“Bro, you need to stop staring. It’s not a good look,” Chase chuckles.
“I wasn’t staring. I uh—” I fumble, trying to find a good excuse, but come up empty. I don’t mean to stare. I just want to be able to make things right with her because I’ve realizedall I want is her. She is the piece I’ve been missing; I’ve just realized it too late.
“So, you weren’t just staring at Brady after she stormed out last night after finding out about your drunken hookup?” Chase questions.
I open my mouth, then close it like a gaping fish. There’s nothing else to say to that, when that’s exactly what I was doing. Chase has always been a good friend to me. Accepted me immediately when I joined SCORS two years ago. I’m really grateful for his friendship.
“Are you going to tell her?” Chase asks.
“Tell her what?” I ask. I’m not sure where he’s going with this.
Chase folds his arms across his chest, giving me a look ofreally?
“There’s nothing to tell her,” I say in a higher pitch than normal, proving I’m a complete fucking liar.
Chase shakes his head at me. “For the past two years I’ve known you, I’ve never seen you anything less than focused and determined. Don’t lose out on something good because it scares you to lose focus or keep the ruse of a rivalry that isn’t there anymore.”
I let Chase’s words soak in. He’s right: nothing, and no one, has thrown me off the way she has. She has thrown everything in my life off its axis, and it’s in a better way than I could have ever imagined.
“I can’t,” I finally say. “She won’t even look at me, Chase.”
“Give her time. I’ve seen the way she looks at you.”
“Just like how you look at Leslie?” I only bring it up because I know something went down between them, he just won’t tell me what. And I can tell he’s torn up about it, he’s just been better at hiding it than I have as of late. He shifts on his feet.
“Yeah, something like that,” he says and walks off, leaving me to my own thoughts as I climb into my car. Adjusting myhelmet and five point harness, Steve walks up to the window to give a pep talk.
“You ready?”
“I’m ready.” Or as I’ll ever be.This is just practice,I remind myself. Though what transpired the previous night and my conversation with Chase are still pulsing through my mind.
“You got this. Ease into corners three and four and get up to speed. The track is hot, so there is a lot of grip out there.” I give him a fist bump, and he puts the window netting up before climbing to the top of the pit box.
I roll off the grid and ease onto the racing surface and start to pick up my speed as Steve said, trying to focus on the task at hand, but my mind keeps wandering back to Regan. I need to figure out a way to get her to listen, to understand that I never meant to hurt her. That I want her to be able to trust me.
I’m so lost in thought that I enter a corner too fast and it boggles the car, tapping the wall with my rear quarter panel.
Damn it.
I can’t believe that Regan has this kind of control over my thoughts. That I can’t focus long enough for apractice run—almost wrecking my car in the process. Hell, I could have done enough damage by tapping the wall that it’d fuck with my race day performance. Steve is going to be pissed that my head isn’t in the game.
Before I can even climb out of the car, Steve is already at my window, and his face is red as a tomato. “What the hell happened out there?” he shouts.
I take my helmet off so that I can better answer him. “Nothing, got loose,” I lie. More fucking lies. I climb out to stand in front of him and take whatever verbal beating he’s about to give me. I just stand and take it as Steve goes off about the championship and how close we are to the Cup Series andyada, yada, yada.
After Steve has finished his rant, I head back to the infield.I hate this feeling. Feeling like I’m letting Steve and the crew down, failing them, failing myself and failing Daniel. And I’m not just failing, I’m falling, spiraling out of control with everything with Regan. Everything stops when I run into someone, and they hit the ground with anoof.
Blinking back to reality, Regan is on the ground, rubbing her ass as she angrily stares up at me.
FORTY-TWO
REGAN
After a shitty nightand shitty qualifying and practice run, I’m finally able to head back to the RV in the infield. I’m hoping Dad won’t ask me any more questions about what happened the previous night after I returned to the RV upset. And with today’s performance, he knows something is up.
It’s times like these that I really wish my mom was still here. She always knew the right thing to say or had advice for any situation.
I’m looking down at my feet, the weight of the day still upon me, when I run into what feels like a brick wall as I fall to the ground—hard.
