Lennox (2 page)

“It’s just not right.” He works his jaw back and
forth. “Troy should’ve never gotten into that fucking car
with Lennox.”

I pull him into my arms and let him rest his head against my chest.
“I’m so sorry, baby. I’m so sorry.”

“I mean, the least Lennox could’ve done was kill himself
instead of his passenger.” He shakes with a dry laugh. “Such
a fucking waste.”

I rub Nash’s back. I can hardly believe it’s been three
years now. Seems like just yesterday, Troy was goofing off with the
rest of the crew, hot-shotting it around hairpin turns like he didn’t
fear God, the Devil, or anyone in between.

And Lennox—God. Three years since Lennox was there, the steady,
calm voice in our drivers’ ears, guiding them right past the
competition. Lennox was my rock. My shoulder to cry on when I was
just a dumb kid, lonely and awkward and completely clueless as to why
nobody in my high school wanted anything to do with me.

Lennox cared, though. Lennox always wanted to hear what I had to say.
Whether I was running my motormouth about cars or the dipshit high
school boys or even my uncle, he never made me feel like a kid. He
always acted like I mattered.

And then one night, when the rest of the crew was on a job, and
Lennox stayed behind—

I swallow audibly. I’ve tried so hard to lock that night away.
After Lennox got Troy killed. After I hooked up with Nash. But I
guess no one and nothing stays locked up for good.

I cup Nash’s face in my hands and tilt him toward me. His hazel
eyes are shot with red; his jaw’s clenched so tight he could
bite through iron. “It’s not right,” Nash says. “He
doesn’t get to just walk away.”

I kiss Nash’s forehead and close my eyes. Nash needs me—now
more than ever. My feelings about Lennox don’t matter in this
moment. Any goodwill he’d built with me was erased the moment
he got behind that wheel. I need to support Nash, keep him safe, keep
him from doing something fucking stupid that’ll hurt both him
and the crew.

That’s my job here—always has been. The boys make a big
flashy mess on the circuit, and I clean it up behind the scenes.
Replace the transmissions they chewed up. Turn their messy finances
into neat columns and rows. Dress and nurse their wounds.

Nash tips his head back and kisses me, slow at first, then fiercer,
hungrier. His lips are salty with his frustrated tears. I slip my
hands beneath his jacket—his brother’s jacket—and
under the hem of his shirt.

Nash bites my lower lip, hard. He looks up at me with his teeth
bared, like he’s something feral. “I need you,” he
breathes. His fingers ease open the fly of my jeans. “I need
you.”

“I’m all yours.”

He stands up, shoving me off of him, and stalks toward me. Normally,
I love it when Nash is aggressive like this. But there’s
something dark in his gaze, something I’ve never seen before.
Well, Nash has every right to be angry. I’m angry for him.
Angry for the whole crew.

As he backs me against the office wall, I close my eyes and melt into
his heated kisses. I work the front of his jeans open and grip his
cock. He’s completely hard. Nash groans softly as I stroke him,
and bites down on my shoulder.

Nash pins me against the wall and shoves down my jeans and panties.
He slides inside me in one smooth thrust and hoists my legs around
his waist. Usually, he’s all sly comments and teasing when we
fuck. He coaxes me along with him. But this is blind, frantic sex. I
hold onto his muscled back and pull him into me as he squeezes his
eyes shut.

He feels amazing—like always—but I can already tell I’m
not going to come. I tense around him and lose myself in the rhythm
and his heat.

“Fuck.” He thrusts once more, and shudders as he comes.
“I—I’m sorry. You didn’t—”

“It’s okay.” I force a bright smile as he eases out
of me. “You can make it up to me later.”

“Yeah.” But he’s already looking away as he wipes
himself off with a tissue and tugs his pants back up.

“Nash.”

He closes his eyes and exhales slowly. I shrink back against the
wall. Like he’s a cornered animal, and I’m afraid to make
him lash out. I shake my head. No. My Nash isn’t like that.
He’s the easiest, most uncomplicated guy in the world. It’s
why I love him.

But I’ve never seen this side of him before.

“Nash. Promise me you won’t do anything stupid.” I
hear my voice waver, and hate myself for it. “Promise me you
won’t go looking for—for him.”

Nash runs his fingers through his hair. “I won’t. I
already promised Drazic. He’s right—it’d only make
things worse for everyone.”

