by Kat Ransom
I lean my head out the open top half of the door and panic to see Nova coming out of the restroom and locking eyes with me.
“Stop, stop,” I push Cole as she gets closer, aiming for me like she’s out for bloodsport. “Get down,” I push him down to his knees to hide, spinning around just in time for Nova’s finger to be right in my face.
Hanging over the closed half of the door, I panic. “Nova, ‘wassup.”
Wassup? Real cool, Emily.
“You!” Nova starts ranting at me. “You’re not special, you’re just his latest play-thing. We’re just on a break while he gets you out of his system, then he’ll come back…”
What the fuck.
Cole’s hands slide up my legs, and he pushes my panties aside. I sneak my eyes down, while Nova rants, and I can just make out a huge grin on his face before I feel his tongue swipe through me.
I suck in a breath and slam my hand down against the wooden door. “Uh-huh,” I try to keep a straight face as Cole’s tongue laps at me and goosebumps race across my flesh.
“…pathetic little American tramp, you’re lying, he’ll never marry you…”
“Oh god,” my head tilts back when Cole sucks my clit into his mouth.
Nova rambles words I can’t even understand anymore. Words in English, words in Russian, I can’t focus. “What is wrong with you?”
“Too. Much. Champagne,” I clench my teeth, Cole plastered against the door on his knees and absolutely devouring me while his shoulders heave in silent laughter.
“You’re insane,” Nova continues, her hands on her hips and her face pursed up.
“Yes,” I moan.
God help me, I’m about to come in this coatroom while the Tennis Bitch stares at me like I have two heads. I am insane.
“I don’t know what’s wrong with you, Plain Jane, but…”
“Jesus god, yes,” I grip the door as I come apart on Cole’s tongue. My knees start to quicker and buckle.
Cole can’t hold it in anymore and lets out a hearty laugh as he grips my hips and then stands up next to me.
My mouth falls.
Nova’s about to go supernova. Her eyes are bigger than her fake tits. Rage fills her perfectly coiffed face.
“Nova, I see you’ve met my fiancé,” he grins at her as he wipes off his chin.
“What are you… were you…” Nova stutters.
“Was he,” I repeat and point to the floor. “Oh no, he just saw a mouse.”
Suck it, Tennis Bitch.
Nova lets out a shrieking huff, stomps her foot like a two-year-old, and storms down the hallway.
Cole stands tall and proud like he’s just conquered Everest, but my jaw is still hanging open.
“What’s this about marrying me, now?”
Oh god.
“I, uh, she… well, I might have…”
He beams at me, his blue eyes dancing and glittering, then his big hands cup my face and his lips meet mine. His tongue spears. He latches on with the perfect amount of suction, holding my head right where he wants it.
Then he pulls away, leaving me in a lust-fueled haze, adjusts himself, fixes my dress, and opens the door.
“Come along, future Mrs. Ballentine,” he holds his arm out for me to take, “we have a gala to get back to.”
“You’re never going to let me live this down, are you?”
“Nope.”
Twenty Two
Marina Bay Street Circuit - Singapore
Cole
The Singapore night race is, hands down, the most grueling of the year with its intolerable, stifling humidity.
We’ve been here for a week sauna training and acclimating to the climate. The street circuit requires exacting concentration and intense preparation and, even then, it’s a battle to avoid mental fatigue for the two-hour duration.
So, I cut Liam some slack even though he’s been hovering and scolding me all week about energy conservation and filling me up with fluids like I’m a water balloon.
“You can have a banana,” he tells me, my stomach growling on the way to the garage.
“I don’t want a banana. Or another salad. Or more fish.”
I want a good, old fashioned, greasy American cheeseburger and a regular—heaven forbid—full-sugar Mountain Dew. I’d stab someone for a Mountain Dew right now.
“And I don’t want to look at scratches down your back from your girlfriend every time I ice you down, but yet, here we are,” he tips my water bottle at me.
“Em okay? She’s not used to this heat.”
“Yeah. Worried about the race, but fine. Heard her on the phone talking to her parents earlier. Nervous about the visibility between it being a night race and now raining. But then it turned into giggling and ‘Cole this, Cole that’ and I walked away before I threw up,” he makes a girly voice and jazz hands.
“Thanks for watching out for her, man,” I laugh and slap him on the back. “This will be a big enough shit-show with Edmund out again.”
“I haven’t heard any updates on him, have you?”
My head drops, and the smile on my face fades. I have a terrible feeling about Edmund and can’t stomach the thought of losing him. He started coughing up blood weeks ago. The whole team is feeling his absence as we wait for more news.
“Waiting for more test results,” I shrug.
Edmund has always looked out for me, he’s guided me around every circuit since I was eighteen. My eyes and ears outside the car, he’s kept me safe, led me to victories, and every other Sunday, I trust him with my life.
He’s been more of a father to me than Stan ever was, really.
“I don’t like that James is your stand-in again. It did not go well in Italy.”
“No shit,” I add.
Italy was a nightmare having to work with James, the junior engineer replacement. I felt like Dante out there, ignoring calls and arguing over the radio the whole time.
