Trading Paint (Racing on the Edge) (41 page)

I was silent for a moment before sighing. “I really want to see you honey.”

I admit, I wasn’t exactly saying the right lines in this conversation but really, could I have sounded any more pathetic? And to think, we’d only been on the phone less than five minutes
...
it was still early. Who knows what other insanity I can knock off with before the end of
it.

Suddenly she was about as silent as I had just been. “Are you there?”

“Yeah,” she said softly. “I want to see you too.”

Why was this so fucking hard? Why couldn’t I just tell her how I felt or the confusion I was feeling?

Oh yeah, because you’re the master of avoidance and if by some slim far off chance she felt the same way, it would scare the shit out of you.

I cleared my throat before talking. “Can I come see you in Bellingham before I head to Vegas?”

“Oh my god, really?” her voice filled with enthusiasm and had me laughing.

“Jesus, you act as though I just offered up a million dollars.”

“Well,” her voice lowered to an incredibly sexy tone. “At this point, I’d pay a million dollars to see you.”

“I think that goes for both of us.” I laughed and leaned back on the bed. I was suddenly aware of the prominent erection straining against my jeans at the tone of her voice. “So I will book a flight here in a few minutes. Can you pick me up in Seattle tonight?”

“Tonight!” she screeched.

“Well yeah, I said I only had a few days.”

“I thought you meant like in a couple weeks.”

“If you don’t want me to—”

“No!” she cut me off. “I mean yes, I want you to come.”

I groaned and she sighed dramatically.

“Jesus Christ, you fucking pervert! I want you to come see me, not
come
.”

“Sorry,” I muttered with a chuckle. “So I will text you with the time my flight gets in there.”

“Sounds good, see you tonight,” she said before hanging up. I hurried and bought my ticket, told Alley where I was going and then headed for the airport, after some bleeding of the valves. That was essential if I was going to be around Sway for a few days.

Once I got to Bellingham, we found ourselves back to our usual ways.

“Is this where we’ve reached the point of no return?” Sway asked outside the apartment complex we stood in front of dressed in our usual, all black, breaking and entering gear.

“I’m pretty sure we passed that when we got out of the car.”

“Good point.” She acknowledged with a nod and then pulled her hood over her head. I kissed the top of her head.

“Remember what that asshole did.”

Sway began nodding her head as the she was preparing for battle, tossing her head from side to side and bouncing on the balls of her feet while shaking her arms at her sides. I chuckled watching her display and then she clapped her hands together. “Let’s do this!”

“Listen,” I put my hands on her shoulders and grinned. “Control yourself. We can’t afford to get caught doing this.”

She nodded but her enthusiasm soon vanished when we approached the door to his apartment.

Tommy came running up behind us holding a paint ball gun as though it was a rifle.

“Where did that come from?” Sway asked with excited eyes. She had a thing for paint ball guns.

“Oh please. I used to live in Elma. Of course I would have a paint ball gun.” He remarked.

“You don’t have to be so rude!” Sway punched his shoulder.

Tommy pushed her back. My hand jetted out to stop him. “Push her again and you’ll regret it.” I warned him.

“That’s right.” Sway taunted behind me.

It took me a while but I got them focused enough to complete the task at hand. “Are you sure it was this apartment.”

Sway shot me an alarmed expression. “Well fuck
...
now I’m not sure
...
it was dark.”

“Fuck it.” I took a deep breath, braced my hands on the doorframe and kicked as hard as I could. Much to my surprise, the door came crashing down.

Sway, Tommy and I just stood there looking at each other, amazed I was able to kick it down, when Sway giggled and then stopped abruptly and gazed at me with a completely blank expression before saying. “I don’t think it’s his apartment.”

Twelve doors later, we still hadn’t found his apartment and I was positive this was not a good thing. My legs were sore, Sway was sweating profusely and Tommy had shot up everything with that damn paint ball gun. We had to get out of there before the police came because surely someone had to of noticed the breaking of doors by now. Also, I don’t know if I need to point this out, but some of the doors we broke down, people were home.

Sway and I hid behind a group of trees when we heard police cars and what was Tommy doing?

He was loading his damn paint ball gun—in plain view.

I decided by myself that since I broke down the doors, it was up to Sway to get him. I leaned back in the grass panting. I did just break down twelve apartment doors. I was exhausted. “Go get him.”

“Do I have to?”

“Yes.” I kept my expression grave and not friendly. “At some point everyone must take one for the team. Guess whose turn it is?”

“Mine?”

“Yes, now go.” I swatted her ass when she stood brushing the grass from her jeans.

This had bad idea written all over it but so did this entire mission. My paranoid thoughts were confirmed just moments later when the police swerved into the parking lot, shinning their lights on Sway and Tommy, holding
a paint
ball gun, dressed in all black.

It couldn’t have looked much worse than that.

There has been a few times in my life when I thought, “Well that should have gone differently.” Now wasn’t any different. We should have thought this through a little more.

Sway wasn’t impressed and had
me
cornered as they questioned Tommy about the paint ball gun, at this point, they didn’t know it was us that broke down all those doors. “Listen, you got me into this mess,” she not so calmly replied shoving my chest. “Get me out of it!”

This was going to take some persuasion on my part, highly analytical persuasion skills. Just as I was about to explain to the cops that we were only searching for the guy that keyed the red dragon, a crazed tenant, who we broke down their door, showed up pointing fingers.

“They broke down my door for no reason!” she yelled in the officer’s face.

