Page 121 of False Start

My co-conspirators, teammates, and best friends. The kids we nurtured. The little old men who brought their feisty belligerence to my counter every morning, but always left me with a piece of wisdom. Patti, the way she had paved the way for me to stay here. Stepping in to encourage me but also ready to call me on my shit. Even the gossips. They were looking for something too. Running from hard truths. Lashing out in the only way they knew how.

All of us flawed just trying to make our way. Tempering our pride while we stoked our passions.

Or I’d just had my limit in the beer department.

“I’m almost there,” Lana said, wiping her hand on a napkin before reaching out and taking mine. “Thank you for what you did today on the track. I didn’t know how much I missed it. I never really thought I could have it again, but you gave it to me.”

I laid my hand over hers and squeezed. “Anytime you want to fly around that track, I’m your girl.”

Her lips twitched and she shot a glance over at Priest. “Well, then we better do something about keeping our boy in town, don’t you think? After all, it’s his track.”

“If he loves me like you say he does, maybe he’ll stay.” I’d told myself not to hope, not to set myself up for disappointment, but hope or not, there was no denying that his leaving would leave a lasting mark on my heart.

“Oh, honey…that’s not the way he works. Because he loves you, he won’t. He put himself under the microscope again—for you. This town isn’t always loud, but the subtle judgments, the whispers—they scream louder than my mother in that ER.”

I knew those stares and whispers well, but for me, they were pitying glances. First for having a mother who didn’t give me what they considered stability and then because I had no mother at all. “I don’t know, she was pretty loud. Not as loud as that finger of hers, but—”

“And you threatened to fuck her up which was rather magnificent.”

I twirled my glass in my hands and winced. “I’m not proud of that.”

“No, I don’t suppose you would be, but you don’t know what you did for me when you did it.” She tipped back her glass of beer, more than half full, and didn’t stop gulping until the glass ran dry. “It’s the final push I needed.”

“What does that mean?” I said, a tingle rolling over my skin at the determination in her eyes.

Lana glanced down at her phone, the color slowly eking from her pink cheeks. “Actually, I might need one more small push. Zach, would you get me something with an octane rating?”

“You sure?”

“Yeah.”

“You got it,” he said, already halfway to his feet.

The skin stood up on my arms. “I feel like I missed something. What are you up to?”

Lana rubbed her hands together. “You’ll see.”

That warm fuzzy feeling I had before slipped away. I glanced around at my team as they compared injuries both past and present, their laughter on my one side while life flipped on its damn head on my other.

Caught between the clashing of moods, and definite impending doom, I looked for Priest. As my eyes settled on him, he turned as though he could feel my stare.

His smile shifted from good-natured to shared secrets and my stomach fluttered at the compelling shift from polite to potent. Energy crackled between us across the divide, sending a shiver right up my spine.

The same kind he delivered with the touch of his hands. The connection between us only getting stronger.

“Your drink,” Zach said, setting the glass in front of Lana. He brushed his lips over hers and the girl practically swayed out of her chair. “You sure you want to do this?” he whispered.

“Yup.”

“Do what, Lana?” I asked, following her eyes as they shot to the door, right as it shut behind a couple who’d just walked in.

Lana’s parents.

“You know what, I need to be standing for this,” she said, gulping back a good bit of the liquor in her glass.

I glanced at Zach. “Ummm—”

“Relax,” Lana said, waving a hand between us. “I know I can’t stand. Just get me up on the bar,” Lana demanded, drawing looks from the team and a few of the patrons scattered around the room.

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