SPEED (A 44 Chapters Novel Book 2)

by BB Easton

  And with that, Harley dropped to one knee in the middle of his disgusting bachelor-pad bathroom, pulled the ring he’d extorted from a crooked pawnshop owner out of his pocket, smirked at me with a face swollen from my ex-boyfriend’s fist, and asked me to marry him. Again.

  My heart swelled.

  I didn’t care how bad he was. Bad felt a hell of a lot better than broken.

  September 1998

  Goddamn, this bitch is boring.

  Whose idea was it to take Calculus in the afternoon?

  Oh, yeah. Mine.

  Ugh.

  Juliet’s not even pretending to be awake.

  Goth Girl’s painting her fucking nails.

  Forty-two more minutes of this shit?

  What did I used to do when I was bored in class?

  I wrote notes! Yes! Duh!

  Completely abandoning the empty page of notes I was supposed to be taking, I flipped to the next blank page in my notebook and stared.

  And stared.

  And stared.

  Who the fuck should I write to? My only two school friends were sitting on either side of me, and writing Harley a note just felt stupid. He was a full-grown man. What was I going to do, hand it to him at his house?

  Who did I used to write to?

  Oh. Right.

  Him.

  It had been almost a month since he, since we, since whatever happened at Peg’s house happened. I hadn’t spoken to him since.

  At first, I’d used my anger as an excuse. But after the first few days, remorse started to settle in. Knight hadn’t tried to contact me at all even though he was in town for another week after that encounter. An encounter where I’d rejected him, made him feel like shit, and then run straight into the arms of another man—the same man who’d attacked him the day before while I stood by and did nothing. Knight was just a few weeks away from heading into a war zone, and knowing him, there was a good chance he might not make it home. I didn’t want what had gone down at Peg’s house to be our last interaction.

  Knight was also just a few days away from turning nineteen. The thought made me almost as sad as the idea of him going off to war. The year before I’d stolen him a chicken sandwich from the school cafeteria on his birthday, and I’ll never forget the look on his face. It was heartbreaking. It was as if he’d never received a gift in his fucking life. His mom didn’t acknowledge the day she’d given birth to him, and his dad didn’t even acknowledge his existence. Why should he expect anyone else to give a shit? If I hadn’t peeked at his driver’s license, I wouldn’t have even known it was his birthday at all.

  That settled it. I was writing Knight a letter. It would give me a little closure before he went to Iraq, and Knight would know that somebody at least remembered his birthday. And I would keep it totally platonic so that I didn’t feel like the world’s shittiest girlfriend. Again.

  No. Big. Deal.

  It was also totally normal that I’d been carrying around two scraps of mud-stained paper in my wallet that I maybe kind of saved after ripping Knight’s letter up and that maybe kind of spelled out his new address when I taped them back together. Not weird at all.

  Pvt. Ronald McKnight

  Alpha Co. Class 10-98 4th Plt.

  ITB BN. SOI MCB

  PSC Box 20166

  Camp Lejeune, NC 28542-0166

  September 14, 1998

  Dear Knight,

  How is infantry camp? Or training? Or school? Or wherever you are? Better than boot camp, I hope. You never hear about infantry camp, so it must not be as bad.

  East Atlanta College is waaaaay better than Peach State High. I’m so happy I transferred. There’s no fucking drama here. Everybody just shows up, goes to class, and then goes the fuck home.

  I met a girl named Victoria here who is cool as shit. She wants to go by VV, but I just call her Goth Girl. Never to her face though. She kinda looks like she might cast a spell on me if I piss her off, but so far, she’s been nice-ish. She and Juliet and I have all the same classes.

  I’m in Calculus right now, and it fucking blows. This teacher is the worst. I basically have to teach myself everything when I get home because I can’t concentrate on a word she says.

  She literally just said, “A differential equation with no partial derivatives is an ordinary differential equation while the derivative with respect to a single variable is considered a partial derivative.”

  That shit just came out of her mouth, Knight. What the fuck does that even mean?

  At least my Psychology class is amazing. I don’t think I told you, but when you left, I decided that I wanted to become a psychologist. Not to get too heavy or anything, but I wish I could have helped you more. I don’t know what all happened to you, and you don’t ever have to tell me, but I wish you’d had somebody to talk to about it. Somebody trained to help you work through it. It would be cool if I could at least do that for other kids. Maybe even you one day, if you ever decide you want to talk.

  Whatever. Sorry. That’s not why I’m writing you. I really just wanted to say…

  HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!!

