Shifting Gears: The Complete Series (Sports Bad Boy Romance) (4 page)

It’s one of those sounds
older people would describe as something you don’t hear anymore. The engine is
loud but deep, and the rumble would be a pretty decent massage if the seats
weren’t split.

He pulls out of the
parking lot, slowly. I anticipate some show of power as we’re pulling out, but
Eli just eases it out when he’s got plenty of room and we start going.

“It’s kind of loud!” I
yell over the growing noise of the engine.

“What?” he shouts back,
and I’m not sure if he’s messing with me or not.

“Where’s Grog Hill,
anyway?” I ask. “I’ve never heard of it.”

“It’s a spot I know just
outside town!” he bellows just above the roar of the car.

I’ve been so busy trying
to read his lips I hadn’t noticed that we’re now doing seventy-five on the forty-mile-per-hour
road out of town.

We come to a gentle
curve, but Eli slows down for it like it’s a right angle. Going only twenty
around the bend, the top of the car pitches violently toward the outside of the
curve and for a second, I honestly think we’re about to roll.

Did I mention the car has
no seatbelts?

I get the sensation I’m
lying down on one of those carnival rides that spin you against a wall, but
Eli’s expression couldn’t be more serene.

We come through the curve
and the car rocks side-to-side. He’s got his foot back on the gas, and I’m
squealing in fear and surprise.

He eases off the throttle
a touch and asks, “You all right?”

“Not sure yet,” I tell
him. “Why is the car still rocking?”

“The suspension’s going
on it. Don’t worry, though. I do this for a living, kind of.”

The sun is already near
the horizon. I’m still not sure whether I’m thrilled or petrified cruising
along in this boat of his, but it’s a decent departure from my usual routine of
never doing anything exciting ever.

We pull off onto a dirt
road that crawls past a tall, grassy hill. There’s a rocky face on the west
side, and I’m wondering if this brash guy might actually have a touch of the
romantic in him.

When we arrive at a dirt
parking lot, there’s a line of people walking toward the hill.

“We’re here,” his lips
say, although it very well may be “weird hair.” It’s difficult to tell.

He opens his mouth wide,
moving his jaw back and forth. I mimic the gesture and after a few seconds, my
ears pop. I wouldn’t say I can hear very well right now, but it’s an
improvement.

“How was the ride?” he
asks in a reasonably discernible voice.

I just keep trying to pop
my ears more, hoping I might be able to follow the conversation a bit better
before it’s time to go and his car deafens me again.

“That bad?” he asks.
“Maybe we should have taken your car.”

“No,” I tell him, giving
up on wiggling my jaw. “It’s fine. It was actually kind of fun.”

It was kind of fun. It
was also kind of terrifying.

“You said you wanted a
ride,” he says. “If you want, I can drive more like a normal person on the way
back.”

“I’d appreciate that,” I
tell him as we get out of the car.

“If you wouldn’t mind
getting the box from Soeur Torsadée,” he says, “I’ve got some camping chairs
and some wine in the trunk I’m gonna grab.”

“What is this place?” I
ask, picking up the box from the floor of the passenger’s seat.

“It’s just a hill,” Eli
says, opening his trunk. “A while ago, I guess people got into the habit of
coming here to watch the sunset.” He pulls out two folding canvas camping
chairs and leans them up against the back bumper. “It started as a hippie
thing, I think, but then a few more people heard about it and it got pretty big
for a while.”

“You’d think there would
be a sign or something,” I say, looking at the hill in the distance. From where
I’m standing, the hill looks like it grew out of the Earth with the sole
purpose of adding to the build-up of the moment. The sky behind the hill is
starting to turn, but the sun is blocked from view.

“They tried that a few
years ago,” Eli says as glasses clink. He pulls a picnic basket out of the
trunk. It’s a strange, if endearing, sight. “Most of the people are just here
to watch the sunset, but some of them get a little protective of this place.
The sign was up for an hour and thirteen minutes before they hooked up a truck
to it and tore it out of the ground.”

“So is this an outlaw
thing?”

He laughs, holding the
picnic basket in his left hand and carrying the chairs under his other arm.
“No. It’s just people on a hill watching a sunset,” he says and we start
walking up the hill. “Stoners show up every once in a while, but they usually
stay off in their own little area. That’s actually how I first learned about
the place.”

“So you’re a pothead?”

“No,” he laughs and
shakes his head. “That was a long time ago. I think I was sixteen.”

