Shifting Gears: The Complete Series (Sports Bad Boy Romance) (23 page)

He’s breathing so heavy
now, and I can feel my own body responding.

My fingernails curl into
the skin of his back and he’s entering me so hard, so deep. I’m just trying to
keep breathing as Eli’s mouth comes open and as he gasps, I can feel new warmth
inside of me.

Every inch of me is
swirling energy as my body gives way, and my head presses hard against the
mattress beneath me.

I’m pulling him into me
with every part of me as I come once more and I’m beyond breath.

As the feeling begins to
fade, Eli slowly pulls out of me, kissing me softly on the lips as he does.
With a gentle sigh, he lies next to me, and I crawl into his strong arms.

We drift to sleep in a
much better world than the one we woke up to.

Chapter
Twenty-Two

The Race

Eli

It’s almost midnight, and
I’m pacing over the oil-stained concrete of the shop. Kate’s leaning against
the door of her car while Mick spins his keychain around his finger on the
other side of the shop.

The call was supposed to
come in before now.

The Chevelle’s already
loaded onto the back of the flatbed. Everything’s ready to go. We just don’t
know where.

“You don’t think he’d-”
Kate starts, but stops herself.

“What?” I ask, finally
stopping long enough to stand in one place.

“I don’t know,” she says.
“You don’t think Jax would just not give you the information and then say that
you forfeited, would he?”

“I wouldn’t put anything
past that guy,” Mick says.

The thought had crossed
my mind. “There’s not much we can do about that if he does. All we can do is
wait and hope for the best.”

It’s so quiet in here,
the sound of my shoes on the concrete as I resume my pacing is almost painfully
loud. Of course, with sweaty palms, dry throat, and the taste of pennies in my
mouth, it’s also possible my adrenaline’s just in overdrive.

My phone buzzes and it’s
in my hand and out of my pocket before the second ring.

“Ransom,” I answer.

“Entrance to Ghost Town,”
the woman’s voice says. “You have ten minutes. Don’t bother with the truck. You
won’t make it in time.”

I hang up the phone.

“We need to get the
Chevelle off the truck right now,” I bark. “They’re doing it in Ghost Town. We
only have ten minutes to get there.”

Kate and Mick spring into
action. The two of them focus on getting the ramps unfastened and in position
while I uncover the car.

I get in and back the car
down the ramp. There’s no time to open the window, so I crack my door, saying,
“Get in.”

The passenger’s seat is
sitting in one corner of the shop, but there’s no other option if I’m going to
have any friendly faces waiting for me at the finish line.

Kate quickly gets in on
the passenger’s side, but Mick says, “Just go. I’ll meet you at the finish
line.”

I close my door and
reverse out of the shop before flipping the car around with a J-turn.

The “entrance” isn’t
anything official. It’s actually just a particularly large graffito reading,
“Welcome to Ghost Town,” written across the side of a building.

What makes me nervous is
that Ghost Town is hardly a secret. It’s where I took Kate on her first chase,
and it’s where she got pulled over and arrested. Even before that, though, too
many people started going through there, and always for something that comes
with a jail term attached to it.

I don’t know if it takes
ten minutes to find the crowd, but there’s at least one car parked in the
road—all the others are pulled off to the side.

“I’m going to have to let
you out and then roll up,” I tell Kate. “I don’t know how long it’s going to
take the other cars to get here, but I doubt we’re going to wait long.”

“Okay,” she says. “Also,
I should probably tell you…” she trails off.

“What?”

“Nothing. We can talk
about it after you win.”

“Anything I should be
worried about?”

“No,” she says as I come
to a stop about twenty feet behind the ’05 Nissan 350Z Twin Turbo on the road
ahead. “Just focus on the moment and have fun,” she says, then gives me a quick
kiss on the cheek before climbing out of the car.

I pull up to the line.

Glancing over, the guy in
the Nissan isn’t Jax.

