Your Fault (Culpable Book 2)

As soon as I hit send, I knew there was trouble in store. That was right when we were leaving my apartment. I wasn’t happy about any of this, but I could feel the adrenaline flooding my nervous system, and a part of me had missed that. I mean, things were great now, but the fights, the races, all the crazy shit I used to do had been an escape valve for me, and it wasn’t easy just to give all that up. I told myself I was doing this for Lion, but I was doing it for myself, too. I wanted to do it; I even needed to. All the memories my mother had stirred up, my little sister saying bye to me at the airport, the feeling that Noah was hiding things from me, and my inability to help with her nightmares had all kept me in a state of constant nervous tension, and it didn’t help knowing that everyone was trying to keep us apart.

Time and again, I told myself she was safe with Jenna, far from all this shit, that neither I nor anyone else would put her in danger. I didn’t want her there that night… There were times when I just needed to be alone, and this was one of them.

I put on my helmet and got on my motorbike. Lion and Luca were going to drive the cars to our destination. This year, the races were in the city, not the desert. The course wouldn’t be long, but the stakes were incredibly high. If we won, we’d walk away with a big pile of cash, and Lion needed it.

The music was blasting as I maneuvered my bike between the people. Lots of them clapped and whistled when they saw me arrive, and I was psyched when I pulled up to join my gang. I couldn’t deny it—I had missed this.

“Look who’s here!” Mike, Lion’s cousin, said, walking over.

We bumped fists as I got off the bike and laid my helmet on the seat.

“What’s up, bro?” I asked, looking around. I hadn’t seen those people in a long time, and soon they were surrounding me, cracking jokes at my expense, drinking like fish, with their stereos turned up so loud, my ears ached.

Lion showed up a few minutes later, and everyone cheered when they saw him pull up in the Lamborghini I’d rented for the occasion. That reminded me of last year, when my little blond demon had raced and had annihilated Ronnie, surprising all of us and almost giving me a heart attack. Noah could drive, and watching her had pissed me off and turned me on in equal measure.

As everybody around me danced and acted stupid waiting for the stragglers to show up, I took out a cigarette and leaned against my bike. I needed to know that Noah was all right and had made it home.

She hadn’t answered my message. That didn’t give me a good feeling. She was probably mad, but she was with Jenna, so it wasn’t like I had left her hanging at the restaurant…right?

I couldn’t call her because of the noise all around me, so I baited the hook with another message.

How was dinner? You back home yet?

I took another hit of my smoke and saw her reply:

In bed in my pajamas.

I sighed with relief. At least that was out of the way. With Noah at home, I could relax and concentrate on what I had to do that night: race, win, and kiss that world goodbye forever.

Lion waved to me, and we walked over to talk to Clark, the guy who had designed the course. We stood in a circle while he showed everyone who was racing where we would start and finish. There would be four contestants. This was a major race—you had to pay five thousand dollars just to get in—but the winner would take a huge chunk of that, plus a cut of the bets.

“As long as no problems come up, you’ll be back in ten minutes. We’ve blocked traffic off, but if the five-o show up, that’s out of my hands,” Clark said, looking around at us. The other two guys I knew—they were good, and one of them was from Cruz’s gang, formerly Ronnie’s.

I’d seen him earlier at a corner surrounded by his guys, all of them as high as he was. I hated them, and I also wanted my revenge for the other night, wanted to make them pay, not with blood but with their money, which was the only thing they really valued.

“See you back here in ten,” Clark said.

I turned to Lion and his brother. “I don’t think we’ll have a tough time, but I don’t want any bullshit. If things get ugly, we’re out, understood?”

Luca was planning on riding with Lion in the passenger seat. I wanted to go alone; I hated racing with someone beside me: it distracted me, and I felt I didn’t have total control of the car. They nodded, and we turned around to head for our cars.

Just then, a flash of something caught my eye. My body understood it before my eyes focused on the red Audi that had just pulled up. My heart stopped, and when I saw those long legs step out of the vehicle, my nerves, which I had managed to keep a tight rein on, exploded.

“No fucking way!” Lion exclaimed behind me.

I felt my feet racing over, my breaths turning to heaves, getting out of my control as I saw Noah standing there surrounded by all those assholes. My steps grew longer, trying to shorten the distance between us, wanting to make it to her side before anyone else did. Her eyes locked with mine. She crossed her arms. There was hatred in her face. It was all I could do not to stuff her back in her car and peel out with her, but before I could think my plan through, her arm shot out and smacked me hard across the face.

