8. Dragon
Chapter Eight
DRAGON
Islept on the couch in the garage and kept working through the weekend. The one time I left to grab a sandwich, the brunette behind the counter glared at me, openly hostile. Her words were worse.
“You think you can take Horse, kiss him and then beat him like a psycho? Consent is a thing, and so is abuse! You make me sick!”
The girl in front of me turned to look at me, and then the sweet blonde girl turned into a hissing harridan as she looked me up and down. “I can’t believe you have the nerve to leave your house after you did that to him. Shame on you!”
It was like the time with Janice all over again, only much, much worse because I was more notorious now, and so was Horse.
I backed away, but not fast enough to miss getting pelted by plastic forks and even a cupcake.
I caught the cupcake and took it with me, because the odds of getting a sandwich without spit was slim to none.
It hurt, and not just the impact of plastic utensils on the back of my head.
The worst thing about it was that they were right.
I’d completely assaulted him just because I couldn’t stand the idea of being one of the idiotic women who fell for his lines like I’d fallen so stupidly when I was seventeen.
Maybe I could admit to myself that I was just as idiotic as every other woman who’d ever thrown themselves at him.
Devouring the cupcake, which was chocolate and cherry, but not nearly as good as the ones Minx made, I went back to the compound and drowned myself in engines and oil.
When the team showed up on Monday, I was working on a truck.
Jezebel stood shoulder to shoulder with Nix, flanked by Daniela, Dirk on the end beside her. It felt like an intervention. Were they going to fire me for sexual assault? It couldn’t be a good look for the team. Maybe I’d lost Nix some sponsors.
“Do we have a meeting I didn’t know about?” I asked, straightening up from my position leaning over the beautiful engine I’d been tweaking under the dusty blue hood. Shafts of afternoon light came through the high window, bringing Nix’s golden hair to life.
“Only because you turned off your phone,” Nix said with an easy smile. “Are you all right, Trix? If anyone hurt you, it’s no trouble at all to make it personal at tonight’s fight.”
My heart squeezed. He wasn’t going to fire me?
And he’d ask me if I was hurt after he’d seen the video?
Was I going to cry? Not a chance, but I was feeling feelings.
And Nix was fighting Horse that night. I’d already hurt him enough.
I patted Nix’s shoulder. “You know I can take care of myself. And after that video, the rest of the world knows it too.”
Jezebel crossed her arms. “I don’t like it. You turned off your phone and disappeared all weekend, just like Horse. We thought you were with him until he showed up at his usual breakfast spot this morning. Without you.”
“With him?” I stared at her, blank with this underlying panic.
“I’m not with him. He’s…” I sputtered while words escaped me.
“Look,” I finally said, gesturing at Pansy.
“I stole his bike, and so he was mad, and said some things, and then I kneed him and whatever, but the point is that I agreed to tune up his bike for stealing it. That’s all. There’s no with.”
“Other than the making out with him while the elevator door was open,” Pinkie said in her face-the-facts way.
“Were you drunk?” Nix asked, concern covering the intensity of the question. If Horse took advantage of me drunk, he’d see him bleed.
“No. Hungover but completely in my right mind. That’s also part of why I kneed him.
He was so loud.” I winced. “I’m surprised he didn’t press charges for assault.
This time, I actually did assault him, and stole his property.
Anyway, anything else we need to talk about?
I’m about to head off to do some testing on those new trails. ”
Jezebel slapped my shoulder. “Sounds good. I’m coming with you.”
I liked to do my driving alone if it wasn’t an actual race; it was more meditative that way, but Jezebel clearly had more that she wanted to say in private.
We’d driven for five minutes off-road when she started, but not in the direction I’d assumed she was headed.
“We should do a Girl’s Night across Dakar,” she murmured, barely above the roar of the engine.
“A thousand miles without tacos? I don’t think Felicia could handle that.”
She adjusted her cowboy hat over her dark hair and shrugged.
“There are worse things. Such as…” She gave me a hard look.
“Janice is the one who took that video and made sure it hit all the relevant media sites. She needs to go down. We’re going to take her down.
I was just wondering if you wanted it to be your Girl’s Night, or mine. ”
Ah, that’s why she wanted a private conversation. I sighed heavily. “It feels like she’s been targeting me for a long time, but I don’t think she really is. It doesn’t make sense.”
“Of course it makes sense. She’s been jealous of your relationship with Horse forever.”
I shot her a horrified look before refocusing on the terrain, narrowly avoiding a large boulder.
“First of all, there is no relationship between me and Horse. Second of all, no one would intentionally show footage of someone they wanted publicly being abused by a woman. Men don’t like to look weak.
” I’d learned that lesson repeatedly my whole life.