He kind of made it better
by making it worse, but I don’t care too much. We were all teenagers.

We’re walking up the hill
and it looks like we’re the last ones arriving. There are about twenty people,
each with their own folding chairs set up along the flat, long rock at the edge
of the hill.

We get to the top and sun
is just kissing the edge of the world and the sky is burst open, paint dripping
outward and upward in a silent pink inferno. Thin, high clouds in the distance
act as a sharper canvas for the contrasting purple and orange.

“Want to have a seat?” he
asks when we reach a space big enough for both of us.

He puts down the picnic
basket and takes one of the chairs from under his other arm. Letting gravity
unfold it, he sets it down.

“There you go,” he says.
“You can put the food down if you want.”

While I’m sitting down
and pretending to look for a better place than my lap for the box of sweets,
Eli unfolds his own chair and sets it up next to mine.

The wide, green valley in
front of us catches the deepening hues of the setting sun, though it’s too lush
a green to hold it for long.

“It’s beautiful, isn’t
it?” he asks as he opens the picnic basket.

“It really is,” I answer
through a very dry throat.

“You okay?” he asks,
pulling a bottle of wine from the picnic basket and reaches back in for a
corkscrew. “I hope you like pinot grigio.”

“I love it,” I tell him.
I’ve never actually had it, but it sounds like the kind of thing I could get
behind.

He hands me a glass,
uncorks the wine, and pours me some.

The brighter colors are
already fading from the sky, and I take my first sip of pinot grigio. I’ve had
wine a few times before, but Paz usually buys the stuff in a box.

My expectations are a
little too high, though: I honestly can’t tell the difference between this and
the other stuff.

I open the lid of the box
in my lap and lift it, offering some to Eli. He takes a truffle, but gazes at
the baklava.

“Whatever this is,” he
says, “it looks delicious, but we probably should have asked if they could hook
us up with some forks or something.”

I smile and tear off a
piece of the baklava, putting it in my mouth.

“Maybe not,” he chuckles
and follows my lead.

“So,” I start, “illegal
racing: what got you into that?”

“Car movies,” he says,
“definitely. That’s basically what it’s like. People talk about
Casablanca
and that one with the Italian
guy who walks around for a while and then the movie ends as being some of the
best movies ever, but racing flicks are basically my life on tape.”

“It’s really hard to tell
when you’re joking,” I say, trying to spot any tells.

“It’s really not,” he
says with a crooked smile. “The movies are mostly nonsense. Ya gotta respect
P-Dubs, though. That guy was awesome.”

“Naturally,” I respond,
having no idea what he’s talking about. “What’s it really like, though? Is it
as big a rush as everyone says it is on YouTube?”

“It’s a lot of waiting.
There are always too many people with too many cars making too much noise. Most
of the people there will never get into a race themselves, not for anything
worth anything, anyway. Usually, you’re up against some jackass with a trust
fund whose parents like to indulge his little ‘hobby’ before they ship him off
to Yale.”

“You know my parents are
both doctors, right?” I may not have a trust fund, per se, but I’d imagine if I
were to take up street racing without knowing Eli, he might just say the same
about me.

“That’s different,” he
says. “You’re not out there trying to prove how ‘grassroots’ you are. It’s
annoying. Besides, you’re not a racer.”

I wonder how I’m going to
tell him that a decent portion of why I gave him my number is that I was
wondering about being behind the wheel.

Of course, I’ll have to
wait to start racing—assuming Eli doesn’t scare me away from it—until I’m out
of college and start making some money. I doubt my stock Honda Accord is going
to stand up too well against what these guys are racing and it’s not like I
have a ton of money just lying around.

I’m not my parents.

“What if I wanted to
learn?” I ask.

He takes his eyes off of
the darkening sky a moment to look at me.

“That’s different, too,”
he says.

“How so?”

“Because I would be the
one teaching you, not some stock car driver you had shipped in for a few
months. You’d be surprised how not-underground the underground can be.”

He looks back at the
view, and I set my hands on the armrests of my camping chair.

A few people are already
starting to leave, but the rest seem committed to stay until every unique color
is sucked from the sky.

“There’s a bit of a
problem, though,” I tell him.

“What’s that?”

“I don’t have a car that
would go fast enough to come in last,” I tell him.

I see him shrug out of
the corner of my eye. “That doesn’t mean you can’t start learning,” he says.

