Dirt Driven (Racing on the Edge Book 11) Read online

  Table of Contents

  DIRT DRIVEN

  Copyrights

  Dedication

  BOOKS BY SHEY STAHL

  Quote

  Prelude – Arie

  Chapter 1 – Arie

  Chapter 2 – Arie

  Chapter 3 – Arie

  Chapter 4 – Arie

  Chapter 5- Rager

  Chapter 6 – Rager

  Chapter 7 – Arie

  Chapter 8 – Arie

  Chapter 9 – Arie

  Chapter 10 – Rager

  Chapter 11 – Arie

  Chapter 12 – Arie

  Chapter 13 – Arie

  Chapter 14 – Arie

  Chapter 15 – Arie

  Chapter 16 – Rager

  Chapter 17 – Arie

  Chapter 18 – Rager

  Chapter 19 – Arie

  Chapter 20 – Rager

  Chapter 21 – Arie

  Chapter 22 – Rager

  Chapter 23 – Arie

  Acknowledgments

  Meet the Author

  Copyright © 2020 by Shey Stahl

  Published in the United States of America

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, sponsors, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination and are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, dead or living, is coincidental.

  The opinions expressed in this book are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of NASCAR, its employees, or its representatives, teams, and drivers within the series. The car numbers used within this book are not representing those drivers who use those numbers either past or present in any NASCAR series, USAC or The World of Outlaw Series and are used for the purpose of this fiction story only. The author does not endorse any product, driver, or other material racing in NASCAR, USAC or The World of Outlaw Series. The opinions in this work of fiction are simply that, opinions and should not be held liable for any product purchase, and or effect of any racing series based on those opinions.

  All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior written permission of Shey Stahl.

  Engine/car definitions were used from the following websites:

  http://www.empiremagnetics.com/glossary/glossary.htm

  http://www.world-sprintcar-guide.com/

  Cover Design provided by Tracy Steeg

  Editing provided by Becky Johnson, Hot Tree Editing

  Interior Formatting by Shey Stahl

  For my dad.

  Thank you for inspiring me to live my dream.

  RACING ON THE EDGE

  Happy Hour

  Black Flag

  Trading Paint

  The Champion

  The Legend

  Hot Laps

  The Rookie

  Fast Time

  Open Wheel

  Pace Laps

  Dirt Driven

  Behind the Wheel – Series outtakes (TBA)

  STAND ALONES

  Waiting for You

  Everything Changes

  For the Summer

  Deal

  All I Have Left

  Awakened

  Everlasting Light

  Bad Blood

  Heavy Soul

  Bad Husband

  Burn

  Love Complicated

  Untamed

  How to Deal

  Promise Not to Fall

  Blindsided

  Revel

  SEX. LOVE. MARRIAGE

  Saving Barrette

  Redemption

  Room 4 Rent (Coming Soon)

  THE FMX SERIES

  Shade

  Tiller

  Roan

  Camden (TBA)

  Red Lined (TBA)

  CROSSING THE LINE

  Delayed Penalty

  Delayed Offsides

  THE TORQUED TRILOGY

  Unsteady

  Unbearable

  Unbound

  ANCHORED LOVE

  The Sea of Light

  The Sea of Lies (TBA)

  The Sea of Forever (TBA)

  Stator – Stationary member of a motor.

  “Where have you been?”

  The sky rumbled, his eyes lazy and bloodshot, lightning dancing on the horizon. “Bar,” he explained. A slow exhale rose his chest as he watched the streaks scatter overhead.

  Bolts of nervous energy shot through my veins. “With who?” I wasn’t sure I wanted to know the answer to this, but I asked anyway.

  At first, he didn’t reply. Maybe he wanted to lie, but we didn’t lie to one another. “Olivia was there.” Our eyes locked, his hiding, mine curious. Rager wouldn’t do this to me though. It wasn’t in him to cheat on me. He was the most loyal man I had ever met besides my father. I knew that, but still, it didn’t stop me from wondering. Loneliness had a way of playing tricks on you.

