Page 12 of Rear View
He angled his seat back, the thing creaking like a bastardas it moved, then folded his beige-toned hands over his round stomach. “New contracts.”
Alec’s stare narrowed. “Something wrong with the other ones?”
Earl lifted an ankle across the other knee. “We needed an update.” His stare landed on me, and he tipped his head to the document to start reading.
My eyes narrowed when I scanned it before my chest expanded. “We’ve got a new sponsor.”Goddamn! Good. Fuckin’. Timing.
Alec grinned. “No way!”
My left hand clenched into a fist to keep my excitement on lockdown. “Who?”
“Prime Tools. They’re midlevel. Good bump up for the two of you.”
Angling forward, Alec flipped through the pages. “Anything different in here?”
“For the team as a whole, more cash, and a higher budget. For you two, bigger performance incentives. A publicist, the use of your faces and likeness with ad requirements, and a morality clause.”
Sounded decent. “What’s the morality clause cover?”
“Essentially that you won’t do anything to damage their business.”
“What constitutes damage?”
He scratched a clump of mud from his pant leg. “Anything that paints them in a negative light.”
Alec cocked his head. “And who decides what that is?”
“It’s determined on a case-by-case basis.”
I rolled the papers into a tube and tapped them over my leg, a small grease stain there streaking the white. “So, it’s at their discretion?”
He lifted a shoulder. “It’s how these people work.Until something happens, it’s hard to say what’s wrong or right.”
I crossed my arms over my chest, the pages crinkling as I dropped my brows low. I’d spent the first chunk of my life controlled by my asshole father, the second, by the Edgewater Juvenile Prison system. I wasn’t keen to sign off on that.
Earl’s dark brown eyes fixed on me when he raised his palms. “I know you’re not a fan of constraints.”
Shackles, more like.
“Just know that this deal’s a two-way street. If they do anything to affect us andourbrand, we can cut ties too.” He leaned forward and set his elbows on his desk. “We’re climbing fast, but still building our name. This clause is par for the course at this stage. If you want to keep rising, this is your reality now.”
Alec bounced his leg, and he watched me, eager. Yeah, he was my co-driver, and his career hinged on this too, but he was good. As team lead, primary driver and the main face of everything, he’d let this be my call.
“They’re taking a risk on us,” Earl hedged. “But with the amount they’re investing, they’re betting on the two of you.”
I rapped a knuckle against my forearm. Knowing the rules covered the company too eased some of that pressure. I could deal with that. Bringing the contract in front of me again, I unraveled it. “Walk us through it.”
Alec thumped me on the back. “Fucking right, man!”
The next chunk of the day was spent with Earl detailing line after line, and by the end, Alec and I signed on the dotted line.
Handing the pages over, I asked, “What’s next?”
“Hook up the car and haul it over to McFadden’s, thatbody shop across from the U of E campus. They’re installing the new decals in the morning.”
“And then?”
His grin split into a wide-ass smile. “Next is the engine.”
