Chapter 8
Race
I HAD TO ADMIT that so far, this night was turning out to be all kinds of awesome. Seeing the underdog win against that doped-up bruiser had done something good for my soul. Watching a bunch of greedy, overzealous, bloodthirsty people fall apart when they realized they had bet on brawn and not heart also made something warm ooze inside of my chest. This was a bad place, corrupted by bad people, so when the unexpected happened, when something good and just fought its way to a hard-won victory, it was hard not to revel in the aftermath. Plus the amount of money we had cleared on that dirty-ass fight was obscene and more than enough to keep Nassir off my ass for the foreseeable future.
Brysen was in the passenger seat of my car and she was coming home with me. That alone put the night at the top of my list in awesomeness. She was hesitant about it, looking for a way to justify it not going down, but then I would look at her out of the corner of my eye, she would bite her bottom lip and blush, and I knew that even though she still wanted to fight the attraction—deny the pull—she wanted to give in to it even more, wanted to give in to me.
I reached across the interior of the car and put a hand on her knee. She was jittery, I could feel it coming off of her. She was also the only girl I had ever met who could make dirty jeans and a simple black T-shirt look overtly sexy. There was just something about the way she moved, the innate grace and class that she carried with her, that made her so unique and desirable. It was like she knew that she was so much better than what was going on around her, but instead of looking down on it with disdain and resentment, she just stood in the eye of the storm and let all the ugliness and destruction whirl around her, waiting to see where it was going to land. Then she would just gingerly pick her way through the debris and mess and end up safely on the other side of it all.
She put her hand over the top of mine and traced the heavy veins on the back of it with the edge of her fingernail. It was a barely-there caress, but I felt it all the way through my body.
“You look like the kind of guy that would have soft, manicured hands. Not hands that are all scarred up and rough.”
I had a wicked scar on the back of one hand from getting into an accident with Bax while we had been running from the cops. My middle knuckle on one hand had been broken so many times it was big and off-center. There were numerous nicks and cuts along my fingers from different fights and different altercations, most recently from the fight for my life when Novak had sent his crew in to kill me.
“You look like a girl who should get to enjoy a night out with an interested boy and not have to rush home to take care of her sister.”
She cut me a look and sat back in the seat with a little humph.
“I guess looks can be deceiving.”
“Why don’t you give me the CliffsNotes version of what that’s all about?”
She didn’t want to, I could see it. Giving me that changed what we were about to do from a quick fuck because we wanted each other into something else. Turned it into something with more depth, and she wasn’t ready for that. Still, after a heartbeat, she breathed out a long sigh and turned to look at me.
“I was just a typical college student the year before last. I went to class, partied a little too hard, just did my own thing, and it was a blast. Well, my mom has struggled with depression on and off for most of my life. She usually maintains with meds, but something really bad happened last year and she went off the rails. She quit taking everything prescribed to her and started drinking really heavily. I didn’t know what was happening. My dad is a workaholic, spends all his time in the office at work, and the one at home, and pretty much forgets he even has a family.”
She made a noise under her breath and I wanted to pull the car over and give her a hug.
“Well, one day Mom went out, I think to pick Karsen, my sister, up from school. Only she had been self-medicating all day with vodka and was shit-faced. She caused a major accident on the highway, hurt herself really bad, and rear-ended a family in an SUV in front of her. She hit the other car so hard that it smashed into the big rig in front of it. The mom and the son made it out alive, but the dad died. It was terrible. Mom was in the hospital for a long time and ended up with all kinds of medical problems. Somehow she was lucky enough to get out of having her BAC taken, either because the cops were distracted or because money changed hands, but either way she missed getting saddled with a DUI and her insurance covered the bulk of the bills, but not all of them. The next thing I knew, we couldn’t afford my car or classes anymore, and things at home were a nightmare for my sister. No one was making sure she went to school, or had any food in the house or that the bills for the lights or the heat were getting paid.”
She shook her silky blond head and I could see frustration and harder emotions surge in her clear, blue eyes. She might be all frosty and cool on the surface, but underneath a torrent was raging. It made me want her even more.
“I wasn’t going to quit school, not when I was so close to being done, so I got a job and took a few loans to get through the last few semesters. I moved home to try and keep things together as much as I could until Karsen is finished with high school. One more year, I just have to hold it all together for one more year, but in the meantime, my mom has added all kinds of painkillers to the booze and my dad is even less present than he was before. I never really know what kind of situation I’m walking into when I get to my own front door, and that sucks. I deserve better and my sister sure as hell didn’t do anything to ask for any of what has happened to our family.”