  I bit my lip nervously, staring at my hands. “Just you guys?” And then I looked up, waiting on his words.

  “I went there alone.” He swallowed, hard, eyes unblinking. “She showed up later and I let her buy me a fucking beer.” His harshness tore at my heart. “Don’t make it out to be something that it’s not.”

  Though I knew Rager would never, ever, do that, your mind could play tricks on you. I didn’t want to believe either one of them would go there, but maybe with alcohol courage and sadness… I didn’t know. I couldn’t even justify what my mind was thinking, let alone Rager doing that to me.

  “And you left alone?” Sadness lingered in my words, like an aftertaste of betrayal. Rager wouldn’t. He couldn’t, right?

  “Jesus Christ.” His jaw clenched, emotion he’d held down deep surfacing. “Yes.”

  “And?” Accelerated beats in my chest shiver up my spine, the anticipation almost too much to bear. Confusion tainted my thoughts like dust on a shelf, floating through my mind like the tiny bits of paranoia I tried so hard to escape.

  “And now I’m here.” He sounded defeated. It was hard to watch someone struggle, deflect accusations only to have them thrown back in your face. My heart pleaded with him to speak, but in truth, I didn’t nor would I ever understand what he was going through.

  Lightning ripped through the sky. “Are you telling me the truth?”

  Right then, the moment he finally let his guard down, a flash through the sky lit the night. He dropped to his knees in the backyard. That was when I finally saw it. I was witnessing what that night in Williams Grove had done to my now cold and restless husband.

  It had destroyed him.

  “I’m fucking telling you the goddamn truth!” he screamed back at me, his breathing harsh, mine stopping all together. “Why the fuck would I lie to you about this of all things?”

  He was burning, so bright I feared the light would go out. And then what? What would be left of my husband then? This sport, one he loved, had taken something from him. Some people had a passion for racing. Others, it was their life and if you said to them, “it’s over; you can’t get back in that car,” well, their life might as well have been over as far as they were concerned.

  Since the accident, Rager feared that car and what it’d done to him and the lives of those he cared about. He feared the unknown. This doubt, that wasn’t Rager and me. We weren’t these people. We were a passion. We were a half-lidded glance from across the pits, dirt clinging to our skin. We were a long sigh when the weight of words wouldn’t let up. We were insecurities that c
ollapsed in the heat of the night, foreheads slowly touching and the shaking of our bodies in the quiet, bringing lips closer together until quivering skin followed.

  Together, I could get him through this. I stepped toward him, hating what this had done to him. On his knees, his head in his hands, Rager’s body shook and finally he melted into my embrace, his sobs never letting up. When I wrapped my arms around him, my fingers clung to the fabric of his clothes.

  Tears fell down my cheeks, and I looked up at the restless moonless sky. Sometimes you looked up and the night was full of stars, burning brightly and shining on you longer than you ever thought they would. And then other nights, there was nothing. Darkness was all you saw. Cold, irritable darkness that took everything from you and left you in the shadows of despair. Hidden behind clouds of doubt, you had to have patience and wait for the night to clear, knowing eventually, your light would return. It wasn’t easy but it was worth the wait.

  I wasn’t sure we could wait the darkness out before it broke my husband completely.

  Stiffness – Relationship describing moto displacement from a fixed position due to an applied torque of specified value.

  THE DIRT TRACK AT LAS VEGAS

  LAS VEGAS, NEVADA

  MARCH - SIX MONTHS EARLIER

  “Stand there.”

  “Where?” Rager groaned, tossing his head forward dramatically. “I can’t tell by the flick of your goddamn wrist what you want me to do, Arie.”

  With a heavy sigh, I glared at him, wishing I could take the Sharpie in my hand and stab it in his damn pretty blue eyes for questioning me. This was what three years of marriage and being on the road for nine months out of the year with four kids does to you. You begin to want to stab your husband. And we’re only a month into our nine-month season, so, it wasn’t looking good for my husband if he kept fucking with me.

