Page 77 of Jack

“I fucking love it here, man. You, the club, have made me feel welcome and not treated me like shit like my old man did. I know that people see me as being slow, because I don’t talk a lot, or drink like the other two prospects. I want to make something of myself, I want to become a Rugged Skull one day. What I havenot told you and the club is that I am fucking good at racing cars.”

“Street racing?” I ask and he nods.

“LikeFast and The Furiousshit.”

I chuckle seeing the laughter in his eyes. Clearly he loves to fucking race, and from what I have heard, there is some good fucking money to be made on the betting side.

“No shit.”

“Yep, which brings me back to why I needed to talk to someone.”

“Go on.”

He takes a deep breath and jumps right into his story.

“I have been racing since I was seventeen. Love being behind the wheel, hell I love being on my bike, but it was cars that gave me the buzz that matches nothing else. Well, except for sex. Anyway. When I was just turning eighteen, a family moved to town, and I fell hard for the daughter, but also became best friends with her brother. The three of us, Valarie, and her brother Greg became fast friends. We did everything together; it helped that Greg loved cars also.

“We fixed cars for money to build our supercar. We raced for even more money, and we became known on the illegal street racing circuit. I fell in love with Valarie, and that was when the little signs started showing— Greg would do shit or say something that would cause us to fight.”

“When did it all go tits up?”

“Greg wanted to race this guy who was huge in the racing world, but the buy in was all of our savings to get the fuck out of Utah. It caused some shit between the three of us; he would plant shit in Valarie’s head, and she would take his side. Then, one night she distracted me, wanting me to take her on a date in the car that we had just finished fixing, and we fucked on the hood. It was not until after we had finished and redressed that Igot a text saying that Greg had lost an epic race against this top guy, and I flipped my shit. Valarie told me that it was his idea, but I couldn’t listen to her. I didn’t want to hear her excuses.”

“I don’t blame you, man, that was a shit move on both of their parts. They violated your trust.”

He nods in agreement. His gaze moves over to Dom, who is flipping his board and yelling out in delight that he fucking did it.

“He is a great kid; you have done good with him, Jack.”

“I like to think so, but I had the club to help.”

“Nah, he is all you, man. He will make a great Rugged Skull one day.”

I love hearing people say that Dom is the best of me, saying that he will run this club one day, because I fucking hope so, but I will never force that title or responsibility onto him— it has to be his choice.

“What happened when you got the girl home?”

“She cried the whole way, saying that it was not her or Greg’s fault that he lost. They must have fixed the race. It was bullshit, because even though this guy was the top gun of it all, he raced fair, ya know? I knew that I was done with them both when we arrived at the house. The car was sitting in the driveway, Greg sitting on the porch steps looking like a kid who lost his puppy, but that did nothing for my anger.”

“Please tell me you hit the fucker?” I gleefully asked.

“I did. Beat the shit out of him. Then packed my shit, making sure to get the ten grand that I stashed and left. She begged the whole time, crying, telling me that she loved me but fucking hell. How could they do that to me? Over sixty thousand he lost that night. It was our ticket out.”

Logan runs his hand through his hair, his baseball cap sitting on the bench between his feet.

“There was no loyalty there, brother. You did the right thing in leaving.”

“It hurt, ya know? They were my family.” I can hear the anguish in his voice.

What they did to him still hurts him and, in turn, pisses me the fuck off. That brother and sister had no loyalty to him to go behind his back like that and fuck him over after all the hard work they had all done.

Greed and ego always get the better of some people.

“I hear you, so why now? What has happened that you needed to talk to me and tell me this story?”

He sighs, bringing his gaze back to me, and I see raw pain.

“I have kept myself updated on what they have been doing. Greg has still been racing but he has also slipped into drugs, and Valarie, she had a kid by some fuck who left as soon as she told him she was pregnant. Well, he raced in a big desert race in Phoenix, lost and bolted. Valarie got in the car with him and the cunt whipped out. He got scraped up with cuts and a broken hand, she is in the hospital, with a few injuries.”

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