Busted (Stacked Deck Book 11)

by Emilia Finn

  “Ha.” I chuckle, and the tension sizzling in the air is allowed to dissipate just a little. “Always. I haven’t seen you all day.”

  She steps in, filling space I could have sworn didn’t exist a moment ago, and presses her cheek to my heart. Her rightful place.

  I could swear my torso developed the way it did over the years because of her presence. Like water passing over rocks for thousands of years, those rocks eventually develop so the water can pass without friction. They function as a team, a guide, a gentle caress.

  “I was so busy at the shop today,” she murmurs. “Half the day was with a regular, the other half was spent on a bunch of small pieces. And I lost a bet,” she sighs. “I hate losing.”

  I breathe out a soft laugh so her hair flutters under my exhale. “I know you do. What was the bet?”

  “That I could lick a Skittle off my nose.”

  I pull back with a comical frown, study her face, and shake my head when she pokes her tongue out and proves she can’t even touch it to her nose. “Why would you make that bet, stupid? Of course you were gonna lose!”

  “They said I couldn’t do it!” she exclaims on a laugh. “You know I can’t not prove them wrong.”

  “But you didn’t prove them wrong. You lost!”

  When Em’s hand leaves my hip, I take a step away, and snag her hand rather than lose her completely. I make my way to the center of the tree, hug it with one arm, and climbing to the next lowest branch, I make my movements slow, my steps careful and concise so that I don’t fall.

  It’s not that I’m afraid of hurting myself. But I know for a damn fact that Em won’t release my hand if I fall, which means if I go, so does she. And that’s unacceptable.

  We move through the tree with smiles, an easy air of confidence, and comfort, and though I expect Em to jump from the second-to-last branch like she usually does, I’m surprised when my feet touch the grass first, and I glance up to find her waiting for me. She crouches without holding on to the branch, balances using more core strength than eighty percent of the members at our gym possess, then when I frown and hesitantly reach up to help her, she allows me to lift her down.

  She’s tall, but thin. Muscular, which makes her a little heavier than she appears, but she’s no problem to lift after all of these years that I busted ass in the gym to build my muscles. I lower her to the grass, let her slide along my body just to test what she’s willing to allow during this crazy full moon, and when she still doesn’t screech and run away, I tilt my head and wonder, for just a second, what the fuck is she thinking?

  If only I could know, I could save myself the misery of wondering.

  “Truth or dare?” she says before I can formulate something intelligent or witty.

  When I continue to stare at her plump lips, she grins and turns away. But she holds my hand, and leads me to her car.

  It’s a hotted-up piece of muscle, but it’s smaller than anything driven by her brother, or the other car enthusiasts we know. A canary yellow Mercedes hatchback, it looks like she drives something cute and girly, but there’s fucking muscle under the hood, and a hefty price tag attached to the vehicle that still makes me cringe.

  “Stop it,” she demands when she reads my mind… or more likely, the way my face scrunches at the car. “I got it secondhand, and everyone knows the price tag is slashed the second it’s driven out of the lot.

  “And you just had to buy this one, huh? The one that goes way too fast.”

  “It’s cute.” She slides into the driver’s side when we arrive at the sexy car, and the second I slide into the passenger side, she glances over and smiles that smile that says she’s going to fuck shit up tonight. “Stop pouting because my car is sexier than yours. And you still didn’t answer; truth or dare?”

  “Dare.” I fix my seatbelt, and sigh when EmKat hits the power button, and her dashboard lights up like we’re sitting in the cockpit of a five-million-dollar jet. “I dare you to sell this car and buy something a little more sensible.”

  She snorts. “Nice try, but I love my car, so nope.” She pushes the gear into reverse so the engine purrs without missing a single beat, checks the camera in the dash to make sure we’re not going to back over anyone, then she releases the brake and slowly gets us moving. “Plus, I already tried sensible and slow. It was boring.”

  “So you just had to run from one extreme to the other? Five-thousand-dollar car, to a hundred thousand?”

