Shifting Gears: The Complete Series (Sports Bad Boy Romance) by Alycia Taylor Page B

their way, something about screwing with traffic lights or something?” she
asks.
    “Yeah,” I tell her. “I’ll
fill you in later. For now, we just need to get the hell out of Dodge.”
    I’ve driven the flatbed
many times over the years, but one thing it’s not is cut out for racing
anything. All we can do is take back roads to the shop and hope nobody spots us
on the way.
    “Whoa,” Kate says,
pulling an envelope out of the glove box. “It looks like there’s $2,000 in
here.”
    “$2,000?” I ask. “That
doesn’t even cover my entry fee.”
    She shrugs. “I guess you
have to keep winning then,” she says, putting the money back in the envelope
and putting it back in the glove compartment.
    “So you won?” she asks.
    “Yeah,” I tell her. “I’m
sorry you couldn’t see that part of it.”
    “I saw quite a bit,
actually,” she says. “Even after you guys turned, where I was, I could still
see you guys going past distant intersections. Wasn’t that spaceship car thing
beating you for a while?”
    “It’s a Ford GT,” I tell
her, “and yeah. I almost lost that race to all three of them.”
    I’m really starting to
get sick of hearing sirens. Fortunately for Kate and me, though, it sounds like
they’re a ways away from us.
    It takes about an hour to
get back to the shop using the backroads, but we don’t come across any cops on
the way. When we get to the junkyard, I hop out and unlock the gate before
backing the flatbed all the way through the maze of broken-down cars and parts
to the Chevelle’s spot.
    I remove the cover once
more and pull the Chevelle back off of the truck and into its spot. I cover it
again.
    Kate and I meet at the
back of the flatbed and, with the words, “For the winner,” she throws her arms
around my neck and kisses me on the cheek, saying, “So, you’re buying dinner
tonight, right?”

 
    **         *

 
    Kate and I go to dinner
in my Galaxie. Her eyes are wide as I recount the race to her.
    We talk for a while, and
she asks me questions when she doesn’t understand something, but she catches on
really fast. In fact, I think she’s getting this stuff easier than I did.
    When it finally comes
time to take her back home, the race doesn’t even feel real. There was nothing
to wait for at the start, and by the time I crossed the finish line, everything
was all packed up except the four cars finishing out the run.
    It was like a dream, but
that two grand looked pretty real.
    We pull up in front of
Kate’s house and, just as soon as I get the car stopped, it dies.
    “You’ve really got to
look into finding something else to drive around town,” Kate says.
    I’m nodding along with
her. Not that I have any definite plans to get rid of the thing.
    “Can I walk you to your
door, or do you have another ‘family thing’ going on tonight?” I ask.
    She seems to have a lot
of those.
    “You can walk me to the
door,” she says, “but I don’t think you should come in.”
    “That’s fine. Are we
still on for tomorrow?”
    “Of course. You won the
race.”
    “If I’d lost it?”
    “Well, I would be very
sad for you,” Kate smirks.
    We get out of the car and
I take her hand as we meet at the end of the walkway.
    Kate’s whispering, “We
need to be quiet. My parents aren’t exactly thrilled about you.”
    “They haven’t met me,” I
tell her. “I’m a very charming young man.”
    “You are that,” she says.
“I doubt that’s going to work so well on Mom and Dad, though. They can be a
little uptight.”
    “All right,” I tell her
and we walk up to the door.
    We kiss on the stoop like
a bad romantic comedy; only it’s pretty great being on this side of it. I’m
giving her one more kiss before I head back to the car when the front door
opens.
    “What are you doing?” a
very angry woman asks.
    Kate and I separate.
    “Mom, this is-” Kate
starts.
    “I know who he is,”
Kate’s mom says. “He’s the young man you’ve been