Chapter 4
I drove my baby—a.k.a.my lime-green 1963 Chevy Nova—behind Jesse all the way back to Avalon. I followed him into the garage, parking as far to the right as I could to accommodate his bike. He’d always preferred two wheels over four, and it was the one argument we couldn’t resolve.
I followed him up the internal stairs to the main living room. He’d rehabbed this place from a falling-down foreclosure into something to be proud of, and it showed. Little pieces of Jesse’s personality were littered through the place, like the hardwood floors, because he liked to work on bike engines while watching football, or The Bachelorette, depending on the season. The rustic kitchen cabinets were all handmade by him, and they gave the place this kind of homey feel that some modern homes lacked.
He could sell the place and double what he paid for it, but he wanted to stay here, despite it being miles too big for him and still in a kind of sketchy neighborhood. “I’ll know the right time to sell.” That was all he ever said when I brought it up, and I had to give it to him, the next suburb over was going through some kind of gentrification, so he might’ve been right.
Honestly, he really didn’t need the money. His dad had worked for the Feds, and had a huge life insurance policy. When his dad had been killed back when we were fifteen, his uncle had made him invest the money. Some safe investments later, and Jesse had made so much money, he didn’t have to work unless he wanted to. He flipped houses. He raced his stupidly fast bikes. He lived life on his own terms, and I could respect that. Not that I’d give up either of my parents for any amount of money, but still, it must be good to not have to work unless you wanted to.
“So, are we going to talk about the girl?” Jesse asked as he stripped out of his leathers, hanging them on a rack right by the door.
I slumped onto his couch. Tally Palmer. Fucking hell, fate couldn’t have punched me in the dick harder than it did tonight.
When she’d first joined Ryclo, she was sweet but fiery. She didn’t take any of the garage talk to heart, but she also didn’t take any shit from the guys. She knew the sport, knew her way around the engine, but more than that, she knew how to drive. Tally Palmer had balls as big as an elephant, dipped in pure brass. Not going to lie, I’d fallen a little in love with her the first day I saw her.
However, before I knew it, Buck fucking Willtot had her in his sights, then his bed. I couldn’t speak ill of the dead; Buck had been a good guy. A golden boy who the sun had shone on every day of his life, until it didn’t anymore. Though, if you asked any driver, at least he went out leading the pack, doing the very thing he loved, and that was a good way to die.
Buck and Tally had been a good match. But Brick Willtot was a surly old fucker, and I hated him to the very marrow of my bones for what he’d done to Tally.
Jesse flopped onto the couch beside me, and I knew he wouldn’t drop it. At least he’d brought me a beer to wash down my pathetic crush.
“She was the third driver for my team. She got a raw deal after another driver died and his daddy decided it was her fault.”
“The Buck Willtot fatality?” I nodded; his death had been big news for weeks. “Did she nudge him into the wall?”
I shook my head. “Nope. She was way back in the pack. Nowhere near him or the accident.”
Jesse screwed his nose up. “I’m struggling to connect how it was her fault?”
“They were fucking. Her and Buck were an item. The star-crossed lovers of NASCAR. Willtot Senior decided his son had been distracted by her boobs or something, and it made him crash. So Brick got her blacklisted from the sport.”
“What a fucking cunt,” Jesse snarled, and I couldn’t agree more. “The woman can drive, though.” He cleared his throat. “So, when did you realize you wanted to fuck her into a different universe?”
I gave a mirthless laugh. Clearly, I wasn’t as subtle as I thought. I could only hope that Tally didn’t pick up on it. “When she told McSweeny that not only could she beat him in any race, she could steal his wife and give Mrs. McSweeny the first real orgasm she’d had in forty years.”
Jesse’s jaw unhinged. Yeah, it was hard to imagine those words coming out of the mouth of such a sweet thing, but she’d proved then and there that she could take anything those old boys could dish out. Not only that, she’d serve it back to them so hot, it burned.
Leaning back, Jesse continued to chuckle softly. “She sure is pretty too.” My eyes slid toward my best friend.
