Pedal to the Metal: Love's Drivin' but Fate's Got the Pole (The 'Cuda Confessions Book 3) (26 page)

“Get off me, you bastard!”

Dropping my purse, I bolted for the house.

T
he front door was closed, but when I wrenched the knob, the panel swung open. Caroline’s red boots kicked frantically against the hips of a pair of black trousers.

“Jonny?”

No, the ass wasn’t nearly nice enough to be Jonny’s. The man raised his head. A spotted pink scalp peeked through thin strands of brown hair.

I tripped over a discarded white shirt. Throwing out a hand, the only thing to steady myself on was the man’s bare shoulder. He jerked away, rolling toward the back of the sofa. His rigid penis stuck out from white boxers dotted with faded blue diamond shapes. I jerked my gaze up to meet eyes so dark, it took a heartbeat to make them out as blue.

“Jill?”

“Wrong answer, asshole.” I snatched a vase off the end table. Lifting it high, I brought it down on his head. The cheap ceramic container shattered. A line of bright red appeared on the side of my palm. I grabbed the shoulder strap of his wifebeater T-shirt.

“Get off her, I said!” I gave another heave.

He landed in the floor, but his arm still stretched over her.

His freckled arm, which ended with a fistful of Caroline’s hair.

I drove my toe into his elbow. “Let go of her! Caroline, get up! Go call nine-one-one.”

“Just make him go,” she whispered. “Just make him go home.”

I searched the room for something else to hit her rapist with, but the glass lamp would shatter all over Caroline. The next heaviest object was a framed five-by-seven photo. The stranger groaned and drew his knees under him, struggling to rise.

I backed away, giving Caroline a tip of my head. Why didn’t she get off the damn couch and go call the cops?

The man rolled onto his ass, reaching for the back of his head. His dick still protruded from the opening in his boxers, soft and unthreatening now, and yet, still menacing. Wincing, he swapped arms, lifting his eyes to my face. Blood trickled down the side of his neck. I tracked the rivulet until it soaked into the thin white shirt, unable to tear my eyes off the spreading stain.

“Jill, you came back. I thought about you every day, sweetheart. Remember how I brought you orange juice in bed and stroked your hair while you drank it, just the day before you ran away? Didn’t you enjoy our mornings together?”

Jill.

Then he must be... Shalvis? The preacher? Caine’s... grandfather?
My stomach rolled. I swallowed the sour taste that flooded my mouth.

“Didn’t you like it when I brought you awake with a sweet touch, Jill? Why’d you have to run away with that juvenile delinquent?”

My stomach twisted. There was something slimy about a grown man taking juice into the bedroom of his slumbering teenage stepdaughter, touching her when she was unaware. Something dripped onto my shoe—
just a gentle patter, like rain
—but I wasn’t willing to take my eyes off this guy.

Oh, God, how I despise a hypocrite.

I slapped my stinging hand to my thigh. “No, I’m Shelby Hannah. Pretty sure I’m the daughter of that juvenile delinquent Jill left home with. Get the fuck out of this house, preacher man, before I show you what all he taught me about self-defense.” I eyed Caroline, wondering if I dared leave to call the police from the car. My eye fell on the sturdy wooden chairs around the kitchen table.
Just three steps.

“Hannah.” He spat the word like a curse, grabbing his shirt. “That fucking bastard killed my baby.”

“The way I heard it, she killed herself because you couldn’t practice what you preach, you sanctimonious bastard. How could you send her away when she needed you most?”

Caroline curled into a ball. Her shoulders shook with silent sobs.
Gotta risk going for the chair.

I moved sideways through the small archway, never taking my eyes off the preacher. Confidence surged through me when I found I could lift the chair easily, but the heft of maple wood assured me of a solid hit.

“If you don’t get the fuck out of this house, I’m going to let you beg Jill’s forgiveness face to face.”

“It’s that... that bastard who needs to beg forgiveness. Dale Hannah raped my daughter, then kidnapped her, and took her out of state. Never done a single day for his sins, because of that damn cop!”

I gripped the posts on either side of the chair back, whipping the seat above my head. “I mean it. Get out!”

