#Junkie (GearShark #1)(6)

I’d do what I could to get to the finish line.

It was this attitude precisely that was earning me a name in the car world here in Maryland. It was my no-holds-barred, drive until my tires were bald and I was white knuckled on the steering wheel that got tongues wagging.

And in cars, talk was half the battle.

The other half?

The way a man drove.

Hell, the kind of driver you were was more important than the actual thing you drove. Because when it came right down to it…

It wasn’t the size of the engine in the car.

It was the size of the engine in the man.

My engine?

It was so big it was limited edition.

I kept that quiet, too. If someone wanted to know who I was, they could get in the passenger seat and I’d show them. I didn’t need to talk smack; I just needed to drive.

The Chesapeake Speedway was the biggest raceway on this side of Maryland. Over on the other side of the state, toward the bigger cities where the Knights (our state football team) was based was a larger racetrack where some big events had gone down over the years. But that track was on a more professional level. At least in terms of competition.

I couldn’t just drive in there off the street and race. To get there, I would need sponsors. I would need a better car and a bigger name.

Basically, in the world of racing, money talks and so does who you know.

Even though I’d been driving since I was five, I was basically starting at the bottom. Growing up in North Carolina, driving was just a hobby. It was just something my parents let me do because if they didn’t, they would find me in the garage, trying to sweeten up the lawn mower to make it faster. Or strapping on a helmet and riding a homemade go-cart down the hill in the backyard.

Go-cart = an old Big Wheel I took the handles off and glued an old spare steering wheel to the top.

My mom about had a heart attack that day.

I still don’t know what all the fuss was about. I’d worn a helmet.

Anyway, it was indulge in my need for speed in a controlled manner or keep allowing me to make homemade “death machines” (Mom’s words, not mine). Even though everything in my life revolved around the track, it was still always expected I would grow out of it.

Driving would never be some kind of career choice.

My career path had been decided long before I even picked up a set of keys. My father wanted a son to follow in his footsteps, a son he could groom into whatever he wanted him to be. When I came out first, my fate was sealed.

At least until not quite six months ago.

Up until then, I’d done everything expected of me. I graduated high school, went to a top-notch college, and excelled in IT (information technology) and computer science. Not surprisingly, I also excelled in graphic design, likely because designing stuff was far more entertaining to me than the software science stuff. But still, I excelled at both.

What can I say? I have a big brain to go with the big engine inside me.

My father was stuffed like a turkey at Thanksgiving with pride. After college, I got some fancy internship at a software and technology company and made coffee all day, spending as much time as possible in the elevators, trying not to die inside.

When I called or went home, I acted like it was all great, like life in the computer world was exactly what I wanted.

But it wasn’t.

In fact, the more time I spent in that office building, the more caged up I felt.

The only thing that kept me from flying off the handle completely was the long, fast car rides I would go on after work. It was the time I spent at the local track (which was little more than a circular dirt path).

When the internship ended, I drove home knowing my father was already lining up interviews and job opportunities so I could start my career in earnest.

I had to get away from it.

I needed to breathe.

When I learned my sister Ivy moved in with some guy none of us had met, I took off. It was the perfect excuse to get the hell away. After all, I’d always been Ivy’s biggest protector. Dad couldn’t say shit about me heading her way. He wanted his daughter looked after as well.

So yeah, maybe I’d used my sister as an excuse for a little vacation.

But then I pulled in the driveway.

I knocked on the front door of a house in a swanky-ass neighborhood.

The sight of my sister made me forget the reason I’d sped up the interstate to get there. Sure, her choice of mate hadn’t been my favorite, but the guy had since grown on me. But not just Braeden… Ivy had a whole family here.

A family I felt a part of almost immediately.

In a lot of ways, more so than I ever had with the family I was born into.

It was almost unsettling. Looking around at people I hadn’t known very long, feeling like the person I was meant to be—the one I’d suppressed most my life to please my father—was known by them and they accepted him.

Suddenly, it didn’t seem like I was escaping from something, but to something.

To the life I really wanted. The life I never considered I could have. My hobby, my passion could be more than that.

It was like I was a car discovering I’d been driving with my emergency brake engaged.

Maybe that’s why I was such an adrenaline junkie now. I had lost time to make up for.

Telling Dad I wasn’t coming home, I wasn’t going to be following up on those high-profile jobs with starting salaries of a hundred grand a year, hadn’t been easy. Telling my father, a man I loved, that I was rejecting everything he wanted for me was probably the hardest thing I’d ever done.