We’d met back in high school, when he’d transferred to Texas. His mom had ended up having a breakdown not long after his dad’s death, so Jesse had been shipped down to an uncle. One weekend, he’d found me ass-up in a piece-of-crap old Mustang that was being held together by some cable ties, cloth tape and rust.
Jesse had been flailing. He’d needed an anchor, and I’d needed a purpose in a town so small, it was like looking down the barrel of death as soon as you were old enough to vote. We’d talked to each other in a language we both understood, despite his East Coast accent, and we were friends from that very moment on.
I’d introduced him to NASCAR. He’d done up an old Indian while I’d worked on my Mustang. He’d gone off to travel down the West Coast on his bike, while I’d apprenticed with a racing team, and the rest was history. It was pure luck we’d both ended up in San Fran.
It felt almost like fate that Tally had ended up here too. “Do you think the guy with her was actually her boyfriend?”
Jesse snorted. “Fuck no. Did you see his face when you dropped that she was pregnant? His shock was funny as fuck.” He turned toward me, his eyes assessing. “Do you want something from her? Not to bust your bubble, but she’s having a baby. Some other guy’s baby. She’s hot, but that’s a lot of baggage to take on for a nice body and some common interests.”
He didn’t understand. He’d spent his life in the fast lane, jumping from one place to another, one bed to another. He didn’t understand what it was like when you met someone your soul connected to. He probably also didn’t know the heartache you felt when her soul connected to someone else’s first, and you had to watch them from the sidelines like some weird-ass creeper.
I really hadn’t thought I’d ever see her again. After telling Ryker to suck my dick when he told me he’d ditched her at Willtot’s request, I’d kind of sequestered her to that part of my life. She was somewhere mourning a guy she loved, and I went and licked my wounds over a girl I’d never had.
Now I had a second chance. But she came with a baby. “I don’t know, Jesse. I don’t care if she has kids. I love kids.” I was the oldest of eight. Like I said, there wasn’t much going on in my hometown, except mining and making babies. “I don’t want to compete with a ghost, though, you know?”
He nodded. “Yeah, man. I get it. On a different note, what the fuck were Vanessa Sumich and Antony Barbieri doing at an illegal street race?”
That was a really good fucking question. I doubted they’d been there to see me, and that Dodge Demon had definitely been watching the race. They’d been there for a reason—maybe to scope out drivers. I hoped so, because I knew the driver they needed, and she’d been right there in front of their faces.
“I don’t know for sure, but man, that would have made front-page news if the cops had rolled up. Can you imagine some of the city’s finest citizens out in the middle of the night with the rest of us hooligans?”
We drank and talked shit for a bit. I’d forgotten how nice it was just to be with Jesse. Being with him, just hanging, was like sleeping in my childhood bed—so comfortable, you wondered how you slept anywhere else.
Finally, I yawned and stretched. It was time to hit the sack, and I downed the rest of my beer. “What are you going to do with the forty thousand? Invest in another property to flip?”
Jesse stood and cracked his spine, leaning left and right. “Nothing. I gave it to the girl,” he said, like it was nothing.
I blinked at him slowly. “You gave Tally forty thousand dollars?” Holy shit. That was a lot of money, and sure, Jesse didn’t hurt for cash, but that was a chunk of change.
He just shrugged. “She needs it more than I do. Besides, she drove the best out there; I sneaked her from the back. It’s only fair.”
Sometimes, I thought I knew Jesse, but then he’d go and do shit like this. It made me realize there were so many layers to this man I’d thought of as a brother for most of my life. He had a heart as big as fucking Texas under that gruff, tattooed, bad boy exterior. He looked like the kind of guy mothers warned their daughters about, and god knows, many mamas back home certainly had. They didn’t know him, though. He was aloof and quiet, but he’d give you his last dollar if you needed it.
I slapped him on the back. “That was a nice thing to do, Jesse. I know she’ll appreciate the buffer.”
Selfishly, it also meant I didn’t have to find another way to see Tally, because if I knew her at all, she wouldn’t accept forty thousand without a word. She was never one to take hand-outs; despite what the NASCAR pundits had said, she’d earned her place on the track at Daytona.
No, she wouldn’t just accept that amount of money. She’d be back, and I already couldn’t wait.