Page 5 of Rear View

Xavier

“You drop this thing on us and I’m kickin’ your ass,” I told Alec from under the car’s hydraulic hoist.

Yara, one of our rally team mechanics, rubbed the back of her hand across her forehead, dragging a streak of dirt over her taupe-colored skin. “I second that.”

Snow drifted over the gray concrete floor of the garage from the open door, sticking to the old oil and rust stains there.

Alec smirked where he stood next to the control levers. “If I drop this, you two aren’t kicking anyone’s ass.”

I cracked a lopsided grin. “Dick,” I said, then twisted to get a better look at the underside. “Shit.”

Yara’s mouth thinned when she lowered her torque wrench and nodded. “Shit.”

Giving the car’s side skirt a tap, I stepped out from under it, and wiped my grease-covered palms on the legs of my coveralls.

Yara followed, then shoved Alec aside and took over the controls. The thing made a high-pitched whine as she lowered it to the ground.

Alec laughed, then rubbed his palms together. “So, what was it?”

“The crankshaft,” I said.

Me and Alec had been climbing the ranks. We’d started drawing the good sort of attention and our team was doing decent, but the crankshaft was the heart of the damn car. That kinda expense was a hard hit for us.

Yara adjusted the straight black ends of her ponytail. “I’ll have to get clearance from Earl.”

“Xavier, Alec,” Earl called from the door of his office across the shop like he’d been summoned. He waved a hand for us to join him.

Alec and I exchanged a look.

Earl Gonzalez was somewhere in his mid-fifties. He owned the circuit and the team. Shitty black dye job on his short hair and mustache aside, he was a good guy, but the team was also a business. The bottom line mattered.

I dodged the tool chests and tires that sat out from the walls, then aimed that way, Alec flanking my left. Slapping the team logo above Earl’s door, I crossed inside where he waited.

“Take a seat,” he said.

I folded myself into one of the two chairs across the desk from him. Sitting back, I bent one knee, and stretched the other out in front of me. My forearms covered the armrests, my hands hanging loose at the front.

The rollers on his desk drawer hummed when he pulled it open. Grabbing some papers, he separated them into two piles. His attention jumped from me to Alec before he leaned forward and slid them across the desk. One for each of us.

I chucked my chin up. “What’s this?”

He angled his seat back, the thing creaking like a bastard as it moved, then folded his beige-toned hands over his round stomach. “New contracts.”

Alec’s stare narrowed. “Something wrong with the other ones?”

Earl lifted an ankle across the other knee. “We needed an update.” His stare landed on me, and he tipped his head to the document to start reading.

My eyes narrowed when I scanned it before my chest expanded. “We’ve got a new sponsor.” Goddamn! Good. Fuckin’. Timing.

Alec grinned. “No way!”

My left hand clenched into a fist to keep my excitement on lockdown. “Who?”

“Prime Tools. They’re midlevel. Good bump up for the two of you.”

Angling forward, Alec flipped through the pages. “Anything different in here?”

“For the team as a whole, more cash, and a higher budget. For you two, bigger performance incentives. A publicist, the use of your faces and likeness with ad requirements, and a morality clause.”

Sounded decent. “What’s the morality clause cover?”

“Essentially that you won’t do anything to damage their business.”

“What constitutes damage?”

He scratched a clump of mud from his pant leg. “Anything that paints them in a negative light.”

Alec cocked his head. “And who decides what that is?”

“It’s determined on a case-by-case basis.”

I rolled the papers into a tube and tapped them over my leg, a small grease stain there streaking the white. “So, it’s at their discretion?”

He lifted a shoulder. “It’s how these people work. Until something happens, it’s hard to say what’s wrong or right.”

I crossed my arms over my chest, the pages crinkling as I dropped my brows low. I’d spent the first chunk of my life controlled by my asshole father, the second, by the Edgewater Juvenile Prison system. I wasn’t keen to sign off on that.

Earl’s dark brown eyes fixed on me when he raised his palms. “I know you’re not a fan of constraints.”

Shackles, more like.

“Just know that this deal’s a two-way street.

If they do anything to affect us and our brand, we can cut ties too.

” He leaned forward and set his elbows on his desk.

“We’re climbing fast, but still building our name.

This clause is par for the course at this stage.

If you want to keep rising, this is your reality now. ”

Alec bounced his leg, and he watched me, eager. Yeah, he was my co-driver, and his career hinged on this too, but he was good. As team lead, primary driver and the main face of everything, he’d let this be my call.