  She rolls her eyes and straightens out on the street, then moving toward the security gate at the front of the estate, she hits the button so her window lowers and warm breeze blows her hair back, and we idle for just a moment as the gates roll open. “I did not pay a hundred thousand dollars for this car, and you damn well know it. I paid much, much less, fixed the engine the previous owner thrashed, got the Alesi seal of approval to say it was as good as new, and now I own a luxury car at a third of the cost.”

  “It all sounds fine and dandy, except for the fact your budget luxury car goes almost a hundred and seventy fucking miles per hour.” I glance over in the dark and scowl. “Dangerous.”

  “It’s not like I make it go that fast,” she huffs.

  “So if you don’t use it, why have it?”

  “Oh my god!” she exclaims. “Robert! Are you going to bitch about my car for the next ten years, or will you be done soon?”

  I sit back, relax into the luxurious leather chair, and fold my arms. “Not until I can be certain you’re going to be sensible in it. Now tell me, where are we going?”

  “Piper’s Lane.” She practically giggles the name of the dirt race track outside of town. “I’m so excited to see how fast this baby can go.”

  “For fuck’s sake,” I growl. “Of course you are. Do you even care about me at all?”

  I meet her eyes, and am surprised by the way she studies me. Because for just a second, a single moment in time, I could swear she’s screaming something in her mind, but locking it behind closed lips and a shield, she refuses to let me pass.

  Or maybe that’s just me projecting.

  “I love you,” she murmurs. “Always.”

  She looks back to the road and leads us away from town, toward the track her grandpa basically set his family up on. He raced to pay the bills, then he stopped racing to save his marriage and ease the worry that suffocated his wife each time fast cars were mentioned.

  “I care about you more than I care about me,” she admits on a soft whisper. “So if you tell me you absolutely forbid me from driving out here tonight, then I guess I’ll turn around, and we can have a movie night instead.”

  “Fine.” I sit back and swallow so my Adam’s apple bobs up and down. “I forbid you from driving out to Piper’s Lane. I want to go home and have a movie night.”

  She hisses and grits her teeth, and just like that, she flips back to Emma-Fucking-Kincaid, the second-generation peacock that sends their best friend crazy. “I mean, I adore you, Fart. But I also hate to encourage abusive relationships where a man thinks he gets to dictate where I go. So I’m gonna have to disrespectfully go against your wishes, to prove to you I cannot be controlled. Honestly?” she shrugs and sends my temper spiking. “All of womankind depend on me to take a stand. It’s the way it’s supposed to be.”

  “You’re a pain in my fucking ass.” I shake my head and sigh, because I have no choice but to follow tonight. I’ve never had a choice, so I settle in and hope that no one goes to prison or the hospital. “Truth.”

  “Hmm?” Em’s right arm is slowly beginning to match her back. What started as patches of art, small drawings, are slowly becoming linked. Eventually, she’ll end up with a sleeve, and her poor father will have a conniption, full of hypocritical shouting about marking one’s skin. “Truth what?” she questions.

  “You asked truth or dare. I say truth.”

  “Oh!” she bounces in her seat, smiling and playful. “Did you like losing your virginity to Grace Risotto?”

  “What?” I j
olt like she poked me with a prod. “Why would you ask me that?” I turn in my seat, and lean against the door to study the side of EmKat’s face. “Seriously? Why do you insist on being weird?”

  She only laughs and indicates to turn off the tar road and onto dirt. “It was on my mind, so now I’m asking.” She glances across to me quickly, and flashes a challenging smirk. “So? Did you like it?”

  “I mean…” I brace myself against the door and rest my elbow on the dash to minimize the bumps and dips from the dirt road Em speeds across. “I didn’t not like it. I just… It’s not like I had anything to compare it to.”

  “So you liked it?”

  “Well, yeah, I suppose. The end felt good.”

  “When you came?”

  “Emma! Fuck.” My face blazes, I know it does. I feel the heat in my cheeks. “Why are you so fucking crass?”

  “Why are you such a prude?” she retorts. She shrugs and turns the car to join the line of drivers vying to enter the single path that leads toward Piper’s Lane. “I’m only asking. And it’s not like she’s your girlfriend, so you don’t have to be defensive about her privacy or whatever.”