He made a deliberate turn toward Caroline. “Me and you ain’t done, girlie. I reckon you done picked the cash option.” Ignoring me, like he thought I wouldn’t dare slap his brains right out of his skull, he slid first one foot, then the other, into his slacks. “First Timothy, chapter five, verse six. But she who gives herself to wanton pleasure is dead even while she lives.”

In an instant, I was transported to some church revival, dragged there at the age of seven by my grandmother and her sister. The preacher had run up and down the aisle, waving a Bible and shouting until people fell down in convulsions. I’d hidden under the pew, crying. My grandmother spanked me when she saw I’d wet my pants.

“Bible verses won’t save you, old man. Not from me.”

He pushed off the couch, drawing his pants up pale, shrunken thighs. The prick’s motions were as deliberate as if he’d been dressing in his own bedroom.

He lifted his head. “Hosea, chapter two, verse five. For their mother has played the harlot. She who conceived them has acted shamefully. For she said, I will go after my lovers, who give me my bread and my water, my wool and my flax, my oil and my drink.”

I held his gaze for a moment, then dropped my eyes to his exposed penis. Lifting my head again, I smirked. “Call me crazy, but I think God’s a little pissed at you for quoting the Bible with your cock hanging out.”

All sanity faded from his eyes, leaving only the twisting flames of hatred. My heart knocked my ribs, but I cocked the chair like a bat while he tucked himself up and closed his zipper. I thought for one hideous second that he’d lunge at me, but he spun and staggered out the door.

Casting the chair aside, I jumped to help Caroline sit up. She tugged her sweatpants over her thighs, but not before I spied long, bloody scratches marring her legs and abdomen.

“We have to call the police. He tried to rape you.”

She twisted her fists in my shirt. Tears rolled down her cheeks. Her wild eyes wrenched my heart. “No. Nobody’s gonna take my word over his.”

“I’m a witness!” I grabbed her shoulders, sinking onto the edge of the couch. “I saw him, Caroline. I heard you scream.”

“Like folks won’t think we made that up together? Face it, Shelby. I’m the town slut and he’s a man of God.”

Like hell he is.

She dropped her eyes, but I jammed my fingers under her chin until she met my fierce stare. “You are not a slut. I deny it’s even a goddamn word! We choose to have sex, when we want, with anyone we want. It’s a fucking choice we’re allowed to make. Because we are no man’s property. We don’t have to answer to anybody on the face of the earth for that. Do you hear me? Enjoying sex makes us nothing but adult women in control of our sexuality. People like him just spout that shit as an excuse to use women like punching bags.”

I stared until she gave a slight nod. “I don’t want Mama to know,” she whispered. “She’ll do something crazy. She just stays here to taunt him. I-I....” She threw her arms around my neck. “Oh, God, what am I gonna do?”

“Shh. Shh. You’re gonna take a shower and scrub that bastard’s sweat off you. I’ll clean up the mess.”

“You don’t understand,” she choked. “He’s bought this house and taken over our lease.”

I pulled back to see her face. “He what?”

She stared past my shoulder. “He’s lost it. Mama’s finally made him insane. He waits till his wife leaves for work. Then, he sits out on the driveway in a folding chair, praying out loud for the Lord to deliver him from the midst of evil. Beggin’ God to cast out the harlots.”

She lifted hopeless eyes to mine. “And his God gave him a way. He bought our house from Hanley Martin. I was tryin’ to scape up the money for it. That’s why I wrote that program for the cigarette plant. I thought they’d give me a bonus. When that didn’t work out, Hanley had to have the money on account of he has cancer, so he sold the house to Reverend Shavis instead. He took over our lease. It runs out the end of the month. He’s jacking up the rent, Shelby. He wants twelve hundred and fifty dollars a month!”

Her face twisted. “Or, I can fuck him once a week for the difference. Because after all, I am a harlot.”

Sour, hot liquid roiled in the back of my throat. “Then, you move. I’ll help you start packing.”

