Pedal to the Metal: Love's Drivin' but Fate's Got the Pole (The 'Cuda Confessions Book 3) (24 page)

Her voice came right through the door. “Well, you can take the girl out of the trailer park, but you can’t take the trailer park out of the girl.”

Seriously? After four years as roommates, she’d side with Robert? A guy she had a passing acquaintance with? I’d drawn on the windshield of the wrong goddamn car.

T
wo weeks after my engagement, I stacked my laptop and textbook into my bag while the classroom emptied. Withdrawing two pages from inside, I laid them on the desk, glaring at the mark at the top. My pulse hammered while I stared at the pages, gathering my courage.

“Miss Roberts?”

I glanced up to see Professor Joyner alone at his desk. Hoisting the bag over my shoulder, I grabbed the paper and sauntered down the row of desks.

“I suppose you want to discuss the C- on your last essay?”

“No. I had a mild concussion over Christmas, but I’m starting to think they underestimated the severity. Your remarks are accurate. My thoughts are somewhat disjointed. I want to discuss the B+ on this paper from the fall term.” I slapped the story about meeting Ernie on the professor’s desk. “I’ve re-read this several times. I fail to see what could’ve been better.”

He lifted the pages and pushed his glasses up his nose. “Ah, I recall this story. It disappointed me. It felt... incomplete.”

“Why?” I demanded. “It has a beginning, a middle, and an end. The main character changed from the time we met her—me—till the story ended. All that’s on the page. What else could there be?”

His lips had a condescending tilt—or did the moustache just make it seem so? “Well, the problem is, your prose sucked me in completely, but I felt cheated. Two minutes’ research would’ve compelled me to give you an A. But, since you didn’t make the effort....” He shrugged, extending the pages.

“What research?” Agitation coiled behind my breastbone. I couldn’t explain why this felt so important, other than Ernie deserved a better grade. Which was stupid, but I glared at the head of the English department—and my faculty advisor of four years—anyway. 

“If the 6k ‘Cuda exists, where is it now?”

I blinked. “I assumed the person who offered to sell it to my stepfather either sold it to someone else or kept it in storage.”

He flipped his textbook closed. “You didn’t tell us and I wanted to know. If the fabled car doesn’t exist, then your reader deserves to know that, too, because either the old man conned you, or the racecar driver gave up, not just one dream, but two. Trust, but verify. I didn’t vote for Nixon, of course, but he said that, and I endorse it. How dare you plant a gorgeous seed in my mind, then let the emerging tree fall flat in the first gust, because you didn’t give your story roots?”

Nobody conned Dale—not about a car—but everything I knew was on the page. I could ask Dale, if I dared bring up a painful past, but goddammit, I ached to ask Ernie. I balled my fists and stared into Dr. Joyner’s eyes. Bifocal lenses split his cappuccino irises, making it hard to determine if he was sincere or just a jerk on a power trip. What was worse, I couldn’t recall how I’d felt about this man before the wreck.

I snatched the pages and stomped out of the room. I was still stomping when I hit the front steps of the Carmichael building. Still fuming when I yanked open the back door to my dorm. 

I wanted to stomp up five flights of steps, too, in hopes the activity would release all the anger raging inside, but my head banged so hard, I stumbled down the first floor hallway, avoiding eye contact with shrieking, half-naked sophomores, so I could take the elevator.

The juniors and seniors on the fifth floor were much quieter when I stalked out of the conveyance, but the sensation of pressure remained.

“Why do you never take your phone anywhere these days?” Becca looked up with a scowl when I burst through the door. “Your mother called, like, seven times. I bet she wants to talk about graduation.”

She wants to talk about the adoption next week, or my graduation party. Fuck her.

“Because I don’t want to talk to the people calling me. Like her.”
And Robert.
I strode into my room. Slinging my book bag onto the bed, I tried to take calming breaths. I had no more classes today. I’d pared my schedule at the bar to Friday and Sunday nights, to give me more time to study, but my GPA was still dropping like a rock. I needed to start my next essay for Professor Ain’t-Got-No-Roots. I’d rather drink battery acid. My brain liteLowe cramped at the thought of staring into an electronic screen for another minute. Since Harry’s going away party, my damn headaches had come back with a vengeance, so bad they made me puke.

I had to get out of here. I could dictate the fucking paper to my cell phone. In the car.

As soon as I hit I-85, I pushed the Audi to one hundred, blowing past scattered tractor trailers. A new app I’d found that broadcast the location of any police was being challenged in court, but the service was still online, so I had little fear I’d run into a cop.

One twenty. One thirty
. The ‘Cuda would’ve fought me a bit at speeds this high. The faster I went, the better the R8 handled. The speedometer touched one forty a couple of glorious times, but I couldn’t outrace my angst.

I blew past the state line, but stayed in the left-hand lane, not tempted by the North Carolina Welcome Center or the King’s Mountain exit, both ideal turn-around spots. Traffic picked up through Gastonia, but the app said the way was clear until I reached Charlotte, so I rocketed underneath overpasses like they were close-set pickets on a fence.

The insistent pressure behind my breastbone expanded when I had to slow to eighty on the south side of Charlotte, thanks to a couple of Highway Patrol units cruising along with the lunchtime crowd. I had the notion I might take a look at the shabby apartment complex Dale had moved us out of, just to take stock of the changes he’d wrought in my life, but the idea flickered and flamed out a couple of miles before the exit.