  “First of all,” I grit out and stare anywhere but at Em. “Whether she and I are dating or not, I’m still not gonna kiss and tell.”

  “Did you come, Robert?”

  I exhale an explosive breath and shake my head. “Yes.”

  She grins, wide and playful, so her white teeth shimmer from the brake lights of the car in front of us.

  The sky is pitch-black but for a handful of scattered stars. Piper’s Lane has spotlights already set up and blazing, which steals some of the magic of the unmarked sky. But adrenaline also pulses in the air, and something else. Something much scarier.

  “Did she?”

  I bring my gaze away from her stomach and the inch of skin exposed by her shirt, and back up to the side of her face. “Hm?”

  She laughs. “Did Grace Risotto come that first time you had sex?”

  A million answers flash through my mind. A million defenses. A million ways to talk myself up. But EmKat and I don’t lie to each other, not even when it’s embarrassing. So I shake my head and glance back to the sky. “Nope.” Humiliation makes my heart race, but I chuckle anyway, and dig my hole deeper. “I was done in about thirty seconds flat that first time. And the second time.”

  Em’s shoulders bounce with laughter. “Smooth.”

  “Got myself under control the third time, though.” I glance to my left and smile. “Learned to count in my brain. I forbade myself from releasing my breath for at least two whole minutes. Thirty pumps.”

  Em throws her head back and cackles. “Thirty! Huzzah, Rob Fart. It’s like you’re a racehorse, bred just for Grace’s pleasure.” She snickers and rolls forward as the line moves. “Despite your thirty-pump prowess, she kept coming back.”

  “Of course she does. It’s probably my personality,” I joke. “I mean, you keep coming back, and we don’t even have sex.”

  The air in the car changes, electrifies, and pulses as she turns just her head and watches me.

  The line ahead of us is slow, each car must check in at the gate and announce if they’re racing or watching, and if they’re racing, they have to declare what they’re betting.

  Which means Em has time to fuck with my sanity as she blinks and studies me with owlish eyes, and long lashes kissing her cheeks. “Have you ever thought about it?”

  “Thought about what?”

  “Having sex with me.” She pulls her bottom lip between her teeth and lets the car roll forward. She’s not even looking at the line, not even pretending to pay attention. “Have you thought about it?”

  Yes! Yes! I want to scream. But I don’t, because my thoughts are kinda new, and I can’t decide if they make me a weird perv, or if shit is changing. So instead, I choose the cowardly way out and shrug. “Have you?”

  She watches me for a minute more, a wrinkle forming between her brows from the severity of her thoughts. Finally, she turns back to watch the car in front. “Nope. That would be… like saying I think of Pukey Lukey in bed.”

  “Ha. Yeah.” I clear my throat and grit my teeth together. “That would be totally weird. And same…” I guess that thing about lying to each other is selective – and brand new. “I would never think of going to bed with Brooke. That would be crazy.”

  “Heh.” Em approaches the front of the line, finally, and rests her elbow on the frame. “Plus, Iowa would whoop you so bad for touching his girl.”

  “Right.”

  “Hey!” Em’s tone perks up a dozen octaves when we pull up in front of a dude with a clipboard. She smiles and puts on the crazy, loud front that she feeds just about everyone on this planet. “Emma Kincaid,” she informs him. “I wanna try my hand at racing, and I was assured I was already on the list.”

  “Kincaid?” The guy smirks and doesn’t even bother to search for her name. “Yeah, you can roll on through. Head to the line and ask for Manda. Your crew is already here waiting for you.”

  “My crew?” She looks back to me, like I somehow had something to do with this plan I had no clue existed half an hour ago.

  When I have no information for her, she glances back to the guy.

  “Who’s my crew?”

  He chuckles. “A star-studded group of Lane OGs who demanded you go to them before rolling up to the line.”

  “Overprotective?” she asks, then raises a hand to above her head, though of course, her head is only up to the guy’s stomach. “This high?”

  “Sounds about right.” He flashes a wicked grin and waves us through. “Go on. You’re slowing us down.”

  “I’m gonna kill them.”

