Supercross Me (Motocross Me #2) (2 page)

“Thanks, I do appreciate it,” I say, because although talking about boys with her is definitely awkward, she’s making more of an attempt to connect with me than my own mother ever did.

“More wine?” she says, lifting the bottle.

My glass is only half empty but I hand it to her anyway. “Definitely.”

Nine months ago – September

I yawned and glanced over at the digital clock on Ash’s nightstand. Three-fifteen in the morning. I’d meant it when I said I wanted to be the first one to see him when he came home from his second professional supercross race, but I also hadn’t expected it to be this late—or early in the day. I picked him up at the airport an hour ago, and now we were finally back at his house where I sat on his futon bed with his blanket up over my legs, curled into his pillow.

“What are you doing?” I asked, pouting out my bottom lip. “Come sit with me.”

“I will, I just need to organize . . .” Ash said as he dug through his duffel bag and suitcase, unzipping and unpacking things, shoving them into new places. Most of his clothes went into a pile near the door because they were dirty. “All of this crap is driving me crazy. I need a bigger room.”

I looked around the small bedroom and nodded. Since he’d accepted his position on Team Yamaha, boxes of new gear and supplies had been pouring in. Most of it was stacked along the wall, or pouring out of his closet. Now a professional racer, all of Ash’s promotional T-shirts and other random swag overtook his tiny room.

I fluffed Ash’s pillow into the corner of the futon and brought my knees up to my chest, getting comfortable while I watched him move quietly around his room. The rest of his family was sound asleep. Shelby had requested to be woken up the moment we got here, but Ash and I thought it’d be nicer to get a little alone time first. So being quiet was of the utmost importance right now.

Ash rocked back on his heels and held up a framed photo of me. I’d given it to him before he flew to California last week. “I don’t think I can take this anymore,” he said quietly. He stood and placed the frame on his desk, facing the futon. “All the guys either drooled over my hot ass girlfriend, making comments that made me want to kick their asses, or they would use it as a catalyst to bitch about their failed relationships.”

He turned toward me, putting his hands on his hips. “I don’t like dealing with either one of those. I’m so sick of hearing that racing will drive your girlfriend away.”

“We’re not going to fail,” I whispered, more to keep quiet, but part of me didn’t want to say it out loud for fear of jinxing our perfect relationship. We’d only been together about a month, but things were perfect. I needed to keep it that way.

Ash’s lips quirked, his eyes softening as he stared at me from across the room. I could feel the tension between us, the desire to be closer and all tangled up in each other. I held up my finger and beckoned him forward.

He crossed the room in two long strides and leaned over me, pinning me to the foam mattress. “We’re not going to fail,” he repeated, his lips held just an inch away from mine. He could close the distance easily, but he was being evil.

“Come here,” I whispered, reaching my hand up to his cheek.

He closed his eyes. Kissed me.

I slid my fingers around his neck and turned so that we could share the length of the futon. Ash’s bicep made a perfect pillow while we made out—hands, lips, bodies exploring each other. This was all so new, but it felt so meant to be.

I was crazy about this boy. I couldn’t believe I almost screwed it up over that idiot Ryan and his stupid silver tongue. But now Ash was mine, and I vowed I would never let him go.

“We should probably get Shelby soon,” I whispered.

“Yeah, we don’t want her getting mad,” he said, his lips to my ear. My body shivered. Ash adjusted so that he was sitting up on the couch-bed, and I held on tight so he could take me with him. He grabbed my legs and put them across his lap, leaving his hand on my knee.

I snuggled into his shoulder and breathed him in slowly, letting the scent of his cologne permeate through my whole body. We had tonight and tomorrow, and then he’d be leaving again for another race. My chest ached at the thought. “I’m going to miss you when you go.”

“I’ll be back again,” he said, kissing my forehead.

“And then you’ll go again.” I poked out my bottom lip and he tilted my head upwards and kissed it.

“And I’ll be back again,” he said, winking.

I smiled. He was even hotter in the glow of the single lamp turned on in the corner of the room. “We should go wake Shelby.”

The hallway creaked and approaching footsteps made us both look over toward Ash’s bedroom door. Shelby appeared in wrinkled pajamas, fists on her hips. “You were supposed to wake me up, a-holes!”

“We were just about to,” I said, looking toward Ash. “Weren’t we?”

“Yep.” He grinned and ran a hand down his mouth.