  “There,” I growled at him. “Where the fucking X is. How is it not obvious?”

  Though he was wearing a hat, I knew if I was to knock it off his head, he’d be lifting a challenging eyebrow at me. “Why are you being mean to me?”

  Because you’re a dick today.

  “Because I feel like it. Now just do your job, stand there, smile, so I can do mine.” Was it him being a dick today, or was I exceptionally cranky? Maybe a little bit of both.

  That conversation right there sounds like most marriages though, doesn’t it? Or maybe it was the marriage of two people who spent the majority of their time together on the road. Probably the second one.

  Rager threw his arms up, kicking at the dirt and the flour marking the spot where he would be standing during introductions tonight. “Why are we doing this? It’s dumb. No one cares who we are.”

  I haven’t told him that the spot where he would be standing tonight would also be lit on fire. Maybe I’d save that for later. I’d save it because he would be standing next to Casten with a lit flame at their feet. There was no telling what my brother would do.

  I also wanted to laugh in Rager’s face that he thought nobody cared who he was. Actually, I did laugh. “You don’t think they care who you are?” I raised a bitchy eyebrow. “Okay. If you think that, go up in the stands tonight. Alone. And tell me they don’t care who the top ten drivers racing in the World of Outlaws are.”

  I knew my husband well enough to know he was actually contemplating this. His sturdy glare swept from the stands where I was pointing, back to me. “I know they care, but why are we making such a big deal out of this prerace show? It’s not NASCAR. Why try to make it that way?”

  “Listen, jerk.” Wow. He was really getting under my skin today. “Just do what I’m telling you to do and shut up.”

  “Fine.” Defiantly, he crossed his arms over his chest. “But I’m not smiling.”

  Always pushing my buttons. When I agreed to be the PR manager for JAR Racing, I should have considered its drivers. Ones like my husband, Rager Sweet, who insisted on giving me shit every day. It didn’t matter that I was his wife. If Rager didn’t want to do something, he let everyone know his disapproval of said task. Kinda like our nearly four-year-old son, Pace. By the way, I have three, three-year-olds at the moment. No, they’re not triplets, two are twins, but it might explain why I was so cranky these days. In fact, we have four kids under five. I absolutely loved being a mother, but some days, like today, I struggled with being nice to everyone. And the one who helped create all those kids, he took the brunt of my anger most days.

  Reality crashed against Rager when he read the car numbers on the ground. Rager pointed at the X with the number 4 on it next to him. “There’s no fuckin’ way I’m standing next to him.”

  Damn it. He knew.

  “Can you not be difficult for one afternoon and let me do my job? It’s the last night here in Vegas and I have a lot to get done today.”

  “Where would the fun in that be, wife?” He smiled, walking toward me. With one smirk, he had his arms wrapped around my body and his mouth on my neck. With one sweep of his tongue against my overly heated skin, I melted. “Now, how about you show me how feisty you can be?”

  “Can’t,” I whispered, trying like hell to ignore him and his wicked ways of getting me to do whatever he wanted. “I just put Hudson down for a nap on our bed.”

  His arms tightened around me and he backed me up against the fence on the front stretch. The metal squeaked in protest when his body pressed into mine. “We don’t need a bed,” he grunted, his breath tickling my cheek, assaulting me with open-mouth kisses up the side of my neck. When he got to my jaw, he held my face is his hands, those beautiful blue eyes on mine. Flush against each other, I had forgotten what this was like. To be drunk on the scent of him and held still by the force of him.

  He shut me up by slamming his lips on mine. Warm, salty, just right, as always. I couldn’t accurately describe what it was like to be kissed by this man, but that kiss, it was everything he had become to me. Adrenaline. Addiction. Aggression. It was all there drawing out my deepest desires, desperate for more, and the weight of him pinning me to the fence.