He’s not meeting my eyes. I wrap my arms around myself,
suddenly cold.

“But trust me, if that shitbag knows what’s good for
him . . . he’ll stay far, far away from the
crew. From the races.”

Lennox staying away from races? That doesn’t sound at all like
the Lennox I knew.

But the Lennox I knew would’ve never driven drunk, either.

I guess the Lennox I thought I knew and loved wasn’t really him
at all.

Elena

I finish fine-tuning the GTO for Nash, and the boys decide to head
out to the warehouse district in what’s left of Ridgecrest’s
downtown. Cyrus, the final member of the crew, meets up with us in
his decked out Mitsubishi, while Jagger decides to bring his favorite
Mazda out to play. I’m more of a classics girl myself; I make
some quick adjustments to Drazic’s favorite, an old BMW M3, and
ride out with them to see how the GTO runs now.

“Usual circuit,” Drazic says, after the boys maneuver
their vehicles into a single-file line in one of the warehouse
district alleyways. We almost never race against each other in
trials. Here, it’s all about racing against the clock. “Elena’s
got stopwatch duty. I’m gonna head up to the roof to observe
from above.”

Jagger peels out first, his throaty exhaust rumbling through the
battered brick alleys. I close my eyes and listen to the way his
engine sounds as he weaves through the decaying streets. We checked
the police scanners before we started, but no one’s going to
mess with Drazic’s crew. Not up here in the downtown
area—there’s no one left to care.

Ridgecrest was a mining town first, then a manufacturing town, and
now it’s not much of anything, but I don’t mind. We’ve
made our home in the mountains and we can claim these streets for our
own. There’s a beauty in the emptiness and grit, and the lonely
peaks and high desert plains that surround us.

Jagger’s engine roars back around the circuit—a mix of
the downtown streets and then the mountain ridge vista with nothing
but a guardrail between the street and the valley far below. As soon
as he enters the alley mouth, I click off the watch.

“Under nine minutes,” I announce, once he climbs out of
the car. “Last week you were almost at ten.”

Jagger flashes his rock-star grin. “Can’t wait to have
those upstate boys kissing my ring.”

“And their upstate girls riding your dick?” Nash asks,
ribbing him.

“That’s the plan.” They high-five while I share an
eyeroll with Drazic.

“Nash. You’re up. Show me what this baby can do.”

Nash wraps his arms around my waist and tucks his hands into my jean
pockets. “I know you’ve built me a winner, babe. I just
hope I’m worthy of it.”

“Please. You were creaming the Calvert crew in that little
piece of shit import. You’ll be just fine.”

He pinches my ass with a wink, and heads over to the GTO.

It runs a lot quieter—a meaty growl, but not the kind that
echoes like Jagger’s drifter does. Once he’s past the
second turn, I don’t hear him at all.

Cyrus puts a hand on my shoulder. He’s Hispanic, tall and husky
with a deep tan from his job at the impound lot. He’s always
been the strong, silent rock of the group, but ready to turn enforcer
at Drazic’s command. After the accident, Cyrus kept Nash from
hurting himself and anyone else. I wonder if he’s up to the
task now.

“You take good care of him,” Cyrus tells me, his voice
pitched low. “Probably better than he deserves.”

I shrug. “It’s what anyone would do.”

“No. You’re different,
hermana
. Much stronger than
they give you credit for.” His lips twist downward. “But
you deserve a break sometimes, too.”

As Nash pulls back off the mountain ridge drive, I hear him again.
He’s pulling the wheel too tight—it’s all in the
way the tires hug the turns. Cyrus is wrong. I don’t get a
break. Not now, when Nash is so tense. I’ve got to keep him
calm.

“Let us take care of him tonight,” Cyrus says. “You’ve
got work to do.”

I click the stopwatch off as Nash pulls in. Just over eight minutes.
“Yeah. Okay.”

I love Nash. But I’m afraid of him right now. I only hope that
the guys can get his head on right so we can go back to normal.

Except, with Lennox out of prison, I’m wondering what normal
even looks like for me.

The boys plan to head out to the bar once we close up the auto shop,
with Cyrus as the night’s DD. After they handle some crew
business, Drazic adds, patting me on the head. Great. I know just
what that means. So I won’t even ask. I don’t mind,
though. I like having some time to myself at the shop, to catch up on
the bookkeeping and think to myself.

