by Kat Ransom
“Oh my god, you asshole!” She smacks my chest with both hands and falls into laughter as my arms capture her and we fall back to the ground. I pull her body onto mine and drag her head down until her lips meet mine. She’s kissing me with intent, remorse, determination. Damn if I don’t take everything she has to give, her tear-drenched hair cascading over us in sheets.
She comes up for air and Bodach sticks his cold nose and fish breath right between our faces. “Bloody cockblocker,” I roll over, help Mallory up, and consider how to spend the rest of the day while the sun is out.
“Would you agree we have more trust issues to work out?” I wag my eyebrows at her.
Her eyes close and she takes a deep breath, “Oh god, what now?”
“Let’s get you changed.”
Twenty minutes later, Mallory comes out of the house in jeans, boots, and the leather jacket I instructed her to put on. I’ve pulled out my Harley V-rod, the only bike in the garage suitable for a passenger, and I’m leaning up against it in the driveway with one of my spare helmets for her.
She shakes her head at me knowingly but walks up for the challenge nonetheless. “You ever ridden?” I ask and slip the helmet on her head. Like the jacket, it’s too big but I strap the helmet down tight. The image of her as my hot biker chick is making me twitchy and hard.
She shakes her head, the helmet bobbing side to side on her neck, “No, but I trust you.” Damn it, now the helmet is on and I can’t even kiss her for that.
“All you have to do is hang on and enjoy the ride.”
“There’s a sex joke to be made here but I’m too nervous to think of it right now.”
“Hop on behind me,” I tell her as I mount the heavy iron monster. She throws one leg over and then I grab her behind both of her knees and pull her frame up close, pressed hard against me and I wrap her arms around my waist.
I fire the bike up and Mallory flinches at the loud roar and thundering idle. “I got you, love,” I reassure her and guide us out of the driveway slowly so she can get used to the sensation.
Pulling onto the asphalt road and heading east to pick up the main road that will wind us all along the north coast and past Duntulm Castle, I open the bike up a little bit. She’s squeezing me for dear life but the feel of her legs around my frame and her tits pressed into my back is bliss. With my left hand, I cover her hands on my waist and reassure her. I tilt my head back and yell so she can hear me, “Ok?” I feel her helmet nod, knocking into mine, and her death grip loosens.
By the time we’re cruising past Loch Harport, Mallory’s relaxed enough that her hands have traveled to my hips and I can feel her untucked from my back, her head held up and looking from side to side. It’s a smooth, scenic ride along the rugged coastline and she shouldn’t be too cold today in her jacket and with me blocking the wind. I still check the temperature of her hands around me every few minutes and keep an eye out for suicidal sheep. “Doing ok?” I yell back to her so she can hear me over the bike.
“Yes,” she nods, “go faster!”
I fill with pride and open the bike up, gliding over the old A863 stone bridge that crosses the Amar River and up the sweeping hills past Loch Caroy with the roaring thunder only a Harley can provide. There are a million little feeder roads that lead down to overlooks on the coast and she taps my shoulder or points to at least half of them for me to stop.
We stop to eat, make out, and maul each other near Knott where we head south along Loch Snizort Beag before we zip north again. She can’t resist the signs for Fairy Glen, a little town that’s capitalized on the unusual landscape, suggesting fairies created all the grassy topped hills and ponds in between. She leaves an obligatory coin on the stone spirals which, one of the tourists tells her, is an offering to the fairies for good luck.
At the ruins of Duntulm Castle at the northernmost point, she’s amazed at the 14th-century structures and now understands why my house is practically new construction. I take the long route home down the east coast through the capital town of Portree and by that time, a drive that should have taken three hours has taken eight. Even though she wants to keep going, it’s dark and her hands are colder than I’d like.
Back at home, I drop her off at the front door then park the bike in the garage. By the time I get two steps inside the house her sweet lips are all over mine. “Make love to me,” she whispers.
And I do.
