“Chloe,” Matt tries again, stepping in closer still, dropping his voice because he’s just inches away from me.I can smell that heady mix of coffee and expensive cologne.“I need to talk to you.Privately.”
I hesitate, narrowing my eyes as I try to subtly step backward.
He looks over at the strategist and then back at me.“Aren’t you supposed to beteam principal?I’m your first driver.”
I get that he’s annoyed.I get that he’s just left a legacy team to join this tin can rodeo, but the way he’s putting that question to me feels undermining.And arrogant.
“Chloe, the officials are here!”calls another strategist from across the room.
“Coming!”I call back.I turn to Matt.“Please.If it’s strategy you want to discuss, then yes, we can walk and talk,” I shoot, deciding to stand my ground.“But otherwise, Matt”—I glance up at him, his eyes dark,stern—“I don’t have time.Youdon’t have time.You are about to head out to qualifying in a car you’ve never driven before and you weren’t even here for testing.You’re under a new management team and the whole world is watching.”
“Yeah.Exactly,” he says, holding his palms up like that’s the point.“That’s why I need to talk to you.”
I feel the blood pulsing in my ears as the pressure rises.Excitement?Anxiety?Actual imminent stroke?Hard to tell.All I know is this “talk” with Matt Warner needs to happen later.When the pressure is off.When we havetime.
One hour and thirty-five minutes to go.
“Please.Noah’s waiting for you,” I say, begging him to listen.
After a moment of worrying silence, I can see his body sag as he steps back and heads slowly, reluctantly toward a waiting Noah, whose eyes light up with awe and delight as two-time world champion Matthew Warner joins him for a pre-race briefing.
CHAPTER 4
Matt
Ilook Noah up and down.He seems okay.Better than the reserve driver at Rossini, who listens exclusively to Peruvian electro-industrial aggrotech and, although he speaks several languages, refuses to speak French on the basis that it’s “overhyped.”
Rossini drivers are famously coddled, most of them coming from legacy racing families, rising through the ranks in a trajectory promised almost from birth.But I’ve heard enough about Noah around the circuit to know that’s not the case with him.Everyone in the field likes him—a driver who didn’t come from money, had to push extra hard, and had parents who invested more than was sensible to keep him in the game.He’s a rare breed on the grid, in a business riddled with nepotism and founded on dynasties.
Still, I don’t want to get too close.After what just happened with Stavros, I think it’s best I keep my distance.
I steal a glance over at Chloe as Noah leads me toward the rear of the car, but she’s already busy with someone else.I’m trying to square the determined young driver I knewwith the woman who is now my boss.A boss who apparently can’t make time for me.
“This way, Matt,” Noah says shyly, nodding toward the rear of the car.I can’t help but feel an instant warmth toward him as he awkwardly points at the car’s more eccentric features, muttering that “Rossini is probably a bit further ahead.”He slicks his blond hair back with his hand before waving at the rear of the car.“The, um, wing is um...well, it has that flap tip, which is only semidetached, and see this?It’s the old-style mainplane.”
I stare hard at him as he fidgets.“How vintage,” I joke.
Noah laughs, his cheeks reddening.“I know.They’re working on it.”
“I’m messing with you,” I say.“What else?”
I nod toward the car for him to keep going, as I follow him around it.He’ssoyoung.Stavros and I were equals.Just a couple of years apart.Friends.Contemporaries.I’m not sure I know how to work alongside a driver this much less experienced.
“Oh, one thing...there is um, still crazy amounts of porpoising on the straight.All the other cars were fixed months ago,” he says.“And like I said, they’re working on upgrades in line with the new rules.Chloe is finalizing them with the team back home.Everyone is hyped about it.”
“Well, that’s good to hear,” I reply, smiling.“Upgrades can really make a difference.”
“McLaren 2009,” he says.
“You definitely know your history,” I shoot back.Okay, that’s impressive.
Noah beams, then continues his tour of the car.But my attention is pulled back to Chloe, who has just removed hergreen blazer to reveal a tight white singlet and has let down her hair.
Wow.She has changed.A lot.She looks...super fucking beautiful, honestly, with that dimple on her right cheek, those huge brown eyes, and those pink, pouty lips.She was always kinda cute, but back then that wild dark red hair was either shoved into a baseball cap or knotted at the top of her head, her body hidden by boyish clothes.Now she looks older, curvier.Sexier.
But she had serious confidence issues back then, making herself smaller in all the wrong moments.As bright and mouthy as she was with me, she struggled to assert herself in that arena.So, I looked out for her when I could.Supported her.Stood up for her.
That is, until we moved out of karts and into Juniors.By the time Chloe joined me in F3, she was an absolute encyclopedia of knowledge and starting to shine.She knew more than anyone about car control, situational awareness, race craft, engineering competence, patience, balance, and on and on it went.
