Page 4 of Link (Dragon Riders MC 1)
Easily half of what a mortgage in this same area would eventually run me.
Still, I had plans. Big plans. Plans to really establish myself in this area and plant roots in the community. New York was as far away from my hometown as I could get without leaving the country, and I wanted it that way. I never wanted to go back home. I never wanted to look my parents in the face again. I never wanted to hear their voices, listen to their pleas, or hear them curse me as I left them in my dust.
They deserved it, anyway.
Especially my mother.
As I came to a rolling stop at a red light, my engine sputtered. I paused as I reached for my phone, sending up a silent prayer that this damn thing wouldn't cut off on me. Stick shifts were finicky enough; the last thing I needed was my car dying on me.
Because if it did, I had no way to get myself another mode of transportation.
“Come on. Just be good for once,” I murmured.
I abandoned the idea to check my schedule and held on tightly to my steering wheel, as if holding on tight might change the entire car’s mind. The light turned green and I shifted as softly as I could. I had a smooth take off from the stoplight, and I sighed with relief. All I needed to do was get home. On a Sunday evening, where I needed to prepare for Monday, what I wanted was to get back to my place and organize things at my kitchen table for tomorrow.
After all, there’s no rest for the weary.
Especially for a new lawyer who had just opened up a new practice.
Still, I wasn’t hurting for clients. Not really, anyway. I was one of four lawyers in town, and I was the only one that specialized in criminal law. Around here, divorce attorneys were more prevalent. Go figure. And for a split second as I purchased my business building, I worried that might play against me. But most of my work came to me through the local police departments. I quickly made positive contacts with the force, and instantly became the go-to for traveling federal forces that came into town to continue their own investigations.
Things were looking up.
Even though I was throwing the bulk of my money at my spiraling debt.
“Holy shit!”
My body lurched and my head almost smacked the steering wheel. I braced for impact, knowing damn good and well that if I hadn’t hit something, I was about to. I squeezed my eyes closed and hung on tightly to my steering wheel. I held my breath, waiting for the crunching of metal to happen. I wasn’t sure why the hell my car had come to such a hazardous stop, but I knew I needed to prepare.
The impact never came, though. And slowly, my eyes opened.
“What the—”
There was nothing around me. Nothing behind me. I sat in the middle of a deserted road with my car completely stalled out. I sighed as I turned off the engine. I depressed the clutch and put the shifter back into neutral, then tried starting up the car. But it didn’t start. Hell, it didn’t even sputter.
It just clicked.
“Fucking hell, come on,” I whispered.
I kept turning it over, again and again. Hoping that if I tweaked it enough, something would have mercy on me. I pressed the gas pedal a bit, wondering if that might help. But at that point, I was worried I’d flood the engine if I tried that again. I put the shifter in park and tried to crank. I put it in reverse and tried to crank again. I tried every gear that fucking shifter had to see if it was a magic combination of some sort. But after a while, even the click of the initial turn over ceased to exist.
And I was left with a dead car in the middle of the road.
“Fuck!” I exclaimed.
I slammed the heels of my hands against the steering wheel as tears rushed my eyes.
“Can’t someone have mercy on me just once?” I whispered.
I turned the key back and clicked it forward once, springing the battery to life. So, it didn’t seem like a battery issue. I had power to the car. That stupid “check engine” light blinked at me despite the fact that I had practically disassembled the damn thing to make sure it was okay. My dad and I—before he got fed up with my mother and left me behind—used to always work on cars. He owned his own scrap yard there for a while, and he’d always bring home hopeless projects for us to work on. I knew a great deal about how to take care of cars from him. It was how I’d kept this heap of junk running for so long on the road.