I take a look at my
gauges. Fuel’s a bit low, but unless this race turns into a marathon, I should
be all right. I topped off my nitrous this morning.

Headlights appear a
little ways behind me and I’m looking in my mirror to make sure it’s not a cop.
It’s not, but that’s hardly a relief.

The car pulling up next
to me is a clearly modded-up Mercedes-Benz C63 AMG.

She’s not Jax, either.

When Jax does finally
pull up after another minute, though, I kind of wish I’d elected to leave town.

The bastard’s pulling up
in a Pagani Zonda. Even if he never added so much as a removable cup holder,
the guy’s sitting in almost two million dollars’ worth of car. As he releases
his nitrous purge, I think it’s safe to say the thing’s not stock.

My phone rings in my
pocket, but I let it go to voicemail. Whoever’s calling, they can wait. Of
course, when my phone rings again and Jax honks his horn, I change my mind.

“Ransom,” I answer.

“The race will end where
it begins,” the woman’s voice says. “You will follow the course. Each
checkpoint is being monitored. Any missed checkpoint will disqualify you.”

“How’s it marked this
time?” I ask, but she’s already hung up.

Oh well, worth a shot.

A new man in a dark suit
walks out into the middle of the road. He points to Jax and immediately raises
and drops his hands.

I probably don’t lose
more than half a second or so with the unexpected start, but it’s enough time
for Jax to get off the line and out in front of the pack.

The Nissan hits his
nitrous almost immediately, and almost catches up to Jax. When the Zonda takes
a hard left, though, the Nissan cruises right through the intersection,
apparently disqualifying him from the race.

We’re only about ten
seconds in.

I slow for the turn Jax
made, but I’m not seeing any signs. It wouldn’t surprise me if the rules
applied to everyone
but
Jax.

It’s not until I’m almost
on top of the turn that I see the yellow arrow painted on top of the yellow
crosswalk sign. I manage to make the turn, but I lose a lot of speed in the
process.

Jax’s headlights are at
least a block ahead, and I’m just hoping this race is a long one; otherwise,
it’s already over.

I gain a little bit of
ground, but the next corner throws me as the red arrow is painted over a stop
sign.

Jax isn’t taking any
chances.

I come around the next
corner, only I don’t see Jax’s taillights. I was going to use him to tell where
to turn, but he’s already made his next one. I’m looking for any signs at all
when I spot the dark blue arrow on the pavement pointing right before the next
intersection.

Jax is keeping a sizeable
lead, but I manage to whittle it down a little on this next straight. I’m not
looking at my speed, but we’ve got to be doing well over a hundred.

Jax takes the next turn,
the light weight of his car meaning he doesn’t have to slow down nearly as much
as I do, and any distance I managed to make up is lost again.

As I make the turn, he’s
a full block ahead of me now. My thumb is hovering over the nitrous, but it’s
too soon. Without being able to see the signs, I’m going to have to wait until
the next checkpoint is the finish line.

The woman in the AMG
apparently comes to a different conclusion, though, as she speeds past me.

I’m half-expecting her to
cruise past the next turn just like the Nissan did on the first one, but she
stays right on Jax’s tail as she takes the corner.

I come around a few
seconds later to find the AMG in a cloud of smoke, facing the wrong way. Her
tires spin as she flips her car around, but I’m already past her, Jax’s
taillights now less than a block ahead.

He takes his turn a bit
too wide, allowing me to close the gap even more as I come around the corner,
myself.

We’re nearing the
entrance to Ghost Town, though there’s no way to tell if the next turn is going
to take us in that direction, and I’ve got my foot down hard.

I’m only about thirty
feet behind Jax when his brake lights come on. He drifts over to the left side
of the road in preparation for his turn, but I stay on the inside.

He turns too wide yet
again, and I’m neck-and-neck with him through the corner.

The finish line is two
blocks straight ahead, and I hit my nitrous.

For the first time in the
race, I have the lead, but I can hear the chirp of Jax’s tires behind me as he
comes down on his own nitrous. He doesn’t swerve as he comes up behind me.