“Unless it pinned the last nail on said woman’s coffin, reputation-wise.”
I didn’t like the sound of that, or the feel of it either. I was a mess. I knew it, and the world knew it, but did they have to know it quite so unequivocally? “Do you think it did?” It certainly felt like it in the cafe.
She put a hand on my arm, squeezing too tight. “Of course not. You just make good choices and your reputation can resolve. Eventually. After we take down Janice so she doesn’t spin whatever you do into more negative press.”
Jezebel took down bad men who did bad things. A female target was new, and not one I was okay with. “No. I’m not hurting a woman unless she chooses to be in a ring with me. It’s not like she made up footage. I really did all of that.”
Her eyes glinted behind her contacts as she settled back, studying me like she was figuring out how to dispose of the body.
“But we didn’t see what Horse did to antagonize you.
She spun it so your reputation would take all the hits.
She’s been in the ring of public opinion with you, beating you down when you don’t realize that there is a fight.
If you’re feeling squeamish, we can go after her using the same methods she used.
We’ll rip apart her reputation, turn her friends against her, maybe throw in some psychological warfare.
We could probably get someone to slip her some meds.
She’s already neurotic. It wouldn’t take much to push her over into full-blown psychopathy. ”
I laughed and patted Jezebel’s shoulder, trying to break her intensity. “Slow down, Cowgirl. We aren’t giving anyone any mental breakdowns. She certainly hasn’t given me any. I do that all by myself. He was twenty-two.”
She frowned at me. “He?”
“The last guy I took on a rampage with me.”
She raised a perfectly painted dark brow. “Rampage? Not Horse?”
“Not Horse,” I reiterated.
“What kind of rampage?” she asked, pulling out her phone. We probably wouldn’t get service out there, but who knew what kind of tech Jezebel had up her sleeve?
“We broke into a golf course, hot-wired a cart and drove it into a pond.” I winced. “I need to call them and pay for it. Maybe I can tune up the rest of their carts so they don’t press charges.”
She frowned, pursed lips for a few seconds before she looked up, shaking her head. “Nope. All the footage is already erased. Someone took care of everything. Seems like your baby rampage has someone with deep pockets watching over him.”
“Not close enough. Someone should have stopped him from going into that dive.”
“Yeah, that dive you took off the stage was pretty spectacular.” She shot me a look that I ignored.
I was driving. I had places for my eyes to be. “The boots were less stable than I’d hoped.”
“Alcohol will do that to a pair of boots.”
“Where did you disappear to?”
She sighed heavily. “Aren’t we a mess? I thought I saw someone I recognized.”
“From the circuit?”
“From college.”
I raised my brows but didn’t say anything. I didn’t know that Jezebel went to college. She kept her past a closed book. Locked and vaulted. Why was she opening up now?
“She was my nemesis, like Janice is yours.”
“Ah. Except that Janice isn’t my nemesis. Horse is my nemesis.”
She snorted. “And that’s why you flirted with him so much by stealing his bike after he caught you in his arms and held you for a good minute? An entire minute of you staring into each other’s eyes.”
Is that how it’d looked from the outside?
So embarrassing. From the inside, there had been no time, just drowning in perfection.
I cleared my throat, dislodging the memory.
“Well, Horse is obviously attractive. It’s normal for any woman to fall for his appeal.
” Particularly after I’d tasted him. He delivered even more than he advertised.
“Literally, I know, but then Janice was there, in that strip club, and then she stalked him afterwards until she got that video. It’s unhealthy.
She’s targeting you as the problem, but when she gets you out of the way, she’s not going to stop until he’s hers.
The way she plays, psychological warfare is definitely on the table.
Horse has a weakness for women, and she’s manipulated him enough to get him to hire her, so who knows how far she can push him? ”
I didn’t like that. What if Janice started drumming up a case of harassment and sexual assault against Horse?
He did steal a kiss after I stole his bike, and it went on a long time, probably because I had my hands wrapped around his neck.
I genuinely couldn’t fathom a woman saying no to him.
But if a woman did, no way he wouldn’t respect that.
Still, Janice could twist things around like she’d done to me.
“Think about it,” Jezebel said before she reclined the seat and started snoring.
I wasn’t the only who had an exhausting weekend. It was nice to have the company, to know that the crazy cowgirl had my back no matter how many bad choices I made.
Maybe I needed to get to know Horse a little better, find out if Janice really was playing him.
I could return the bike as a peace offering.
Maybe ask for a tablespoon of sugar or something neighborly.
What did neighbors do? Avoid each other.
But I wasn’t okay with anyone targeting him, no matter how big and irritatingly egotistical he was.
If anyone targeted him, it was going to be me.