Outlaw's Last Race

by Dallas Cole

  “Elena!” Drazic seizes me by the arm. “Get yourself home. Let me worry about the crew.”

  But what about Lennox? I want to scream. It’s pointless, though. He’s huddled on the ground, crumpled up and forgotten like a piece of trash as everyone else runs off. My uncle seizes Nash by the arm and pries him away; Jagger and Cyrus surround him, blocking his path back to Lennox. Engines roar to life all around us as the crowd piles into their vehicles to pull away.

  Get myself home. Great. I rode here with Nash. But now my uncle and the rest of my family, the crew, are hauling him off and leaving me behind. I’m standing stock still as the race audience shoves past me, as red and blue lights wash over the alleyway. This isn’t my first time ducking the police during a raid. I know all the best places to hide. But this is the first time I’ve been left to do it myself.

  All because Nash can’t control himself. Because he can’t stop blaming Lennox for what happened in the past. What Lennox did was absolutely awful, I know. But no amount of anger is going to change it. Lennox used to be our family, and god knows he’s not the only one of us who’s fucked up. Fucked up huge, even. And now they’re going to leave him for the cops, so he can be sent right back into the hell where he’s spent the last three years—

  Fuck it. I charge into the crowd and dive for Lennox.

  “Come on. We’ve got to get you out of here.” I grab him by the wrist and tug him to his feet. “Can you walk?”

  Lennox glances up at me. Some blood has dripped into his eyes from a cut on his forehead. Nash’s rings, probably. And one eye is already threatening to swell shut. But his jaw tightens as he studies my face, and he turns away.

  “I’m fine, El. Take care of yourself.”

  “You are not fine. Look at you.” I pull an oil-stained rag from my back pocket and wipe away the stream of blood from his forehead. “What about your ribs? That was a nasty hit.”

  “I’ve had worse.” But as Lennox pulls himself to his feet, he groans, and nearly doubles over. If Lennox is actually showing this much pain, stoic, quiet Lennox, then I can’t even imagine how much it hurts.

  “Come on.” I loop my arm in his. He sags against me, heavy, as I guide us through the crowd toward his Mustang. “Where are your keys?”

  He starts to reach across his body to fish them out, then winces and thinks better of it. “Left pocket.”

  I nod and dig into his left pocket. My fingers rub against his thighs, and a flush spreads across my face. Just an old instinct, I tell myself, left over from my dumb teenager days of fawning over Lennox. But damn if he isn’t carved like a Greek god. I pull out his keys, unlock the Mustang, and ease him into the passenger’s seat. He stifles a cry as he bends forward and swings his legs into the cab.

  I slam the passenger’s door shut and let myself into the driver’s side. The scent of fresh upholstery washes over me, and for a moment, I just savor it. The McManuses may be the scum of the earth, but they did a damn fine job with this old pony, I’ll give them that. As I turn the engine keys, the motor barks at me like a ferocious hound ready to be let off its chain. I laugh to myself. Damn fine job.

  Then the sirens wail, much closer now. We’re out of time.

  I kick the Mustang into second gear and rev it up to thread us past the crowd and the approaching cops. They may have blocked the main alley entrance, but I guarantee their crappy, boat-sized Crown Vics can’t follow us down the side street. I surge down the side alley, and people jump out of our path, flattening themselves against the brick walls, to let us through. As soon as we reach the turn-off for the main street, I upshift and spin us effortlessly around the corner, then take another corner, peeling us away from the main streets. We’re going to stick to the roads the cops can’t follow.

  As I finish our quick weave out of the warehouse district, I ease us onto the ridgeline drive and sit back with a contented sigh. Lennox laughs to himself beside me. I glance toward him and return his grin.

  “I see you’ve picked up a few tricks,” he says.

  The heat returns to my face. “Learned from the best.”

  He settles back in his seat with a groan. “As I remember it, you threw a fit the first time I suggested you learn to drive stick.”

  “That’s me. Stubborn as shit.”