Not like last night which was hard and rough and we extracted everything from one another over and over in a fury of pent up need. Tonight I kiss her eyelids and caress her face. Tonight she asks me to skip the condom because she’s on the pill and wants to feel my skin, all of me inside her. I ease myself into her slowly and I hold her close and let her feel my body over hers, my arms protecting her from anything and everything. When she comes, a tear rolls from the corner of her eye and I kiss it away.
I don’t sleep much tonight, but I hold her tightly against me and try to figure out what I’m going to do.
For her, for me.
For us.
Twenty Two
“You can run your whole life but not go anywhere.” - Social Distortion - Ball and Chain
Mallory
“As long as you aren’t hurt, I won’t care.”
“Don’t you have one that’s self-driving? Those are meant for people like me.” On our last day in Scotland, Lennox is forcing me to drive a black and orange McLaren up and down the tiny road in front of his home. There are no neighbors near us but if another vehicle comes onto the road, I’m convinced I will panic and launch his million dollar car straight into it.
“People don’t need cars in New York City,” I argue, going so slow down the road that the car is just idling along.
“Still something you should be able to do, just in case.”
I feel a little paranoid when he says things like this, it’s happened a few times in recent days. Like he’s preparing me for an eventuality no one can stop, or a zombie apocalypse. We have been watching a lot of horror movies…
In an about-face, Lennox brought me to his parent’s house, his childhood home, the day after we fought. His ‘Mum and Pop,’ as he calls them, are the parents I’ve dreamed of since I was a little girl. They’re humble, warm, and the pride in their eyes for their sons is so bright it could fuel the entire east coast power grid. Lennox adores them, and I understand why.
While Pop—I was immediately instructed that I am to call them Mum and Pop ‘like everyone else’—has an accent so thick I missed half of his words, they welcomed me. Part of me felt like one of the strays everyone says Lennox is forever bringing home, but in a good way. He gets that from his parents, who took in both Matty and Jack, and others when they needed help. The modest three-bedroom house they refuse to move from is a wayward home for anyone needing unconditional love, support, and a home-cooked meal.
Bram didn’t stay long, he had pressing girlfriend matters to attend to. He’s a spitting image of a younger Lennox so it’s easy to imagine the trouble he’s getting into with girls now that he’s sixteen. He idolizes his big brother and now, more than ever, I understand why Lennox is so conflicted about his advancements in karting and path to the junior Formula series.
We traverse the island several times over when it’s not raining. By my request, Lennox took me around on the motorcycle several more times. Not only is it a great way to see the beauty of this land, but I felt free on the back of his bike. Worries disappeared for those moments in time. And, in all honesty, it was an excuse to have my arms around him all day.
He drove past the marina where Pop worked from the time he was a kid until he was forced into retirement when Lennox started pro racing. Apparently, tourists, media, and well-intentioned but overstepping fans started turning up more than paying customers and disrupted the business more than the owner could tolerate. Pop maintains Lennox’s home and estate while he’s away, saying it gives him something to do, allows him to ‘earn his keep.’ Like his oldest son, who has m
y heart, sarcasm laced with a bit of truth runs deep in the older generation.
The distillery where Mum worked is the oldest on the island and we had a private tour. Lennox schooled me on the differences between whiskey, bourbon, and scotch. Mum took a job here when he was just a kid because karting is hella expensive. They each took several jobs to afford Lennox his dream that started when he was just three years old and Pop made him that first homemade, tiny kart that still hangs on the garage wall.
Mum showed me pictures of him as a kid at the kart tracks all over Europe and when she pointed to other kids in the photos, snarling words at a few of them in Gaelic, Lennox set back and let her tell the story. They were a poor, working-class family, there’s no two ways about it. Good, honest people that Lydia and Robert Mitchell would look down upon. Karting and the path to F1 is rife with money, it’s the playground for the ultra-wealthy. Until Lennox got picked up by sponsors, Pop couldn’t afford professional gear or mechanics so Lennox turned up in homemade, old beat up karts, used race suits and hand-me-down helmets. The privileged junior Digby DuPont’s of the world terrorized him. They’d break parts of his kart so he couldn’t race, they called his dad a pauper.
