PowerShift: Skid Row Kings Series, #2 by Winter Travers

car with him, I was going to run away as fast as I could.
    “I figured you could hang out with Violet and Leelee. Luke will be there too. Kurt and I help him when he races so he repays the favor when we race.”
    “Yes, that sounds perfect.” I reached for the door handle, but Mitch grabbed my arm.
    “In a hurry to get away from me?”
    “Not so much you as your car.”
    Mitch laughed and leaned in. “So that means you like me?”
    “Um, I plead the fifth.” I tried pulling my arm out of his grasp, but he didn’t budge.
    “No running, Scarlett. You agreed to go out with me tonight, and I can’t help but think that you’re here because you want to get to know me better.”
    “I think you should be thinking about the race and not me.”
    “Hmm, I guess I’ll accept that for now. After the race is a whole different story.” He let go of my arm, opened his door and hoisted himself out of the car. He ducked back in, a smirk on his face. “I’m just happy you decided to come out with me tonight.”
    “You and Frankie actually didn’t leave me much choice.”
    Mitch shrugged his shoulders, “You had a choice, Sparky. I’m just glad you made the right decision.” He stood up, slammed his door and I had no idea what to do.
    I was completely lost. I liked Mitch, I really did if I let myself admit it, but I just couldn’t let go. I was terrified that the hell I had just escaped was going to come back and haunt me. I knew Manny had no idea where I was going when we left, but the nagging feeling I had just wouldn’t go away. Mitch knocked on the window, and I had no other choice but to get out of the car.
    “I thought you might have changed your mind.” Mitch opened the door and held out his hand. I grabbed onto it because I didn’t think I would be able to haul my butt up without his help.
    “You need a pulley system to get out of that car,” I huffed.
    “Or I’ll just be here to give you a helping hand.” He pulled me up into his arms and rested a hand on my hip.
    “I’ve come to find that’s your MO.”
    “Only when it comes to you, Sparky.”
    “Every being in my fiber is telling me to run, Mitch.” I felt like a deer stuck in the headlights. Mitch was saying all the right things, trying to make me feel comfortable, but I couldn’t let go, not yet.
    “Do you want to go home?”
    “Um…” That was not the question I expected him to ask.
    “I don’t want to force you to do anything. You wanna leave, go get pizza, play mini golf or go home to Levi, I’ll take you.” He reached up, cupping my face and stroked my cheek with his thumb.
    “What about your race?”
    “Making sure you’re comfortable is more important than the race. I can always catch the next one.”
    “And you have again completely blown me away.” I leaned into his hand, a brick falling from the wall that I had built around Levi and I. “I wanna stay although mini golf sounds like fun.”
    “Tomorrow. We’ll bring Levi along and get pizza.”
    “I hesitantly say yes.”
    “Hesitate all you want. I’m not going anywhere.” He leaned in, kissing me on the cheek and his hand trailed down my neck and arm and he laced his fingers through mine. “Let’s find Violet. You two can be clueless about cars together.”
    Mitch tugged on my hand, and we started walking into the crowd. “Violet is Luke’s girlfriend, right?” Mitch nodded his head. “She doesn’t know anything about cars either?”
    “Violet is more clueless than you are. She’s learned a bit from being with Luke, but cars just aren’t her thing.”
    “But I’m assuming Luke is her thing so she’s trying to learn.”
    The crowd parted, and we came to three cars that were parked in the middle of the road. There was a sleek black one that was so close to the ground it looked like it was touching it, a bright green one that had a paint job similar to the Hulk and the last car was bright yellow like Bumblebee that Levi went on and on about. “It goes