I don’t trust James. He doesn’t know me or how I drive. He doesn’t know what I need to hear and how I need to hear it when I have one-thousandth of a second to make a decision.
I felt like I was not only driving the car, but I was also my own engineer, my own strategist, and my own pit crew. I should have been on the podium but finished in fourth, instead.
“Silas and I argued about it, but he won’t let Emily stand in for Edmund,” I add and hand Liam my empty drink bottle. He immediately gives me a full replacement.
“Why not?”
“I don’t know, I think it comes down to the fact that she’s new and she’s a girl.”
“You gotta be kidding me,” he squints.
“You know this place, full of swinging dicks.”
For one of the most technologically advanced industries in the world, F1 has a long way to go to catch up with the rest of the world. We’ve never had a woman driver, an openly gay driver, barely any people of color.
“Whole lotta rich white boys,” Liam reads my mind and nods as we reach the garage and head inside to start the race.
Of course, I’m now one of those rich white boys, so I’m a bit of a hypocrite, but it pisses me off that Emily has to put up with this antiquated nonsense. Despite her degrees and mind, she still has to prove to people that she knows what she’s doing.
As soon as we’re in the garage bay, I see her doing just that. She’s showing James and Silas something on her laptop. She’s been working her ass off trying to improve tire performance and calling her old professor at Cambridge every day for updates on Tire-Gate.
“What’s going on?” I ask when I reach the three of them.
“Emily wants to change your Energy Recovery System settings,” Silas answers me.
“It’s a bad idea,” James adds. “You’ll lose time.”
“The time lost will be marginal in these conditions. We’ll save the tire life, and he’ll be more confident going into the corners,” Emily argues.
“And I’ve changed the camber and toe angles to increase tract
ion. Like I told you,” James taps her laptop screen.
“And I’m telling you, these tires are not going to hold together if you do that and do not turn down the ERS.”
“How long is the rain going to last?” I ask. Maybe we can get off the wet tires altogether soon enough.
“It’s going to get worse as it goes on,” Silas says, negating my previous thought.
“So we need to be concerned about wear life on these tires. Change the ERS,” I tell James.
“No, we can’t lose more time. We need the points. We aren’t changing Dante’s car, and we’re not changing yours,” Silas issues the final word and walks away.
James does the same. Emily snaps her laptop closed, letting out a huff and gazing up to the ceiling.
This is the problem, James doesn’t understand how I need the car set up, how I need the car to feel.
Emily does. We’ve worked in the simulator a dozen times now. She gets it.
And I trust her.
“Cole, time to go,” Liam yells across the garage bay.
“If you don’t feel like the car is with you, or if it’s oversteering, unlock your on-throttle differential. It’ll help and extend the tires a bit since you’ll come out of the corners a little more slowly,” she grimaces at me.
Pulling on my balaclava and hearing the raindrops hit the pavement just outside the team garage, I do my best to distract her. She’s nervous about the conditions as it is, and now my car isn’t set up how she wants it.
“Will do. Now give me my kiss,” I grin, pulling down the chin of my face mask. Emily gives me a PG-13 kiss since half the crew is watching and waiting for me.
“Good luck, have fun, go fast, come back to me, then take me to bed…and the other thing I’m not allowed to tell you because you’re stubborn.”
“Pretty soon, you’ll need to write that all down to remember it,” I smile as I pull my helmet on.
Every race, she extends her good luck wish by one new phrase. I’m starting to think she’s as superstitious as us drivers are, but knowing Emily, she’d never bank on something so scientifically refuted.
“Nope, it’s all up here,” she taps her temple then puts her thumb to her lip to chew her cuticle, nervously.
Right, more distracting needed.
“Move in with me when we get home,” I blurt out as I tighten my chin strap.
Her hand falls from her face as her eyes flutter.
“I don’t like you driving all the way from Cambridge every day, you spend the night at my place every night anyway, and I want you there. Don’t argue.”
“I wasn’t planning on arguing,” she grins. “But you should know I’m only using you for your kitchen.”
“Just my kitchen?” I pull her against me.
“Maybe other things, too.”
“Time to get your ass kicked, lover boy,” Dante slaps my helmet as he walks past and starts to climb in his car.
I want to ask her how the conversation with her parents went earlier. I find it hard to believe they aren’t making her life hell if they know we’re together. Even if they don’t know now, they’re going to when she moves in with me.
But it’s race time, and that’s not going to be a quick conversation, by any stretch of the imagination.
We’re not even half-way done with this race yet six cars have already retired. They’ve spun out, crashed together, the track is more akin to a pond, and I’m going to ram my fist down James’ throat.
“Change to strat-mode four, please,” James tells me over the radio.
“Four? No way, there is no grip now. That isn’t going to work,” I yell back and try not to hydroplane off the track in a corner.
The rain is coming down in buckets, and it’s a wonder the race hasn’t been red-flagged yet. We’ve had safety car after safety car.
“Correct, mode four is faster.”
“I won’t be going very fast when I’m in the wall,” I lose my patience. “I’m telling you, the tires are shot, and there is no grip.”
