“Now,” he orders.
He takes me through an opening in the track wall to an empty room near the Harper garage. It’s some sort of storage area, filled with folded-up chairs and stacks of pylons. Travis puts our helmets on a dusty table and locks the door behind us.
“We have to be in our cars in, like, two minutes,” I say.
“Then you’d better talk fast,” he says. “What’s wrong?”
I hesitate for a moment longer, then the awful feeling inside of me swells up like a wave. “What if I beat you?” I blurt out.
He blinks. “What?”
“What if I beat you?” I repeat. “What if I win?”
“Er—then Heather will owe me ten bucks?”
“I’m serious.” My voice is tight and thin. “What if I win the race, and you come in second, and then in December you lose the championship by seven points?”
“Oh.” His expression changes.
“Yeah. Or what if I make a mistake? What if I take a corner too hot, and lock up, and run you off track? Or what if we make contact going into turn one, and I damage your car, and you can’t finish the race? Or what if?—”
“Jacob,” Travis interrupts. “Where is this coming from?”
“It’s coming from me,” I say. “The guy who broke your heart last year. The guy who dumped you and didn’t talk to you for months.” My voice rises with my hysteria. “The guy who’s never been good enough for you.”
“Jacob—”
“No, don’t!” I say desperately. “You know that it’s true. You’re the best driver in the world, and you’re way hotter than me, and you rescue stray dogs and read books?—”
“I read books?” he repeats.
“—and you deserve someone like Quin McCarthy, or someone like Trevor, if Jonathan will share, and I just—I can’t watch you lose the championship at the end of the year and know that it’s my fault! I can’t do it, Travis, I’ve fucked things up too much?—”
He shuts me up by pulling me into his arms. I try to keep talking—“I can’t do it, I can’t fuck this up again”—but he ignores me, squeezing me tight and pushing my head onto his shoulder.
“Everything could go wrong,” I mumble into his race suit.
“Nothing will go wrong.”
“You say that now,” I say hoarsely. “But what if it happens? What if you lose by seven points?”
“Then I should have done a better job racing.”
“But what if I make a really stupid mistake?”
He shrugs. “Then it’s a mistake. I won’t be mad.”
“When Cole Milton ran you off the road in Miami, you called him a braindead moron.”
“Yeah, but I haven’t been sleeping with him nearly as long as you.”
“I’m serious, Travis.”
“I know.” He kisses me softly and then rests his forehead against mine. “Listen to me. There are a thousand possible outcomes tonight. And at the end of every one of them, I love you.”
I squeeze my eyes shut. It’s too hard to look into his eyes, so unendingly patient, so full of affection. “I know you will,” I say. “But I don’t know why.” I force my eyes open again, and repeat the ugly, painful truth. “I’m not good enough for you, Travis.”
“You are perfect for me, Jacob. No, don’t,” he says, putting two fingers to my lips to stem my protest. “I know that you feel that way. I do. And I appreciate the place that it’s coming from, but I need you to move past it. You are perfect for me. You make my life perfect. And the only problem in our relationship isn’t that I’m a better driver than you, or hotter than you—which isn’t even true, by the way?—”
