SPEED (A 44 Chapters Novel Book 2)

by BB Easton

  I gingerly tapped the gas pedal with one steel-covered toe and watched the RPM needle lift as a deafening roar filled the cabin. That was no 302. My mouth fell open, and my wide eyes cut to Harley’s. He reached over and lifted my heart-shaped sunglasses, placing them on top of my shaved head, and smiled.

  “So? Did you drive all the way out here for nothing?” he asked, cocking his head to one side.

  I shook my head with my mouth still agape, unable to form a witty retort. My cool, completely shattered.

  “Now, this time”—Harley gestured toward the pedals—“give it just a little gas, and hold it steady as you ease off the clutch.”

  I shook my head again.

  “You don’t want to drive it?” Harley furrowed his brow.

  More head shaking.

  “Lady, shut your door, put your hands on the wheel, and get your foot off that clutch.”

  Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God, oh my God…

  How was I supposed to operate a fucking jet on wheels when I could barely operate my own limbs at that moment?

  I awkwardly pulled my door shut and grabbed the wheel at ten and two—just like I had at the Department of Motor Vehicles during my driving test—and gave her a little gas. As the roar built, I swallowed hard, squared my shoulders, and eased off the clutch.

  Please don’t stall out. Please don’t stall out. Please don’t—

  The car shot off like a rocket, slamming my head back into the headrest. I let off the gas to slow down, but evidently that was the wrong thing to do because the car started jerking and hopping like the fucking wild stallion it was named after.

  “More gas!” Harley yelled.

  I slammed my foot back on the gas, much harder than I’d intended, and the Boss raged full speed ahead into the first turn on the oval street.

  “Shift!”

  Fuck.

  I shifted into second, and it actually wasn’t hard. That part felt familiar.

  “Now, ease off the gas a little as you turn.”

  I did it and let out a sigh of relief when the car didn’t do that hopping thing again.

  “That’s it. Now, once you get the hang of it, you can get up to third gear on the straights. Then, just pop it into neutral during the turns, tap the brake, and shift back into second.”

  Through my adrenaline-fogged ears, it all sounded like Greek, but Harley coached me through every turn.

  After about ten laps, I was doing it on my own, and I had finally released my death grip on the steering wheel enough to be able to feel my fingers again. After fifteen laps, I was actually getting the hang of it. And after twenty laps, I felt like I needed a post-sex cigarette.

  I pulled to a stop next to the poor-man’s version of the beast I’d just tamed and…stalled the fuck out.

  “Oh my God!” I screamed, clamping a hand over my mouth. “I’m so sorry!”

  I expected Harley to bite my head off, but instead he just laughed and said, “You know, you should really try turning the key to the left sometime. That works too.”

  I loved him. That was it. I loved him.

  I locked eyes with the baby-faced bad boy and was surprised to discover that I didn’t want to look away. Holding Knight’s gaze had always felt like staring into the eyes of a zombie. His irises were so pale. So cold. Focused and unflinching. Murderous and remorseless. Harley’s eyes, on the other hand, were bright. Playful. Alive. When he looked at me, I didn’t feel like I was being studied or psychoanalyzed. I felt like I was sharing an inside joke with a friend.

  As I drank in his messy dirty-blond hair, his mischievous blue eyes, his pouty, pierced lip, his aura of fun, I realized that Harley James had just become my favorite person on the planet. So what if I’d only known him for six hours? Harley James was going to be my new BFF.

  Hopefully, with benefits.

  The inside of a black car with a black interior parked in the full sun is no place to try to get to know someone in the middle of summer. Harley cranked up the AC to full blast, but it simply couldn’t compete with the heat coming off that big block engine, the Georgia sun, and my raging hormones. He asked if I wanted to go somewhere cooler to hang out, maybe grab dinner, and at the mention of food my stomach growled about as loud as his 429 cubic-inch engine.

  I hadn’t eaten yet that day, and it was already almost seven o’clock. I’d been hospitalized for anorexia the month before when I fainted in the delivery room after Juliet gave birth to Romeo, and it had been a wake-up call. A wake-up call that had lasted all of about two days.