  I laugh, too, remembering how petulant I was. The rest of the crew had me convinced I did my best work in the garage, not on the circuit, and I didn’t want to look like I was defying their wishes. Cyrus wouldn’t have cared, I knew—he liked being behind the scenes, himself—but Jagger and his fragile ego couldn’t have stood it if I’d showed him up in the races. And Nash—well, Nash always liked being the best. If Lennox, who consistently ran the circuits a few seconds under him, taught me of all people how to race . . .

  I thought those days would last forever. Me and the boys. But Lennox shattered that peace. I guess I can’t blame Nash for hating him for that. For taking Troy from us. But I guess I’m just not cut out for lifelong grudges. I may be stubborn, but I’m soft at heart.

  And Lennox always had a way of making me melt. The way I pined after him . . . I shake my head. I used to think nothing could ever break me out of the spell he had me under, even if he didn’t know it. Then the crash happened. Yet here I am, dangerously close to falling back under that same spell.

  “Where are you staying?” I ask Lennox. I’ll take him home and get him cleaned up. It’s the least I can do for him. Then I really do have to leave the past buried. For the sake of the crew, and maybe for my own sanity.

  Because the more I’m around Lennox, the easier it is to forget what he did. To forget he’d ever left.

  “My grandma’s,” he says. “Take the exit for—”

  “For Colson Pass. I remember.” I swallow. I remember all too well.

  After about ten minutes, I pull into the drive of his grandmother’s white and yellow split-level house and kill the engine. Her cracked concrete driveway’s seen better days, and the white paint on her porch columns is starting to flake away in thick chunks, but the window boxes and flower beds are well-tended and someone’s set out a can of paint and brush, obviously ready to do some touch-ups. And by someone, I’m sure I mean Lennox.

  I slide under his arm to support him up the stairs to the front door. He’s got nearly half a foot on me, and for all his leanness, his lithe muscles are heavy, but we manage to make it to the door. “Red key,” he tells me, as I fumble with his key chain. The door handle sticks a little; I have to throw my weight against it to pop it open. Lennox smiles sadly. “Another project I need to do.”

  “Lenny?” an elderly woman’s voice echoes. “Lenny, is that you?”

  “Yeah, Grams, it’s me.” His voice is tight and strained, like he doesn’t want to give her even the slightest indication of his wounds. “Do you need anything?”

  “I dropped my nighttime pill. Can you help me?”

  I exchange a glance with Lennox. “You’re in no shape to be bending down. Let me do it. Go have a seat in the bathroom—”

  “No.” Lennox forces his weight off of me to stand up straight. “I can help her.”

  “Seriously?” I hiss. “You’re beat to shit, you may have cracked ribs—”

  “Please.” Lennox’s dark eyes pierce through me. But it’s the twist on his lips that kills me. That sly smirk he used to wear constantly, the one that spoke of countless untold secrets, has turned into something else entirely. A sad shadow of its former self. “Let me do this one thing.”

  I force myself to nod. “I’ll be in the bathroom. You’ve got hydrogen peroxide?”

  “And bandages aplenty.”

  He manages a slow shuffle toward his grandmother’s bedroom while I let myself into the bathroom. It hasn’t been updated since the house was built in the fifties; black and white ceramic tile line a cracked and stained tub and battered toilet. I dig around in the cabinets for something to clean and dress Lennox’s wounds. I’ve done this enough times for Jagger, after one of his countle
ss bar fights, or Nash and Uncle D, after whatever it is they get up to when I’m not around. But if Lennox’s ribs are cracked, there isn’t much I can do to help.

  I dab some hydrogen peroxide onto a cotton ball and listen to the sounds of Lennox and his grandmother talking. I can’t hear the words, only their tones—soothing, gentle, relaxed. I can’t even imagine how much it’s straining him to sound casual. Lennox has always loved his grams—long after his dad skipped out, long after his mom shacked up with her meth-head boyfriend, his grams was always there for him. I can only guess how hard it was for her while he was in prison.

  After a few minutes, he limps into the bathroom and takes a seat on the edge of the tub. “All right, nurse.” He offers me another sad smile. “Do your worst.”

  I dab at the cut on his forehead first, cleaning away the blood that’s already started to dry. It’s shallow, but long. “Ugh. You really ought to get a stitch in this.”

  “You say that like I have insurance.” Lennox grins.

