Page 59 of Fuckboy Psychos (Scarlett Force 1)
Bohnes jerks his car sharply to the left, hitting Widow so hard that he actually spins out, sliding through the muck and coming to a stop in the opposite direction. Shit. He’s fucked. He’s completely fucked.
He does an admirable job of trying to recover, making a sharp U-turn to face himself in the right direction and then taking a risk by gunning it faster than he probably should, wheels spinning in the slick mud. He takes a note from my book this time and uses the outer edge of the track and the stickier, more clay-like mud for purchase.
But he can’t catch up. He’s lost too much time, and Bohnes laps him like it’s nothing.
Within minutes, the race is over, and the black-and-white checkered flag is being waved.
I purse my lips, watching as the boys make their way back to the parking lot and the next set of drivers take their places at the starting line.
“This is barbaric,” a voice says from down below. I glance over to see who it is and find that Glove Guy—Alexei—staring out at the track like he’s been mesmerized. Rich guys always look like that when they find the shadows of Prescott, like the brutal violence on the track suits them in a way fancy parties and yachts and mansions never could.
I move down the bleachers as if they’re steps, my muddy heels loud against the metal. Aspen watches me the entire time, stroking his finger up Lemon’s thigh as he watches me with undisguised want.
Boys like him aren’t used to being told no.
Lucky me that I get to teach him a lesson that he should’ve been given in fucking preschool.
I pause next to Alexei as he looks over at me, his face covered in sweat, his body shaking. We exchange a look as I pass by, but hey, if he isn’t going to complain that we robbed him at gunpoint the other night, I suppose he can stay.
Even though I was wearing a mask, I know he recognizes me; he must recognize my car, at the bare minimum.
I move past him, pausing when I see a couple of boys—some of the more well-known troublemakers at the track—come up on Alexei, as if his quivering and sweating has announced him as easy prey. To be fair, it has.
Although I have no horse in this race, I decide to watch.
“Hey you,” one of the guys says—this idiot’s name is Pete—as he circles the trembling Alexei with a cruel smirk on his thin mouth. “You want to race me, rich boy?”
“No thank you,” Alexei replies, lifting his chin in an imperious sort of way. “If you’d kindly maintain a three-foot distance …”
Pete steps in and shoves at Alexei with two dirty palms, and the next thing I know, Pete’s howling and there’s a knife buried in his thigh.
Alexei releases the weapon and steps back, staring down at the blood on his hands with wide eyes and a stricken expression.
“What the fuck?!” one of the other boys shouts, lunging at Alexei as Pete howls in rage and Aspen watches absently from his perch on the bleachers. As soon as the second boy—this one is Dale; I know everybody at Prescott High, okay?—goes for him, Alexei turns into a machine.
He slams his palm into Dale’s solar plexus, and the other boy gags like he can’t breathe, stumbling back and falling to his ass in the mud as Alexei spins and nails the third boy—a senior kid named Wayne—directly in the face.
Once all three of them are on the ground, Alexei stares at his bloodied gloves again. With gritted teeth, he turns and takes off for his car at a near sprint, making a wide berth around me as he tears the tainted gloves off finger by finger, careful not to touch any of the crimson color, and then hucks them into the rusted barrel that serves as a trash can.
Whoever loses the most races in a single weekend is charged with dumping it. Nobody cares where they dump it—someone else’s trash can, a store’s unlocked dumpster, the side of the highway—just so long as we have an empty can to use.
Nobody gives a shit about Pete either or the sight of him wailing on the ground and bleeding from a knife wound. He started it, by trying to attack Alexei in the first place. And, to his credit, Alexei only used just enough force to get the three of them to back off and nothing more.
Based on what I just saw, he could’ve killed all three of those boys without breaking much more of a sweat than the one he already has going on.
He yanks the passenger door of his car open and then digs through a bag, pulling out what look to be antiseptic wipes that he carefully cleanses his hands with. As he finishes, each one goes in the trash.