Shelby shook her head. “I’ll just pretend you’re totally not cuddled up right now, looking like you have no intention of getting me.” She walked to the middle of the room and sat on the floor, sinking her chin into her hands. “Okay, tell me everything. What goes on in the pits when no spectators are there? Any celebrity racing gossip yet?”

“I gotta pee,” Ash said, rising to his feet. “But then I’ll tell you everything, Shell. Be warned though—there’s really not much to tell.”

Shelby was quick to grab my hand once Ash slipped into the hallway. “My brother is totally in love with you.”

I flinched, even as her words sent a chill through my heart. “We’ve been dating a month. He doesn’t love me.”

Her shoulders lifted. “He doesn’t
not
love you.”

“Keep it down!” I whisper-yelled, my eyes going wide. “He can’t hear you say that or he’ll—”

“He’ll what?” she said, punching my knee. “Love you more? Please, he’s not going to care. My freaky twin connection is telling me all I need to know. My brother loves you. You’re going to be together forever and have little perfect babies who are great on a dirt bike and have your little pointy nose.”

“Tell me more about the freaky twin connection,” I said, leaning forward but keeping my eyes on the door.

She shook her head. “It’s hard to explain it, but I know it when I feel it. Ash has dated a few other girls, but he never had feelings for them, not really. Things are different with you.”

I brought Ash’s blanket up to my knees, pressing my lips into it to hide the sheer giddy excitement that I was certain was painted all over my face. “I hope you’re right. I like him a lot.”

She leaned back and crossed her arms over her chest. “Trust me, Hana. I’m right. You’re going to be a part of this family for a
long
time.”

I wake up to the stench of freshly-brewed coffee and the trill of Molly’s laughter. I glance over to my window and notice that it is, in fact, the butt-crack of dawn, like I had assumed. On a Saturday.

Shit!

I throw off my comforter and check the time on my phone: six-ten. With a groan, I drop the phone back on my nightstand, pretending I don’t care that I have no messages or social media notifications, and rush into my bathroom to get ready.

Since I’m finally home for the summer, I’d promised my step-mom that I’d be the one to take breakfast to the track this morning. I was supposed to be downstairs ten minutes ago. I jump into a pair of jean shorts and tug on a Mixon Motocross Park shirt—the kind they sell to fans, not the stupid purple polos—and grab my running shoes before bolting out of my bedroom.

“Molly, I’ll be down in a second!” I call out as I do the dance of trying to put on my shoes while walking down the stairs at the same time. Probably not a smart move, but I hate letting people down. I need to get down there immediately.

Molly leans against the kitchen counter, her eyes crinkled in laughter as she talks on the phone. She gives me a little wave when I walk in. Either she expected me to be late and be a huge disappointment, or the person on the phone is too exciting for her to care.

I point to the basket of foil-wrapped breakfast burritos on the counter and lift my eyebrows as if to ask permission to take them now. She shakes her head and holds up a finger. “Mags, I need to go. Oh, totally . . . yeah we’ll talk later. Love you!” She sets her phone on the counter and ever the forgiving, kind woman she is, she doesn’t complain that I’m late. “You still like extra cheese and no onions, right?”

“You know it,” I say, scanning the basket for the burrito with my name on it. Ugh, I love being home. The food is so much better than college food. “I think my Freshman Fifteen went the opposite way. I’m going to gain more weight being home with you instead of at college.”

“Not if Jim has his way,” Molly says. “He’s short staffed and will be working you like crazy. I’ll do my best to keep you fed, though.”

Working like crazy used to make me shudder, but I could use the distraction from my aching heart. “Thanks. Do they need anything else before I go?”

She shakes her head but then her lips slide to the side of her mouth and she leans toward me, as if sharing a secret. “Your father might throw a fit up there, but try to tell him it’s for his own good.”

I lift an eyebrow and she lifts her shoulders. “I made the burritos with whole wheat tortillas and turkey sausage. I’ve been saying I’m going to start cooking healthier, and he keeps refusing to eat them, but he’s just going to have to make some changes.”

“
Turkey
sausage?” My once loving gaze at the basket of delicious burritos turns into a grimace. “Are you trying to torture us?”

She chuckles. “Yours and the boys’ are normal sausage. Jim needs to pay attention to his cholesterol. His doctor has been complaining for a while now, so I’m making his food a little healthier. Just tell him to suck it up and eat it, okay?”

My lip curls. “Okay, but if he tries to murder me, I’m telling him I had no idea you switched out his food.”