  “I’m serious, though. You don’t want it getting infected, or leaving a permanent scar . . .”

  “Please. You think I don’t have worse scars than that?” He points to a nick on his chin, where a patch of stubble is missing. “Prison fight. Someone tried to smash my jaw with a metal pipe.” He pulls down his shirt collar. “And when that didn’t work, they tried to garrote me in my sleep.”

  I wince. “I’m so sorry.”

  “Oh, there’s more.” Lennox leans back from me and peels his thermal shirt up and over his head. I suck in my breath. He’s a fucking granite-chiseled Apollo underneath his shirt—firm pecs, a six-pack like it was factory-stamped, and then a flawless V of muscle disappearing beneath his waistband with a thin trail of dark hair. I flinch, my heart aching for Lennox and everything he’s been through.

  “See this?” Lennox points along the right side of his torso. “Look closer.”

  I lean in, my stomach doing a little flip. Part of me is thrilled to get a closer look at his fucking amazing physique, but another part of me feels sick for doing so. I’m not doing anything wrong by being here, I tell myself—not cosmically speaking. I’m patching up someone in need. Caring for an old friend. But I also know Nash wouldn’t see it that way. I feel guilty, even though I’m doing something nice, and the fact that I feel guilty only makes it worse.

  “Oh. I see it.” I start to reach out, to trace the fine trail of scars that race along his right side. The skin puckers at odd angles like he was burned. It stretches down along his lats and curves toward his abdomen, winding and twisting. “Wow, those look really painful. What—what happened?”

  Lennox exhales slowly. “Broken glass, hot twisted metal, burning gasoline . . .”

  “Oh.” Oh, god. My stomach churns again, but not with the same guilty butterfly feeling from before. He’s talking about the crash.

  The night he killed Troy.

  “Sorry. I just—I needed someone to see them, I guess.” Lennox shrugs back into his shirt with a pained grimace, like his shoulder is still stinging. “I don’t know if you remember, but they kept pushing back the hearing, waiting for me to heal up . . .”

  “Huh. That’s weird.” I tilt my head at him. “I would’ve thought the glass sliced you up on your left side. Since you were driving.”

  Lennox shrugs. “The passenger’s side bore the brunt of the hit. Flew over Troy and hit me, I guess.”

  He falls silent. I pick my gauze back up and patch up his forehead, then start cleaning the crusted blood away from his swollen left eye. “I’m surprised your attorney didn’t try to make something out of it, though.”

  Lennox snorts. “What attorney? I entered a guilty plea. Got some crappy public defender to go through the motions for me.”

  “But I’m sure the detectives—”

  “Elena. It’s over and done with.” Lennox clenches his jaw. “I just—I guess I just wanted you to know that I carry those scars with me, too. Inside and out. I may no longer be in prison, but I’ve got to spend the rest of my life making up for what I did. Making it right to Nash, and you, and everyone else I hurt.”

  “Well, I don’t think Nash is ready to let you.” I lower my hand; my thumb grazes against Lennox’s lower lip. His dark eyes flash up toward me, haunted. “He may never be.”

  Lennox’s breath passes over my fingers, sending a thrill up my spine. “No, probably not.”

  I want to keep my thumb where it is. Resting against him. I want to cup his face in my hands and tell him I forgive him. Standing like this, his soul exposed to me like this, feels far too much like that night. Like the promises we made.

  If I ever find a way to work an honest job, to be an honest man for you, if you ever need someone to love you, to care for you forever, then I’ll do it, Elena. I’ll come running.

  What about Amber? I’d asked. The crew?

  That’s the life I have to live right now, he’d replied. But it’s not the life I want.

  He clenched my hands in his. You are.

  I step away from him, my hand falling away. “Um . . .” I squeeze the washcloth in my hand. “I’m, uh . . . I’m gonna get some ice for your eye.”

  He laughs again. “Yeah. Sorry. I must look pretty awful.”

  No, Lennox, just insanely gorgeous. I flash him a smile. “Be right back.”