“They’re taking a risk on us,” Earl hedged. “But with the amount they’re investing, they’re betting on the two of you.”

I rapped a knuckle against my forearm. Knowing the rules covered the company too eased some of that pressure. I could deal with that. Bringing the contract in front of me again, I unraveled it. “Walk us through it.”

Alec thumped me on the back. “Fucking right, man!”

The next chunk of the day was spent with Earl detailing line after line, and by the end, Alec and I signed on the dotted line.

Handing the pages over, I asked, “What’s next?”

“Hook up the car and haul it over to McFadden’s, that body shop across from the U of E campus. They’re installing the new decals in the morning.”

“And then?”

His grin split into a wide-ass smile. “Next is the engine.”

My pulse kicked up. Mods meant speed, and speed meant wins. Bigger. Faster. Better.

I could sure as hell work with that.

* * *

Forty-five minutes later, I flicked the signal indicator on my Jeep, and it ticked while I waited to turn right, eying the rally car where it sat strapped to the trailer I was towing. The sun was high, and I flipped my visor down as it beat through the windshield.

Alec stared straight ahead, his hand latched on to the holy-shit handle for comfort. “You think your time away’ll be an issue?”

My stomach hardened. Last thing I wanted was to think about any of that shit, but the question was fair. “Can’t see how. My record was suspended the day I turned eighteen.” And the media wasn’t allowed to print the names of charged minors, so there’d be no searchable trail.

Traffic cleared and I cut the wheel, banking wide so the trailer cleared the sidewalk as I veered onto College Street. Snow crunched under the thick tread of my tires, and I kept my eyes wide, ’cause students liked to dart through traffic and the road conditions were garbage.

Alec gave a nod. “If that ever came out—”

“It won’t, man.” I’d taken the heat. All of it. Of the people that knew, most were legally compelled to shut their mouths, and the rest had incentive to. “Earl and Sean aren’t gonna talk, and neither are you. As long as everyone stays quiet, we’re golden.”

Alec nodded. The guy was good that way. He pushed when he needed to and backed the hell off when he should.

That part of my past had to stay buried, ’cause if anyone found out, the sponsors would ditch. My reputation would be shot. The WRC was a business and had a reputation they liked. They weren’t about ex-cons, so my rally career would be shot. All our careers would be.

His phone buzzed. He checked the screen and grinned.

There was only one person who brought that look to his face. “How’s Sheila?”

“She’s pumped for us.”

The two’d been together three years and he’d popped the question two months ago. Sheila was his family. I was happy for the guy. So damn happy, but I’d be lying if I didn’t say it stung. My family was gone. I was fuckin’ alone.

Ma was still around, but my old man’s drug-running family—the same ones he’d filtered half his embezzled cash to—were just as shady as him.

Before his trial had gone down, they’d come looking for Ma.

No doubt, they were still watching. Waiting.

So going to her wasn’t an option. Yeah, we talked on the phone but it wasn’t the same.

I wanted that family back. Someone to be proud of me. Just someone.

I’d had Penny, my ex. Things had been good for a while, until I’d figured out that I wanted her, and she just wanted everything that came with me.

Downshifting, I rolled to a stop at the red light. Every head at the intersection turned our way, eyein’ the rally car. I checked the side mirror, seeing the traffic behind was just as dangerous as the stuff in front.

Movement at my front right quarter panel had my attention snap up. I sat straighter, heart thumping overtime against my ribs.

Fuck me.

A girl stood there, glancing to her left as she searched the faces around her like she was waitin’ for someone.

She looked somewhere in her early twenties.

Had on a tan wool coat that stopped halfway down her legs.

Dark jeans, and brown boots that hit her knees.

Her clothes were simple and loose and hid her body.

Nothing special, but, Christ , she still pulled it off.

The wind cut from the east and whipped her long brown hair around, showing off the sleek line of her neck. My chest tightened. She was gorgeous. Like the “I forgot how to think, and who I fuckin’ was” kinda gorgeous.

Her face was flawless. Full lips, high cheekbones and eyes that caught the light like liquid copper. When they flicked my way, they pierced my goddamn soul.

There was a shout from nearby. My head jerked toward it. A delivery cyclist with thick winter tires was barreling past a clump of pissed-off pedestrians. The idiot snapped his handlebars to go around them and caught a patch of ice.