With so many people already here, it takes a minute to find a parking space, and by the time I’m cutting the engine, Ilaria is right there, tearing my door open and practically yanking me out of my car. “Come on,” she says, the excitement in her tone intoxicating. “I don’t want you to miss it.”
Trusting her word, I let her pull me along while pressing the small button on my key fob to lock my car. We take off through the rows of cars, and with each step, the excitement drums rapidly through my veins. “Who would have known that rich kids knew how to have fun?” I say, discreetly checking the rows of cars to make sure there’s no sleek black motorcycles hidden within them.
“Oh, you’ve got no idea,” she tells me.
The roar of the loud engines is deafening, and I have to yell over them, but I love it. I can almost feel the loud rumbles vibrating through my chest.
A black Camaro whips around the final corner of the track, spitting dirt all over the crowd as they wait anxiously for the winner. They all scream louder, and I find myself pulling Ilaria along faster, my eyes wide with anticipation. I never thought I’d be into something like this, but my eyes are glued to the car racing around the track, the danger and adrenaline spiking high within me. There’s no way in hell I’d ever race, but fuck, I’d more than happily stand by the sidelines and soak in the adrenaline.
A white car races after the Camaro, but the Camaro has this in the bag, and not a second later, it flies over the finish line and the crowd goes insane. An unbelievable amount of money changes hands and I gape, horrified by the kind of cash these kids are getting around with. Hell, maybe they just bring more when they’re coming to things like this.
“Ilaria. Bri. Over here,” I hear hollered through the crowd. My head whips to the left to find Arizona’s hand shooting up into the air, waving us down, and we immediately make our way toward her. Chanel stands at her side, her attention locked on the track, all but glaring toward the finish line. I follow her gaze to the track and watch as none other than Logan Morgan steps out of the black Camaro.
Well, damn.
I was expecting a lot of things when I realized this was a racetrack, but seeing Logan come out of that Camaro was definitely not one of them. Nervousness rattles me. If Logan is here, there’s a good chance Tanner is too.
“You came,” Arizona cheers, throwing her arms around me in a quick hug. “I thought you were going to some stupid Hope Falls party.”
“I did,” I tell her, my gaze discreetly scanning over the cheering crowd. “And it sucked ass, but this is a million times better. What the hell is this place?”
“Jax and Logan’s,” Arizona says, her eyes flashing back to the track, watching as a throng of people surround Logan and his Camaro, jumping around him and cheering for his win. “Their dad owns a crap-ton of properties around here. He’s a bigshot movie producer and is never here, so he hasn’t even noticed that the twins turned this place into a racetrack.”
My eyes bug out of my head, secretly impressed. “Are you serious? Jax and Logan did all of this?”
“Yup,” she says, popping the p. “Don’t get me wrong, they didn’t set out to create some kind of illegal racing ring, it just kind of happened like this. I guess the guys started by just using the property to fuck around and one thing led to another and now this is the place to be every Friday night.”
“I’m not going to lie, it’s kinda cool,” I tell them. “Though, I can’t say I expected this from them. I mean, Logan—yes. He seems like the type to thrive on this bullshit, but Jax? I don’t know. I haven’t spoken to him much, but he doesn’t strike me as the racing type.”
“He’s not,” Chanel calls back, her eyes still locked on the Camaro, disdain spilling from her sharp glare. “He’s the brains behind the whole thing. He’s the one who turned this from a few friends fucking around into a profitable under-the-table business, but don’t let that fool you. The dork can still drive like a fucking maniac.”
Ilaria scoffs. “That’s putting it nicely,” she laughs. “All of them are fucking psychos on the track. They’re savages.”
“Who do you mean by all?” I ask, hating how my heart picks up and thunders erratically, just hoping that she’ll mention Tanner’s name, which is absolutely ridiculous. I shouldn’t want to see him, shouldn’t crave that spike of adrenaline at hearing his name and seeing him outside of school and home. After all, sitting up on that roof, I was the one who said that the moment he climbed back down, we’d go back to hating each other. How was I supposed to know that after that, he’d set out with the intention to make me ache? I should be running for the hills. “Who else races?”