  I know you probably thought you could run back to North Carolina and avoid your birthday altogether, but I couldn’t let you get away with that. Besides, I heard that in boot camp you’re not allowed to have junk food. I don’t know how it is in infantry camp (or wherever you are), but just in case, I’m gonna hit up the vending machine for you after class. If I recall correctly, you like everything that ends in -tos. I’m pretty sure they don’t have Tostitos, and there’s no guarantee on the Fritos, but I can probably scrounge up some Cheetos and Doritos no problem.

  Well, my class is almost over, so I’d better go. I really hope you have a good birthday. Stay safe, okay?

  Love,

  BB

  SEPTEMBER 18, 1998

  YOU FUCKING BITCH,

  I CAN’T FUCKING BELIEVE YOU SENT ME A BIRTHDAY PRESENT. ALL THE GUYS FOUND OUT AND SANG ME MOTHERFUCKING “HAPPY BIRTHDAY” BEFORE LIGHTS OUT LAST NIGHT. I WANTED TO THROAT-PUNCH EVERY ONE OF THOSE ASSHOLES.

  THANKS FOR THE CHEETOS AND DORITOS THOUGH. THE FOOD HERE IS SHIT.

  I’M GLAD YOU’RE LIKING SCHOOL. INFANTRY SCHOOL IS HEAVY ON THE INFANTRY AND LIGHT ON THE SCHOOL. WE TAKE SOME CLASSES, BUT MOSTLY WE’RE OUTSIDE HIKING WITH HEAVY-ASS PACKS ON AND SHOOTING SHIT ALL GODDAMN DAY. I LIKE IT THOUGH. FOR ONCE IN MY LIFE, I’M JUST LIKE EVERYBODY ELSE. EVERY ASSHOLE HERE HAS A SHAVED HEAD, ANGER ISSUES, WEARS COMBAT BOOTS, AND JUST WANTS TO FUCK SHIT UP. IT MAKES ME FEEL LIKE MAYBE I MADE THE RIGHT DECISION AFTER ALL.

  IT’S TAKEN ME A WHILE TO GET TO THIS POINT THOUGH. HONESTLY, I THINK IT’S BECAUSE I’VE BEEN AWAY FROM YOU. EVERY TIME I SEE YOU I FEEL LIKE I’VE MADE THE BIGGEST MISTAKE OF MY LIFE. BUT SEEING YOU WITH HIM, SEEING YOU CHOOSE HIM, THAT SHIT FUCKING KILLED ME. I’LL NEVER FORGET THE WAY YOU LOOKED, JUST STANDING THERE, STARING AT ME WITH THOSE BIG, DUMB GREEN EYES, WHILE YOUR NEW FUCK BUDDY TRIED TO BEAT MY ASS. IT’S LIKE YOU WEREN’T EVEN THERE.

  YOU WERE THE SAME WAY AT PEG’S HOUSE. JUST FUCKING GONE. THE BB I KNOW CAN’T SIT STILL OR SHUT THE FUCK UP FOR FIVE SECONDS. I GET THAT YOU’RE UPSET WITH ME, BUT THERE’S SOMETHING ELSE GOING ON. IF I FIND OUT HE’S GOT YOU ON DRUGS OR SOME SHIT, I SWEAR TO GOD, I WILL FUCKING FIND HIM AND I WILL FUCKING GOUGE HIS EYEBALLS OUT WITH MY THUMBS AND PISS INTO HIS FUCKING SKULL.

  YOU ARE SO MUCH FUCKING BETTER THAN HIM. YOU HAVE NO IDEA WHAT YOU’RE WORTH, PUNK. NO FUCKING CLUE. YOU WERE TOO GOOD FOR ME, AND YOU’RE DAMN SURE TOO GOOD FOR THAT PIECE OF SHIT. YOU CAN’T TRUST HIM. HARLEY DOESN’T FUCKING CARE ABOUT YOU. I KNOW YOU THINK HE DOES, BUT HE ONLY CARES ABOUT WHAT YOU CAN DO FOR HIM. ALL THOSE STREET KIDS ARE THE SAME. THEY’RE FUCKING CON ARTISTS. HARLEY WILL FUCK YOU OVER THE SECOND HE GETS A CHANCE, JUST WATCH. ONCE A GUTTER PUNK, ALWAYS A GUTTER PUNK.

  SEE? THIS IS EXACTLY WHY IT’S BETTER WHEN I DON’T FUCKING TALK TO YOU. BECAUSE NOW I WANT TO PUT MY FUCKING FIST THROUGH A DOOR OR GO AWOL JUST SO THAT I CAN COME BACK DOWN THERE AND PUT MY FIST THR
OUGH HIS FUCKING FACE AGAIN. HARLEY SHOULDN’T BE ALLOWED TO BREATHE THE SAME AIR AS YOU, LET ALONE STICK HIS DICK IN YOU. HE’S FUCKING GUTTER SLIME.

