“I’m Haggard’s daughter, and this is my best friend,” the other one said. “Oh yeah. My name is Clem. Clementine.”
I smiled. “It’s nice to meet you, Sophia and Clem.”
I didn’t comment on the awkwardness of being best friends with your dad’s wife.
I had a feeling there was a story there, and that I would need to ask Callum about it.
“Well, Clementine,” Anderson said, his eyes assessing her. “Have you ever been in a race car before?”
I burst out laughing when every single man stiffened.
“Stop.” I punched him in the side. “You’re not helping.”
Anderson shrugged and jerked his head toward the tracks. “I think we have about twenty minutes. You ready?”
Was I ever.
I looked away from Anderson and into Callum’s eyes.
He was looking down at me with an odd expression on his face.
“What’s wrong?” I asked curiously.
He shook his head. “Nothing.”
• • •
SHINE
“Nothing is wrong with you, my ass.” Clem bumped me with her shoulder. “You were so mad that you practically ran across the parking lot toward her. You were pissed as hell until you realized he was her brother.”
She was right.
I was.
In fact, I was so upset that at first, I didn’t realize I was marching across the parking lot until I was nearly to them.
Anderson definitely wasn’t what I expected.
“Maybe.” I paused. “Maybe not.”
We all watched, leaning against the chain-link fence, as the cars lined up at the starting line.
I didn’t know which one Iris was in yet, but I was sure that I would find her soon.
“Guy doesn’t look like some geek,” Haggard rumbled from my side.
I looked over at him. “Yeah, I didn’t think so, either. He looks more like some MMA fighter ready to bash people’s heads in than some computer tech millionaire. I swear to God, I saw my life flash before my eyes before I headed toward them. Yet, for her, I was willing to do it.”
“You have a thing for her,” Bram’s wife, Dorcas, teased.
I looked over at Dorcas, who was really starting to get on my fucking nerves lately. But not because what she was saying wasn’t true. Because it was.
Technically, I supposed, it wasn’t the messenger it was the message, that was annoying me.
I didn’t like that she was right.
Dorcas and Bram were married during my time spent in bootcamp.
Honestly, when I first met Dorcas, I’d hated her on the spot. Mostly because when I’d left, Bram had been dating his high school sweetheart, Mimi. I’d loved Mimi. Then, while I’d been gone to bootcamp, then AIT—advanced individual training—which had taken a total of eighteen months, something had happened to the point where Mimi and Bram had broken up. Oh, and Bram and Dorcas had gotten together and married.
And, over the last ten years that Dorcas and Bram had been married, I’d grown to like her enough to tolerate her annoying ways, but lately, she’d just been extra… argumentative.
Or pushy.
Hell, I didn’t know what at this point.
What I did know was that Bram and Dorcas were fighting a lot, and I didn’t need to be in the middle of their fights to know that Dorcas was usually always in the right.
“He has a thing for her, that’s obvious, Dorcas.” Clem rolled her eyes. “That’s why we came here tonight.”
“Oh, I thought it was because y’all were wanting to watch them race?” Dorcas shrugged.
I didn’t know why Dorcas was here tonight.
Usually, the dirt tracks weren’t her thing.
Anything that had the probability of getting her dirty wasn’t her thing.
Dorcas was all about herself, and the way she looked. Dirt would cause her to have an apoplectic fit.
I secretly couldn’t wait for them to start their cars up and start drifting around those corners, spraying dirt into the crowd.
Dorcas would be so pissed.
I didn’t think she had a clue we were in the danger zone, either.
“Oh, they’re starting!” Clementine squealed. “I hope I get dirty. I can post a picture and make my almost-went-out-with-him date pissed that I blew him off.”
Haggard snorted.
“What do you mean, get dirty?” Dorcas asked.
Nobody answered her.
Then again, they didn’t need to.
Within a lap and a half, Dorcas was more than aware of what she meant by that comment.
“Wow,” I said as I watched Anderson and Iris battle it out. “She’s good.”
“She’s fan-fucking-tastic,” Bram agreed, laughing when a spray of dirt hit him directly in the face.
Dorcas shrieked, outraged when the cloud of dirt hit her.
Then, “Bram, swear to God. You’re dead to me.”
Bram laughed, and I saw him wrap his arm around Dorcas.
I ignored them for the excitement of the race.
In the end, Anderson won, but Iris definitely gave him a run for his money.
I was just standing up, ready to head to the pit where I could meet her after her almost victory, when a car—one that’d been hounding the two all night—came barreling out of nowhere heading straight for Iris’s car that was about to pull into the pit row.