Pedal to the Metal: Love's Drivin' but Fate's Got the Pole (The 'Cuda Confessions Book 3) (11 page)

***

“Y
ou bastard! Look what you’ve done to my baby.”

Mom’s cry sent a strike of pain into my skull, despite the painkillers dripping into my veins that pinned me like a heavy quilt. I thought her voice came from nearby, but when I forced my eyelids open, all I could see was the blue curtain that shut me off from the rest of the emergency room.

Was I your baby when you brought him home with no warning and told me y’all were married? Or when you went on a cruise for Christmas three years in a row? No, I was an adult then, because it suited you to see me that way, so shut the fuck up.

“Macy, I—”

Dale, don’t listen to her bullshit.

Mom’s shrill tone bore into my splitting head again, ramping up the nauseating ache.

“Shut up, Dale. Just shut up. Why’d you force her into this? She could’ve died! Then what? What if you’d killed my baby? Would you ask Rick to paint her name on that creepy goddamn wall at the office?”

I wanted to defend Dale, since he didn’t seem to want to take his own part, but my eyelids refused to stay open. I wanted to tell him this wasn’t about me.
Two days ago, her biggest concern was tricking me into taking her Volkswagen so she could have a new car. Not a word about the danger then, was there?

“My God, Dale. Shelby’s going to graduate in a few months with a degree from a fine institution. She’s not some grease monkey. She—”

No thanks to you.

“She wanted to do this, Macy. That girl’s the best natural racer I’ve ever seen. Her reflexes, her instincts—”

“Don’t you dare!” Mom lowered her voice to a growl. “Don’t you dare try to pretend this was about Shelby. This was about proving your dick’s bigger than Kolby Barnes’ dick, so don’t you tell me that my child wanted to do this. Can’t you see? She’d do anything to feel like she had a father? And you exploited that. For you!”

Walk away, Dale. Go now, before she cuts your heart out. Trust me, she’s just getting warmed up.

“Macy, she wanted to do it. Me and Richard both thought this would be a good way to get Kolby’s damn atten—”

“Oh, will you just shut up? The Ridenhours are never going to fire that boy, Dale. If you keep forcing them to choose between him and you, you’ll be the one they let go. Not Kolby. You don’t have an engineering degree. That’s what owners want in a crew chief now. How will we pay for the new house if you’re out of a job?”

Way to go, Mom. From ‘oh my poor baby’ to ‘what about me’ in record time. See, Dale? See how she twists everything until it’s about her?

***

T
he vivid memory relented, leaving me staring into Caine’s deep blue eyes. “She’ll leave Dale if I end up with either of you. She’ll make his life hell, or worse, she’ll divorce him.”

“Shh. Shh,” Caine murmured, stroking my arms. “Damn, baby, don’t cry.”

“Please,” I sobbed, hating the helpless tears coursing down my cheeks. “When the board flashed at the fairgrounds and said I was Shelby Roberts-Hannah, I finally felt like I had a daddy, Caine. I wasn’t some accident who had to toe the line to justify her own existence. I was wanted and loved and a part of a real family for the first time in my life!” The stripped-down hulls in the adjacent lot sent my shriek bouncing back in a chorus.

I jerked my gaze to Colt’s stunned face. “I love you both, but I love Dale, too. He’s.... I can’t choose! I know her. Dale would just roll with it, but she’d beat him over the head every damn day with how his sons defiled the baby she sacrificed everything for. Then what? Do we get to be happy if Dale’s miserable? How long before he blames us for fucking up his good thing?”

Or just me? In my darkest dreams, I never envisioned Dale turning on his sons.

“Fuckin’ bitch.” Colt brought his fist down on the car. Over Caine’s shoulder, I saw the same hard look in Jonny’s eyes. Caine’s jaw worked, and his face—oh, God, the pain I saw there doubled the ache in my heart. “After what she done to you? Belivin’ Colt over her own kid?”

Colt told him.
Now, both my brothers knew that my mother put living the good life above her concern for my well-being, even as she gave lip service to the opposite. I’d never felt more naked—or more ashamed. Without that little lie between me and my mother—that I was worth her sacrifice—what was left? If ever she and I punched through that thin veneer, what darkness lay beyond?

