by Parker, Ali
Chapter 16
Laina
“No,” I breathed.
Everything seemed to unfold before me in slow motion.
The crowd was tense, and all seemed to be holding the same breath as the three cars hurtled toward the finish line. The roar of the engines and the crash of the bumpers slamming into each other echoed in my ears as they approached, and all I could think was one thing. This is going to end badly.
The three cars passed the line. Mason’s brake lights came on. The crowd gasped.
And then Sid and Mark made their move and sent Mason’s car spinning across the track where he slammed driver’s side first into the cement barrier. The passenger side tires lifted off the ground with the impact, and the whole frame seemed to crumple inward, leaving the car looking warped and crooked like a piece of plastic left out in the sun for weeks.
I think I might have screamed.
I didn’t realize I’d started moving away from the crowd in a desperate attempt to get to Mason. Somebody grabbed my upper arm and yanked me backward. I spun and swatted their hand away, but they gripped the back of my shirt and hauled me back again. It was Harley. I tried to get away from her.
Then another two cars came blowing over the line. Followed by nearly a dozen more. I would have been struck dead.
I fell still and waited, my heart hammering wildly in my chest. The crowd was whispering. Mason’s car was steaming from beneath the hood. Harley released my sweater. “Two more cars,” she said. Her voice was thin.
“Oh God,” I whispered.
“Keep it together,” Harley warned.
I peered down the track. All the cars had stopped—including Benji’s car. He came to a stop and was waiting—like I was—to get out of his car and get to Mason. The waiting was unbearable.
Sid and Mark had also stopped farther down the track. Their cars were side by side, and I could imagine they had rolled their windows down to talk and laugh about what they had just done to Mason.
I thought I might be sick.
I craned my neck to peer down the rest of the street in the opposite direction. The last two cars were coming. I inched closer to the barrier and pressed my fingertips to it. I was ready to leap over it as soon as they crossed the line.
What probably only took ten or so seconds felt like an eternity. The cars finally passed me, and I pushed myself over the barrier and ran to Mason’s car like the devil was at my back. Benji was running up the road too. He hadn’t even bothered to close his car door.
He beat me to Mason’s car and bent in front of the passenger window to peer inside. He tried to open the door, but it wouldn’t budge because of the frame damage. I heard him swear loudly as I came to a stop beside him.
“Benji,” I whimpered. Fear had wrapped its hands around my throat.
My brother glanced over his shoulder at me. His eyes were wild and furious—and scared. This didn’t make me feel any better. He didn’t say a word to me as he leaned back and drove his elbow into the passenger window of the car. Glass shattered at his feet, and he stuck his head in the car. “Mason!”
I still couldn’t see him. The windows were too black. What if he was dead?
No. I couldn’t think like that.
“Mason!” I heard Benji yell again.
The crowd wasn’t approaching. They were all hanging back. Women had their hands over their mouths, and the men looked concerned too. But no one was coming to our aid. Was this how it always went down? People came for the thrill of watching the race, but if one of the drivers ever got hurt, they were on their own?
“This is so fucked up,” I whispered.
“Laina!” Benji roared, emerging from the window. “I need your help.”
I licked my lips and nodded. “Tell me what to do.”
“His arm is caught in the seat belt. I need you to climb in through the window and get him out so I can pull him out the other side.”
“What?”
Benji hurried around the front of the car and leaped over the cement barrier. Then he broke open the other window. More shattered glass fell to the pavement. “Now, Laina!”
I was terrified to see the state Mason would be in. Benji was wasting little time, so I knew things were serious. We had to get Mason out of the car.
I nodded to myself. I could do this.
I had to do this.
Glass crunched under my heels as I went to the side door and peered down.
My heart leaped into my throat. Mason was unconscious. His chin rested on his chest, and he was slumped to the right side, leaning against the door panel. Blood had trickled down the side of his head and run across his face to drip off his nose and jaw. I knew head wounds bled more than other wounds, but this looked bad. Really fucking bad.
I pulled my sweater over my head and set it down on the open window frame to protect myself from broken pieces of glass wedges in the panel. Then I put one leg in followed by another and gripped the hood as I slid inside the car.
The first thing I noticed was the blood on the steering wheel. And the shifter. And the seat belt. Then I reached out with a shaking hand and pressed my fingertips to the side of Mason’s neck and waited, paralyzed with terror, to feel a pulse.
Benji put his hands on the passenger window. “The seat belt, Laina!”
I felt it, a soft kiss of life beneath Mason’s skin.
It was enough to spur me into action. I reached around him and guided his arm out from the seat belt. Blood stained my fingers, but I didn’t care. I worked the seat belt out from around his shoulder, freeing him, and Benji asked me to help him turn Mason sideways so we could guide him out through the driver’s window.
He weighed a fucking ton.
Benji wrapped his arms under Mason’s armpits and began pulling him out of the car.
Laughter caught my ears. I looked out the passenger window to see Mark and Sid standing about ten feet away. Sid had his arms crossed over his chest. He was wearing loose jeans and a white tank. His gold teeth flashed as he threw his head back and laughed. Mark jabbed him in the chest and said something they both found humorous because their laughter increased, and soon Sid was doubled over, slapping his knees and howling with hilarity.