She shakes her head, waving a careless hand toward me. “Maybe he won’t even notice.”

I carry the basket out the back door and head across the yard to the wooden bridge that connects our yard to the motocross track. It’s weird seeing your parents turn into people who need to watch things like cholesterol and start taking blood pressure pills. Like the last time I saw my mother, on Christmas break before I headed to Dad’s house, she looked so much older. The crow’s feet in the corners of her eyes seemed twice as deep, and her hands were starting to get brown age spots on them. My parents are getting old, and I’m becoming an adult, and it’s just all so weird and hard to accept at times.

I’d wanted to grow up and turn eighteen for so long, and now that I’m here, I almost wish I were a kid again. They don’t have to write ten page essays, and worrying about their future career is a thing so far in the future that it doesn’t matter.

Mostly, they don’t get broken hearts.

The rumble of dirt bikes thunders through the air as I make my way across the track, heading toward the tall score tower to deliver the guys their food.

As I make the trek up the metal stairs that lead to the main room of the score tower, I think of all the hundreds of times I’ve made this journey. Working at my dad’s motocross track was my first real job after I moved here to get away from my erratic mother. It’s because of this track that I finally had my own money, a way to save it up or spend it how I wanted, without catering to my mother’s whims of blowing every dime we ever had. This track welcomed me into the motocross family, and it’s never let me go. It’s where I met Ash and Shelby, who despite my breakup with the former, will always be special people to me. Working like crazy for another summer is the least I can do to pay it back for all the greatness it’s brought into my life.

The door swings open and an Arctic rush of air conditioning hits me in the face. “Is it cold enough in here?” I ask, turning around to shut the door behind me. The room is in all about the size of my bedroom, so the window unit set to full blast really makes the place into an igloo.

“Well, look who’s back!” The voice that greets me isn’t my father’s, but it’s just as welcome.

I turn around to find the room empty except for Marty, my dad’s longtime friend and Mixon Motocross Park’s resident race announcer. He throws an arm around me and pulls me into a hug that smells like coffee and a faint hint of tobacco. “So, are you all educated now?” he asks, pulling back and holding me by the shoulder.

“One semester of freshman level classes hardly counts as educated,” I say, handing him the basket. “Where’s Dad?”

“Should be back any second,” Marty says, but his attention is solely on the burritos. He digs around the ones labeled with Dad’s and my name and finds a blank one. “Why don’t you take a seat and tell me about college life while we wait on him?”

I take my burrito and unwrap part of the foil. Marty offers me coffee from the tower’s industrial coffee maker but no matter how I try, I can’t make myself like the stuff. “There’s really not much to say,” I begin, a little tired of repeating the same boring college stuff to everyone. “There’s classwork, which isn’t that hard, parties that I don’t really go to, and roommates that are randomly assigned, and mine sucked.”

“What was so wrong about your roommate?” he asks with his mouth full of food.

I peel off a piece of tortilla. “She . . . dated a lot. And I wouldn’t have cared, but the guys she brought over were usually half naked on her side of the room the next morning. Also, she cooked all this weird food that smelled terrible.” I shudder at the memories of her hot plate cooking.

The door swings open, letting in a brief blast of hot summer air. I turn toward the warmth, already forming arguments for turning off the air conditioner in my head. I know it’s hot as hades outside, but making it an igloo in here won’t change that. Dad enters, followed by a tall, towering guy I’ve never seen before. He has black hair that’s cut short around the sides, but it’s a little wavy on top of his head. Piercing blue eyes find mine as quickly as if he were already expecting me to be sitting in this exact spot. He has the kind of angular face that always looks like it’s in a smirk, probably from perpetually looking down on everyone because he’s so tall.

Dad heads over to the coffee and pours himself a cup of the grossness that everyone loves around here. “Morning, sweetheart! You ready to get to work?”

“Something tells me the only acceptable answer is yes,” I say, which earns me a chuckle from my dad.

The new guy walks over to the basket of burritos and fishes around, grabbing one without Dad’s name on it. “Good morning,” he says as that smirk transforms into something like a smile. “Hana, right?”

I swallow the food in my mouth and give him a wary once-over. Only now that he’s standing next to me, towering like fifty feet above my head, do I realize that he’s wearing a black Mixon Motocross Park Staff shirt. “Yeah, that’s me. Who the hell are you?”