  I knew I needed to eat. I just didn’t want to. Ever. That acidic churning in my stomach made me feel so accomplished. So in control. And it was also a welcome distraction to the emotional pain I’d been drowning in after losing almost everyone I cared about within the span of just a few weeks.

  But being near Harley was an even better distraction—one that I was willing to eat a dozen cronuts injected with cheesecake, dipped in bacon grease, and rolled in powdered calories to prolong.

  Harley laughed at my gastrointestinal theatrics and told me to follow him to the Waffle House up the street.

  Fucking Waffle House.

  My first date with Knight had been at the Waffle House, too. Goddamn, I had a type.

  I was heartbroken to have to turn the keys to that beautiful beast back over to Harley, but driving my own car felt about a million times easier after wrestling the Boss for twenty minutes. I didn’t even stall out when I parked next to Harley at the diner. He noticed and did a slow clap as I got out of the car.

  “You tried the key trick that time, huh?” Harley teased, lighting a cigarette as he walked over to me.

  “Yeah, but I like my way better,” I said, fishing around in my cavernous bag for my own smokes. “It’s much more dramatic.”

  Harley stopped right in front of me, his shadow blocking out the abusive sun, and placed the butt of his cigarette within an inch of my mouth. The cigarette that had just been in his mouth. My gaze jumped from my purse to Harley’s oil-stained fingers to the flames and hot rods on his forearm to his eyes, which were hooded yet challenging. Harley’s offering felt intimate, like foreplay. He wanted to see how I felt about swapping saliva with him. Well, I felt just great about it, and I let him know by wrapping my lips around the filter, biting down, and snatching the entire thing out of his hand.

  I grinned at him with the cigarette still between my teeth and said, “Thanks.”

  Harley smiled in approval. “Anytime.”

  There was a promise in his reply, and it made my pussy clench.

  He shook another cigarette out for himself and escorted me into the diner. Waffle House is a seat-yourself kind of establishment, and Harley chose to sit in a booth by the window. I’m pretty sure it was just so that he could keep an eye on the Boss. If I drove a hundred-thousand-dollar car in this part of town, I’d probably want to keep an eye on it too.

  “So, what was that place?” I asked, gesturing with my thumb in the direction we’d just come from.

  “The track?” Harley slid a plastic ashtray into the center of the table and ashed into it. “It was gonna be a neighborhood, but the developer stopped construction after the roads were built. Technically, all that land is still private property, but since the dude who owns it skipped town, there’s nobody around to report us for trespassing. The cops can’t bust anybody for street racing on it.”

  “So people race there?”

  “Fuck yeah. Almost every weekend.” Harley looked at me as if he were considering something, then bit the corner of his mouth and cocked his head to one side. Pointing two fingers at me, his cigarette pinched between them, Harley said, “You’re gonna race there too.”

  I snorted and shook my head. “Fuuuuuck no I’m not,” I said, holding my hands up in the universal sign for fuck no. “I literally just got my license.”

  I cringed inwardly at my admission as a bedraggled waitress yelled from behind the counter that she’d be with us in a minute. Harley ignore
d her.

  “That’s why you’re gonna win,” he said with a smug smile. “Nobody’s gonna bet on a little girl in a factory-model five-oh.”

  Little girl.

  His words stung. I wasn’t a little girl. I mean, I was, but I didn’t want him to see me that way.

  “You bring your car to my shop,” he continued, “and I bet I can get that thing up to four hundred horsepower in no time. Not that you’ll even need it. Five-ohs have some serious fucking torque.” Harley gestured out the window toward our matching black Mustangs. “You could make a shitload of money with that thing, lady.”

  “Then you race it,” I said, stamping out my cigarette.

  “Can’t,” Harley said, shrugging his wide shoulders. “Nobody’ll bet against me anymore. If I don’t start throwing some races soon, I’m gonna have to find a new track to work.”

  “Is that how you can afford to drive such a badass car? Racing?” The second the question was out of my mouth, I squeezed my eyes shut in regret. Shit. That was so none of my business.

