Free Clutch (Custom Culture) by Tess Oliver Page A

Jason’s kid sister, Taylor. You were young. The whole thing was kind of warped.”
    She lifted her arm but I grabbed her wrist before her hand made contact with my face. “You’re a damn coward,” she said. “I would have risked anything, even being thrown out of the house, if it meant being with you.”
    I combed my hair back out of my face and my shoulders relaxed with a sigh. “I wasn’t a coward, Taylor.” I should have opted for the slap. It would have been far less painful than having her call me a coward. I tried to choose my words carefully, but it never seemed to matter. With Taylor, I always managed to find the exact wrong thing to say. “It was about doing what was right.” And her expression assured me that I’d nailed it again.
    “So being with me would have been wrong?”
    I stepped back. “Shit, you’re twisting my words. Maybe you’re just too young to understand.” My first words were wrong, but my last ones were the death knell.
    “Go to hell, Clutch.” She stormed away in the pissed off style that she’d perfected.
    I momentarily stared at the brick wall in front of me but then decided it would hurt a lot more than plaster. What the hell was with my luck lately?
    My phone rang as I rounded the building and plowed back into the melee of people and shiny chrome. I ignored it. Taylor had managed to disappear completely.
    Nix spotted me and headed over with the food. He stopped in front of me and lifted a brow as he noticed my face. “I heard handprint was the new thing in skin art.” He leaned his head to get a better look. “And from the looks of it, I’d say you took a double hit. What did you do in your excitement? Grab the first girl you saw?” I didn’t answer and his cocky smile disappeared. He glanced around and then looked back up at me. “She’s here?”
    “Yep, and I don’t want to talk about it.”
    He held up the sandwich. “Still interested in the pastrami?”
    I grabbed it from him. “Yes. At the moment, food is my only source of joy.” I ripped open the paper and spotted Dray wandering through the crowd alone as I shoved the sandwich in my mouth. Even in a thick crowd of people, my head stuck out like a beacon on a lighthouse. He saw me and headed over.
    “Where the hell is Barrett?” I was not in the mood to deal with any of my brother’s antics. “If he has climbed into the backseat of some girl’s car then he’s going to have to find his own way home tonight.”
    “Nah, he was behind me, but he stopped to answer his phone.” Dray stared longingly at my sandwich. “I didn’t see the pastrami truck. Where was it hiding?”
    Nix pointed behind his shoulder. “Right back there in the middle of the lot with the big plastic pastrami sandwich on top. You’re really thinking of following up lobster with pastrami?”
    Dray scrunched his face and pressed his hand against his stomach. “Yeah, maybe it’s too much.” Then he glanced up at me and leaned his head to one side just like Nix had done. “It looks like you ran into a hand.”
    “Sort of.” I stared down at my half eaten sandwich and realized that even food wasn’t bringing any relief from my misery. This thing with Taylor made no sense and was completely out of whack and I had no idea how to fix it. All I knew was that all this time I’d been denying myself the one thing I wanted more than anything, more than any car, more than any racing win, more than any damn pastrami sandwich. I wanted Taylor Flinn, and I was never going to be completely happy without her. I shoved the sandwich into Dray’s hand. “Here you go. Enjoy. I’m going to round up my kid and head home.”
     

 
    Chapter 10
    Taylor
    I’d bummed a ride off of friends to get to the car meet, but I had no way to get home. I’d run out of the house without my phone. Cell phones were forbidden at the dinner table, so I’d left it behind on my nightstand. Not that I wanted to go back home. I was going to be in for a major scene