Chapter 375: Middle Finger

Lucas did not get out.

He sat in the scraped black Silvia with the engine ticking over and kept his eyes on the folded Mark II. Smoke leaked from the wreck in thin lines and drifted off in the sun. Nothing moved inside it. No hand on the door. No shape shifting in the seat. The seconds dragged. Thirty of them felt longer than the whole race. He stayed where he was and waited to see if Buster was dead in there or still breathing.

Then something shifted in the wreck.

The driver’s side was too far gone. Metal had folded wrong around that frame, so the door was never opening. Movement showed on the other side instead. Buster forced himself across the cabin, pushed through the passenger side, and climbed out through the window with raw effort. Glass scraped his arms as he dragged his upper body into the light, then hauled the rest of himself free and dropped onto the scarred asphalt.

Blood covered one side of his face, thick from the hairline down past his eye and into the corner of his mouth. His shirt was torn at the collar. Dust and glass stuck to his sleeves. He got his feet under him on unstable legs, chest pulling hard for air, and locked eyes on the black car that had put him in the wall.

Lucas was still sitting in the Silvia.

Windows down. Engine easy. He looked almost bored, like the scraped paint on the door was a minor inconvenience and not the leftover of a near-death race. A newbie had just put Buster’s car into the barrier and was now waiting in the middle of the track like he had time to kill.

Buster saw that face and lost it.

The pain in his body took a back seat to pure rage. He charged the Silvia full speed, boots slamming the scarred asphalt, blood running down his cheek, both hands up like he planned to rip the door off and drag Lucas out by the collar.

Lucas watched him come.

Then he smiled.

The second Buster got close, Lucas dumped the clutch and floored it. The Silvia snapped into a tight, nasty donut, rear tires screaming, white smoke exploding up in a thick ring. Buster stumbled to a stop right in the middle of it, coughing.

Lucas kept one hand on the wheel.

The other hung out the window with his middle finger raised high, clear as day for the whole lot.

Fuck you.

Buster shouted something ugly inside the smoke. Nobody heard it over the engine and the tire scream. The Silvia finished the spin, straightened out clean, and shot toward the finish before Buster could even grab the side mirror.

VRRROOOOOM.

Lucas crossed the end of the track with the engine still strong and the damaged flank trailing scraped paint. The barrier line broke open at once. People poured forward like they had been held in place the whole race and could not wait another second. Girls pushed through first. Voices rose in a messy wave, half cheering, half still processing what they had just watched. Phones stayed up all along the fence, recording the outsider who had walked in that morning and was now climbing out of a car that should not have survived Buster’s kind of race.

Rechelle reached him before anyone else.

She got to the door while he was still stepping out. Both arms went around him hard, no hesitation, no space left between them. She hugged him so tight his ribs felt it. For a second she did not kiss him. She just held on, face pressed into his shoulder, breathing like she had been underwater and had only now found air. Her hands locked behind his back. Her whole body was still shaking from the last stretch of the race, from every near miss, from every second she thought the wall was going to take him.

Then she pulled back just enough and kissed him.

Hard. Right there in front of the whole lot. Relief poured into it. Leftover fear poured into it. All the regret from watching that death run sat under the kiss, and so did the greed that had put him in that car in the first place. She had wanted him close. She had wanted him busy on this track so he would not leave the city. Now she could still taste the cost of that choice, and she kissed him anyway, like holding him was the only way to make the morning real again.

She did not care who saw.

The blonde who had dropped the flag earlier was already moving.

She had fixed herself the moment the race turned in Lucas’s favor. Singlet pulled high, midriff bare, the short hem of her bottoms riding up enough that the lower curve of one blonde cheek showed when she walked. She had not met anyone this hot in a long time, and the way he won only made it worse. Surviving Buster’s dirty race, putting him in the wall, then throwing a donut and a middle finger in smoke like it was nothing. That kind of calm after violence did something to her. She was determined to get to him before anyone else locked in.

She took the first step with full intent.

Then Rechelle got there first.

Arms around his neck. Body pressed in. Kiss hard enough that the whole front of the lot saw it. The blonde stopped short, face twisting with pure disgust as she watched the other girl claim him in public. She stepped back one pace, jaw tight, but the decision in her eyes did not die. She was not ready to give up. Not on a man who looked like that after a race like that. She would wait for the next opening.

Around them the lot kept celebrating like Buster had never owned this place. Old loyalty thinned fast in the noise. The same voices that used to scream for the local champion were now locked on the outsider who had survived the trap, answered it, and driven away from the wreck with a smile.

Back near the barrier, Buster finally looked at what was left of his car.

It was gone.

The front had folded into itself against the iron rail. Glass covered the scarred asphalt in a wide glittering spread. One wheel sat wrong. Smoke still leaked from under the compressed hood in weak gray lines. The machine that had carried his name around this lot for months was now just wreckage.

No one was coming to help him.

No one checked if he could stand. No one offered a hand. No one even looked his way for long. The lot was already busy with Lucas and the black Silvia.

Buster spat blood into the dust, pushed off the bent frame, tested his weight on the bad leg, and started walking the rest of the track on foot.