  Harley pursed his pretty mouth. “Sure,” he finally answered. “We’ll go with that.”

  The waitress barreled over and took our order without even trying to hide her annoyance at our presence. Harley and I each asked for the same thing—their famous greasy hash browns and coffee. I fucking hated coffee, but that’s what grownups drink. Right?

  Grown-ups = coffee

  Little girls ≠coffee

  Therefore, BB + coffee = grown-up

  As I doctored my mug of steaming black filth with at least five containers of creamer, all the ice from my glass of water, and at least fourteen packets of sugar, I looked up and noticed Harley smirking at me from behind his mug.

  “What?” I snapped, a little too self-conscious about my lack of coffee skills.

  “Nothing,” he said, taking a sip of what looked like squid ink.

  “Are you drinking that shit black?” I asked.

  Harley shrugged. “You get used to it, workin’ at the shop. Those assholes never have cream or sugar.”

  Jesus. Harley might be even older than I thought.

  That face made him look eighteen, but his faded tattoos, grease-stained hands, broad shoulders, laid-back style, expensive-ass car, and super-mature coffee preferences screamed otherwise.

  “How old are you?” I blurted out, stirring my Frankendrink for the millionth time.

  “Twenty-one,” Harley said, watching me with amusement as he took another sip of his putrid black beverage.

  I almost choked.

  Twenty-one?

  Harley James was officially fucking perfect.

  “If you’re twenty-one”—I coughed—“then why the fuck are we drinking coffee?”

  Harley laughed as he reached for his wallet. “That’s an excellent fuckin’ question, lady.” He stood up and tossed a few bills on the table, then extended a big, blackened hand in my direction. “I got some beer back at the house. You wanna get outta here?”

  The second my hand slipped into Harley’s, every muscle in my body tensed in anticipation. I felt like a motor that had just been turned on—vibrating, idling, just waiting for Harley to give me a green light. My gaze landed on the shiny silver hoop barely containing his full bottom lip as he pulled me out of the booth, and I nodded. It didn’t even matter what the question had been. If Harley was doing the asking, my answer was going to be yes.

  Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.

  As I followed my dream car and my dream guy down a dozen twisty, tree-lined back roads to God knows where, the reality of my situation began to settle in. Not only was I going home with a man—like, a grown-ass man, whom I’d just met that day—but I was doing it less than a month after saying good-bye to my first love. It felt wrong. It felt slutty and shitty and wrong.

  But Knight left, my ever-present sense of positivity chimed in, dousing my guilt with cold water. He broke your heart, hollowed it out, used it as an ashtray, and then he fucking left. He said he wanted you to find somebody better, right? Well, here he is. What could be better than a tattooed hottie who makes you smile, drives a Boss 429, and is old enough to buy alcohol? I’ll tell you what. A tattooed hottie who makes you smile, drives a Boss 429, is old enough to buy alcohol, and has his own place.

  As soon as my persuasive, optimistic side won me over, I followed the Boss into the gravel driveway of an adorable little bungalow on the outskirts of Atlanta. The drive sloped down a hill next to the house and out to a freestanding shed at the back of the property. Harley parked inside the weathered tin structure, and I parked in a patch of overgrown grass next to it—concentrating really hard on not taking my foot off the clutch until after I shut off the ignition.

  I glanced at my reflection in the rearview mirror, fluffed my bangs, took a deep breath, and stepped into the glow of the setting sun.

  I heard a loud clang as Harley pulled the garage’s sliding metal door closed and secured it with a padlock. He looked at me and smiled. The sunlight had turned orange and was coming in sideways, illuminating all the tiny specks of pollen and dandelion fuzz floating in the air between us.

  “This is it,” he said, gesturing around the unkempt yard with an unlit cigarette between two fingers.

  “I love it,” I replied. It reminded me of my house. Small. Secluded. Overgrown. Wild.

  Harley lit his cigarette and offered it to me again. I accepted it with my hand instead of my teeth that time, suddenly feeling shy in the face of potential fuckery. I was at his house. I mean, I wanted to be at his house, but now, I was actually at his house. Where his bed was. Where he had sex with silly little girls who followed him home pretending to just want beer.