I had a moment of real indecision at the spot where I had to either get off on Highway 49 and head for my high school stomping grounds, or stay on I-85.

I stayed on the interstate. Maybe I’d just touch the Virginia state line, then double back. The gas light came on, accompanied by a ping. I had an easy fifty miles before I ran out of gas, but, shifting into the right lane, I tried to recall if there was a gas station at the exit that led to Ridenhour headquarters.

Entering Cabarrus County.

Home of nine-time NASCAR champion Jesse Hancock.

Why does that piss-poor excuse for a man get a sign and not Dale? Dale has ten championships, dickwad.

A long horn blast snatched my attention from the roadside. A tractor trailer roared down the on ramp, giving me no choice but the wrench the wheel to the left. Heat flashed over my skin, but luckily, I didn’t plow into anyone.

I hit the gas, offering my erect middle finger to the driver before I cut in front of him and tapped my brake. I smiled grimly when I heard his air brakes shriek.

“Oh, yeah. Bet your asshole puckered. Just returning the favor.” I slowed to fifty-five. When he changed lanes to pass me, I slid over, staying in front of the trucker. I played that game until I spied the exit that led to the mall where Caroline and I used to try on clothes in a shared dressing room and mess with random guys in the food court, letting vanilla ice cream melt in our mouths, then showing them our stained tongues.
Plenty of gas stations there.

I took the exit, but cruised past Hardee’s, where even the trash blowing across the parking lot looked unchanged since high school. I rolled by McDonald’s, noting the faded state of the once-red metal roof.

Highway 29 narrowed from four lanes in each direction, down to two. I stayed in the left lane. Another mile and I spied the sign for the pricey Carolina Estates.

Dammit. Somehow, I was less than a mile from Mom and Dale’s. Maybe I’d just drop in and make her tell me to my face what her issue was about the adoption. Was it the second right, or third?

Third
. I made the turn, slowing to a crawl, because the house wasn’t far down this road, if I’d guessed right.

I spied the house and whipped the car into the driveway. The leaping dolphin spit water now. Clay pots, filled with coral geraniums, anchored each step. White rocking chairs no one would ever relax in lined the porch of her fancy new house.

A white Mercedes two-seater filled the garage bay that still had no rollup door. I halted behind the vehicle, shifting into park while I stared at the car. The pressure in my chest expanded. She hadn’t told me she’d weaseled a new car out of Dale.

I didn’t know why it mattered so much. Dale wasn’t the penniless redneck I’d assumed the night I’d met him, and falsely believed throughout much of my college years. The man made good money.

No. Not made. Earned. There’s a fucking difference.

And that was what stuck in my craw.

The idea that Macy flaunted Dale’s hard-earned cash, when she did not one goddamn thing to support him, pissed me off. She didn’t go to the races, to at least watch while he sweated and toiled. Hell, if she did go, she sat in an air-conditioned box and gossiped with Doris. She refused to let him show any pride in his work, not in this wasted space of a show house.
The only thing she’s showing is how goddamn small she can be.

I squinted into the gloomy garage, glaring the circular chrome symbol on the rear deck. I dropped my gaze.

She got a vanity tag for the motherfucker?

My car, Caine’s truck, both of Colt’s vehicles, and Dale’s truck—not one damn vanity tag in the bunch—because that shit was amateur hour.

BORDR78?

What the actual fuck is that even about?

I scowled at the stupid tag, but the tail lights drew my eye. Mom had her heart set on a new car, so this should be the same make and model as the car Joelle Fitzgerald drove. But the tail lights, even the deck and trim, were wildly different. This car was boxy, not sinuous like Joelle’s.

Unless... this was a classic? The ’78 on the end of the tag number made sense, if that were so. But, would Mom trade a four-year-old car for one that old? Not goddamn likely.

And that tag wasn’t issued by the state of North Carolina. Who the fuck lives in Virginia?

I slid out of the car, easing the door closed. Stepping into the garage, I pushed my sunglasses to the top of my head. The Passat gleamed under a new coat of wax in its spot by the kitchen door, but my attention was fixed on the Mercedes.

Up close, the paint looked more dove gray than white. A neat navy pinstripe matched the leather interior and canvas top. Slight cracks in the paint and the white build-up of wax around the windshield—
messy, messy, Dale would not approve
—supported my suspicion that this car was from another decade.

A man’s jacket lay on the passenger seat. A couple of energy drink cans lay discarded in the floorboard. An iPad Mini rested on top of the jacket, which I noted was two shades of gray, with a blue thread in the weave, making a subtle plaid that no man in my family would be caught dead wearing.

The knot in my chest wound so tight, I could barely breathe.
You’d better be selling Jesus or custom-made garage doors, asshole.

I
skirted the Passat and eased up the three brick steps. The kitchen door was unlocked. I turned the knob and pushed the panel with my fingertips. The breakfast room was empty. So was the kitchen.

The rumble of a dryer drum was the only sound. I toed off my shoes beside the door, padding across the ceramic tile in the direction of the laundry room.

Masculine laughter stopped me in my tracks.

“God, Macy, you haven’t changed one bit. Spread those legs, woman. It’s been too damn long since I hit this shit.”

Mom giggled. “Shame we don’t a have a joint.”

No, you are not doing this.

I couldn’t bring myself to step into the laundry room.
How fucking awkward.
Instead, I eased a chair from under her kitchen table and took a seat facing the hallway. The weird pressure inside me twisted and picked up speed. I folded my hands together and laid them on the tabletop, digging my nails into the backs of my hands.