LOVE ME AT FULL SPEED

CHAPTER THREE

I held Cole's gaze, hand stretched out.

“Wait… you're not joking?”

“Nope.”

“As in you want to race?”

“Boy, didn't you hear me the first time?”

“Absolutely not,” Cole said.

“You don't have a driver, Cole. You have a car, a crowd that's about to start asking for their money back, and about ninety seconds before this whole thing falls apart in front of everyone you supposedly run this town with.”

“That's not the point.”

“Then what is the point? Enlighten me.”

He didn't answer. His jaw moved like he was chewing on something bitter, something he didn't want to say out loud in front of Jules or the crowd. Whatever it was, it wasn't about whether I could physically handle a car.

Jules watched the standoff with the open delight most people reserve for a good movie.

“You know,” he said, “for a guy who talks this big, you sure fold fast when it matters.”

“Stay out of this, Moreno.”

“I would, except it's genuinely the most entertaining thing I've seen all week.” Jules leaned against his own car, arms crossed, clearly not going anywhere. “So what's it going to be, Hartley? You forfeit in front of everyone, or you let the girl drive?”

“She's not driving.”

“Scared your little sister can't handle it and you would lose?”

“Stepsister,” Cole snapped, “and no, I'm scared she's going to get herself killed doing something she has no business doing.”

“Let me prove you wrong, Cole,” I said. “I know exactly what I'm doing.”

“This is not an evening drive.”

“Obviously. Just hand over the keys already. Trust me on this one.”

Cole's eyes moved between me and the crowd, weighing it, and for a moment I thought he'd actually refuse outright, forfeit the whole thing rather than let me near that driver's seat. Then someone near the front called his name again, impatience curdling into something closer to mockery, and I watched the calculation finish behind his eyes.

He put the keys in my hand.

“If anything happens to you,” he said, low enough that only I could hear it, “your mother will kill me before I even get the chance to explain it to my dad.”

“Nothing's going to happen.”

“You don't know that.”

“Neither do you.”

The second my hands touched the wheel, I felt a fire light up in me.

The seat. The pedals. The low, steady hum of the engine waiting for permission to move. It all came back like muscle memory I never actually lost, just buried under enough guilt and gravel and eight hundred miles of highway to convince myself it was gone for good. My hands found the wheel and my foot knew the pedal without looking. Some part of me that had been holding its breath since Millbrook Falls finally exhaled.

Jules leaned down toward the window before I pulled off, close enough that I could see the genuine curiosity in his face, none of the mockery he'd aimed at Cole a minute ago.

“Are you sure about this?”

“Are you asking because you care, or because you want to win?”

“Can't it be both?”

I didn't answer him. I just put the car in gear.

The flag was raised and a gunshot followed.

The cars launched forward, engines roaring as we tore down the stretch of road.

For the first few seconds, everything felt almost too easy. Then the driver beside me swerved hard, trying to squeeze me toward the edge of the road. I tightened my grip on the wheel. The old instinct kicked in before I could think about it. I eased off for half a second, let him think he'd forced me back, then cut around him the moment the road opened.

I shot ahead. The first corner came fast and I took it hard, the back of the car sliding just enough to make my stomach drop. For a split second, the tires lost their grip, but I corrected before the car could spin, straightening out and hitting the accelerator again.

One car flew past me on the outside but there was no way I was letting him stay there. I pushed harder, closing the gap before the next turn. He tried to block me, moving across the road just as I went for the inside. There was barely enough room but I took it anyway.

My shoulder slammed against the side of the seat as I cut through, but I came out ahead. The road stretched open in front of me, and the noise from the other cars faded behind me.

For the first time all night, I smiled. This was it.

Not the crowd. Not Cole. Not Jules. Just the road. The old familiar feeling of being behind wheels on a cold night.

The next corner was a really sharp bend and I felt the car fight back. The tires screamed against the pavement, the steering wheel jerking beneath my hands.

I held on, counting down to three seconds in my head and I accelerated. By the time the finish line came into view, I had pulled far enough ahead that I could finally breathe.

I crossed it first.

When I climbed out, the entire lot had gone quiet, dozens of people staring at me like I'd descended from somewhere they didn't have a name for, like the new stepsister everyone assumed was just some rich man's inconvenient houseguest had turned out to be something else entirely.

For a few seconds, nobody said anything.

Then someone from the crowd yelled, “What the f**k was that?”

Another voice came from somewhere behind him. “I've never seen her before.”

“That was her first race?”

“There's no f*****g way,” another person replied.

The murmuring spread through the lot almost instantly. People who had been leaning against cars were now standing straight, craning their necks to get a better look at me. A few of them turned toward Cole, then back at me, as if they were trying to figure out whether he had somehow been hiding me all this time.

Jules walked toward me slowly, looking completely overwhelmed.

“Where the hell have you been hiding?” he shouted.

I had no words. My hands were still shaking from the thrill and relief. This was the first time I was going behind the wheel without a panic attack.

Jules stared at me for another second, then looked past me at the car I'd just driven.

“You've got to be kidding me.”

Someone laughed in disbelief. “She just smoked everybody.”

“Who brought her?”

“That's Hartley's stepsister.”

“Since when does Hartley have a sister who can drive like that?”

“Stepsister,” someone corrected.

“Who cares?”

The noise got louder. Cole stood off to the side, arms crossed, and when I met his eyes, I didn't see anger anymore. I saw something completely different.

Shock.

He looked like he was still trying to process what he'd just watched. His eyes moved from me to the car and back again, almost like he expected someone to tell him there had been some kind of mistake.

Jules glanced at the two of us, and he instantly clocked it.

“You didn't know your sister could race that well, did you?”

The lot went even quieter than it already was, but Cole didn't answer him. For once, he had absolutely nothing to say. He just stared at me, completely fascinated, with a hint of a smile in his eyes that looked almost accidental.

The girl I had spotted leaning against a car when I first came pushed herself away from it and started walking toward me. She had been watching the entire race. She stopped in front of me, looked at the car, then looked back at me.

“Okay…” she said, still looking slightly stunned. “I have questions.”

I finally laughed, leaving me breathless. “About what?”

“Everything.”

She held out her hand. “I'm Sasha.”

“Nora.”

“I know.” She glanced over her shoulder at the crowd, where people were still talking about the race like they'd just witnessed something impossible.

Then she looked back at me. “You just got here, right?”

“Yeah.”

She stared at me for another second. “Okay. I think we're going to be friends.”

I laughed again. “That's a little fast.”

“Maybe.” She shrugged. “But you just beat half the people in this lot on your first night. I'm not wasting my opportunity to get to know you before you become famous.”

She said it so casually that I couldn't help smiling. For the first time since I'd arrived in this city, I didn't feel like the outsider everyone had been treating me like.

I had no idea yet what getting behind that wheel would cost me.