“Bastards,” I growled.
“Laina, no,” Benji warned.
But his voice sounded far away like it was underwater. Like it wasn’t real.
I extracted myself from the car the same way I got in. Torso first. I sat on the window frame as I took one leg out at a time, mindful of all the glass and my bare skin. It was a bad combination.
My heels crunched down on the glass with every step I took.
“Baby,” Sid said, licking his lips as he looked me over. “You’ve never looked so sexy. Fuck yeah. Look at those tits on display like—”
I wound back and decked him right across the jaw. Pain erupted in my knuckles, but I didn’t give a damn. The crowd gasped and then applauded. I wound back to strike him again, but Mark caught my wrist and yanked me sideways.
So I kicked him right between the legs.
Mark howled. Sid rounded on me. “You insufferable little—”
I spat at him. “The only person here who’s insufferable is you. You’re a snake. You couldn’t win on skill alone so you do this?” My voice was so hoarse, I couldn’t even scream at him. My words broke, and my voice trembled. “How dare you!”
“Laina!” Benji was yelling at me. “Now is not the time! Get your ass over here!”
Sid’s eyes flicked behind me to my brother. “You’d better listen to that brother of yours. Your boy toy doesn’t look so good.”
I jabbed him in the chest with one finger. “You’re a pathetic coward. A joke. And we all know it. You vile, greedy, slimy piece of—”
Sid grabbed my arm and yanked me to him. I was so close, I could smell his foul breath. “You be careful how you speak to me, woman. Mason can’t help you this time.”
“But I can,” a woman said from behind him.
Sid’s eyes flickered back and forth between mine. He was deciding if he should hurt me or not. I could read it all over him. His jaw muscles flexed, and his grip on my upper arm tightened painfully. Suddenly, he released me and stepped away, turning to Harley, who was standing behind him with her arms crossed. Her glare could freeze fire.
“Harley.” Sid smiled. It was a slick, forced, putrid smile. “You know I was just making sure the girl knew her place.”
“I’m docking points from you and Mark for this shit, Sid. You know foul play is not to be tolerated in The Streets. We are past this.”
“Harley—” Sid tried to say, but she shook her head.
“No. I won’t have it. You and Mark better get the fuck out of here before I change my mind and make matters worse for you.” She narrowed her eyes at him when he stayed where he was. Mark was still groaning and gripping his crotch. “Now,” Harley growled.
Sid ran his hand over his head. “This is fucked up.”
“I couldn’t agree more,” Harley said.
Mark winced as he straightened up. Sid grabbed his shoulder, and the two of them walked off toward their cars. Harley turned to me. Her stare was still icy as hell. “You have to be more careful, Laina. He was going to strike you.”
“I could have handled it.”
Harley shook her head. “Says the girl who’s never been struck by a man.”
I swallowed. She was right, of course. I didn’t know what I was getting myself into. For all I knew, one hit from him could have knocked me out. Then Benji would have had my ass to deal with as well as Mason’s.
Mason.
I turned back to Benji. He had Mason’s arm draped over his shoulder and was walking him away from the car. Benji nodded down the track at his car. “Laina. Bring the car over. Keys are in the ignition.”
Sirens whirred to life in the distance.
“Fuck,” Harley hissed.
“Now, Laina! Go!” Benji yelled.
Chapter 17
Mason
Fuck.
Everything hurt. My head pounded like someone was relentlessly smacking my skull with a hammer. The pressure behind my eyes had me convinced my brain had exploded and was pushing itself out of my head. My ears were ringing like a fucking fire alarm. And it wouldn’t stop.
The rest of my body wasn’t better off. My ribs and shoulder and chest ached furiously, and I found myself being gently jostled around and every bump or movement sent little shocks of fiery pain through my veins.
I groaned and lifted my hand to my face to try to rub something wet out of my eyes.
“Mason?”
A woman’s voice called my name from far away. She sounded familiar. She also sounded scared. I tried to open my eyes without success.
“Mason? Can you hear me?”
I swallowed and rubbed harder at my eyes. The woman pulled my hand away from my face, gently stroked my hair off my forehead and said, “Hold on. We’re almost there.”
There? Where was there?
I tried to ask what she was talking about, but my tongue was thick and useless in my mouth.
“Benji, step on it. He’s waking up. We’re going to need painkillers.”
I was jostled around even more and realized I was in a car. I was lying down. My head was on her lap. We must have been in the back seat.
“Laina,” I finally managed to say. My voice was a weak croak that sounded foreign in my ears.
“I’m here,” she said softly, stroking my forehead again. “We’re almost back at your house. Rick knows we’re coming. You’re going to be all right.”
It sure as shit did not feel like I was going to be all right. I felt like someone had thrown me off a fifty-foot cliff and then dragged me back up only to throw me off it again.