Jonny’s eyes were flat and wary. Anger danced in Caine’s. Colt’s were pure, blue flames, but Caroline’s eyes were soft and filled with understanding.

“That’s her mama, Colt. No matter what, you gotta love the parent that didn’t leave your sorry ass. How many times have me and you had this same talk, brother?”

The icy wind transported me to the graveyard across from Caroline’s house and the moment I’d stared down on Caine’s mother’s grave. The thought I hadn’t been able to form then unfurled inside me. We protect our biggest pain with a gossamer web spun from the tiny lies we tell ourselves. Those lies are the bandages we slap over the otherwise-fatal wounds to our souls that let us keep stumbling forward.

Without those lies, we’d all end up like Jill Shalvis.

Hence, Caroline stayed with Robyn, helping her mother stand again, and holding her hair while she puked, and maybe even fixing her another drink. Because right across the road, a tiny headstone spelled out the alternative. And I played along, trying to be enough for Macy, for the same damn reason. 

“It’s me she hates.” Caine tightened his arms around me, pulling me away from the yawning hole in my heart. “Colt flirts with her. He teases and flatters her, but—God, I’m sorry, Shelby.”

Macy had a history of serial relationships. I only had her version of why they ended—her bandages. It wasn’t like any of her other men had offered to say more than ‘hi’ and ‘bye’ to me.

I tried to choke back my sobs so they could make out every word, because, dammit, they had to hear me.

“After they stopped talking, I lay on that gurney and thought back to the party. Those women, the wives and girlfriends of Dale’s crew? They treated her with respect. Deference, even. In her mind, that’s what the house is all about, making people look up to Dale. Something she picked up from Bliss Roark. She’s found the one thing she’s always craved. Respectability. She’s somebody now. Mrs. Dale Hannah. And there’s no room in that new vision of herself for any of us giving people a reason to gossip.”

I bit the inside of my cheek. What was the point in hurting Caroline by telling them that Caroline and Brandon’s relationship—or the ugly things people said about it—played a role in the other little speech Mom had served up, along with store-bought banana pudding and ice cream? Way back in high school, Macy had let slip that someone had told her the sordid tale. That was life in a small town. Everybody knew everybody’s business.

I knew Dale stopped to pick my mother up on the side of the road because he was into redheads. But he married her for far different reasons. Ernie had nailed it. The man was building his legacy. He needed the white picket fence and the little girl to complete the picture.

That was the missing piece I hadn’t been willing to see, until the smack on the head made my brain think in new ways. Why else would the man turn in his bachelor card, long after he’d already had raised his sons?

Still, I believed Dale loved Mom. He loved her so much, he’d been determined to find a way to reach me, too. I could tell by the misery in Caine’s eyes, he couldn’t deny I was right. I darted another look at Caroline. She dashed away a tear and turned to stare at the junkyard.

“Kiss me, dammit,” Caine demanded. “Kiss me hard and make me forget about all the ways I planned to hurt that little cocksucker that came to pick you up. Because she thinks he’s good enough for you and I ain’t.” He swallowed so hard his Adam’s apple surged in his throat. His voice fell to a whisper. “Kiss me with all you got, Shelby, because I’m gonna have to stand by in a goddamn monkey suit and watch you marry him, or someone just like him.”

His eyes dared me to deny it. The words died in my throat, leaving a tight, sour ache that burned all the way to my chest.

“Give me tonight, Shelby. Give
us
tonight.” He tossed a glance at Colt, who murmured an agreement. He turned the other way, getting nods from Jonny and Caroline.

Jonny and Caroline, who were holding hands.

Oh, fuck me. She’s got her man and it’s not Caine.

My last shred of self-protection went up in smoke. My loving Caine ruined nothing for Caroline, but that didn’t matter, because if we did one damn thing about it, our relationship would rip our family apart
.
Fucking Caine was the easiest thing I’d ever done, but the first lesson my brothers eve taught me was that fucking wasn’t intimacy.

