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He took me back to Rick’s house and didn’t say anything about it. I expected Clair to have a fit over how badly I could have gotten hurt the following day, but when she saw my nose and split knuckles, it was clear he hadn’t snitched about what went down. It only made me like the guy more.
Clair fussed over me like the mother I always wanted. She had always been like that for all four of us. When I first came around, it had been a lot to handle. Her constant attention was almost overwhelming with how often my parents were gone or didn't care. Nobody had ever cared so much about me.
After a while I realized this is what parents were supposed to be like, it only made me hate my own more, something that I didn’t think was possible.
Later that day, Trent’s dad dropped him off at Rick’s so Clair could take them to practice on her way to work. I was in the kitchen looking for something to eat when Clair came in and told me he was waiting on me in the driveway. I expected more shit about last night but when I got to the car, he told me to get in and took me back to his house.
We spent the rest of the day working on his baby, the McLaren F1. A car that sits in our garage today, a gift from him when I turned eighteen just two years before he died.
I spent damn near every day for the rest of that summer in his garage, even when he was at work I was always welcome. It became my escape, and I was damn good at it. He gave me an outlet and without me even realizing it, it kept me out of trouble, well mostly. I still got in trouble in school and shit, but not nearly as much, and while he never said as much, looking at it now, I can see that was his goal.
Getting my hands on the Beast was like a dream come true, it’s one of the few projects we never got to. The motorcycle had been sitting in his garage for years, but the parts were hard to come by, and other things always got in the way. Getting it running was a dream that he never got to achieve and when he died, Trent threw himself into it even though he didn’t know a thing about mechanics.
I had intended to work on it with him, but before that could happen things fell apart with us, and just like that, it wasn’t a dream I could make come true for him. No matter how often I asked, he wouldn’t bring it in. He knew what that bike meant to me, and whether he just didn’t want to accept help or just wanted to hurt me, I wasn’t sure.
Just a handful of times with Jade was all it took, though. He wanted her, and he was willing to play nice if that’s what it took for us to let him be around her.
Little did he know, she wasn’t one to be told she couldn’t do something. Rick had already told her how we felt about Trent, which clearly did nothing. But I wasn’t going to be the one to tell him that, not if it got my hands on that bike.
I could see it in his eyes when he looked at her that first night, and every time since, it had only been more intense. His need to be around her was something I could relate to. It should piss me off or make me jealous, but I find that it doesn’t, not even a little bit.
Not anymore.
I had been mad at first, but now I can see I was angry for her. He had almost left her behind in that hell, in a literal hole in the ground. He didn’t deserve to look at her like that. But even knowing that she still seems to enjoy being around him, she didn’t hold it against him, so far as I could tell. He made her smile. Who was I to say she couldn’t be around him if it made her happy?
Watching him with her was like watching her with Kratos. She could be good for all of us. Shit, I had seen how Rick and Spencer looked at her that first night, and I think she could be good for them too.
If they would just let her in.
Rick has warmed up a bit, honestly, I’m not sure how she crawled under his stony exterior, but I could see the cracks. To anyone else, they might say he’s just doing his job, but there were hints you could find if you looked hard enough, and after years with him, those hints screamed at me like a banshee.
I could also see that he was torn, which is why I’ve left him alone so far. Usually, I would be the first to give him shit about this little crush thing he has going on. But doing that could push him to lash out at her, and I couldn’t chance him pushing her away.
No, I’ll let him figure it out on his own.
For now.
I turn my attention back to the manual in my hands and push the thought of Jade from my mind, or try to. She never really leaves me fully nowadays, and I can’t say I mind.
The thought of Trent’s dad has my chest tight as I remember how our lives have taken turn after turn to get us here.
A few days after that fight, Jake told me that Sin’s leader had been there that night and told Jake I was welcome to the fights whenever I wanted. For years I went back to those fights, and I never lost. In the year that followed Trent’s dad's death, I was there so often that I became their main event. Now we run those fights under Vengeance since we gave Sin the boot, and while I don’t have as much time to participate, I still go when I can.
It’s crazy to think something like that small decision shaped my future. I would have never known I was good in the ring if not for tagging along with Jake on that run. Shit, I would have never known I could be good with cars if I hadn’t gotten picked up after that fight, either.
Now cars are as much a part of my identity as fighting, maybe more.
The whole thing reminds me a lot of how Jade had been dropped into our lives.
I bet Jade would dominate in the ring.
I shake the thought away before it can take me too far down the rabbit hole. I need to know more about this bike, so I can get it running, and thinking about Jade in the ring, dripping in the blood of a guy three times her size, won’t help me with that.
Shit.
I drop the bike manual down on the table with a thud, reaching down to adjust myself. Clearly, even that small thought was too much for me. Now I get to try and focus with a boner, perfect.
I push my hand through my hair, looking over at the clock on the wall. I have just over an hour until I need to be at the garage to meet Trent but seeing as I don’t think I’ll be making any headway on reading, I could probably head out now.
