by Kat Ransom
“No. Nothing is funny about Charlotte’s mama needing a kidney transplant. This is serious,” I bite my inner lip and try to keep a straight face.
“Cole,” she covers her face with one hand.
I put one hand up to keep her from snatching the Kindle and bring it back down before me with the other. “Ahem, now then,” I start reading aloud. “Charlotte panted, her thighs quivering from the assault of Steel’s tongue on her wetness.
‘Yes, Steel, yes,’ Charlotte cried.
Hearing her cries of ecstasy, Steel dragged himself over her naked body and lined his thick cock up with her entrance.
‘You want my stick shift, baby?’ He taunted her.”
“Oh my god,” Emily flops down onto the couch across from me and covers her face with both hands.
“You know, this is not the most technically correct in its depiction of NASCAR,” I look over at her.
“That’s not the point,” she takes her hands away from her face and pouts.
God, I love seeing her blush. So many little things I’ve missed about her.
“No, I imagine it’s not,” I can’t help but smirk at her.
I keep reading aloud and sneak glances at her out of the corner of my eye.
“‘Give it to me,’ Charlotte whispered. ‘Give it to me hard, Steel.’
‘Beg for it, beg for me to fill up that pussy,’ Steel growled.
‘Please,’ Charlotte whimpered.
Steel thrust forward, his massive girth penetrating her and filling her up like no other man could. He moved in and out, his pelvis slamming into her like a piston, and Charlotte’s wetness began to seep down her thigh.”
“See, right there. Pistons don’t really slam. They’re very smooth and more like they rock… in and out of each cylinder. You’re a mechanical engineer, you know how pistons work.” I look at Emily and dramatize my words, speak them slowly.
“Oh my god, I hate you,” she’s redder than ever, but I can see her biting her lip, trying not to smile. It’s the first time in a long time I’ve made her smile, even if she’s hiding it.
Before I have time to think through what I’m asking or the ramifications of her answer, I blurt it out. “Do you… hate me?”
She leans back to the couch and wraps her arms around herself. Her face turns away, and she looks off into the distance.
Please say no.
Eventually, she brings her head back and looks down at her lap, then shakes her head, “I should.”
“But, you don’t?”
She shakes her head again like she can’t make herself say it aloud.
I drop her Kindle to my chest and turn my body to face her better. Even the head shake is a win, and a tiny bit of the heaviness inside me lifts.
“I hate what you did, though,” she adds after a moment.
“I hate what I did, too.”
“Good for you,” she fires back at me.
Okay, then. I knew it was coming. Emily can be angry. She should be angry.
I need to switch gears before she walks out. “Not what I expected you to be reading,” I tap the Kindle on my chest, “not that there’s anything wrong with it.”
“Yeah, well, I’m not the same person you used to know,” she says defensively, still mad. “Are you?”
“No,” I admit.
What a fucking mouthful.
I picture her dancing at that club and all the things I’ve done over the last several years, things I would never want her to know or learn about. Things I am not proud of.
“I don’t want this to be weird, Cole,” she says after a long quiet moment. I can see her formulating her resolve before my very eyes. “We have to work together.”
I sit up, drop my legs off the couch, and nod as I turn to face her. “We used to be friends once.”
“You want to be friends?” She emphasizes the word friends like it’s the most disgusting thing she’s ever heard.
“I’m asking what you want.”
“I don’t think I can be your friend.”
I take a deep breath and try to reign in my thoughts, try not to show my disappointment. Still, even if there is only one percent of hope, I don’t know how to give up. Not with most things, and definitely not with her.
It may be naive, but I want to believe there’s still something there within her, something lying under the pain and anger. Sitting this close to her, hearing her voice, looking into those deep brown eyes again—I have to try.
“How about just being friendly, then?”
“Friendly?” She asks skeptically.
“We do have to work together, like you said,” I shrug. “We’re going to have to communicate and spend time together.”
She thinks about it for a moment, takes a deep breath and nods, “Okay.”
I smile and lean back. Sometimes one percent is enough. Nothing is over until it’s over.
This is a start.
“I have questions,” she pulls her knees up underneath her on the couch and looks at me.
My heart drops.
It’s too early for the questions I’m afraid she’ll ask. I’m not prepared, and if we get too deep into the past right now, she’ll run.
Emily doesn’t run from commitment. She runs when failure might be an option, and when it carries consequences that she can’t accept. I think I might just be her worst-case scenario now.
“Some of the things you say in the car, on the radio, I don’t understand what you mean,” she explains.
Oh, thank christ. Just car questions.
“Like what?”
“You said the rear felt loose.”
I spend a minute telling her about understeer and how we can change the wing setups, how it affects cornering in the car, but she cuts me off after a minute or two.
“I know the definition of it, Cole. I need to know how it feels.”
“How it feels?”
“Good engineers listen to needs and wants and then create a solution. I know what all the parts on the car do, or can do. I don’t know how it feels to drive the car, and I need you to explain it to me. So when you say it feels loose…”
I rub my chin and think about how to describe the feeling to someone who’s never driven a Formula 1 car. Only a handful of people on earth will ever experience it, and it’s not as easy as one might think to put it into words.
