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I smirked back. “I won’t let you past me so easily next time.” I reached out and shook his hand, and the feeling of his long, strong fingers wrapping around mine made me a little breathless. The adrenaline was definitely catching up with me.
I climbed into the passenger seat of the Porsche, and Willy gave the guys a little nod as he slid behind the steering wheel. The tenseness of his jaw told me I was definitely going to get a lecture, but instead, he gave me the silent treatment all the way back to his side of town. He didn’t take me back to my place, just pulled up in front of his townhouse, walked around and opened my door, waiting.
Sighing heavily, I climbed out. Honestly, I didn’t really want to be alone tonight anyway. On the way past, I squeezed his arm. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you, Willy. I would have eventually.”
He sucked a deep breath. “You’re lucky I love you, Tally. Go inside before you freeze.” The fire suit was actually toasty as hell, but I didn’t tell him.
Despite the late hour, Colin opened the door. Willy ushered me in and kept walking toward the stairs that led to their bedroom. “Tally is pregnant. She drove a hundred and fifty miles per hour, in the pitch black, while pregnant. You deal with her,” he said to his long-time lover, then stomped up the stairs like a drama queen.
Colin’s mouth hung open as he looked between us. Well, between me and the disappearing shoulders of his partner. “Ah, sweet thing. You look tired. Come on, I’ll grab you something to wear to bed, and we can talk about all this tomorrow.”
Colin’s softness was in direct contrast to Willy’s anger, and it almost made me cry. I swallowed it down, following him to the downstairs guest room. He flitted around, showing me the ensuite and grabbing me some sweats and one of Willy’s oversized tees from the laundry room.
Finally, he left, shutting the door, and I let the tension flow from my body, like purging poison from a snake bite. I’d survived the night; that’s what mattered most. I tried not to think of the loss, or even worse, how it had felt to lean into Hayes. I peeled my fire suit off the rest of the way, letting it land with a muffled thump.
Looking down, I realized one of the sleeves was sitting weird. Picking it up and shaking it out, I couldn’t believe my eyes when a yellow envelope fell onto the bed. My head knew exactly what it was, but my heart couldn’t believe it.
Flicking it open, I found eight rubber-band-wrapped stacks of hundreds. The buy-ins.
“How the fuck did this end up in my suit?”
Even as I asked those words out loud, I knew. Jesse had slipped it in there. The last time I’d seen the envelope, he’d been holding it.
But why would he give me forty thousand fucking dollars? And should I keep it?
FOUR
HAYES
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.”
