Chapter 4 #2
Dawson stared at him. Justin only had two staging passes. One for Dawson, one for himself. He’d just given Leo his. It would serve Justin right if the officials gave him shit about being in the staging area without it. Driver or not, they checked everyone.
“You sure?” Leo took the lanyard.
“Wouldn’t offer if I wasn’t.” Justin clapped him on the shoulder. “Dawson’ll show you where to stand. Right, Dawson?”
Dawson was going to kill him. Slowly. With the scored pivot pin.
“Yeah,” he said. “Fine.”
Justin winked at Dawson and headed for his helmet.
Dawson led Leo to the spot behind the starting mark, where the crews stood during pulls. Close enough to feel the heat off the exhaust.
“You’re going to want earplugs,” Dawson said.
Leo patted his pockets. Pulled out the foam plugs Ski had given him earlier, now lint-covered and slightly crushed. He held them up.
“Those’ll work.” Dawson pulled his own pair from his back pocket and rolled them in. “When he launches, make sure you’re out of the way. Dirt goes everywhere.”
“Got it. Earplugs in, stay out of the way. Anything else?”
“Yeah. It’s loud.”
“You keep saying that.”
“You’ll see why.”
Two rigs pulled before Justin. The first one bogged down at the hundred-fifty mark, tires spinning, the crowd groaning.
The second made it past two hundred before the engine popped—a sharp crack followed by a plume of white smoke—and everyone in the stands groaned.
Leo flinched at the sound and then laughed, shaking his head. Dawson watched the track.
Justin’s rig rolled to the line. Dawson’s chest tightened the way it always did before a pull. He’d done his job. The rest was Justin and three hundred feet of dirt.
The flagman dropped his arm.
The rig exploded off the line—no other word for it.
The sound hit Dawson in the chest even through the earplugs, a concussive wall of noise that shook the air and sent twin rooster tails of dirt arcing behind the rear tires.
The sled lurched, its weight box creeping forward, and the rig dug in and kept pulling.
Past the fifty. Past the hundred. The front end lifted and the crowd surged to their feet.
The noise wasn’t just the engine anymore—it was the grandstand, the pit crews, the whole fairgrounds screaming the rig down the track.
Past two hundred. The sled was heavy now, dragging hard, and the rig was fighting for every foot. Dawson’s hands were fists at his sides. Come on. Come on.
Leo grabbed his arm like he was invested in the pull.
Dawson didn’t pull away.
Past two-fifty. The engine screaming, the tires biting, the sled grinding forward inch by inch. The rig bucked once, twice, and then the front end slammed down, the tires caught, and it dragged the sled across the three-hundred mark as the flagman’s arms went up.
Full pull.
The grandstand erupted. Dawson’s fist punched the air.
Justin was hanging out of the roll cage with both arms up, helmet still on, screaming something that nobody could hear over the crowd.
Dawson was grinning, and when he turned, Leo was right there.
Leo’s hand still on his arm, dirt on his shirt, hair wrecked, laughing.
Dawson looked down at Leo’s hand. Leo followed his gaze and let go.
“Sorry,” Leo said. “Got caught up in the moment.”
“It’s fine.” Dawson’s voice came out rough. He cleared his throat. “Everybody does the first time.”
Justin’s rig was rolling back toward the pits, and the crew was already moving to meet him. Dawson should be moving too. Instead, he was standing in the staging lane with dirt on his boots and his arm burning where Leo’s hand had been.
Justin pulled into the pit, killed the engine, and climbed out of the roll cage, whooping. He grabbed Dawson in a bear hug that lifted him off his feet—Justin was stronger than he looked, the fence-post bastard—and Dawson shoved him off, laughing.
“What’d you think?” Justin turned to Leo.
“I think I can’t hear anything, and I don’t care.” Leo pulled the earplugs out. His hands were shaking—adrenaline, not fear. “That was one of the coolest things I’ve seen since getting here.”
“Yeah?” He looked at Dawson. Looked at Leo. Grinned. “You should come out to the barn sometime. See where we do the real work.”
“Yeah?” Leo looked at Dawson.
Dawson grabbed the tarp off the ground and started folding it.
Leo was still close. Close enough that Dawson’s hands weren’t steady on the fold, and he had to focus on lining up the edges to keep from looking at him.
His whole body was pulling toward Leo like a magnet, and the answer he wanted to give—yes, come to the barn, come anywhere, just keep standing that close to me—was sitting right behind his teeth.
“Yeah,” he said. “Maybe.”
Leo nodded. The easy smile was back, but underneath it something had settled—not a wall going up, but a door being left open. “I should find the guys I came with. Good meeting you, Justin. Seriously. That was incredible.”
“Anytime, Florida.”
Leo walked back toward the gap in the fence. He didn’t look back.
Justin watched him go. Then he turned to Dawson with both eyebrows raised.
“Don’t,” Dawson said.
“I didn’t say anything.”
“You’re about to.”
Justin held up his hands. “I was just going to say he seems like a decent guy. Doesn’t know shit about engines, but that’s better than pretending he knows it all.” He pulled off his gloves. “I also think you’re a damned fool if you think he was gave two shits about the pull.”
“Sure seemed interested from here.”
“Dawson.” Justin said it easy, no weight behind it, leaving room. “He was definitely interested, just not in the tractors.”
Dawson didn’t answer. He started packing up the pit, and Justin let him.
It would’ve been easier if Leo had stayed behind the fence.
Easier if he’d asked stupid questions or treated the rig like a sideshow or done any of the things Dawson had been ready for.
Instead, he’d leaned in and asked how, and compared Dawson’s hands to his own instincts on the ice, like the two things belonged in the same sentence.
And then he’d grabbed Dawson’s arm during the pull like it was the most natural thing in the world, and Dawson hadn’t pulled away.
He closed the tailgate harder than necessary.