She raked tangles from her hair. “Mama’s almost as bat-shit crazy as he is. I don’t know what she’ll do if that man’s the one to force us outta here. She thrives on—What’ll I do if she goes back to drinkin’? We gotta have her paycheck. Little Shelby needs her grandma. Shelby, she might shoot the bastard.”

Jamming the heels of her palms into her eye sockets, she choked, “I knew I shoulda held onto that cash we won and not paid up the car insurance. I guess I’ll have to sell the car after all, but when that money’s gone, then what?”

“You’re not selling the car.” I supposed we could race, but without three strapping males to enforce the deal, we might end up just wasting gasoline. Maybe Ervin could fix something up. I could ask Lee Haney, but it made more sense to have this discussion with the guys.

“I’m calling Jonny.”

She dug her nails into my arm. “No. No! Promise me, Shelby, you won’t call any of them. They can’t do nothin’ from Virginia. They need to think about racin’ and nothin’ else. Besides, I told you, me and him’s just foolin’ around. But, even if we ain’t, dumpin’ your problems on a man’s the best way in the world to make sure he runs.”

I opened my mouth to tell her what Jonny had said about her and little Shelby. But closed it again, because after all the hell Caroline had been through, didn’t she deserve that unspoiled, heart-pounding moment when Jonny went down on one knee? I didn’t want her walking on broken glass for months, wondering when he’d propose, because I spilled the beans. Too much had to happen before that moment would come. Because of something Dale had done for me. 

“Just hold me,” she begged. “For one minute, I wanna feel like someone loves me.”

I wrapped my arms around her, holding her tight to my chest. Her tremors rippled through my body.

“I’ve always loved you,” I whispered, smoothing her hair from her cheek. “From the moment I first laid eyes on you and those damn sexy boots.”

It was true. I didn’t know whether to trust what I felt for Caine and Colt, but I’d always been in love with Caroline. From the moment she’d casually forged my mother’s signature on an excuse for school, she’d been the thing I always aspired to be. Wild and free. Expecting Caroline to follow the rules of the mundane world made about as much sense as expecting a tiger to cross the road at the light.

Her wildness called to the resentful, half-grown girl I’d been then, one who’d been ignored when not being smothered. I’d answered the call, thrilled because no one else in my entire, miserable life had ever looked on me as a fellow rule-breaker. Every rule I’d ever broken had been because I’d wicked up courage from Caroline like a thirsty sponge.

It took more than courage not to give a fuck about the rules. It took the wisdom to see that the rules were rigged in unfair ways—the way no one ever condemned Brandon, for example, when Caroline got pregnant. The way no one would ever whisper about Colt and Caine for all those nights spent fucking on the hood of a car after a race, but would be thrilled to point a finger at me and Caroline and cry ‘harlot!’

She’d rejected everything society said a good girl should be, in favor of enjoying her femininity in ways most never dared. And the women who knew her despised her for the freedom she took, the way I supposed those condemned to life in prison must hate their visitors when they turned to walk away.

I smoothed my lips over her cheek, murmuring
shh, shh
, while she sobbed. I thought about the way she’d writhed on the hood of her Challenger, clad only in the glow of a street light, while a stranger knelt between her thighs. The scared little girl I’d been the first night I’d seen Caroline race had marveled that any woman could be so free.

She pulled her head off my shoulder to look into my eyes, and I knew I’d fight anyone to wipe the shame from her eyes. I regretted not swinging that damn chair, but the luck of the Roberts dictated that I’d maim rather than kill.

“I’m fine.” She sniffed. “Really, I don’t know why I’m crying. He didn’t hurt me.”

Oh, yes, he did.
Anger burned hot inside my breast. The woman I loved pushed me away. I wasn’t ready to let her go. Forcing her to let me hold her made me no different than Shalvis, so I stood.

“Okay, you get a shower. I’ll clean up the mess. I’ll go to the cash machine and get out fifty bucks to pay Robyn back for her vase. Think that’s enough?”

“I don’t want your money, Shelby. She’ll believe it was an accident. She’ll be home any time now.” Caroline pushed off the couch. I couldn’t bear watching the wooden way she moved, but I sensed she didn’t want my help. Only my silence.