Page 39 of My Fault
That meant the public was on my side. They’d seen Ronnie playing dirty; he’d broken the rules and rear-ended me; that was strictly illegal, especially in a car like that, which wasn’t made for harsh impact.
“Let her go, Nicholas,” Lion said, but his face was no friendlier than Nick’s.
Jenna’s expression was nasty, too, and that surprised as well as hurt me.
“Here comes Ronnie,” she said, and Nicholas released me so abruptly that I hit my back against the car.
What the hell was going on? Why was everyone so pissed off?
Nicholas turned around with his fists clenched.
“You broke the rules, Leister, and you know exactly what that means,” Ronnie said, clearly furious, but with a grin across that face full of piercings and tattoos.
“Bullshit,” Nicholas said. Lion was next to him, and the other guys in his gang approached to give him support. Ronnie’s crew did the same. Less than a minute had passed, and I still had no idea what was going on. “It’s not my fault if someone else gets in my car and drives on the track. There’s no way you’re pinning that on me.”
Now I started to see what was going on.
“She’s a member of your gang, Leister. That makes her your responsibility.”
“No, she’s not,” Nicholas said, but then he turned and looked at me. I saw surprise in his eyes and anger again, or, rather, a new anger, three times as fierce as the old one.
“She’s got the bandana on. That means she’s in the gang,” Ronnie blustered.
Now I got it. The bandana made me a member. But if I was, then what was the problem with me racing in Nicholas’s place?
“You broke the rules, Leister. The final was between you and me. So that makes me the winner.” All those behind him howled in agreement, and his eyes seemed to dare us to say otherwise.
“This is bullshit,” Nicholas said, stepping forward. Lion did the same, his fists pressed into his hips.
With that dumbass smile of his, Ronnie started shaking his head even as Nicholas was speaking.
“You can go ahead and hand over the fifteen thousand and that baby right there,” he said, looking at Nick’s black Ferrari.
What the…?
I stepped forward; I didn’t care who was standing across from me. I could feel Nick getting tenser, but before he could push me back, I spoke:
“You were the one who told me to race you,” I shouted. “And I beat you. A seventeen-year-old girl beat you.” Ronnie’s face twisted into an expression of wrath. I thought he’d kill me. But that wouldn’t stop me from saying what I had to say. “I wounded your puny little masculine ego, and now you want to try to make everyone think you’ve got some right to the money and the car.” I would have continued, but Nicholas got in front of me.
“Shut your mouth and get in my car,” he said through clenched teeth. “Now!”
“Fuck that!” I shouted, looking past him to Ronnie. I wasn’t going to let that fuckhead manipulate the situation to his benefit, and there was no way in hell I was letting him take the car. I won the race; he never even took the lead. “You should learn to race, dumbass!”
Nick’s gang shouted their agreement. That made me feel better.
Someone pulled me back as Nick turned to Ronnie with the veins in his neck ready to explode. I saw Ronnie’s face and thought they might beat each other to death.
“Shut up, Noah, now,” Jenna said in my ear. “You’re going to make this way worse than you can imagine.”
I didn’t respond. Nick and Ronnie were staring each other down. A fight seemed inevitable. But then Nick grabbed the keys from me and handed them over.
No!
“I’ll send you the cash tomorrow,” he said, feigning calm.
All around us was silence. Ronnie smiled, took the keys, and started spinning them around his finger. Nicholas was struggling to breathe, and I could tell he was seething, ready to explode.
“Yo, try to keep that bitch at home,” Ronnie said. That was when Nicholas lost it.