“You’d really teach me?”

“Yeah,” he says. “It may
take a while, and we’re probably going to want to start with your car so
neither of us ends up killed by the massive fireball that would have been my
Chevelle, but if you’re willing to learn, I’m willing to teach you.”

I didn’t know what to
expect when Eli called, and I wasn’t much more prescient when I got to the
Twisted Sister restaurant, but I’m pretty happy with the way things are headed.

“Okay,” I answer. “Mind
if I think it over a little while? I’m getting visions of police lights and
handcuffs and mandatory driving courses.”

“It’s not without its
risks,” he agrees. “If it helps at all, the first lesson is going to be what to
do if you’ve got the cops on your ass.”

“It sounds like you
already have a curriculum in place,” I smirk.

“It’s the one Mick used
when he taught me,” Eli says, and suddenly everything makes a lot more sense.

The way Eli talks to
Mick, it almost seems like he doesn’t respect his easily-injured friend. Still,
Eli has been to the hospital almost every day, and he’s the only one. A couple
others came in to visit Mick, but Eli’s the only one that ever came back.

“So he’s the master
racer, huh?” I ask, feeling more nervous than I already was. After all, Mick’s
in the hospital after crashing his car during a street race. If
he
taught Eli, the chances of me making
it through alive can’t be very good.

“I wouldn’t say that,”
Eli says. “He’s more on the mechanical end than the driving end. He knows
everything you’d need to know to be a great racer, but he tends to let his
emotions drive the car.”

“Who’s to say I wouldn’t
be the same way?”

“I can’t teach him,” Eli
says. “He’s been doing it the other way for too long. I’m not going to let that
happen with you, though. If it’s something you’re really interested in doing,
I’d be sure to teach you the right way from the start.”

Eli’s a hard guy to pin
down.

When I first met him in
the ER, he came off as brash, cocky—good sense of humor, but definitely a bit
of a jerk. Ever since then, though, every time I see him or talk to him,
there’s something else that seems to blow that assumption out of the water.

The sun is gone and the
sky is becoming more black than blue, now, but I’m not in any rush to get out
of here.

I reach over and take
Eli’s hand as we watch the last bit of sunlight fade from the world.

Chapter
Four

Snakes Can Walk and the Tale of Two
Warehouses

Eli

So, the Galaxie’s back in
the shop to get a new transmission, and I’m telling myself for the twenty-ninth
time that it’s just time to let the thing die like it wants to. Even as that’s
going through my head, though, I’m typing in the make and model on the computer
and ordering a new tranny.

Today, I’m getting off a
little early. I’m taking Kate out for a ride in the Chevelle after I’m off,
just to make sure she’s actually got the nerve to go anywhere with racing.

To be honest, I’m not
really expecting her to start rolling up against someone for a pink slip, but I
like her. People that like each other should have things in common, right?

There’s another reason
Maye was willing to let me go early, though.

Mick is finally coming
back to work today.

He finally made it out of
the hospital, surprisingly still alive, and this is going to be his first day
back. To mark the occasion, Maye and I have left him a bit of a “welcome back”
present: I’m leaving early, Maye’s locking herself in her office after he shows
up, and we’ve got seven cars on the docket and nobody else scheduled to work.

I love a boss who’s
willing to risk customer happiness in favor of a prank.

“Hey, Faust!” Maye’s
voice comes from somewhere behind me.

I tighten the alternator
I’m replacing and turn around. “He here already? I would have thought he’d do
the fashionably late thing.”

“No,” she says. “He just
called, he’s going to be a few minutes late.”

“Ah, so the world isn’t
ending then?” I ask.

“There’s a guy out front
that wants to talk to you,” she says. “Tall guy, bald, goatee, really
expensive-looking black suit. I wanted to give you a heads-up in case you got
in over your head with a race and need to get out of here before that guy puts
a couple in you.”

“How thoughtful,” I
respond, smiling. “I notice that you didn’t tell him I wasn’t here, though.”

“Well,” she says, “I
figure if he does kill you, I might be able to convince him to throw some money
at the problem so I keep my mouth shut. I like you and everything, but you’re
hardly a big payday.”

“Nobody is here to kill
or otherwise cause harm to anyone,” a man says, coming through the open bay
door. “I am here to discuss cars.”

“You want me to stick
around?” Maye asks quietly.

“Then there would be two
bodies instead of one, wouldn’t there?” I ask. “I think I’ll be fine.”

