Racer

A self-absorbed smile appears on his face and he shoots me a smile. “You’ll come around. Nobody wants to date a loser. Especially when she can have a champ.”

One second everything is fine, the next Clark is getting shoved back—HARD. “I said, take a hike.” Clark stumbles for balance as Racer gives him a look that could peel off the skin from his bones.

Racer sits back down, looking at me as Clark exits the shop with his brother without buying a single thing. “Let’s get dessert,” Racer says as he calls the waiter, calm and confident, as if nothing happened.

I blink, still stunned by what happened. “I don’t like guys that are violent,” I whisper, flushing because no man has ever fought for me before. “Too much testosterone if you ask me.”

“I’m not violent.” He grins, but his eyes look a little dark and angry. A little lusty, too, as he watches me finish my omelet. “If I were, I’d have cracked that motherfucker’s skull,” he gruffs out.

We do well in practice, but during qualifying, Clark gets in the way, and we don’t seem to be able to catch up with his fastest lap.

“Tate said she didn’t have enough torque,” Drake is filling me in. “Doesn’t seem comfortable in the car. He seems off these past few days.”

I watch Kelsey get too close to the car in front. Suddenly Kelsey’s nose grazes the car in front, and she flips. He’s in the air.

In

The

Fucking

AIR.

I’m on my feet, screaming “NO!!” and covering my mouth as the car flips three times before he lands with a crash against the wall. Debris is landing everywhere; and the car parts are scattered all across the track. The nose. Two wheels. Broken parts from the tail. I can only see the cockpit, and the cloud of dark steam coming off the engine against the wall.

My whole body collapses and I feel my dad catch me.

“Lainie baby,” my dad says worriedly.

I start to hyperventilate, and they bring me a little bag to breathe in. “Is he okay?!” I’m begging my brothers to know as I breathe into the bag and frantically try to see some movement from inside the cockpit.

One hand comes out to flip his visor back—and I almost faint from the relief washing over my ice-cold bones.

“He’s signaling from the car, I think he’s okay,” Clayton assures me.

It takes forever for the car to be brought back, in shambles.

And Racer has to walk the way home from the track. He storms into pits like a devil on a vengeance spree. He sends me a heated look when his helmet comes off, his hair standing this way and that, his eyes blue like laser beams. He grits his jaw and heads over to our tent and slam his helmet down. “What the fuck,” Clayton tells him.

“I wasn’t concentrating.” He drags his hand along the back of his neck and makes a fist at his side.

“You—”

“I wasn’t concentrating.”

“This is our best car,” Clayton says.

“Was,” Drake says.

Racer storms away, more furious than my three brothers combined.

There’s dead silence as we ride back to the hotel in my family’s rented van.

Finally, Drake breaks it. “Look, I don’t know what goes on in your personal life, but you can’t fuck up like this. Get it?”

“I got it,” Racer growls, frustrated as he stares out the window, frowning.

We’re almost at the hotel, and the tension after Racer crashed hasn’t gone down.

I’m wringing my hands. Remembering what it felt like to feel him touch me intimately, how hard I came, how he watched me with a look of total lust in his eyes.

Oh god.

Drake shoots him a scowling look. “We can’t afford this shit again.”

“I’ll cover it,” he growls.

Drake laughs softly and shakes his head. “You won’t have anything left from what we’re paying you.”

He clenches his hand around the back of his neck, his teeth gritted. “I made a mistake. Won’t happen again.”

He looks at me. And my stomach flips inside my body.

“He made a mistake, Drake, drop it okay?” I hiss.

There’s silence. My dad just looks at Racer, and reaches out and pats him on the back.

“You’re human, it’s all right. Won’t happen again,” he tells Racer as we climb out of the car.

My throat constricts when I see the tiredness in my father’s eyes, and when they all descend and head to their rooms, I feel Racer curl his hand around my arm.

“Hey.”

I turn at the roughly spoken word, meeting his gaze.

He clenches his jaw, then releases my elbow and plunges his hands into his pockets.

I don’t know if he just didn’t want me to leave or if he wanted to say something, but we stay like this, wordless, for a moment . . .

He turns away and I turn away too, both of us too frustrated to talk.

Racer

The disappointment in her eyes … yeah, that kills me most of all.

I miss her smile, I want it back.

You fucked up and it’s gone, Tate.

I lost my head. I was distracted. Badly slept, and too damned crazed over her to think straight today.

I head to my room, but I’m too restless and angry at myself for fucking up, and I need to take the edge off. So I do what I never do and I head to the bar because it’s either a glass of something hard, or my lithium pills. And I really don’t want to pass down any of that unless I want to fucking lose the Grand Prix.

Lithium makes me slow as shit and if HW Racing had wanted slow, they could’ve fixed up #38 with a grandpa.