Chapter 370: No Head Start

Meanwhile, at the back of the lot, Buster had been winning all night.

That was the part people remembered first. The last heat. The way his car held the line through the broken final turn and came out clean while the other driver lost the rear and settled for second. He had parked after that with the ease of a man used to attention, hood open, engine still ticking down, chrome and modified metal catching the early light like the whole machine had been built to be stared at.

For a while, it was.

Then it wasn’t.

Buster noticed the shift the way a man notices a room going quiet for the wrong reason. The girls who usually drifted toward his car after a win were not there. Not in the numbers he expected, and not with the same hunger. They were still all over the lot, big tits in tight singlets, thick asses half out of bum shorts, long legs and open stares, but their eyes had moved.

Toward the BMW.

Toward the man who had stepped out of it behind her.

Lucas was not even a racer. That was what made it worse. In a place like this, attention followed speed, money, and wins. Girls attached themselves to the men who could put a car on the edge and bring it back. That was the order of the lot. That had always been the order.

Except right now that order was broken by a man in a clean shirt and jacket who had not touched a steering wheel since he arrived.

Buster left the open hood and started walking.

He did not lower his voice.

"Rechelle," he called across the asphalt, loud enough that heads turned between them. "You brought a newcomer here?"

She turned toward the sound, already reading the temperature of it. "Buster..."

He kept coming without giving her room. Boots hard on the old track surface, shoulders set, the grin on his face doing a poor job of hiding the irritation underneath. Up close he looked exactly like what he was: local champion, used to being the tallest name in a small kingdom, suddenly watching that kingdom lean toward somebody else.

He stopped in front of Lucas and looked him over with open challenge.

"Car man," he said. "You handle two laps, or you just here to stand around and look pretty?"

A few of the nearby drivers laughed under their breath. One of the girls by the black coupe covered her mouth and still failed to hide the interest in her eyes. The lot had found a new center of gravity in under a minute, and Buster clearly hated every second of it.

She shifted forward. "He’s not..."

"I’m talking to him." Buster cut in without looking at her, chest slightly out, chin lifted, like he expected the other man to fold under the weight of public pressure. "What, you only ride shotgun? In this place a real man races. Stop acting cocky and be one."

Lucas still had not spoken.

He only looked at Buster, calm in a way that made the silence around them stretch. No flinch. No rush to defend himself. Just that flat, assessing attention that somehow felt worse than answering too fast.

Buster’s grin widened, forced and bright.

"Okay then," he said, louder now, playing to the audience gathering near the cars. "I’ll even be generous. Thirty seconds head start. You take the first jump, I hunt you down. Two laps. Unless you’re scared of real asphalt."

That got the murmurs started.

"What is Buster doing with this guy?"

"He’s not even from the circuit."

"Thirty seconds? He’s playing with him."

"Or he wants the girls watching when he shuts him down."

She felt the whole thing turning the wrong way. She knew these people. She knew what he was protecting, not just a win record, but the way the lot arranged itself around him after every heat. The girls. The respect. The easy assumption that he sat at the top of the morning. Lucas had walked in and stolen the air without trying, and Buster was trying to take it back in the only language the track understood.

She stepped in closer, voice lower. "Brian, he’s not a racer..."

Lucas’s hand moved just enough to stop her without looking away from Buster.

"Okay," he said.

The word landed clean.

Her mouth stayed open around the rest of what she had been about to say. A couple of drivers exchanged glances. One of the blondes near the white coupe actually straightened up like the morning had just become serious. Even Buster blinked once before the grin crawled back into place.

She recovered first. "Lucas, don’t listen to him. I’ll race him."

"No."

"You don’t understand who..."

"I know what I’m doing." His voice stayed even. "Chill."

She stared at him, caught between frustration and something sharper underneath it. She did know he could drive. She had felt it in the way he watched the road, in the quiet confidence he carried into any space that required control. But she also knew Buster. Local champion. Dirty when he needed to be. Fast on this exact stretch of broken track because he had grown up learning every cracked apex and faded marker.

Before she could get another sentence out, Lucas spoke again, louder this time, for the whole circle of listeners.

"Why don’t we make this fair," he said. "No head start."

The murmurs changed shape immediately.

Buster let out a short laugh, but there was less ease in it now. "You turning down free seconds?"

"I don’t need them."

That did it. The energy around the cars tightened. Someone whistled low. A girl in a red singlet muttered, "Oh, he is serious," to the friend beside her. Rechelle felt her stomach drop and her pulse climb at the same time. This was no longer a loud man trying to claw attention back. Lucas had accepted, then raised the pressure, and the lot was already leaning in to see whether he would regret it.

Buster rolled his shoulders once, eyes bright with the kind of hunger that came from public pride being touched.

"Alright then," he said. "No head start. Two laps. You lose, you stay out of my morning."

Lucas’s mouth barely moved. "And if you lose?"