Maye pats me on the
shoulder, really milking the whole killer bit, and she heads back into the
office.

“How can I help you?” I
ask the man. “We’re a little backed up at the moment, but if you don’t mind
waiting, I’m sure we can take a look at whatever you’ve got going on.”

“I am here to talk about
cars,” he says, “not repairs.”

“Okay,” I tell him,
wiping my hands on a sham cloth. “What can I do for you?”

“I hear you have become
quite the driver to beat around town.”

“Yeah?” I ask. “Where’d
you hear that?”

“It does not matter. What
matters is that I have a business proposition for you.” The look on his face is
stern, his eyes unblinking.

“I already have a job,” I
tell him, “but thanks for the shady offer. It’s been a while since some jackass
who wants to knock over a bank has come by asking me to be his fall guy.”

“Who do you think I am?”

I shrug. “I’m not sure
who you are, but I know any racer would keep his or her mouth shut about any
other. Talking is bad for business, and I think you should probably forget you
ever heard my name.”

I know I’m laying it on a
bit thick, but this is the sort of thing that gets people imprisoned. Well,
that and the illegal racing part.

How Kate went about the
topic—that’s the way a noob is supposed to do it. You don’t just walk up to
someone at their work and talk about the circuit.

A wide, toothy grin comes
over the man’s face. “I am not just some nobody off the street,” he says.

“Well,” I tell him. “You
look like nobody and you just came off the street, so…”

“Rans!” Mick calls from
the direction of the shop. “Guess who’s back?”

“Hey, look at you,” I say
and leave the guy who’s trying to get us all arrested standing there with a
stupid look on his face.

He’s not responding to
me, though, he’s looking at the man I was just talking to.

I get up to Mick and give
him a pat on the shoulder, saying, “You look like an ear of corn that’s been in
the bottom of a dumpster for a while.”

“What’s
he
doing here?” Mick asks in a whisper.

I glance back. The man is
staring at us.

“Just some jerk-off who
came in here asking about racing,” I answer. “I was just about to kick his ass
out of here.”

“Don’t,” Mick says. “Eli,
just speak when you’re spoken to and be respectful. I don’t know why he’s here,
but it can’t be good.”

Ding.

“You mean-” I ask.

“Yeah,” Mick interrupts.
“That’s
him
.”

He means Jax. The king of
this city’s underworld, if there is one, is standing in my shop and I just
called him a punk and told him to get out of my shop.

“You’re full of crap,
man,” I tell Mick. “Jax isn’t even a real person. He’s just a legend based off
of some guy who won a few races back in the day. I know you like to talk all
big, saying you went to school with him and everything, but-”

The man Mick is calling
Jax interrupts, saying, “Greenville Junior High.”

“Dude, he’s real and he’s
standing right behind you,” Mick says.

“I get this is your first
day back and you want to jump right back in with a prank, but this one’s pretty
stupid…” I trail off as I notice all of the color has drained from Mick’s face
and he’s taking long, slow breaths out of his nose. He’s trying not to let on
that he’s on the verge of hyperventilating.

Mick’s like me when it
comes to pranks: he keeps his cool until everything’s played out.

I turn around.

“Jax?” I ask.

The man nods.

“Now,” he says and takes
a few steps toward us, “if we are finished with introductions, I believe I was
about to make you a proposal.”

“Hold on,” I tell him.

I walk past Jax and out
the open bay door. One of the many legends I’ve heard regarding “Jax” over the
years is that he drives a platinum-colored LFA when he’s not racing.

Personally, I’ve never
seen an LFA of any color even driving past this town.

“Where is it?” I ask.

“Where is what?” Jax
returns.

“You know,” I start.

Jax is shrugging when I
look back at him.

“Without being more
specific, I really do not know to what you are referring,” he says.

He’s even talking the way
Mick says he did. Of course, that’s a strike against this guy. Mick makes stuff
up all the time, especially when it’s to mess with someone.

“Okay, Mick,” I say,
turning. “You got me. I’m
really
scared.”

Only, Mick hasn’t budged
from his spot near the office. Why would he do this if he couldn’t see the look
on my face?

The man calling himself
Jax sighs, saying, “If you choose not to believe I am who I say I am, that
works for me. However, I doubt you will take what I am about to say very
seriously unless I confirm your friend’s story, so…”

He unbuttons the top
button of his sports jacket. I’m scoffing until he undoes the second button and
opens one side of the jacket, revealing a very large handgun in a holster on
his hip.

