Page 2 of Love Collided

The stress of trying to come up with ten grand had turned me into a sleep-deprived snarky goblin, and at this point, I couldn’t even hide it. According to the crew, I was a little moreannoyedthan usual, but that was their way of politely telling me to knock off the attitude without causing a fight. Not that I didn’t agree, but it was getting more frustrating not to tell them what was going on.

On top of hurrying to get the money, my car kept acting up, making it nearly impossible to make extra cash with racing.

I needed a new car, and I needed to find a way to tell the guys that I was done with this one.

I groaned at the thought.

Almost five years ago, I had been brought down to the garage on my sixteenth birthday to find this car, a gift from the guys that I never expected. It made it special. I would never get over how lucky I got to have them in my life. Now, I was having a hard time coming to terms with telling them it wasn’t in great enough shape to keep racing, and my heart broke at the thought of retiring it. Not that they would be mad, they had all updated their cars over the years, but I wasn’t great with change. At least not with something like my car.

The biggest problem with getting a new car was now the cost. I first needed to make the money to deal with my dad, and tonight’s races could have secured it for me, but not with my car acting up.

I knew they were giving me two weeks to find money for my dads debts, but in the meantime, I couldn’t let anyone else here find out where my money would be going. Hopefully, I could borrow a car to quietly race for extra cash.

I slammed my hood closed, the roar of the crew’s engines coming my way, and making me groan again. They were on their way to pick me, and my car, up to go out racing tonight.

There would be five in their own cars tonight for racing.

They all lined up in front of the garage. Ransom and Quinn in his RX7, Fox with his Supra, Ash with her Aston Martin, Jax and Carly in the Charger, and Kye with his 350Z. The colorful lineup always made me smile, and now it was making me sad I wouldn’t be joining the line-up tonight.

The engines shut off and I could hear my phone buzzing now.

Jesse

I’ll be late. Meet you at the races?

Scout

Serious? Your shop has been closed for hours.

Jesse

Yeah, well, I have some things to catch up on. I will meet up with you later.

Scout

Fine.

We were coming up to a year of dating, but each month we seemed to see less and less of each other. Now, he wasn’t even making an effort to show up for race night? It had become the one constant for us, but that was crumbling now, too.

One more thing that kept falling apart no matter how much I tried to piece it back together.

I had even asked him to help me practice my driving more often since Holt Racing was now giving me the chance to be on their drag racing team with Ash. Since Holt hadn’t seen me race enough, he was giving me the chance to show off what I could do in a few upcoming races, and how well I did in those would determine if my future was going to be in racing or in working at the garage.

Fox and Ash walked in, laughing about something Kye had done.

“What are you working on?” Fox asked, looking at the wrench in my hand.

“Just checking it over before tonight,” I said, forcing a smile.

“And? How’s it running?” Ash asked.

I blew out a breath, looking at the car. The neon green Supra had been my pride and joy.

“Not great,” I finally said. “At this point I’m not sure what I can do to make it run right again.”

Fox laughed, throwing an arm around me. “If you are still hinting at wanting a new engine, we can figure something out.”

“Oh, yeah? You think we, the people who own this garage, could figure out how to put a better engine into my car?”

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