This circuit is unforgiving under the best of conditions. One slip up and you’re in the wall with few run-off areas and no margin for error. The storm has made the night race even darker, the rain reflecting off the Singapore city lights makes everything blend together even more chaotically.
“Concordia rated them for another eleven laps. The wear on them looks fine on my end.”
“I don’t give two shits what Concordia rated them as or how they look on your end. Put Emily on.”
“Negative. Strat Mode four, please.”
“Are you listening to me? I’m telling you, whatever your data is saying, it isn’t working on my end. You know, the guy actually inside the car.”
Then there’s long silence where James simply refuses to answer me.
Another car spins out in the meantime, and, in my side mirror, I see him smack up against the wall, powerless to stop the slide. At least it was a slow impact, not enough to hurt anyone, just enough to ruin your day.
I’m in third place, and I know the team wants the points.
Hell, I want to win more than anyone, but what James is telling me makes no sense. This is the problem when you don’t trust your engineer. You’re in no man’s land trying to navigate, plan ahead, develop strategies, and—minor detail—keep the car on the track in the middle of a monsoon.
I don’t have much choice but to switch the engine mode to mode four since James is giving me the silent treatment, and I can’t see what’s on the engineer’s computer screens. My only other option is to box for an unscheduled pit stop, which will piss Silas off and I’ll lose track position.
Traction is immediately worse.
Shocker, James. You prick.
Just ahead of me, Alessi Cruisinallo, from the Anora team, slides sideways through a corner, which lets me catch up to him, but now we’re both coming up to backmarkers.
We’re trying to navigate through this traffic—I’m trying to pass, he’s trying to defend—and neither of us can see shit through the spray coming off all the other cars.
“Push now,” James says.
“Is it clear? I can’t see.”
I can barely see Alessi ahead, only occasionally the red light on the back of his car that blinks when he slows down, when his car is harvesting energy under braking.
James doesn’t answer.
James and I are going to have a little chat about communication as soon as this race is over.
Coming out of turn five, there’s a decent passing zone, so I accelerate as hard as I can without losing the car. The tires are slipping, and I’m fighting the steering wheel to stay in a straight line. Visibility is next to zero.
James had better be…
“Cole! Cole!” Emily is screaming in my ear.
I blink hard, turn my neck, wiggle my toes.
“I’m okay,” I mumble.
Feels like the wind got knocked out of me, but I’m okay.
Steam is billowing out of my car, the rain hitting hot engine components. Somehow, I’m in the wall, my right front tire is on top of the car and held on only by its safety cord.
I take off the steering wheel and unstrap myself. I need to get out of the car and let everyone see I’m okay.
I’m just stepping out when I see the yellow lights of the medical car approach and I’m grateful I won’t have to walk back to the garage in the rain, but it darts right past me.
When I watch it fly past, that’s when I see the white carbon fiber car components littered over the asphalt.
My car is black and green.
Alessi.
Oh fuck, what did I hit?
I drop the steering wheel and run toward the medical car’s flashing lights ahead as the cars that were behind us slowly navigate the debris field, passing us by.
It doesn’t take but a moment to come into view, Alessi’s car is on its side up against the wall, the whole front end destroyed beyond recognition.
The underside of his car faces me
. I can’t see Alessi, only the heads of the medical crew trying to work between the car and the wall.
The Extraction Team car flies up behind me with its yellow lights flashing. The only time they’re called is when a driver cannot get out of the vehicle. When he’s unconscious or may have spinal trauma or fatal injuries.
No.
No, no, no.
What happened? What have I done?
I try to get closer, but the marshals and a second medical team arrive and force me into their Mercedes.
“What happened? Is he hurt?” I scream at them while they shine lights in my eyes and assess me.
They won’t tell me anything.
Twenty Three
Emily
Liam, Mila, and I cram into a private waiting room at Singapore General Hospital Accident and Emergency. Cole is pacing back and forth like a caged lion, still in his race suit and soaking wet. F1 personnel line the hallways and fill every waiting room on this floor.
As soon as the on-track medical crew cleared him, Cole was in a car racing here, where Alessi was airlifted by medical helicopter.
No one will tell us anything.
All we know, at this point, is that a backmarker spun into Alessi, who was trying to pass him. That caused Alessi to lose control, and Cole, who could see nothing and could not have avoided it, hit Alessi. The impact lifted Alessi’s car into the air, flipped it, and it eventually stopped a quarter mile down the track against a wall.
The horrifying footage is replaying, over and over, online and on every sports television channel. Liam turned the waiting room televisions off as soon as we arrived.
We’ve all told Cole it wasn’t his fault. While he watched the footage once, he isn’t saying much. His every muscle is tense and taut, his fists clench at his sides, his nostrils continue to flare even now, almost an hour later.
I feel guilty to be relieved that Cole isn’t hurt because someone else is. Badly hurt.
I feel guilty that my heart is breaking for Cole right now, who will not be consoled. Even though it’s not his fault, I know he is blaming himself.
Mila clutches my hand in the chair next to me. A tear falls down her eye beside me, which makes me start to tear up again, too. Liam observes both of us, then stands and has me move one seat over so he can sit between us. He wraps an arm around each of us.