“It’s not sticky. It’s like there’s no foundation when it’s loose. It’s like the car pushes itself around, doesn’t do what I ask. Like it slips out of my hands, and there’s nothing I can do about it.”
Like you.
“And then you don’t trust the car heading into a corner,” she says.
I can almost see her mind working. As gorgeous as Emily has always been, she’s absolutely brilliant, and it turns me on as much as her body does.
She’s probably the reason I have no tolerance for ditzy chicks. The bar has been set so fucking high.
“Right, it makes me lose confidence like I’m going to spin and lose everything. It makes me hesitant to go as deep in the corners or push as hard when I don’t know if the car will be there for me.”
Like you.
There’s a long pause where we both just stare at one another. I wish I knew what Emily was thinking. I wish I knew if I stood up and walked to her and took her face in my hands and pressed my lips to hers—that she’d be there with me.
I’m not convinced she wouldn’t knee me in the dick. More likely, she’ll quit and then be out of my life again.
Too soon.
“Your tires wear for shit when the car is loose,” she finally snaps her eyes away from mine and says.
“Good thing you’re on the case, then,” I laugh.
She smiles, cautiously. So cautious.
“Did you get anything helpful from Gaspard?” I ask, treading very lightly over the rocky terrain of Emily’s palpable anger and trepidation.
“Gaspard?”
“Yeah, Olivier from Concordia,” I do my best
French accent of his fancy name and try not to roll my eyes. Guy’s as smooth as glass.
“Oh. No, not really. I think I upset him or something,” Emily crinkles her eyes up and twists her lips.
“Why? What happened?” My hackles are immediately up like I have any business at all feeling protective. But I am. This industry is brutal, sometimes.
“Nothing, really. I asked for some info he said was proprietary, then I went off on a tangent about wanting to learn cheesemaking,” Emily shrugs and purses her lips like she’s embarrassed.
“You want to learn how to make cheese?” I smile.
God, she’s adorable.
Every week, Emily was learning something new when we were together. It was never dull or boring with her in my life. One week she’d want to learn to surf, so I’d take her to the beach, and we’d do a lesson together. The next week it would be pottery, and she giggled all night at my Ghost reenactment attempts.
Candle making, rock climbing, whatever it was, we did it. All that mattered was that she was happy, and I was with her. She drew the line at my suggestion of skydiving, but I’m kind of glad she refused because I was secretly terrified, too. Going a couple hundred miles per hour is excellent, on the ground. Not free-falling through the air.
“It’s stupid,” she drops her head.
“It’s not stupid,” I shut that shit down. No one in their right mind would ever call Emily stupid. “Cheese is goddamn delicious.”
I will take you to learn cheesemaking. Please let me take you like we used to.
Her face lifts, and her slight smile is back. I still feel like a million dollars when I make her smile.
“The metalworking class was still my favorite,” I tell her, and she starts fiddling with her long, brown hair as she makes the connection, remembers all the times that are flashing through my mind, too.
I don’t think I’ve ever been so turned on in my life as watching Em weld shit in that class, her safety mask on, fusing steel together like a total badass. We absolutely sucked at it, which was half the fun for her.
To my right, I hear footsteps coming up the stairs, and we both glance over.
“Hey,” Liam struts up and interrupts us. It’s just as well, I can’t rush her.
“Emily, this is Liam, my physio. Liam, this is my friend Emily,” I wink at Emily when I call her my friend.
Baby steps.
“Nice to meet you,” Emily stands and shakes Liam’s hand. He’s a particularly tall bastard and hovers over her.
“You too, welcome to the team. Let me know if you need anything,” he smiles at her.
“Mmm-hmmm,” I stand to join them and give Liam the death glare. Liam is only too happy to offer his massage services to pretty women, though he does a lot for the rest of the team, also.
“Time to go,” Liam checks his watch and announces.
Liam is the Fun Police, officially. He sets sleep schedules, what I eat, all the workouts, and generally tries to keep distractions down and performance up.
“Apparently, it’s my bedtime,” I tell Emily, and all three of us start to walk toward the stairs.
As Liam heads down first, I whisper over my shoulder at Emily, “Don’t leave me hanging. Does Charlotte’s mama get the new kidney?”
She bites her lip and shakes her head, long brown hair swirling around her, “You’ll have to read the book.”
Ten
Emily
The schedule on race day is jam-packed. Long before the race even begins, at sunup, the mechanics and engineers are all at it in the garage, ensuring every T is crossed, and I dotted. Then, not ten minutes after the race, the breakdown process begins, and most of us fly home.
Dante and Cole have a million pre-race obligations and routines, so I don’t even see them until it’s a few minutes before the national anthem starts. That might be a good thing since I keep replaying last night in my head.
I called Makenna as soon as I got to my hotel and told her about talking to Cole on the rooftop and my absolute mortification of him reading my romance novel aloud.
I wanted to die of embarrassment nearly as much as I wanted to climb on top of him on that outdoor couch.