“Hana,” Dad chides, and it’s almost like an automatic dad-reaction to hearing his daughter curse because he doesn’t even look away from his coffee as he pours sugar into it.

The new tall guy lifts his burrito in a form of hello. “I’m Lincoln. I started working here a couple of months ago.”

It takes everything I have not to flinch. He can’t know that I’ve already heard about him, this mysterious new track employee who allegedly has a crush on me. I peel off another piece of my burrito with all of the casual boredom I can manifest. “Cool. Well, nice to meet you.”

“Definitely.” Lincoln stuffs the still-wrapped burrito under his arm and hefts a black laptop case onto the desk in front of a row of windows that overlook the track.  “Maybe you can teach me some insider info on the track sometime.”

“I’m sure you already know it all,” I say, spinning around in my chair so that I face the windows. The sun is rising, casting a bright glow over half of the track. The other half is buried in shadows from the tall dirt jumps.

“I’d still love to hear from the expert.”

Is he smirking at me?

Is he
flirting
with me? I mean really, this soon? In front of Dad and Marty?

A walkie talkie thunks down beside me and then Dad ruffles my hair, which is in a ponytail, so now I have to fix it. “I’m off to water the track. Call if you need anything.”

Lincoln and I watch as Dad and Marty leave the score tower. If Dad knows about Lincoln’s supposed crush on me, he must not care very much. It took a little while before he let Ash and me be alone in small spaces together. Of course, now I’m eighteen so maybe he thinks it’s none of his business.

My new companion sets up a laptop, plugging it into a dock on the desk next to me. “That’s new,” I say over a massive bite of food. “Portable computers in the tower? I can’t believe they’ve upgraded so much.”

I may or may not be trying to sabotage whatever crush he may think he has on me by being completely disgusting. I bite off another bite and lean back in my chair, propping my feet up on the counter.

“Yeah, I’m the tech guy.” Lincoln types in a password and focuses on the screen, booting up whatever programs he uses for his job.

“I didn’t know we needed a tech guy.”

“Ya’ll don’t need one full time,” he says, tossing me a quick glance. “Which is why I’m also the marketing director, the guy who answers the phone on weekends, and most importantly—”

“So you’re a massive nerd?” I say, cutting him off. “I can’t believe this cool track has slipped into nerdom.”

“You didn’t let me finish,” he says, running his tongue over his bottom lip. “If you think answering phones is nerdy, you should hear my main job. I am the peewee instructor.”

“You teach little kids?” The peewees are the below five age group of little rug rats whose parents clearly don’t love them and therefore have bought them a dirt bike. We have a tiny kid track off to the side of the two big main tracks where little kids can ride without fear of their small bikes not making it up the big jumps. “I didn’t even know that was a thing here.”

“Yes, ma’am.” He leans a little closer to the laptop screen, eyes squinting as he highlights a row of text. “Mr. Fisher has branched out into motocross training. He hired a few guys as contractors to teach riding lessons during the off-season and on slow days. Turns out I suck at trying to make it as a professional racer, but I’m a stellar teacher to kids.”

“That’s really cool,” I say. Whatever self-imposed hostility I’d had over this new guy starts to melt away. I mean, teaching little kids is kind of adorable.

“So what do you do here?” he asks.

I hold out my arms, gesturing to my laid back position in Marty’s favorite chair. “Mostly I just wait for Dad to assign some mundane task. Unless it’s race day and then I’m swamped.”

Lincoln’s long fingers type something on his computer and then the printer whirs to life in the corner of the room. “Oh, to be the owner’s kid. I wish my parents did something other than slave away at shit jobs. But yeah, race days suck. That’s why we get paid double.”

He closes the laptop and slides it back into the bag, rising from the chair next to me. He gives me a little nod. “I’ll see you around, Hana.”

And then he’s gone. And as if by magic, all of my longing for Ash falls off the high mental shelf where I’d hid it and comes tumbling down, ruining my mood. I don’t like Lincoln. I’m not even sure he likes me, judging by his professional chit chat just now. That’s fine, because I don’t want anyone to like right now. There is no room in my brain or heart to even consider letting someone else in.

I stand up, looking for something to do in the tower, anything that will keep me busy and keep my mind off Ash. The paper Lincoln printed still rests in the paper slot, face down. I grab it and rush back to the door, yanking it open.

“Lincoln!” I call out to his retreating form. He’s already down the stairs and a few yards away. When he turns around, there’s a playful look in his eyes. I hold up the paper. “You forgot this.”