The front of his car
comes under the rear of mine, giving me enough of a bump that I have to really
work the wheel to keep from spinning out as Jax comes up the side of me.

As we cross the line, I
honestly don’t know who made it first.

I ease off the throttle
and take a few deep breaths.

Ahead of me, Jax spins
around and heads back toward the start/finish line. Once I’ve lowered my speed
enough, I follow suit.

By the time I’m parked
and out of my car, Jax is barking orders into his phone.

“I don’t care if they
both cut for the border with a police escort. You find them and bring me my
cars!” he shouts and throws his phone hard at the ground. “And you!” he says,
coming toward me. “Let’s not make a big thing out of this. I have other fish to
gut and fry tonight.”

The two-dozen or so
people crowded around go into a frenzied uproar, some claiming Jax won, others
claiming I held onto the lead across the line.

After ten seconds of
deafening argument, Jax holds up both his hands, silencing the crowd.

We don’t have time for
this. We’ve got to get out of here.

If he won, he won. I’m
not going to be a crybaby about it. But that seems like the sort of thing we
can figure out when we’re not all standing around at the scene of the race,
waiting to get busted.

A hand grips my wrist and
I turn around to find Kate standing there.

“You won,” she says. “It
was only the difference of about a foot, but you won.”

“Hey, Jax,” I say, “it
sounds to me like you just lost your Zonda.”

Jax closes the distance
between us in less than a second, and he’s standing with his face only about an
inch or two from mine.

“You’ll understand if I
don’t take your girlfriend’s word for it,” he says. “Ty!” he calls out.

A moment later, that same
bodyguard who had his gun against my head recently walks up. Jax backs out of
my face and turns toward his lackey. “Who won it?”

Without hesitation, the
sycophant cries, “You did!”

The crowd is a mix of
cheers and jeers, and I’m looking over my shoulder for one last look at my
beautiful car.

“Eli?” Kate says.

“Hold on just a second,”
I tell her.

“You remember how I
wanted to tell you something before the race?” she asks.

“Yeah,” I answer.

“Hey!” a sharp woman’s
voice comes from behind me.

We all turn around to
look.

My attention was so
directed toward Jax and his goon that I didn’t even see Kate’s mom standing
behind me.

“Yeah,” Kate says. “I
kind of had my mom on standby for tonight.”

I look from Kate to her
mom and then back at Kate. “
How
?”

“Mick snuck her into the
office a couple hours ago,” Kate says. “She was going to follow us out to
wherever the race was going to be, but after you got that phone call-”

“Mick stayed behind,” I
say, finishing the sentence.

“Yeah,” Kate says.

While we’ve been talking,
Kate’s mom has pushed her way past me and all the way to Jax. I grab Kate’s
hand and we follow.

“What do you want?” Jax
asks Kate’s mom.

“I want to live in a
world where idiots don’t cheat their way to victory,” she says and pulls out
her phone. She turns toward the crowd, calling, “I’ve got the end of the race
right here!”

“What is she doing?” I
ask Kate.

“She’s saving your car.”

“Lady, the race has been
called,” Jax says. “The only thing that remains is for that
punk
to give me what’s mine.”

My mouth is open and I’m
ready to jump in, but Kate’s mom beats me to it.

“I understand some people
are so incredibly insecure, they need to win everything or they get scared that
everyone’s going to find out how insignificant their genitalia is,” Kate’s mom
snaps. “But that’s not you, right?”

“You better watch your
mouth,” Jax says, and I step between him and Kate’s mom.

“What are you scared of?”
I ask him. “If you won, the video’s going to show it.”

“This is
not
a democracy, and it certainly isn’t
A/V club,” Jax says. “Now give me my keys and the pink slip to my Chevelle
before I have my man here give you a few new holes.”

Kate’s mom doesn’t say
anything more, she simply holds up her phone and presses play on the video.