"I'm just going to drive her, Aleksi. Like ye said."
He let the parking brake off and hit the gas.
She didn't like it.
The Viper had been built to be respected on the way out of stillness, eased into power, taught who was in charge before you asked her for anything. Fin asked her for everything in the first three seconds. He dumped the clutch hard enough she barked, the rear tires scrabbled on the concrete, and we shot out of the bay door into the dark of the paddock with my back pinned to the bucket and my hand braced on the dash.
"Fin—"
"Aye?"
"What did I just say about cocky?"
"Cannae hear ye over the engine."
"Fin!"
"Christ, would ye look at her go—"
He shifted into second like he knew what he was doing. The Viper settled into her stride out across the paddock at a speed that had no business happening in a paddock. The high beamsthrew the access road yellow ahead of us. The asphalt was wet from the earlier rain, and Fin didn't seem to give a single shit.
"Fin. Brake! There's a turn—"
He braked late enough I felt the harness points dig into my shoulders, and then he spun the wheel and moved his feet like he was a goddamn stunt driver.
He kicked the back end out.
The Viper went sideways under us. The rear tires lit up, the rev counter spiked, and the rear of the car came round in a slow ugly arc with the front end pointed somewhere off into the grass before Fin caught her, corrected, caught her again, and dragged her straight on the throttle out the other side of the corner. The whole thing took maybe three seconds. I watched it happen with my hand on the dash and my mouth open. The smell of burning rubber filled the cab and when I glanced into the rearview, two black lines smoked into the asphalt behind us in a curve that wasn't ever going to come out.
"Jesus Christ, Fin! Do you have any fucking idea how much these tires cost?"
The little shit was laughing. He pulled the car off onto the verge between the paddock and the track, and let her idle and turned to me with his whole face lit up like a kid who'd just gotten away with something. I wanted to throttle him almost as much as I wanted to throw him over the hood and fuck him until I felt like I'd gotten the four grand back the tires had cost.
"Where in the fuck did you learn to do that?"
"Back home," he said with a big stupid grin. "The highlands are full of mountain switchbacks and hairpin curves. Me and the lads would take the junkers from a mate's da's garage and run them until they broke down. Then we'd sit around and smoke until his da showed up with the wrecker."
I stared at him a minute and wondered what else about Fin's past I still didn't know. There was so much, a whole lifetime ofmemories that had come before me. I wanted to know them all. I wanted him to tell me everything, give up every little secret, even the ones he didn't know he was keeping. They were mine as much as he was.
That'd take a lifetime, I realized, watching him laugh at me.
And some, small, soft part of me was totally on board with still discovering small secrets about Finlay Gallagher when we were both old and gray.
"Get out of the car," I growled.
"What?"
"Fin if you don't get the fuck out of this car and up to the suite in the next five minutes, I will bend you over the hood and fuck you in the fucking garage."
He looked at me and didn't move.
"Fin," I warned. "Don't test me."
He let the moment stretch out long enough that I knew exactly what he was about to do. He opened the driver's door and got out of the car slowly and walked the length of the Viper with his good hand trailing along the roofline. He stopped at the front. Then he turned around and leaned back against the hood face up to the darkening steel gray sky, the wind in his hair.
Fucking hell. I needed to be inside himnow.
I reached over and turned the car off. Then I threw open my door and stepped out, pausing to adjust my jacket.