired from his job too?”

I didn’t mean it in a bad way, but I could tell my question wasn’t the right one to ask, judging by the look that came over his face. He blinked it away quickly. “No, kiddo. He didn’t.”

I didn’t have anything else to say, so I just looked back to my clothes.

His hand went to my shoulder, and he gave me a little shake, chuckling. “You going to give your old man a hug or what?”

I knew his laugh was fake. I was old enough to know the difference now. Still, I gave him want he wanted. When I wrapped my arms around his neck, I laid my head down on his shoulder. I kept my eyes closed for five seconds before opening them, and when I did, I froze.

Outside my window, across the narrow way between our houses, the blonde boy stood in his window. His eyes were on me and Dad, his head tilted slightly. Slowly, I lifted my hand away from Dad and gave the boy a lame wave.

I thought he would sneer or give me a dirty look like his brother did—

He didn’t.

Instead, he smirked at me.

Over time, I would fall in love with that smirk, and later, I would come to hate the sight of it.

Present Day. St. Louis, MO.

I ached. Everywhere.

Why was I hurting so much? Where was the warmth I felt before I fell asleep? Why did my tongue feel funny?

I remembered being behind the wheel, doing pretty fucking good for driving Leon Torrance’s car instead of mine. I remembered coming up to the U-turn on the race route, getting ready to shift. Then—

My eyes shot open, and all I saw were cheap ceiling tiles as my chest heaved, the memories attacking me.

The explosion.

Leon’s car flipping.

My body jerking against the harness and the immediate pain.

The smell of gasoline and oil.

The heat.

So much fucking heat.

Then…a voice calling out to me, using a name I hadn’t heard in a long time.

I blinked, the memories began to fade away as the sounds of a hospital surrounded me: the steady beat of a heart monitor, the hum of machines, the stale smell of bleach and cleaning supplies. Slowly, I turned my head, only to find that I was in the one in the fucking hospital bed.

Great.

I tried to sit up, but shooting pain on my right side caused me to fall back. I let out a small groan, wincing as I brought my hand to the source of the pain. My hand snagged on the crisp white hospital sheets and I looked down at the IV, my eyes focusing on the dirt on my skin. I held out both of my arms, taking in the scrapes and bruising as my breath began to quicken.

What the fuck happened? Why did the car explode?

More importantly, how in the fuck was I not dead?

I dropped my arms, and something in the far corner of the room caught my attention. My breath caught, panic attack forgotten as my eyes landed on pale blonde hair, illuminated by the moonlight shining in the window.

Cain’s long and lean body took up the space of the shitty hospital chair. His eyes were hidden in the shadows, but I could feel them on me, piercing through my soul, as they always did. His jean-clad legs were bent at the knee, spread apart as his long, tattooed arms draped effortless over the arm rests, his hands hanging down.

I swallowed, my throat dry and burning. “Cain?” I forced out, my voice raspy.

He said nothing. After a moment, he moved, slow and calculated, like a panther. His hands moved back, gripping the arm rests, pushing his tall body up to stand. He moved then, step after step, his Air Force Ones damn near silent against the tile floor.

A cold, uncomfortable feeling slithered up my spine between me and the bed.

That feel was fear.

I whimpered as the shadows fell away from him, revealing the unhinged anger that lingered in his menacing blue eyes. I tried swallowing again, but it was no use.

“Cain?” I whispered, my hands gripping the hospital blanket, the fabric coarse and irritating.

I tried to move my legs, to push up, to get somewhat of an advantage against him. The twinge of pain in my right ankle stopped me, and a brand-new fear gripped me by the throat.

What the fuck was wrong with my ankle?

I was torn from my worries as Cain’s cologne, a mix of citrus and pine, enveloped me. He leaned over the bed, his fists planting themselves on either side of my head, making deep dips into my pillow. I stopped breathing all together, the steady beep of the heart monitor increasing by the second. A lock of his hair fell in front of his forehead, hanging down as he glared at me.

His lips, ones that had been the definition of perfection on this shitty planet once, formed into a snarl as he growled, “You. Are. Done.”

Three little words.

You”d think, after a near death experience, that you’d hear a different set of three little words, but that wasn’t the case.

Cain and I weren’t an epic love story.

He wasn’t prince charming, and I wasn’t the helpless princess.

This wasn’t a fairytale.

This was a fucking tragedy.

So, I mustered up all the strength I could, lifting my head, stretching my neck until our lips were a breath away from each other.

I pushed back the memories of our old life and hissed, “You don’t tell me what to do.”