  I jerked my head to the side when something wet hit the side of my face and it wasn’t from Rager. I looked up to the sky thinking it was starting to rain, but cloudless turquoise shined down on us. “What was that?”

  Rager turned his head, and then scowled immediately. “What the fuck, Tommy?”

  “Thought you two should calm down.” Perched on a four-wheeler with Hudson on his lap, Tommy grinned and held up a squirt gun in his hand. “Or you could get lit. Whatever you prefer.”

  Tommy Davis was my dad’s longtime best friend, and my older brother, Axel’s, crew chief. He’d lived his life around the Outlaw schedule for the past thirty years, and sometimes I think he drank racing fuel and it went to his brain. Wavy orange hair, brown eyes full of trouble, his blood was mostly vodka and he was up to no good most of the time. Never trust him.

  Rager backed up, creating a foot of space between the two of us. He wiped his hand down his cheek and then smelled it. “Is that vodka in your squirt gun?”

  At the same time my son Hudson took it from him and squirted his mouth. Tommy’s wide eyes met Rager’s. “Will you kill me if it is?”

  Rager stepped toward them, his black T-shirt stretching perfectly around his biceps. “If my son is drinking vodka, yes.”

  Tommy grinned. “Then it’s water.”

  Rage took another step. “Bullshit.”

  Straightening out my tank top, I kicked dirt from my white shoes I knew I shouldn’t be wearing at a dirt track. After collecting my phone, I wiped the vodka from my cheek and moved toward Rager.

  Hudson looked at me, Rager, and then smiled at Tommy and tried to pry the squirt gun from his hands. Our almost two-year-old son, Hudson, was the definition of a bad kid. I said that with all the love a mother has for her children. I loved my baby boy, but he was an asshole. Plain and simple. We couldn’t even find a regular babysitter for him; he’s that bad. And he only liked my dad. Everyone els
e he scowled at.

  To prove my point, just wait. When Tommy didn’t give Hudson the squirt gun, he threw his head back in a tantrum and nailed Tommy right in the chin.

  Rager shook his head when Tommy caved and handed him the squirt gun. “Here, ya little brat.”

  “Don’t give him that.” I gasped, rushing toward them to pry the squirt gun out of Hudson’s hand. Naturally, he cried and I plucked him off the four-wheeler.

  “What is he even doing up? I put him down for a nap. Rosa said she was watching the kids for us.”

  Tommy started the four-wheeler, revving it once. “I saw Rosa at the concession stands. She didn’t have any kids with her. I picked this little guy up on the way to check track conditions. He was wandering around under the pit bleachers.”

  Goddamn you, Rosa was my first thought. Followed quickly by, It’s a good thing my dad didn’t see him under there.

  Hudson took my phone from my hand and threw it on the ground. No reason at all. Just decided I didn’t need it.

  Two-year-olds are dicks.

  I peered down at him. “Why’d you do that?”

  He looked at the phone, then me, batting his lashes. “Sawry, Mama.”

  That meant sorry. And then I couldn’t be mad at my baby any longer.

  Beside me, Rager rolled his eyes, walking toward the pits, leaving me on the front stretch. “You’re such a pushover.”

  I was. There was no denying it. Tommy took off the other direction, spraying a wave of dirt at Rager in the process.

  Carrying Hudson on my hip, I wiped the vodka from his face. He licked his hand. “Yum.”

  “Don’t get addicted yet,” I told him. “You gotta get off the tit first.”

  I was still breastfeeding Hudson, at nearly two. Believe me, I tried to get him to stop, but he wouldn’t.

  Back in the pits, everything was beginning to burst to life as the final night in Vegas was getting underway. I stood at the entrance to the pits, the long row of haulers and sprint cars my view. I… loved this life. Everything about it. From the smells, dirt, sun, burnt rubber, brake cleaner, methanol… all the way to the concessions stands serving the stale beer and overly greasy hamburgers.