But he showed up week after week and outraced them.
Unlike mine which live inside my heart and stay hidden by my image-obsessed family, Lennox’s scars and perceived failures have all been public. From the loathsome way Kate humiliated him to Celeritas debilitating him on track every Sunday. Having to work alongside Digby every single day after what he did, what he continues to do. The way people in my own industry have exploited him, even I tagged a scarlet A on his chest without knowing the whole story. I hope my guilt over that will fade, in time, and that he truly does forgive me.
The weight that must be on his shoulders devastates me. I want to take it all away. The man he is here, on this island, is miles away from all of that stress and pain. I never want to leave here. I want to stay hidden in this fortress with him where we are free of my parents, Celeritas, Digby, Kate, and even the media that has rubbed salt in every wound of his life. I never want him to know that pain again.
I can’t point to the day or time on this island that I fell in love with him. His walls have all come down, he’s let me in and allowed me to see the real man. The one no one else is lucky enough to see. Maybe I loved him even before we landed here, but I can’t deny it anymore. There have been moments where I’m looking into his eyes and it almost leaves my mouth, and I think he’s pondering the same words, but there’s something stuck in my throat that won’t let it come out.
Fear.
This is all so new, so fast. What happens when the season ends and I go back to New York? Do I want to go back to New York? I’d rather stay here but that’s a bit premature and I scold myself for the naive fantasy. What happens if Dickby, Celeritas, or even my father ruin it all before then? That’s far more probable. Lennox has his dream and I have mine, if both don’t get crushed before the season ends and send us each our own separate ways. We’re too new to survive that and we’ve made no promises for what happens after the last race in Abu Dhabi.
But for now, I’ve pushed it all out of my mind as much as possible and have spent this time relishing in his company. I haven’t even replaced my phone yet. When we’re curled up on the couch in his barren living room watching black and white monster movies, or sitting beside the bonfire he makes every night, I almost forget who he is.
Until his eyes light with fire, his words get filthy, and he issues me sexy commands. Then I very much remember the competitive, bossy, powerful asshole he is.
And I absolutely love it.
For all the jackass things he does during the day, sabotaging his own interviews and letting his false playboy persona run wild, when he takes my clothes off, he makes me feel comfortable, special.
Twenty Three
Headline: Your Barcelona Driver of the Day - Lennox Gibbes
Blog: While the Uber Wealthy Party in Monaco, Lennox Gibbes… Shops at a Bookstore? Wherefore Art Thou, Paddock Playboy?
Headline: Gibbes Presented with Prestigious Fans Choice Autosports Award in Montreal
Mallory
If I ever have the time and money, I need to come back to the south of France and spend time here not working. It is the ultimate irony to be in such a beautiful place and be unable to enjoy it.
Despite the warnings from Sandra and the fact that I have been a good bad-employee, deliberately pulling back from posting so much material on Lennox, he continues to outshine Digby at each race even if he doesn’t win. He’s been less of an asshole to the journalists. He gives them such long, thoughtful answers that they now joke he’s been replaced by a body double. I have no choice but to fake a smile each time because he thinks he’s helping me. He spends even more time with his fans at every race. They now mob the hotels the team stays in and he stands outside until every single one has a signed item or a selfie.
Digby’s been even worse for weeks because of it. When hundreds of photos and blogs were posted of Lennox shopping in Monaco, Digby’s home race, it particularly enraged him. Digby had won that race yet all the internet and the paddock could talk about was Lennox at a freaking bookstore. Insta videos poured in of him flipping through language books because now he wants to learn Italian. Then he signed random books for people and even read to kids in the children’s section. He read. To children. In several languages.
