A race for love

Collision course

*Wyatt*

By the time I get back to the paper mill, the gray car smells like hot rubber, scraped metal, and the expensive bad decision I made with my own hands.

Rex is already at the finish line.

He has parked his yellow Charger beneath the work lights, passenger side scarred with fresh gray paint. People cluster around him in the loose, hungry shape of a crowd that has decided something worth watching might happen. Big Eddie stands near the betting table, arms folded over his Hawaiian shirt, looking like a man who regrets every life choice that led him to referee illegal races for adults with poor impulse control.

I kill the engine and sit for half a second.

My pulse pounds behind my eyes. I see the woman at the curb, one arm raised over her head, her dog tearing loose. I see Rex angling across the road, committing to the move even after there was nowhere for me to go but into her.

Then I am out of the car.

Rex watches me cross the lot. He does not move. He just takes off one black glove, finger by finger, as if he has all the time in the world.

That does it.

I catch him by the front of his shirt and slam him back against the Charger. The impact rocks the car on its suspension. A few people shout. Someone whistles, because apparently violence is a delightful intermission.

"What the hell was that?" I ask.

Rex's face stays smooth. "A race."

"You drove at her."

"I drove the course."

"There was a woman on the road. A woman and a dog."

His eyes sharpen, just a little. "And you chose to hit my car."

"I chose to keep both of us from hitting her."

"You chose to lose control."

The words land neatly. That is Rex's favorite trick. He says a lie in a calm voice and waits for everyone else to make it uglier by arguing.

I tighten my fist in his shirt.

Nick gets to me first, catching my forearm. "Wyatt. Do not punch him. His face has the structural integrity of wet drywall, and Eddie will call it property damage."

"Let go," I say.

"Love you too, man. Still no."

Barbie takes position on Rex's other side, close enough that he has to notice her. Her expression could strip paint.

"You saw them," she says.

Rex looks past me at her. "Did I?"

"Don't play stupid. You are very bad at it."

"I was watching the road."

"You were watching Wyatt's car."

Rex smiles. "The same thing, for the purposes of that race."

I let go of his shirt because Nick is right. Not about drywall. About consequences.

Rex straightens his collar with his bare hand. He looks down at the wrinkle I left there as if it is evidence of a personal insult.

Big Eddie approaches, slow and heavy. "Everybody take five steps apart before I start charging admission."

Nobody moves.

Eddie lifts his beer. "Five. Steps."

I take three because I am feeling charitable. Rex takes five, probably because he enjoys looking more reasonable than everyone else.

Eddie's gaze goes to the gray coupe. The passenger side bears a long new gouge where Rex's Charger met it. The front bumper has a spiderweb c***k near the grille. She will drive. She will need work, but she will drive.

For now.

"Talk," Eddie says.

Rex folds his hands in front of him. "Wyatt rammed my car after the north exit. Forced me through the parking lot. I lost time."

"You ran wide," I say. "You cut into my lane."

"I held my line."

"We had civilians on the road."

Rex turns to Eddie. "I saw no one."

"You saw them," I say.

He looks at me again. "You have a witness?"

I look toward the exit road. The street beyond the gate is empty, black under the distant lamps. Esmeralda is gone. Good. She got home. That is all that matters.

Except it means I have nothing.

"She left," I say.

Rex gives Eddie a faint, regretful shrug. "Then we have Wyatt's word, against the fact that he deliberately struck my vehicle."

"Your car was angled toward the curb," I say. "I had nowhere else to go."

"You could have braked."

At that, Nick laughs once. It has no humor in it. "At that speed? You want to explain stopping distance to the crowd, Ruthless? Maybe use crayons."

Rex's attention settles on him. "You are emotional."

"Yeah, weird night for it."

Barbie steps closer to the gray car and crouches by the damaged front quarter. She runs two fingers along the scrape, studying it. Her mouth presses flat.

"The transfer's consistent with a side impact," she says. "His car came across on Wyatt."

Rex lifts his brows. "You are his mechanic. Your analysis is touching."

"I am a mechanic. That is why it is an analysis."

"And I am supposed to accept it as neutral?"

"No," Barbie says. "You are supposed to accept it because it is true. I know truth is a weird texture for you."

Big Eddie raises a hand before Rex can answer. "Barbie, I respect your eye. I do. But I need more than paint on a fender to decide intent."

"He had people trapped on the roadside," I say.

"Did you see them?" Eddie asks.

"I saw the dog. I saw her."

"Anybody else?"

Chrome steps up from the edge of the crowd, visor hanging around his neck. He shakes his head. "I was at the gate. I saw them leave the mill, then heard the hit. I didn't have eyes on the road."