“You have no proof of that,” was my genies response. I did in fact have cuts all over my hands and splintered chunks of wood covering my jeans.
Couldn’t have been more obvious.

There all three of us were in the cop car with Sway on my lap because she refused to sit next to Tommy. She blamed him for this, which was fine by me because it was my fault, my idea at least.

Being inside the cop car was another story. Sway wouldn’t stop moving around on my lap. It didn’t take long before she noticed the reaction
is was
causing.

“Are you
...
is that
your
...
?” She had the most adorable blush spreading across her cheeks.

“In my defense
...
you’re wriggling around in my lap.”

Sway giggled.

“Should I
...
I mean,” she cleared her throat. “I should get off.”

I grinned. “You’re welcome too,” I implied lasciviously winking at her. “
but
if you stay, I might.”

Apparently that was the funniest thing she’d ever heard because she started laughing hysterically to the point where I have to hold her up. Tommy just grumbled next to us. He was more upset that the cop now how his paint ball gun.

Once they had our ID’s and ran background checks, I’m sure they saw Sway and I already had B&E’s on our records and also theft but they were distracted by me. Like I said before, racing in a NASCAR series, I was becoming someone people recognized by just the name.

So here the officer came, smiling. “You’re Jameson Riley, like the driver of the number nine car?”

“Yeah,” I moved Sway off my lap. She giggled again when I had to adjust myself. “Are we free to go?”

His smile grew when his partner approached the car. I was all about getting out of this mess without jail time. I didn’t think my dad or Simplex would appreciate me being arrested when I was supposed to be in Vegas tomorrow.

This went on for a few minutes, the officers asking me questions completely unrelated to the crimes we committed. I was fine with that as long as we weren’t arrested but I also began to think we’d be here most of the night by the way they were talking.

How all this was relevant to our situation was not lost by me.

They were both a bunch of weirdo’s but I had a real problem with the shorthaired blonde officer who kept eyeing Sway.

“Are we free to go?” I finally asked leaning against the side of the car.

“Yes, but it appears you may need to pay for those doors you broke.” The blonde officer said to me.

“I’ll pay for ‘
em
.” I said. “It was a misunderstanding.”

“I’m sure.” He remarked with a sour edge.

I’m sure he was thinking I was trying to use the fact that his partner was star stuck by me but that was beside the point. I had to be in Vegas tomorrow, I couldn’t be arrested right now. I should have thought of this earlier in the day when we planned this escapade but I was too caught up in paying back this asshole that keyed Sway’s truck almost daily. I didn’t think of the consequences, which was usual for me and Sway, she did everything on a whim and looked at the consequences later. Tommy, well in his defense, he had orange hair, we shouldn’t expect much decision making from him in general.

In the end, I handed my credit card over to the apartment maintenance manager. Tommy’s paint ball gun was confiscated and Sway found the dude that keyed her truck, keying her truck again.

Let’s just say he won’t be keying any more cars in the near future.

“That was awesome.” Sway said once we were back in the truck. Only having two seats, she made Tommy sit in the bed. By the time we reached our destination in downtown Bellevue, a nightclub by the name of Vertigo, Tommy’s hair looked much like the time we got caught in the tornado.

Abby, Tommy’s girlfriend met us there and thought his new orange hairdo was pretty awesome. I liked Abby, she was good for Tommy and let’s
face
it, he and his orange hair needed someone special.

We spent the remainder of the night dancing and drinking. Sway and I got a little frisky and I was having a hard time keeping my hands to myself. I pretty much lost most control I was wavering with when she downed her last beer and drug me out on the dance floor.

I hated being hung over. Most of all, I hated being dehydrated when I had a race the next day.

Racing sprint cars, it wasn’t as bad because your feature event wasn’t longer than fifty laps. I think your body worked harder to control the car in a sprint car but stock cars were just as physically demanding but also, mentally demanding because you had to constantly think strategy. Now instead of making fifty laps I was making three hundred.

Leaving Sway in Bellingham was hard. We had so much fun together it was difficult to leave. I was so close to giving in at the bar that last night, I honestly think if I wouldn’t have gotten so drunk, I just might have acted on what I was feeling that night but no, I got scared and downed as much alcohol as I could and left myself a mess.

“I thought for sure that you two were gonna
...
” Tommy said when as we headed for baggage claim.

“Yeah
...
” I hung my head. “I almost did.”

Tommy came to Las Vegas with me and then he was off to Mooresville to see my dad about the sprint car team. I told him he could either work on the Busch team or sprint cars and he chose sprint cars. I couldn’t blame him. That’s essentially where I wanted to be too. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed racing these stock cars but you have to understand that’s where I came from, it was in my blood.

We landed in Vegas, Aiden met us there and we drove to Las Vegas Motor Speedway where I was met with yet another girl I despised these days, a reporter for FOX Sports, Ashley Conner. She reminded me of Chelsea but with black hair. As you can probably guess, I slept with her one night after my first Busch series win in Nashville back in February. I’d avoided her ever since because really, I did this all the time.

She caught me when I entered the paddock looking for Spencer and Kyle.

“Why haven’t you called?” she asked keeping step with me.

I didn’t look her direction just stared straight ahead. “I didn’t know I was supposed to.”

“Well we slept together.” She said this like it meant something. “I thought you’d at least call.”

“I don’t know what you expected this to be?” I motioned between us. I’d seen her around the track; she slept with most of the drivers so I couldn’t understand what would make me any different.