  My heart is hammering against my ribs as I leave the bathroom and head to the kitchen to wrap some ice in a towel. What the hell am I doing? I was wrong. This is a betrayal, of the highest order, and any reasonable girlfriend would know so. Nash hates Lennox, therefore I should hate Lennox, too. But as terrified as I am of what Nash might do or say if he knew I was taking care of his brother’s murderer—his ex-best friend, no less, whose wounds Nash inflicted—I think I’d only hate myself more if I stood by and did nothing to help. Lennox is a good man, deep down. He’s an old soul, full of compassion and conviction. He’s saved me from myself more times than I can count. He was the one to talk me down when it first fully hit me just what my uncle does to pay the bills.

  Nash has never aspired to be anything more than what he already is. Lennox, on the other hand, has always fought to be a better man. To find a way out of the dead-end life that, so far, has been his only option. And life just keeps slapping him right back down.

  I wrap the ice in the washcloth and head back to the bathroom. I’m doing the right thing—I’m sure of it. Caring for someone who’s been shown too little kindness. Nothing more, and nothing less. Nash is tomorrow’s problem.

  “Hey, El.” Lennox’s smile fills the cramped bathroom when I return, twisting at my heart. “By the way . . . I owe you one. For looking after a wreck like me.”

  I press the cloth to his eye, gently, and he hisses through his teeth, but doesn’t jerk away. “It’s the least I can do. Seriously.”

  “Yeah, well, not everyone would do that much.” He closes his other eye and relaxes against the ice pack. “And maybe they’re right. Maybe I’m not worth it anymore. Maybe some sins can never be absolved.”

  “No. You’re wrong.” I take a deep breath. “Listen . . . what you did was terrible. But I think you’ve paid the price for it. I’m not going to keep punishing you for it, again and again.”

  Lennox’s hand closes around mine; his thumb grazes the ridge of my knuckles. Heat blooms deep in my gut at his touch—the kind of touch I dreamed about, all those years. The kind of touch I thought his promise guaranteed. Before everything. Before he broke us all.

  “Thank you, El. Truly. That means the world to me.” He releases my hand. “But . . . it doesn’t change anything. What’s done is done.” He sighs. “Drazic wants me to keep my distance. So that’s what I have to do.”

  “You don’t have to stay away,” I whisper.

  “I do,” he repeats. “For my sake.” Then he looks at me with storm clouds in his eyes. “And for yours.”

  6

  Elena

  I wake up to the sounds of arguing. Great. I guess the crew i
s finally home. I roll out of bed, throw on some workout clothes, and twist my hair into a quick bun on top of my head. When the cab dropped me off last night, Drazic’s house was empty. Our two-story white clapboard house, wedged into the shadow of the mountain, usually has no less than three people drifting through it at all times. But the boys must have run off somewhere with Nash to try to calm him down, or to run a job, or god knows what else.

  Well, if their goal was to calm Nash down, it didn’t work.

  I pad downstairs, careful not to make the floorboards groan, not that they would hear me over their shouting anyway. It’s Drazic, Nash, and Jagger, stomping around the living room, exhaustion heavy in their tones. I doubt they’ve slept at all. I slip into the kitchen and flick the coffee maker on, then dig into the fridge for some eggs.

  “We are not messing with the McManuses,” Drazic says in the living room. “I just got done trying to smooth shit over with Mama McManus, and here you are trying to stir it up again.”

  “Like I give a shit,” Nash snaps back.

  I cringe. Drazic doesn’t take that tone from anyone, but especially not from Nash. I’m about at my limit with his attitude. I can’t even imagine how Uncle D is feeling.

  “No. Not just no, but hell no. We cannot bring that ten-ton shitstorm down on our heads. Do you know what they can do to us? What kind of connections they have?”

  “I’m not scared.” Nash huffs. “Not of Mama, not of Rory, not of any of their friends. I’ll fucking plow through every last one of them—”

  “C’mon, man—” Jagger cries.

  “—I will. I don’t care. Eye for an eye, man. I’m fucking owed.”

  Jagger flops onto a chair with a rattle of his wallet chain. “Grow the fuck up, man. I love you, but I’m not sticking my neck out. Not where the McManuses are concerned. They got the cops deep in their pockets, man. Their boys inside the prisons . . . They’re everywhere.”