Nick points toward the nearest abandoned building. "There are cameras."

"Dead cameras," Chrome says. "I checked the property last week. I am not proud of that sentence, but here we are."

Eddie rubs his beard.

The crowd has gone quiet. They understand the rules. They may hate them, but they understand. Big Eddie's races run on money, reputation, and the belief that a wager means something after the flag drops. If he rules for me because he likes me better, the whole rotten system turns useless.

I hate that I am thinking about the integrity of a system built around people racing through an abandoned factory.

Rex knows it too.

"You admitted contact," he says. "You chose the detour. You forced me off the marked route."

"I forced you away from her."

"You say."

My hands curl.

Big Eddie looks at me. His eyes are tired, not cruel. "Did you make contact with his car?"

"Yes."

"Did you take him off course?"

"Yes."

"Can you prove he intended to hit somebody?"

My throat goes tight.

I see Esme on the pavement again. The terror in her face. The way she asked whether I knew what happened when drivers thought they controlled everything.

I have spent enough nights around racing to know that a car moving wrong can look like a mistake. A swerve. A correction. A split-second calculation nobody outside the driver can prove.

Rex builds his whole life in that gap.

"No," I say.

Eddie exhales through his nose. "Then Rex takes the race."

The words barely register.

Rex's gaze drops to the gray coupe.

"No," Nick says.

Big Eddie looks at him. "Nick."

"He tried to murder somebody to win."

"We cannot prove that."

"We all know it."

"Knowing and proving are not the same damn thing."

Nick takes a step forward. Barbie catches the sleeve of his racing jacket. He stops, but the silence that comes out of him is worse than yelling.

Eddie turns back to me. "You put your car up. Pinks are pinks."

I look at the gray car, the one I rebuilt out of stubbornness and sleep deprivation. The one that got me through rent shortages, bad nights, grocery runs for my mom, and more races than I should admit. It is not just metal, but it is also exactly that. Metal. Bolts. Wiring. Things I can understand.

Rex holds out his hand.

"Keys, Wyatt."

I want to put the key fob through his windshield.

Instead I pull it from my pocket and hold it for one ugly beat. The little black fob rests in my palm, light as nothing.

Then I drop it into his gloved hand.

Rex closes his fingers around it.

"Thank you," he says.

"Don't thank me."

"You always mistake that for humility."

He heads toward the gray car. Two of his people move with him, men I recognize only as silhouettes from old races. One gets in the passenger seat. Rex slides behind the wheel like the car has been waiting for him.

I know every noise that engine makes.

When he starts it, something in my chest goes painfully still.

Barbie comes up beside me. Her shoulder touches mine, brief and solid. "I hate him."

"Get in line."

"I mean I hate him with technical specificity."

"That is your love language."

Nick watches the gray car roll toward the east gate. "We could steal it back."

Barbie turns on him. "No."

"I said could. I am brainstorming."

"You are proposing grand theft auto to a crowd of witnesses."

"Fine. We steal it back later."

"Nick!"

He looks at me, anger bright in his eyes. "Say the word."

The offer is reckless. Loyal. Exactly the kind of thing that makes me want to put distance between myself and every person I care about.

"No," I say.

Rex stops at the gate and lowers the driver's window. He looks at me through the open space.

"Bring what you owe next time," he calls.

Then he drives out into the Los Angeles night in my car.

The engine note fades.

Nobody speaks for several seconds.

Chrome shifts his weight. "He knew you would hit him."

"Yeah," I say.

Barbie looks toward the dark road. "Then he put her there."

My jaw tightens. "He was willing to."

"That is not the same thing as knowing," she says carefully. "I am not defending him. I am saying he built it so you could not prove anything."

I rub my thumb over the wrench ring. Back and forth. The metal has warmed against my skin.

Nick kicks at a loose chunk of concrete. "What now?"

What now is a garage with one less race car, a rival who has made his point, and a locked rear bay I have spent two and a half years avoiding.

I look toward the truck.

"We go home," I say.

Barbie studies me. "And tomorrow?"

"Tomorrow, we see what we have left."

Her eyes narrow. She hears the part I do not say.

The car under the cover.

Will's car.

She does not push. Not here.

"Fine," she says. "But you're not doing tomorrow alone."

Nick nods. "No brooding in unventilated spaces. New shop policy."

"That is not a policy."

"It is now."

I look between them, at Chrome pretending not to watch too closely, at Barbie standing ready to argue me into common sense, at Nick furious enough to commit several felonies for a car that was mine.

"Get the truck," I tell Chrome.

Then I walk away from the empty space where the gray coupe stood, trying not to feel how much colder the mill seems without it.