Free Pedal to the Metal: Love's Drivin' but Fate's Got the Pole (The 'Cuda Confessions Book 3) by Eden Connor

Finishin’ dead last in a Cup race is worth about seventy grand. And seventy grand is prob’ly close to coverin’ Richard’s payroll for the week. DNF don’t get you nothin’, ‘cept the chance to start over buildin’ the damn car.”
    Payroll for the week? I chewed and nodded.
    “It breaks Dale’s heart to see that boy throwin’ away his talent on his temper. I ain’t never had no kids, so maybe I got no room to talk, but Kolby’s old man needs a kick in the nuts. If your kid’s got talent and temper, why wouldn’t you feed one trait and starve the other?”
    That observation struck my heart. Of course Dale, who’d had to walk away from racing, would be annoyed to see Kolby throwing away opportunities.
    I tried to frame the problem in terms I knew—me and my mother. If wrecking was better than losing, in Kolby’s mind, then what did that say? How many things had I quit, rather than listen to Mom moan to some friend over the phone that I wasn’t ‘applying myself’? She never let anything be about me. Everything came back to how my actions reflected on her. If, after a couple of tries, I didn’t grasp the idea, I’d quit so I didn’t have to hear her moaning.
    “Kissed Francine for the first time right there.” Ernie jabbed a gnarled finger toward Twitchell Auditorium, the three-story music hall nestled underneath tall oaks near the stately main building. “After that Christmas show they put on every year.”
    “The Festival of Lights and Carols?” I adored the holiday musical, a Converse tradition.
    “Yep. Folks said it wasn’t gonna work, a redneck like me, with her, a graduate of this fancy place. I made her invite those same assholes to our twenty-fifth anniversary bash. Fed ‘em some crow along with their cake.”
    Glad to leave the topic of Kolby, I laughed. “How’d you two meet?” If I knew the tale, the wreck had knocked it out of my head.
    “Used to be a Citizens and Southern bank right across the street. I went in one Friday at lunchtime to deposit my paycheck. She was in front of me, askin’ real sweet why they’d charged her a fee she didn’t owe.” He patted the spot over his heart. “Woman was standin’ right in a sunbeam. Made my ticker just stop, she was so goddamn beautiful.”
    I slid the Bear Claw into the wrapper and laid it on the seat. How the hell had I let Ernie waltz me right back to Concord? Caine’s declaration about those illicit videos he’d made of me rang in my head.
    I lied to you, Shelby. About those videos I made of you in your room. I looked at ‘em all the time. I still do, but not at the places you prob’ly think. I fast-forward every one to the moment you come home from school and throw yourself on your bed. The sun comes through the front windows that time of day. It lights up your hair. You look like an angel, and that’s what I keep going back to see.
    Ernie’s voice jolted me out of the past. “When she got her two dollars credited back, I stuffed my paycheck into my pocket and followed her outside. Asked her what kind of church she went to. She said Methodist. I’d never set foot inside anything but a Baptist church. Ain’t gonna pretend I was no regular, neither. But I said I went to the biggest Methodist church in town. Offered to take her along come Sunday.”
    I hooted. “Ernie, didn’t you get found out when no one in the congregation knew you?”
    His naughty grin was a peek at a younger version of Ernie. “I been in a few congregations, and don’t nobody really know nobody, if you ask me. Church ain’t much different than any other social settin’. People got fifteen folks they speak to, fifteen they nod to, they save the rest to have somebody to look down on. But, that church was so big that, when the preacher thanked us for visitin’, I said I’d been a member since I was fifteen and the preacher apologized.”
    Ernie’s eyes danced with mischief. “Francine even kissed me to make up for the hurt. She found the