Lying there all stretched out like a jungle cat bathing in the moonlight, equally wild and untamed thoughts overtook me. Fiction is the closest I’ve ever been able to get to recreating sex with Cole Ballentine.
I’ve only been with a few other guys, but even when I was very clear with them on what I wanted, it wasn’t the same. It was beyond dirty talk—that just came out like a joke with other men—I would end up laughing and couldn’t get into it.
It didn’t turn off my mental switch. I didn’t trust them enough.
Then he had to go and be sweet about the stupid cheese, too. Cole never once made fun of my rambling thoughts or bizarre ideas. He never minded when I went off on tangents. He embraced them, made me feel comfortable. And so, years ago, I opened up to him and showed him the most honest version of myself.
And then he left, of course.
For six years, I’ve imagined what it would be like to talk to him again, be in the same space as him once more. I’ve envisioned everything from clawing his eyes out to jumping his bones.
But when I got the chance? Ninety percent of those thoughts left me, and I was sucked into his vortex.
It’s like he wields a pocket dimension where space and time become irrelevant, and he’s a black hole sucking me into him. He’s been this way his whole life. You couldn’t miss Cole in a crowded high school hallway anymore than you could miss a supernova in the night sky.
Makenna still thinks Cole and I need to have sex to get him out of my system. Even if some part of me wants to believe that, it’s a ridiculous idea.
Six years and thousands of miles haven’t gotten him out of my system. Then again, what I’ve been doing isn’t working, and you know what Einstein said about insanity—it’s doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.
Stop it.
The German national anthem finishes, and the circuit is packed with seventy-thousand fans. It’s a gorgeous, sunny day, and I’m excited to experience my first race in person.
I’m more excited to see tire data from an actual, full race. Every team gets their choice of three tire compounds today, soft, medium, and hard. It seems simple enough.
I won’t be on the pit wall during the race, my regular station is in the rear of the garage with a few other engineers and our computers, but we’re all in contact via our headsets. Making my way past the mechanics and cars, I head toward my zone when Dante and Cole enter through the back of the garage.
They both look very focused, but everyone else is clapping them on the back or telling them ‘good luck’ as they walk by, so I wait to take my seat.
“Good luck,” I tell Dante.
“No luck needed, bellissima,” he smirks at me. God, he is an endearingly cocky bastard.
Cole is behind him and pauses to smile at me, clearly waiting his turn for me to acknowledge him, too. “Good luck, have fun,” I tell him. As soon as he gets what he wants, he resumes his pace, and the crew get both guys into their cars.
I may, or may not, watch him walk away.
Dante and Cole get secured in their cars. I throw my headset on, then tuck into my spot at my computer. I can hear both drivers going through their rituals. Edmund gives them instructions, updates on weather, and wind speeds.
In just a few minutes, both cars pull out of the garage, and I’m hit with pangs of nervousness and find myself chewing on my thumbnail. I see several other people tapping their feet and fidgeting, it’s not just me.
The whole pack of cars does their formation lap around the track and then line up on the grid waiting for the lights to go out. For a moment, it is silent in the garage, and the tension is palpable.
Then the start lights on the grid drop, and all twenty cars rumble, roar, and push past one another, zinging past our garage on the straight.
&nbs
p; My eyes dart between the data on my computer screen and the monitor above it that shows live action of the cars on track. I need to look at this data and watch it, but I’m also compelled to watch the TV screen. I want to see how Cole is doing, but I’m also suddenly more nervous than ever before.
Be logical, Emily.
Serious accidents are infrequent. Safety is unparalleled in this sport.
I know this. I’ve researched that heavily already, years ago, and many times since. It just feels so much more real now, in person.
Several laps go by, and both of our boys are doing reasonably well for themselves in fourth and fifth place. The cars have spread out around the winding track. I can relax a little bit, not be so afraid that some other driver will cause an accident. There’s always one asshole acting like a torpedo on track, ruining shit for everyone else.
Dante’s on the medium compound tire, and it’s rated by Concordia for twenty-five laps, but his tire data is showing more wear than they should at this stage. Edmund catches it too, as I hear him over my headset tell Dante to cool the tires and change some settings.
That’s no good, it means he’ll have to slow down. Accelerate less, slow down more gradually, go softer into the corners. I can see why the tire performance is critical here, and I start running some numbers to see if we can artificially manipulate the tire temperatures.
I also start watching Cole’s data, he’s diving into corners and quick on the uptake—he trusts the car, right now.
I smile.
Then I decide I need to really need to dig into the differences between all these tire compounds. It’s two nearly identical cars, yet only one is chewing up rubber.
I use the lull in track action to walk around the garage and take a look at our rack of tires in their black heating jackets. Temperature looks right, every tire has a unique identifying number on it and is labeled for the specific driver. Even though I can’t tell anything just by looking at the slick black rubber, I run my hands over several of them.
Olivier hasn’t gotten me that materials data yet. I want to know what’s inside these babies.
“Dante, box this lap. Box, box, box,” his engineer calls over the radio instructing Dante to come in for a pit stop.