  Em rolls her window most of the way up and drives toward the epicenter of spotlights. She grumbles under her breath, changes gears with a heavy hand, and makes a lot of noise with her gas pedal, though she doesn’t drive all that fast.

  “I’m going to murder them dead,” she hisses. “Look!”

  She waves a hand forward, so I follow it and find exactly who I knew I would.

  Her brother – Bryan – rests against the side of his dusty Camaro, and though he appears formidable and dangerous, with his heavy jeans, tight shirt, and biceps that could choke his baby sister to death, he watches our car roll up with a smirk. Beside him, Maddi snuggles up to his side and shakes her head as he says something we can’t hear.

  “You’ve got a snitch, EmKat.” I turn to her and grin. “He’s gonna whoop your ass.”

  “No he’s not.”

  She pulls up beside his car, and cuts the engine so that the purring motor dies out, and the sound of hundreds of others penetrate our ears. Shaking her head, she unclips her belt and pushes her door open, but before climbing out, she turns back to me and nibbles on her bottom lip in thought.

  “What?” My hand rests on the door handle. My heart in my throat.

  Why does everything feel more now? Why does everything feel hypercharged and intense?

  “That game of truth or dare?” she murmurs. “It sucked.”

  “You didn’t have fun?”

  She shakes her head, slow and purposeful. “The answers sucked, and we didn’t even get to dare.”

  “The answers—” I choke out. “Are you—”

  “Emma Kincaid.” Bry pushes off his car and commands her attention until she pulls away from me, gets out of the car, and stands straight so her arm rests on the roof.

  I climb out my side, match her stance, and catch a glimpse of Tucker Morris – Bry’s track mechanic, among other things – walking away from a woman in a tiny skirt and carrying a clipboard, and with a wicked smile, he approaches our car and pops the hood without asking.

  “Explain yourself, Little Bit,” Bry says. “You know Mom will kill us both if she finds out you’re here.”

  “How’d you know I would be here, huh?” She pushes away from her door and shakes her head at Tuck working under her hood. Approaching Bry and Maddi,
she smiles for Maddi, but scowls at her brother. “Who snitched?”

  “You did.” He rolls his eyes and pulls his sister in for a side hug. “There isn’t a Kincaid on this planet who buys a car like yours and doesn’t bring it out here. It’s like… literally against our religion or something.”

  Em lifts her chin, proud and defiant. “Brooke wouldn’t.”

  He chuckles. “First of all, I think she would. Give her four hundred horses, and she’s gonna test ‘em out. Second, she’s a different breed from us, and you know it. There’s the Reilly half of our family, and then there’s the Kincaids, and maybe the Reillys can party too, but you got the peacock, Em. That’s how I knew you’d be here. The second you brought that fucking car home, I knew.”

  “Then you took it to Chuck,” Maddi laughs. “And, according to him, you literally asked him to make it go fast.”

  Em shoots a filthy look over her shoulder. “So there’s my snitch.”

  “I already knew,” Bry chuckles. “He only confirmed it. Now it’s the weekend, and whatdoyaknow, Emma Katherine and her sidekick are rolling up.” He looks to me and lifts a brow. “Really, Fart?”

  “I didn’t plan this.” I walk around the car and take Bry’s hand when he offers it.

  We live across the street from each other, so it’s not like we never see each other, but still, he greets me the way many do in public, pulls me in, and slaps a hand to my back.

  Maybe I’m a heavyweight fighter nowadays… but so is he. And he doesn’t lie down when we’re sparring.

  Stepping back, I tell him, “I plan to ride with her.”

  “Wait,” Em’s gaze shoots to me. “What?”

  “What?”

  “You’re not riding with me. No one is.”

  “Yeah,” I pull her under my arm and squish her close. “I am.”

  “No one else takes a babysitter onto the track!” She points to all the cars lining up. “Look, none of them have a Miss Daisy.”

  “Guess that makes you special.” Bry nods for me. “I would have ridden along, but since you’ve got it…”

  “I’ve got it. She’s not racing without an escort.”

  “And if she spins out?” he prods. “Whatcha gonna do?”