“You goddamned liar!” she shouted over the music and the people yelling.

I took a few deep breaths to calm down. It was pointless.

“Get in the car,” I ordered her between clenched teeth.

“Fuck that, Nicholas!” she replied, her arms cocked to shove me backward. I stopped her, grabbing her wrists. “Don’t you dare! Don’t you fucking dare give me orders!”

I pushed her against the Audi and squeezed against her, immobilizing her.

“I repeat: get in that car, and go back where you came from. You’ve got three seconds, hear me? I don’t care how mad you are, goddammit, you shouldn’t be here. Do I have to remind you what happened last time?”

Her eyes were burning, boring holes into mine. It was all I could do not to throttle her. It didn’t matter if I was there. No one was going to hurt me. There was nothing there I couldn’t deal with. But Noah? The fear that someone might see her… I turned instinctively to where Cruz was standing with his friends. He still hadn’t recognized her.

“Hell no, you don’t have to remind me! I was there, remember?” She was trying to wriggle away from me. I looked down at her dress… Was she trying to be conspicuous?

“Stop, dammit!” I ordered her, interlacing the fingers of one hand with hers while the other grabbed her chin and forced her to look at me. “This isn’t a joke, Noah. I need you to go.”

“There’s no way I’m going unless you leave with me.” With that, she jerked her face to one side.

I leaned my arms on both sides of her, pressing her into the car to shield her from the people gathering around us. I looked down at her, sniffed her, to try to calm myself down more than anything else. But instead of touching me, her hands hung dead at her sides.

“You shouldn’t be here,” I whispered in her ear. We both knew I was making her tremble.

“Neither should you.”

I noticed then that she was wearing makeup, that her short dress revealed her bare legs provocatively. She’d done that for me, and I’d left her in the lurch to enter a drag race.

“I’m sorry, Freckles,” I said, grabbing her around the waist. The fabric of her dress was so thin, it was as if I were embracing her skin. That, and her anger, which was also sexy in its own way, made me want to kiss her desperately and seek her forgiveness.

I bent over to try, but she looked away.

“I can’t have you lying to me,” she said.

“I won’t do it again.”

“I don’t believe you.”

Those words hurt, but I didn’t want to let her see that.

“This is the last race I’ll ever drive in, Noah. Ask Lion: I said the same thing to him this morning. It’s over, Noah… This is my last goodbye, and I’m only doing it because Lion needs me.”

“You can’t keep doing this stuff for him, Nicholas.” Her voice was worried, not angry. “I know you love him like a brother, but I talked to Jenna, and he’s not the same as before. You supporting him here is only going to make things worse.”

She was right. I kept moving ahead in life while he was digging his own grave. Either he would climb up out of the mud, or he would sink down in misery like Cruz or like his own brother, Luca.

I reached out and pulled Noah to me. I would never make her worry about me again. Those days were over.

“I’ll do everything I can to get Lion to leave this behind with me,” I said, and I was overwhelmed with happiness when Noah reached up and touched my cheek. That caress meant she’d forgiven me.

I stroked her spine and kissed the side of her face, rubbing my nose next to her ear.

“Go home, please. I’ll be there as soon as this is over.”

Noah didn’t say anything. But I took that as a sign of agreement.

I turned around and saw the three other drivers talking with Clark.

“I gotta go.”

She nodded. I kissed her on the lips and waited to go over to where the rest of the guys were standing until I saw her with Jenna next to her Audi and the two of them seemed ready to go.

“Good luck, everyone. See you on the other side,” I said to Lion. That was my go-to line before racing.

He smiled, but I saw something else on his face that gave me a weird feeling just before he turned and got into his car.

I walked to where the Lamborghini was parked, got in, and started the engine. Lion got in the car Luca had driven over in and pulled up to the starting line. A girl in a bikini top and tiny shorts was standing in the middle of the cars with two flags held high. The city shone brightly behind her, waiting for us to rip through its streets. Fast, no mistakes…that was the only way we could be sure of avoiding trouble.

Just then, right as the countdown started and my hands were gripping the wheel, the passenger door opened, and Noah got in beside me.

“What the fuck are you doing?”

The starting gun echoed, and the flags fell. The race was on.