Broken Hill Halo (Broken Hill High 2)

I roll my eyes and tug on his hand. “Come on,” I say. “Why don’t we go check out the actual damage and work out a plan while the boys get the trailer?”

He doesn’t respond but allows me to lead him over to the car. It doesn’t go unnoticed how he grunts under his breath and cringes with every step he takes. The guy is clearly in a shitload of pain and it kills me that he won’t take a moment to allow his body to catch up.

Jesse disappears with Tyson while the rest of us stay behind. Maxen and Nate manage to wedge the hood up before the boys start looking over the engine. “Sorry, dude,” Maxen says. “This is fucked.”

“I was afraid of that,” he grumbles as he reaches in and grabs something that’s clearly been dislodged from the rest of the engine. He turns it in his hands before tossing it back in. “Fuck.”

“What’s the damage?” I ask as I join him a moment later.

“It’s scrap metal,” he grunts.

“You can’t save the engine?”

He lets out a sigh and reaches up to grab the hood. “Nope,” he grumbles as the hood comes tearing down before dislodging from the car altogether and clattering off the side.

“What about the interior?” I ask.

He shrugs his shoulders. “Most of it’s salvageable.”

With that, he pulls me away and we sit down on the side of the hill, just staring at the car the used to be so important to him. Nobody says a word and it’s almost as though we’re mourning for the loss of a family member.

An hour must pass when Nate lets out a sigh and pulls me into him. “So, what’s the plan then?” I ask him, hoping it’s not too soon.

“I don’t know,” he says as he rests his head on top of mine. “The smart thing to do would be to start over. Buy a new one and do it up to my needs, but I’m pretty damn attached to this. I’m trying to work out what it would take to fix it. It kills me seeing it like this.”

“Why don’t you take it home and sleep on it? Right now, probably isn’t the best time to be making decisions.”

“Yeah, you’re right.”

I rest my head more firmly against his chest. “You kind of scared me,” I tell him. “Are you still hurting?”

He silently nods his head and refuses to meet my eyes before letting out a heavy sigh. “I’m sorry,” he murmurs. “It wasn’t my intention to flip the car twice.”

I can’t help but scoff. “Three times, actually.”

“Shit,” he grunts. “I promise. I won’t do that to you again.”

“Do what? Race?” I question. He nods his head with a hint of sadness behind his eyes. “Don’t do that,” I tell him. “I want you to race. It makes you happy. I just don’t want you getting caught up with dickheads like Jackson and nearly killing yourself. Just… I don’t know, make better choices.”

“Alright,” he laughs as I spy Jesse’s Range Rover coming into view with a huge trailer on the back. “You’ve got yourself a deal.”

“And you’ve got yourself a trailer.”

He looks back over his shoulder and groans before shaking his head. “Damn it. Why’d he bring that one?”

I can’t help but grin to myself as he lets go of me and walks back toward his car. I spend the next hour, laughing quietly with the girls as we watch the guys work out how to get the car up onto the trailer without the car actually starting or a ramp to roll it up on it.

Chapter 17

At school on Monday morning, the corridors are nothing but endless chatter about Nate’s accident. Everywhere I go, there’s someone telling their own version of the story. At the beginning of the day, it starts with a story pretty similar to the real one, but by lunchtime, the story pretty much reads like a TV drama. They had a fist fight before they challenged each other to a race, where apparently, I was the prize. Jackson was winning the whole time and Nate drove off the road to avoid the embarrassment of losing to Jackson.

I walk past Jackson in the hallway and can’t help but shoot a glare his way as he spouts his bullshit about Nate being in the wrong to a group of junior girls, who I’m pretty sure are in the dance squad. “There she is,” Jackson says a little too loudly as he points me out. “Why don’t you ask her yourself?”

I stop in my tracks and turn towards Jackson, ignoring the girls around him as I storm forward. “What do you want to know?” I demand. “How Jackson here rammed Nate’s car and pretended he didn’t do a damn thing? Or maybe how he destroyed a car that Nate spent over a year building? Hell, maybe you’re a little curious as to how he nearly killed my boyfriend?”