It suddenly occurs to me what a huge problem this could be. The rivalry between Crosswire and Harper is notoriously contentious. Why on earth would Crosswire hire a test driver who’s literally slept with their enemy?
“We’re not together anymore,” I blurt out. “We broke up months ago.”
“Do you think you’ll get back together?” he asks bluntly.
I hesitate. “I don’t think so. We don’t talk anymore, or anything.”
I don’t add that I wish we would get back together. Amanda told me to tell the truth, not to shoot myself directly in the foot.
My knuckles are white on the edge of my chair. Please don’t take this away, I think desperately. Please, please.
“Hm.” Tom drums his fingers on the desk again.
“I really want to be a part of this team,” I say again, in a thin voice.
Tom tilts his head from side to side, as though he’s weighing something in his mind. I can’t help but feel he’s running through a list of other drivers in his mind, weighing my skill and work ethic against their convenient lack of a relationship with Travis Keeping.
“Yes,” he says finally. “We want you to be a part of this team, too.”
My shoulders sag in relief, even as a little voice in my head whispers,But Travis. I shake it away. I’ll cross that bridge if I have to.
“Was that all?” Tom asks.
I hesitate. I should probably just shut my mouth, but my father’s angry words are running through my mind. “What if...” I lick my lips. “What if word got out? If I dated someone else. Not Travis, I mean, but another... guy.”
Tom snorts. “That would be quite the media circus, wouldn’t it?” He sounds amused by the idea, rather than horrified. “The press could feast for months on a story like that.”
I swallow nervously. “I’m not saying I’m going to run around making it obvious, or anything. I just meant, if it got out accidentally—”
He shrugs. “If it does, we’ll sort it out. This is a massive operation, Jacob. We know how to deal with the media.”
I peer uncertainly into his face, but he seems genuinely unperturbed. I don’t think he cares if I date a guy, as long as that guy isn’t Crosswire’s number one rival. My stomach twists a bit unhappily at the thought, but I force myself to ignore it. There’s, like, a one-in-a-million chance Travis will take me back. He’s probably still dating that American guy, so it would be stupid to ruin my chances with Crosswire on the slim possibility we’ll get back together.
I nod once, then again. A nervous laugh escapes my throat. “I guess that’s all, then.”
“Very good.” Tom rises to his feet, as though we’ve been talking about something totally mundane and normal. “Let me show you around.”
33
Breathing
I have acontract.
I keep saying it over and over in my head, but it still doesn’t feel real.
A messenger biked it over the day after I met with Tom (because Crosswire is too fancy for e-mail, I guess), and Kelsie and I just stared at the dark blue envelope for a while. She hooked me up with some high-powered lawyer she knows who spent a few days poring over it and making recommendations. A week later, after a few back-and-forths and minor adjustments, I signed it.
I’m officially a test driver for Crosswire Racing.
I’m so happy, it’s honestly hard to sleep. I just grin up at the ceiling of my new room (Kelsie’s roommate finally moved the last of her stuff out) and whisper it out loud. I’m a test driver forCrosswire Racing.
I call Amanda’s office to tell her. She sounds like she’s crying when she calls me back, which nearly makes me cry, too. And when Crosswire releases a press piece online about signing me, I get a flood of messages from people congratulating me. Carl from Porteo even sends me a sort of passive-aggressive congratulations,saying something like, I must be glad he released me from my contract.
I spend a full day responding to e-mails and Instagram messages. I owe some big apologies to my close friends for disappearing for so long. It makes me feel awful, seeing how many times some of them tried to reach out and check in. None of them call me on it, though, and I set a plan to meet up with Nate in a couple of weeks. The girlfriend he told me about all those months ago is now his fiancée, and they’re in and out of London quite a bit.
There’s radio silence from my parents and Paul and Lily, which shouldn’t surprise me, but somehow still does. Sometimes I’ll be walking along and suddenly remember some happy childhood memory, and I’ll feel sort of sick inside.
But then I remember my dad saying I’d be a laughingstock, and my mother looking away from me, and I move past it.