I can’t control that the world finds that insanely attractive. They’re videos posted by the public, I can’t make them disappear. And what am I going to do, tell Lennox to kindly go back to biting everyone’s heads off and insulting reporters? Please stop being so sweet and wonderful so you don’t get us both fired?
I’m certainly not going to heap more stress into his life and tell him what Sandra has me doing. Despite Digby’s tantrums, Lennox has been happier since Scotland. He lets more things run off his shoulders, and I’m going to keep it that way.
But now that he’s showing the world a tiny fraction of the man he really is, in a misguided attempt to help me keep my job, I assume, the world has latched onto him.
It’s out of control.
So out of control that Sandra has scheduled a Skype call with me saying the topic was not an “email appropriate conversation.” Corporate speak for someone not wanting to leave a trail of evidence.
While the cars are on track qualifying at the Circuit Automobile Paul Ricard, I want to be in the garage with Matty and Jack keeping my eyes on Lennox. Instead, I am ferreted away in Lennox’s suite in the motorhome waiting for the call to come. I am a bundle of shaking nerves, and it’s not the sugar rush from all the delicious French pastries Tatiana and Francesca have been stuffing us with.
My mouth goes dry when my laptop screen finally lights up with the call notification. Coming into focus, Sandra is not pleased. Less pleased than usual, even.
I’m so frazzled I don’t even let her start, I know what this is about. “Sandra, I’m doing what you said. I can’t do anything about the fan awards or the pictures regular people post online, the blogs, the…”
“I realize,” she cuts me off waving her hands in front of my screen to stop my rambling. “They’re very unhappy, Ms. Mitchell. Very unhappy.” Of course, she means the scroogey DuPont’s and their sniveling man-child son who throws tantrums whenever he doesn’t get exactly what he wants.
“What can I do?” Lennox is going to inadvertently destroy his career at this pace, by being himself, something I encouraged him to do. I can’t bear even more humiliation heaped onto him and I’ve been running myself ragged trying to stay far away from Digby so there are no other head-smashing incidents.
If I thought Lennox was an overbearing, territorial brute before, he has really ratcheted up his overprotectiveness ever since Scotland. I am glue to Matty and Jack at each race, velcro to their sides. It’s so bad Matty asked me if I was coming with to ‘take a piss’ because I followed him absentmindedly even as he started wa
lking into the restroom.
“Mr. DuPont has requested… demanded your services,” Sandra says, rubbing her eyes as if this is as painful for her as it is for me.
“Excuse me?” My services? Like, buy me, Pretty Woman style? Is that what he did with Kate, that vile man-whore? Apparently, he can’t even get his own women, he needs to steal those from Lennox, too.
“Your social media, marketing services,” she clarifies and I let out a sigh of relief. No wait, that’s not much better! “As he explained, you must be doing such a good job that the Number One driver should have the best representation.”
“No. No, no no, Sandra.” I shake my head. “I can’t do that!”
“We have no choice, Ms. Mitchell. He…” her head swivels from side to side making sure no one can hear her and then she whispers, “he has the Board in his pocket, Mallory. With the recent err, ‘racing incident’ in the hallway, we have no choice.”
“Lennox will kill him! Literally, kill him!” I’m not even exaggerating. I can picture Lennox burying Digby in the Highpoint Cemetery and god help me, I’d help him dig the grave.
“Be smart,” Sandra sneers. “You think that’s not exactly what he’s banking on?” She taps her pen on her desk, takes her glasses off and rubs her eyes before continuing. “You’ll do social engagement and sponsor events with both drivers. We can increase your salary…”
“I don’t want more money, Sandra! I c-can’t do this to Lennox!” My stupid, stupid eyes are filling up with moisture and I’m so frustrated. I promised him I would stay away from Digby. I learned long ago that life is not fair but this is unreal.
“I warned you not to get involved,” she shakes her head but it’s not disappointment, I don’t think. It’s sympathy. “Mr. DuPont has been given your phone number, email, and he’ll be expecting your assistance effective immediately.”