“Are we done with the
foreplay, or do I have to fire a couple of rounds to convince you I am not here
to play games?” Jax asks.

“What do you want?” My
voice is about half the size it’s been the rest of the day.

Jax smiles at me. I’m
still not certain it’s him, but I
am
certain that’s a gun on his hip. Maybe it’s a fake, but it sure doesn’t look
like it. Whoever this is, even if it is the real Jax, my best bet is to just go
along with it.

I go along with it, the
worst case scenario is that I make a fool of myself. I don’t go along with it,
the worst case scenario gets a lot worse.

“I trust you’ve heard at
least some scattered rumors of a tournament I’m putting together,” Jax says.

I turn back toward Mick.
He was telling the truth.

“I’ve heard about it,” I
answer.

“What you may not have
heard is that it is by invitation only,” Jax continues. “Maybe we are
different, but I do prefer knowing a driver can race before I put him on the
line.”

“So?” I ask. “What do you
want with me?”

He reaches inside his
jacket, and I’m already halfway turned toward the nearest exit, but he just
laughs. I glance back to find he’s just reaching into one of the inner
pockets—much too high for him to be going for the gun.

Of course, if this is the
real Jax, the rumor goes that he’s got at least three guns on him at any given
time, so all things considered, I should probably start running.

“Why would I want to kill
a man who calls himself Ransom? You are not a threat to me. I am merely here to
give you this,” he says, pulling a card from his inner-jacket pocket.

It’s the size of a normal
business card, but the only word on the front is the name “Jax.”

“On the back, you will
find instructions on where to go and who to talk to if you are in,” he says.
“Three heats. If you make it to the third heat, you have made it to the final. If
you win the final, you win the tournament.”

“And what happens then?”
I ask. “Based on your reputation, you don’t really strike me as the kind of guy
to put up a quarter-”

Jax holds up his hands.
“I am not here to discuss specifics. I am here to offer an invitation.”

Mick, who has slowly made
his way over to my side, breaks his silence. “What about me?” he asks.

“What about you?” Jax
returns.

I turn my head and
whisper, “Maybe you shouldn’t be trying to get
more
involved in this right now.”

“I want in,” Mick says.
“If you don’t have me, you don’t get him.”

“What the hell are you
talking about?” I retort.

“Hey, Eli!” a cheerful
woman’s voice comes from back toward the office, and I’m really hoping it isn’t
who I think it is.

“Leave now,” I tell Jax,
“for all our sakes.”

“Hold on a minute,” Mick
says. “I’m the one who told you about the tournament, Eli. You’re not just
going to cut me out like this.”

“Dude, shut up,” I
mutter.

“I don’t think I will,”
Mick says.

This is the wrong time
for him to display how butt hurt he gets when he’s left out of something.

“I trust one card will be
enough for the both of you, then?” Jax asks.

He doesn’t wait for an
answer. He just starts walking toward the bay door until he’s out of the shop
and around the corner.

“Sorry,” Kate says from
behind Mick and me, “I didn’t know you were talking to a customer.”

Yeah, a customer.

“It’s all right,” I tell
her. “We were done, anyway. Are you ready to go?”

“Ready when you are. Hey,
Mick,” she says. “It’s good to see you up and walking around.”

“Thanks,” he says with a
smile, then whispers to me, “Dude, we need to talk about this.”

“I have plans and none of
them include getting my brains blown out by some phantom mob guy,” I whisper
back. “Now be cool or I burn the card.”

“It’s great to see you,
Kate,” Mick says, “but I’ve got a few things to go over with the boss before I
can get back to work. You two have a good afternoon.”

His face is red as he
walks to the office.

“Shall we?” Kate asks.

“Hold on just a second,”
I tell her and point in Mick’s direction.

When he gets to the
office door, he tries the knob, only it’s not turning.

“Hilarious,” Mick calls
over his shoulder. “Toss me your keys.”

“I’m already clocked out,
man,” I tell him. “I gave my keys back to Maye so you’d have a set for the
night.”

Mick knocks on the door,
calling out “Maye!” and I’m finally ready to go.

“Okay,” I tell Kate.
“Tonight, I’m going to take you around town in the Chevelle. The point of
tonight is to start teaching you when you need to drive like you’re just heading
to the store and when it’s safe to race.”

“Where is it?” she asks.