  IF YOU’RE GOING TO FUCK SOMEONE WHO DOESN’T DESERVE YOU, IT SHOULD BE ME. ME, NOT THAT PIECE OF SHIT. I FUCKING LOVE YOU. I’D FUCKING KILL FOR YOU. AND, WHETHER YOU WANT TO ADMIT IT OR NOT, YOU STILL LOVE ME TOO.

  THAT BIRTHDAY LETTER FUCKING PROVED IT.

  KNIGHT

  October 1998

  For somebody who hates cold weather, I fucking love the smell of fall.

  Around here, fall smells like burning leaves. Georgia is basically one big forest with streets, homes, and businesses carved out of it, so when the trees begin to shed their summer foliage, the entire state finds itself knee-deep in crisp, crinkly russets and golds. There aren’t enough places on earth to hide that many leaves, so every autumn, people take to their barrels and fire pits, filling the sky with the sweet-smelling souls of the leaves they’d been buried under.

  On that particular October night, it smelled like the entire world was on fire. I had a nose full of cocaine and a pocketful of hundred-dollar bills as I flew down the dark, twisty back roads that led from the track to Harley’s house. My windows were down. My heater was on full blast. And my steel-toed boot couldn’t press the accelerator hard enough.

  It had been a good night. Harley had convinced a customer at work—a white dude with a gold grill who was getting gold rims put on his Mitsubishi Eclipse—that he would slay at the track. Maybe even make enough to pay for those twenty-twos he’d just bought. By the end of the night, Gold Grill Guy and his buddies had lost enough money to buy each of us a set. One of them had even raced Harley. Harley! In the Boss! Fucking dumbasses had balls bigger than their brains.

  Harley had suggested that Gold Grill Guy race me, which, of course, got his panties all twisted. Fucker acted like it was an insult to drive on the same track as me, let alone at the same time as me. I’d only wanted to put five hundred bucks on it, but Harley goaded him into seeing my five hundred and doubling it.

  I believe his exact words were, “You afraid of a little girl in a five-oh, bro?”

  It didn’t bother me when Harley referred to me as a little girl anymore. He only said it at the track when he was trying to make me seem like an easy mark. As soon as the races were over, I was back to being lady. Or woman. Nicknames I didn’t deserve but was trying desperately to live up to.

  I’d beaten Gold Grill Guy by at least two car lengths. Honestly, I’d expected him to just keep on going—the dude had flight risk written all over him—but Harley’d had Bubba and JR block the exit road with their trucks during the race. That motherfucker was always one step ahead. Of everybody.

  Even me.

  I knew I wasn’t talented. I never expected to win any of the races Harley set me up on, but he knew what he was doing. He’d trained me to drive exactly the way he would on that particular track. He’d done God knows what to my car to make it perform on that particular track. On a straightaway, I would lose. On a bigger NASCAR-style oval, I would lose. But on a track where torque and grip were everything, horsepower was secondary, and turbochargers got you nowhere, me and my unassuming little hatchback were Harley’s perfect secret weapon.

  “Harley doesn’t fucking care about you. I know you think he does, but he only cares about what you can do for him.”

  Fuck you, Knight. You’re just jealous.

  Knight’s voice would still creep into my consciousness and hijack my thoughts sometimes, but I’d gotten better at telling it to shut the fuck up.

  The flashbacks didn’t paralyze me the way they once had anymore either. They were simply memories. Intrusions. Besides, I knew that Harley wasn’t using me. We were a team. Hell, we were BB and fucking Clyde.

  As I inhaled another lungful of fall, my sinuses tingled, and my throat tasted like aspirin—remnants of the line I’d snorted off of Bubba’s tailgate before we left the track. I’d done coke before but never before driving. It made the whole experience so much better. The smells, the deep rumble of the engine, the vibrations, the speed. I felt like I was going to lift right off the pavement and fly. I stuck my arm out the open window, like the wing of an airplane, cranked up the stereo, and sang my heart out to Blondie’s “Heart of Glass” while I soared through the smoke-scented night.

  When I finally landed at Harley’s house, I couldn’t feel my hand or my face, but I didn’t care. I had more pressing needs.

  Even though I’d been driving at least twenty over the speed limit, Harley had still beaten me home. I bounced up the steps to the back door and let myself in—no longer bothering with formalities where Harley was concerned—and found him and Dave standing side by side with their backs toward me, hovering over their beige Formica kitchen counter.

