Page 5 of Stupid Dirty

Fuck.

I swing my leg over and get into position, trying to let the familiarity of it all counter the gnawing sense of wrongness in my gut.

Just focus on the win. These are a bunch of amateurs. Just ride until you win. If you lose here, you really will be useless. Just win.

I ignore the fact that the voice in my head sounds more like my dad’s than mine.

When the gate snaps down, I hesitate, and by the time my bike jumps forward, I’m already in the middle of the pack.

Fuck.

Chapter Three

This never gets old. All the other shit in my life fades away and gets drowned out by the thrum of adrenaline through my veins. All I see is dirt. All I smell is fuel. I move with the bike, constantly adjusting my body to counterbalance so I can keep leaning around every corner and flying over every jump as fast as I can.

Nothing will ever compare to the pure joy of breaking out into the lead and then tearing through the course, lap after lap, leaving everyone else in your dust.

I was apprehensive when Wish told me that Silas Rush would be racing today. Well, first I was fucking flabbergasted, then I was apprehensive.

Apparently, I live under a rock and am the only person in the state that didn’t know about him and his dad moving back to town. No one knows why Silas quit in the middle of the AML season. Only an idiot would give up a fancy-ass pro career to come back here and ride kiddie league with us. But Wish assuredme that the rumors range from cheating scandals to injury rumors to alien abductions.

Sure.

I’ve watched him race since he joined the national circuit at sixteen, and he’s never become a superstar, but he’s a solid rider. Just like when we were kids, he was always reliable and consistent. If there was a textbook for motocross, he would have followed it. Hell, he would have written it. He was picture-perfect technique. He never had heart, though, even when we were little. From day one, he was like a dirt bike robot.

Nothing ever got to him, and he barely acknowledged that the rest of us existed. He just showed up, rode well, didn’t talk to anybody and then went home. Over and over and over.

He obviously thought he was too good for us, just because he had a former pro for a dad and lived in a house that didn’t have wheels. I wasn’t going to waste time and energy trying to talk to some rich asshole with a superiority complex.

It’s a lot easier to go pro when you have all the equipment you need and all the time in the world to train, instead of worrying about putting food on the table.

He had everything handed to him on a platter, and now he’s giving it up? To come back to Nowhere, USA and compete for prize money that I desperately need, but probably means nothing to someone like him.

It pisses me off.

I wasn’t prepared to face him today. Especially on a day when I need this prize money so badly.

He looked just like he does on TV. Dark blond hair cut short and neat. Impassive face. Everything about him is uniform and neat, and he’s wearing the same boring-ass gray and black gear he always wears. I caught him staring at me while we were at the gates, with the same weird, blank expression he used to have. The one I assume he uses to cover up his disdain, or whatever.

Which I’m used to, especially from him. There’s not one inch of me that doesn’t screamwhite trash,and I’ve made my peace with it. But when I saw him eyeing Wish with the same judgy robot stare, I felt anger trying to claw its way to the forefront of my attention.

Times have changed, even in places like the back ass of Missouri. But Wish has always been unapologetically herself, from her tattoos and punky haircuts to coming out as bi when we were teenagers, and she still gets shit for it sometimes from the more conservative side of the community. She doesn’t need my protection, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to stop being protective of her, ever.

Especially from straight, cis, rich, white boys who’ve spent their entire lives thinking the world revolves around them. I never heard him say anything bigoted back in school, mostly because he never condescended to talk to any of us, but I’ve heard his father say plenty of shit and I’m sure the apple doesn’t fall far from the very privileged tree.

All of that bled away as soon as I left the gate. The second the moto started, it was just me and my bike, and as soon as I got the holeshot—being the first rider to hit that initial corner—I knew I was in for a good ride. I’d expected to be neck and neck with robot boy, if not trailing behind him, so the fact that I couldn’t see him anywhere in my periphery took the pressure off and let me focus on myself.

The 450 class is grueling. It’s thirty minutes on the track, around and around, but I’ve always kind of liked that about it. You can get lost in it. Nothing else matters, it’s just you, your bike and the dirt. And it’s dry as hell today, making every turn and landing take that much more muscle power to keep myself stable on the loose grit.

By the final lap, I know I have it in the bag. No one has gotten near me in a while, and I haven’t seen Silas, so I assume he musthave wiped out somewhere or gotten bogged down at the start and never made up the time. The profound sense of peace that I associate with a win is already settling over me as I go into one of the last turns of the track.

Which is when I finally catch sight of him. And he isflying.I see him out of the corner of my eye, shredding through the track, moving way faster than he should be for a track this dry and going for too much distance on every jump. His head is down, and I recognize that same grim, soulless determination that’s been keeping him on the national stage. In all those years, though, I’ve never seen him ride recklessly before.

And this is reckless. He’s a hair’s breadth from washing out in the loose dirt. We slip on the track all the time. It’s part of the race, but at the speed he’s going, he could really get fucked up.

I can see him gaining on me, and it splits my focus as I go into the final turn. My inside leg is out for balance, and I realize I fucked up and left him way too much space on the inside. If he’s close enough, he can easily pass me.

The roar of his engine in my ears tells me he’s definitely close enough.

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