It’s the strangest thing. I grew up in this shop; it’s
as familiar to me as Uncle Drazic’s house. So many warm
memories of laughter with the boys, of kissing Nash for the first
time, or learning everything I know about cars right at my uncle’s
elbow. But tonight, as I log the latest receipts and draft minimum
payment checks to cover the shop’s debt, all I see when I look
across the mechanics bay are the times I spent here with Lennox.

There, when he hugged me and let me cry in his arms the first time I
got my heart broken in middle school. And there, when
fourteen-year-old me helped him write the perfect Valentine’s
poem for his girlfriend, though I was secretly pretending he was
writing it for me. And then, sitting on that counter, our voices
hushed, when he clasped my hands in his and made me a promise for
once I grew up—

I’ve barely thought of him since the accident—certainly
since he was kicked out of the crew. It was like he’d died, and
we’d all buried our memories with him. I thought he’d
faded from my mind completely, but the memories sure haven’t.
They were just locked up with him, and now they’re loose too.

I shake my head and toss the overflowing file of receipts into
Drazic’s safe. I’ve got to pull myself together.
Nothing’s changed. Lennox betrayed us all, and he hurt Nash the
worst. I can never forgive him for that, just like the crew can’t
forgive him for taking the life of one of their own.

It’s just eerie, is all. To know he’s no longer a ghost.
To think of him as a living, breathing human again, and yet, I can’t
feel the same obsessive love I felt for him when I was younger.
Because he’s no longer that guy.

I lock up the shop and grab the keys to my favorite of Uncle D’s
cars—the 1979 Camaro, with its liquid blue paint job and its
engine that purrs.

The back roads outside of Ridgecrest dazzle with starlight and warm
night air blowing up from the desert. There’s a highway that
runs right by Drazic’s house, but it’s studded with
potholes and tourists on their way to the mountains for skiing or the
desert for hippie communes. I prefer this path—just me and the
mountains, my headlights kissing the tree trunks as I wind my way
along the ridge.

And then there’s this poor idiot in a stripped-paint Camry
pulled over on the shoulder with his hazards flashing.

I’m sorely tempted to drive past—my nerves are shot for
the day and I can’t wait to sleep—but I can’t bring
myself to do it. I pull over behind the Camry and slap on my hazards.
I’ve got a decent selection of roadside emergency tools in the
trunk, but I need to diagnose the issue first.

Uncle D always warned me to be careful offering help late at night. I
fumble with my key ring until I’ve got my butterfly knife ready
to snap open in case there’s any sign of trouble.

Never can be too careful.

“Hey there.” I keep a respectful distance as I approach
on the highway side of our lined-up cars. “What seems to be the
problem?”

The driver ducks out from behind the popped hood. My heart leaps into
my throat. Fuck. It’s Lennox Solt.

And he looks
good
.

Lennox was always fit—not in a tight-shirted, show-offy
way—Nash’s favorite way to bare his physique. Instead,
Lennox always carried this quiet, flinty strength, ready to help out
whenever needed. Now, though, his body looks whittled away, with
nothing but bones and lean muscle remaining. And his olive skin is
covered in tattoos, swirling like vines up his arms and peeking out
of the collar of his shirt. He’s sporting a goatee now, trimmed
and casual, and his thick dark hair is just long enough to wisp at
the ends, begging for fingers to run through it—

My keys slip out of my hand and hit the gravel shoulder as I suck in
my breath.

“You, uh . . .” He furrows his brow. Tries
to smile at me, but it looks forced. “Dropped something.”

I scramble for my keys, then take a nervous step toward the front of
the Camry. “Lennox,” I mumble. “Hey.”

“Elena Drazic.” He glances skyward, shaking his head.
“Well, I guess if I had to break down, at least I had the good
fortune of you showing up. Best damn mechanic in the biz.”

My face immediately heats up; I’m grateful the only light we’ve
got are his headlights and mine, washing all the color out of
everything. “I’m—I’m really not. I just
learned from . . .”

“No, no. Don’t do that.”

“Don’t do what?” I ask.

Lennox ducks his head back behind the hood of the Camry. “Sell
yourself short. Give all the credit to your uncle. C’mon.”
Another strained smile. “Everyone learns somewhere. It’s
what you do with it that matters.”