  I was just about to ask what they were doing when I saw Dave lean over and heard a loud snorting sound. Then he stood up and rubbed his nose.

  “Fuuuck, that’s some good shit.”

  Turning toward me with a huge smile, Harley waved me over. A flash of light glinted off the razor blade between his index and middle finger. “C’mere, woman. We’re celebratin’.”

  Dave opened his eyes and focused on me. “I heard you kicked some ass at the track tonight, B. Get in here!” Taking a step toward me, Dave grabbed me by the back of the neck and gave me a fucking noogie.

  Asshole.

  He laughed hysterically as I pushed him off and tucked myself into Harley’s side.

  Harley chuckled and wrapped his free arm around me as he took the razor blade and divided a tiny pile of white powder into two skinny lines right on the countertop. He set down the blade, snatched a rolled-up hundred-dollar bill out of Dave’s hand, then offered it to me. “Ladies first,” he said with a grin.

  I accepted the improvised straw without hesitation. Coke was fun—it was like snorting pure enthusiasm—but it wore off after about thirty minutes and always left me wanting more. Good thing I was too poor to buy it on my own. I could totally see how people got addicted to that shit.

  While Harley and I inhaled our lines, Dave dug around in their cabinets until he found a bottle of Cuervo Gold. “Dude, dude, dude,” he said, holding up the bottle and practically running in place. “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”

  Harley’s eyes flicked to mine, glowing with the same bright blue mania as his brother’s. “Fuck yeah, I am.”

  My head swiveled back and forth from one smirk to the other. “What? What’s going on? Tell me. Are we doing shots? Because if we’re doing shots I’m gonna need a chaser. And you can’t let me do more than, like, three, or I’ll puke. I’ve never done tequila shots though. Only Southern Comfort. That shit burns like hell. Wait, why do you need salt? Wait. Oh my God, is that a lime? You guys have a fruit in your house? No fucking way!”

  I burst out laughing—mostly out of embarrassment over how quickly I was talking—as Dave chopped that lime up faster than Edward Scissorhands. While I was busy praying he didn’t lose a finger and trying to keep my rambling mouth shut, Harley was behind me, unzipping my jacket. Once it was off, he tossed it onto their new kitchen table, then began kissing and suckling his way down my neck. My head rolled back onto his shoulder just as his tongue dipped into the hollow of my collarbone.

  “You don’t have to take any shots if you don’t want to, lady.” Harley’s voice rumbling against my clavicle made other parts of me jealous. “All you have to do is stand there and look pretty.”

  Just as I opened my mouth to ask what he meant, Harley turned my body toward his and placed a wedge of lime between my teeth. Then he smiled. Fuck, he was cute. I just stood there with that damn hunk of lime in my mouth and stared at him—wishing it were his lip ring between my teeth—as he dusted my wet, protruding collarbone with salt. Then, accepting a miniature glass of amber liquid from his brother, Harley held it up in a tiny cheers motion before leaning forward and licking the salt from my skin. Stifling a moan, I bit down on the lime between my teet
h a little harder. I tasted a burst of tart juice as Harley stood and knocked back his drink. Slamming his empty glass on the counter, Harley pinned me with a wild-eyed stare and came at me with teeth bared, clamping down on the other half of the lime in my mouth. Fiery, salty lips closed around my own as he sucked the juice that would have run down my chin.

  As soon as Harley yanked the spent lime rind out of my mouth with his teeth and spit it into the sink next to us, Dave replaced it with a fresh one. I looked into his eyes—as blue and crazed as Harley’s but hooded by darker lashes and eyebrows—and held my breath. Dave leaned forward, breaking our eye contact, and slid his tongue slowly across my collarbone.

  I gasped at the contact—somehow managing to keep the lime in my mouth—and looked to Harley. His jaw was flexed, his nostrils flared, and his eyes were narrowed to slits. Was he jealous? Harley? I held his gaze and tilted my head, offering Dave better access as he salted my wet skin.

  Harley’s chest rose and fell in fury. He was pissed. And I fucking loved it.

  As much as my body wanted to be the jelly in a Harley-Davidson sandwich, my heart was begging for Harley to stake his claim. I didn’t want to be shared. Not really.

  I wanted to be cherished.

  I smirked at Harley around the lime in my mouth as his brother tucked his face into my neck and sucked the salt from my skin.

  As soon as he pulled away and tipped his shot glass up, Harley growled, “Fuck this,” and yanked me away from his brother by my upper arm. Grabbing the bottle of tequila in his other hand, Harley dragged me out of the kitchen.