Laina’s voice was a nice distraction from all the hurt. “We can’t take you to the hospital. The police showed up after the race ended, so they’d know we were involved, and you’d end up in jail. Harley cleared everyone out and got the RS the hell out of there even though it wasn’t driveable. We couldn’t risk the cops tracking it back to Benji’s friend.”
I wanted to ask her where they’d taken it—and who had taken it. Who did I owe a debt to? But the words still wouldn’t come.
Laina continued. “Harley is storing it for us for now until we figure out what to do with it. One of the guys there with a truck towed it for her. Hopefully, they made it back to her place without any interruptions.”
Benji piped up from the front seat. “The three of you tied, by the way. You qualified for the next race.”
“I don’t think that’s something we need to worry about right now,” Laina said.
“Trust me,” Benji said as we took a right turn, “He probably wanted to know.”
I smiled at my own expense. Benji knew me well.
Laina pressed something to the side of my head, and I flinched. She apologized. “You hit your head pretty good, Mason. I’m just trying to stop the bleeding.”
Bleeding. Great.
“Tobias,” I grated.
Laina tried to shush me, but Benji answered from the driver’s seat. “We’ll worry about that later, Mason. Right now, we just have to get you home and cleaned up.”
The car I’d fucked up was worth way more than twenty thousand dollars—the amount I owed Tobias for letting me race his RS. I should have known better. I should have anticipated this sort of shit from Sid and Mark. I knew they would do anything to win, and they’d already tried to run me off the road in the last race. Why had I been foolish enough to think this time would be any different?
Because I wanted to win.
Naturally.
I’d gotten myself in deep shit. Harley was covering for me, something she would hold over my head until the day I died. I’d also gotten Laina tangled up in this mess. I was probably bleeding all over her and giving her a good scare. But selfishly, I was glad she was here. I was glad to have her leg under my head, her hand running through my hair. It was a comfort.
My thoughts started to wander as Benji and Laina went quiet. Maybe they thought I was asleep. I was being pulled down into the darkness again, but this time, it was the darkness of my own memories.
Of Evelyn.
Had she been there? Had she been on the sidelines watching when Sid and Mark rammed me into that concrete barrier? Had she cared?
Not long ago, she had been the woman I would have given my life for. Sometimes, I was still sure that if someone ever threatened her safety, I’d step in and take a bullet for her. Love didn’t die just like that. At least not for me. It had for her.
But I couldn’t shake those feelings. She’d been my everything for too long. She had chased away the storms inside me and taught me how to live for something other than speed and pavement and the smell of victory.
If she saw the crash, had she hoped I was okay?
Or had she hoped I was dead?
The latter might be easier for her. Then she wouldn’t have to think of me ever again. She could finally wipe her hands of us and focus on her relationship with Mark.
The thought made my aching body ache even more.
I tried to think of other things, but everything kept circling back to her.
I grimaced when we hit a bump. The car rolled up my driveway, and Benji apologized. I must have made a sound without even realizing it. Laina’s hand fell still in my hair, and she opened her door. Cool air washed in and chased away some of the fog in my head.
I rubbed at my eyes vigorously one last time and was finally able to squint them open. My lashes were thick with red.
I heard Benji get out of the car. He hurried around to my side as I forced myself to sit up. I gripped the headrest of the seat in front of me to try to stabilize my spinning head.
“Okay,” Benji breathed, looking from me to the front door. “Laina, go get Rick. We’re going to take this slow, Mason, all right?”
“I’m good,” I said.
“Buddy, you are so far f
rom good right now,” Benji muttered. “Go, Laina.”
She nodded and jogged up the driveway to knock on the door. I peered over at Benji who had dropped to a crouch outside the door. His brow was furrowed, and his mouth was a thin line of worry. “You scared the shit out of me, man. I thought I was going to be pulling your body out of that fucking car.”
“Give me a little credit,” I said thinly. “It’ll take more than that to get rid of me.”
Benji didn’t smile at my joke. His expression remained just as serious. “How do you feel?”
“Probably about as shitty as I look.”
He nodded. “If it makes you feel any better, Laina went to bat for you against Sid and Mark.”
“What?”
Benji nodded. “I’ll fill you in when you’re a little more coherent. But damn. It was a whole other side of my sister I’ve never seen before. She was a fucking animal.”
Laina came back down from the front door with Rick hot on her heels. He came to the back door, and Benji slid out of the way. Rick put his hand on the roof and peered in at me. “Well, fuck,” he spat.
“Nice to see you too,” I managed.
Rick looked at Benji. “Let’s get him inside. Laina, there are sheets in the closet beside his bathroom door. Can you run and get them and put them over the sofa so he doesn’t bleed everywhere?”
Laina nodded and took off again. Then Rick motioned me out of the back seat with two come-hither motions of his fingers. “Come on, Mason. Let’s get you lying down.”
I slid out of the back seat. It was painful. My ribs screamed in protest, and I hugged one arm to my body. It was the only way to subdue some of the pain. Then I rose slowly to my feet and swayed on the spot. Rick slid under one arm and Benji went under the other. They started walking me up the drive.
“I’m gonna kill those fuckers,” Rick breathed.