Horrified, I followed the shining droplet that spilled from Caine’s eye. “So much for pourin’ my heart and soul into your new ride, as my way of sayin’ how fuckin’ sorry I am for what I done to you, Shelby.” His jaw worked. “Because I never could figure out how to say it. But, I always said you were the smart one in the bunch.”

I tried to cover his mouth, but he shook off my hand.

“Until noon tomorrow, when we absolutely have to get in the truck and haul ass to Atlanta, this problem doesn’t exist.” His eyes flamed, burning me alive. “Tonight, we’re Hannahs, hammer down and hell-bent. We get off on speed and sex till we’re drunk on both, and nothin’ else matters. After that, I’ll start tryin’ to figure out how to be your brother. Until then, I’m your crew chief and your man. No games, like I know you been thinkin’, baby girl. This is real, and this fuckin’ night’s gotta last us forever.”

The salty taste of the drops racing down my cheeks mingled with the tang of Caine’s tears when he pressed his lips to mine, forcing his tongue into me like he was determined to wipe away the ugly truth that had led me to run again.

Plenty of women chose love over family. When the men I loved were my family? Like a bolt of lightning, I realized why I kept going back to Robert. I went back time after time, because he wounded me in the same places Mom wounded me. I already knew by heart which little lies to tell myself to stop the bleeding.

But Caine would wound me in new ways. Raised to doubt whether I was worth anything, no matter what I accomplished, could I stay on my feet long enough to concoct new bandages for the fresh wounds he might punch in my soul?

Running was the only thing that made sense, but in Caine’s arms, I’d never had a lick of goddamn sense, and so, I kissed him back with everything I had to give.

But I knew, deep down, I’d race. Because what might happen if I raced again was the smaller fear.

I
tailed Jonny’s Corvair into the convenience store lot. “Which side’s my gas tank on?” Caine pointed to the curved gauge that hugged the left side of the speedometer—the speedometer that numbered to two hundred.

“See the gas pump symbol?” I nodded. “See which side the hose is on? That’s always the side your tank’ll be on, no matter what you’re drivin’.”

“You gotta be kidding.” I stared, open-mouthed.

He laid his hand over mine on the shifter. “Nope. It’s not rocket science, but damned if it ain’t one of the best kept secrets around. If you see a little arrow and the hose, goin’ different ways, follow the arrow.”

“I’m almost full.”

He unsnapped the four-point restraint. Leaning forward, he tugged his wallet free. Withdrawing his debit card, he handed it to me. “Let’s top you off. Jonny says the old man who runs this joint sells gas. So, no gas cans allowed. I doubt it’s market price, but what’s worse, I doubt it’s fresh. No sense in fouling your plugs right off the bat. Plus, we need cash for the bets. Take out two grand. The pin’s your birthdate, month and date.”

My birthdate.
I nearly fumbled the card, trying to breathe through the fresh jolt of pain. Yesterday, I’d have held off the hurt by reminding myself that those same numbers were also Caroline’s birthdate. Tonight, with my half-assed subterfuge swept away on a river of truth, I had no choice but to absorb the ache. Tomorrow I’d start looking for a way to bandage my wounds.

But we had tonight.

“Uh, my card has a cash machine limit of three hundred bucks a day.”

God, that smirk.
Caine’s expression hit me below the belt. “And mine has a limit of two grand. I ain’t used it in a week. I’ll pay cash for your gas.”

Blinking in the harsh light inside the convenience store, I slid the card into the slot and punched in the four digits.

My pulse galloped like a wild thing when the PIN screen dissolved.
What would you like to do? Make a withdrawal. Make a deposit. Check your balance. 

There could be a hundred reasons he hit on using those four numbers. But, I hugged the knowledge that Caine carried my birthdate in his head like a miser grabbing gold, even while I knew doing so was dumber than I’d been the night I turned eighteen, when I pretended Colt loved me while Caine fucked me, giving me the only first time I wanted to acknowledge.

Yet, I made the same choice a second time. If I had only one night to be foolish, I might as well double down.