“Good to know.”
Footsteps echoed down the hall. Callaghan appeared in the doorway, helmet in his hands now. His face was pale beneath the strip of sweat-slick hair stuck to his forehead.
For a moment, no one spoke as he walked over to the shelf and placed his helmet in the cubby next to ours.
Callaghan dropped into the chair beside me, grabbed a bottle, and drank like a man trying to wash the entire race out of his system.
None of us spoke for a while. No one needed to. The kind of exhaustion hanging in that air didn’t leave much room for words anyway.
Callaghan was the one who broke it, voice low and rough. “Hell of a drive, Michaels.”
I stared at him, my mouth almost hanging open. That had almost sounded… friendly.
For a second, I didn’t know what to say. Callaghan hadn’t spoken to me without venom since… hell, I couldn’t even remember when.
“Yeah?” I said finally, tone half disbelieving.
He took another sip of water and nodded, thumb tapping against the bottle. “You were faster in the middle stint. Thought I had you when you boxed early, but… you found something. Don’t know where the hell it came from.”
“Rage has good fuel economy,” I muttered.
Callaghan huffed something that might’ve been a laugh. “Guess so.”
“The pair of you were relentless.” Nico shook his head, grinning. “Best final race. Thanks, guys. You even had me switching tire compounds in my head, trying to work out who’d break first.”
“Wasn’t going to be me,” Callaghan said, quietly enough that no one could mistake it for arrogance. Just the truth.
I glanced at him and found something new there. The rage he’d carried for the last year seemed to have evaporated.
He met my gaze and winced. “Look, “I’m not proud of how I acted this year. Or last. Or…” He shrugged, turning the bottlein his hands. “You deserved better from me. You weren’t the enemy.”
I stared at him, waiting for the punchline. For him to twist it into another barb about my driving or my daughter or any of the thousand things he’d weaponized against me this season.
My brain refused to process what I’d just heard. Jesse Callaghan apologizing to me? I’d sooner believe Nico would forget how to drive than Callaghan could learn the meaning of an apology.
Yet he just sat there, shoulders slumped, looking kind of pathetic.
The Jesse I’d been battling all year had teeth. This version looked like he’d filed them down himself.
The shock of it left me adrift, searching for solid ground.
“I think I kept treating you like one because if I didn’t—” he swallowed hard, “—then I’d have to face that the problem was me.”
Nico snorted. “I said you two would kiss and make up before I retired. Maybe I need to buy a lottery ticket tonight.”
Callaghan rolled his eyes, but the corner of his mouth tightened with a weary smile. “Don’t push it, old man.”
“Old?” Nico smirked. “Three-time champion on one side, emotional breakthrough on the other. I’m the only balanced one left in this room.”
Callaghan laughed, the sound genuine for the first time since I’d known him.
He glanced at me again. “You earned it.”
“Yeah,” I said, unsure how to react. “So did you.”
“And I uh…” Callaghan rubbed a hand over his face. “I told my lawyer to drop the custody petition.”
Good riddance. Two judges had already tossed his petition before it could gain traction. The whole thing had been theater, Callaghan playing to prove some point I’d never understood.