  We walked together through the knee-high grass, up the wooden back steps, across the weathered porch, through the back door, and into what will forever hold the title of Nastiest Bachelor Pad I’ve Ever Seen in My Entire Fucking Life.

  We entered through the kitchen, which was all mustard-colored 1950s era appliances, ripped linoleum, dirty dishes, empty beer cans, dented aluminum furniture, exposed light bulbs, and random holes in the Sheetrock, each about the size of a human head. I stood with my mouth hanging open as Harley headed straight for the fridge.

  Pulling out two cans of Natural Ice, Harley handed one to me and said, “Sorry the place is a fuckin’ mess. My brother and his redneck friends had a party a few nights ago and shit got rowdy.”

  I laughed, looking around at the destruction. “Shit got rowdy, huh?”

  “The living room is still in one piece—sort of.” Harley led me through the entryway into a very sparsely furnished living room.

  In the center was a well-worn leather sectional and coffee table—definite thrift store finds—facing a big screen TV that had so many wires, controllers, game systems, DVD players, speakers, and stereo head units sprouting from it that it looked like an electronic octopus. The only decor to be seen was a collection of neon beer signs hanging on the left wall, their plugs all jammed into a single power strip on the floor.

  As I walked toward the wall of neon, Harley flipped a switch on the other side of the room, almost blinding me.

  “Jesus!” I cried, shielding my eyes from the multicolored assault. “Where did you get all these?”

  “I stole ’em from the liquor store I used to work at,” Harley said without a shred of shame. “Vendors used to send ’em to us all the time, but sometimes, they got damaged and had to be thrown away, you know?”

  “Oh, I know,” I said, turning away from the wall of wattage to face him. “That shit happens all the time at Pier One. Funny how the damaged stuff seems to wind up behind the dumpster instead of in the dumpster.” I smiled.

  “You work at Pier One?” Harley asked, flopping onto the sectional and downing about half of his beer in one gulp.

  “Yeah,” I said, taking a sip of mine as I walked around the couch to where he was sitting. “Until they fire me. I’m pretty much the worst employee ever. I just show up and rearrange all their dis
plays. I don’t even ring people up because one of the managers said my shaved head might ‘intimidate’ the customers.” I rolled my eyes and used finger quotes around the word intimidate. I was so not intimidating.

  “I like your hair,” Harley said with a smile. “It’s fuckin’ badass.”

  Badass?

  No.

  What?

  Did Harley James just call me a badass?

  I sat on the couch next to him and just stared at his sweet puppy-dog face for a second. Who the fuck was this guy? And where had he been all my life? He was so…nice. And hot. And fun. And funny. Harley might have looked bad, bad, bad with those tattoos and muscles and lip ring that I just wanted to bite, but he was a good guy. I could tell.

  And when his brother walked in the back door, carrying a big flat box and a grocery bag, I found out that Harley might just be too good to be true.

  “Motherfucker, you owe me thirty bucks!” the younger James brother yelled into the living room as he set everything down on the wobbly kitchen table.

  Harley chuckled. “That’s my little brother, Davidson.”

  “Davidson?” I whispered back, trying to suppress my laughter. “Your mom named you guys Harley and Davidson?”

  The redneck version of Harley grabbed a beer out of the fridge and leaned against the entryway between the kitchen and living room. “Technically, we’re the same age, and you know I go by Dave, asshole.”

  “Are you twins?” I asked, glancing quickly back and forth between them.

  If they were, they weren’t identical. Both cute. Both had the same mischievous blue eyes, but Dave had short brown hair stuffed under a baseball cap with a fishing hook stuck in the bill, and he wasn’t quite as tall.

  “Irish twins,” Dave said. “I’m ten months younger.”

  “It took you fuckin’ long enough,” Harley said, standing up. “We’re starvin’.” Holding his hand out to me, Harley added, “I called Davidson here when we left Waffle House and told him to pick some stuff up for us on his way home from work.” Turning his head toward the kitchen, he raised his voice. “Now he’s being a little bitch about it.”