“A few.” Laurie swiped at the coat of dust on the dashboard. Her hand came away covered in thick copper dirt, and Mack dug in the glove box for a napkin. “Nothing that lasted.”
“That sounds lonely,” Mack mocked. The glare Laurie shot across the cab was so familiar that Mack saw the ghost of the teenager her sister had once been, could almost imagine Laurie was angry because Mack used her tube of Revlon Fire and Ice to mark tires.
“Relationships aside ... you wouldn’t do anything stupid like start something with Leo, right? Because you won’t get a chance like this again.”
The words pressed down on Mack more than the g-forces she’d weathered on track. Mack knew Laurie judged her for taking up with Kelley and getting pregnant. She’d made it clear since that first phonecall when Mack told her sister about the two blue lines on the pee stick. She’d even loaned Mack the money to get an abortion in Illinois and had refused to take it back when the clinic turned Mack away for being three days past the legal cutoff. In a mortifying moment, Mack had sobbed on the phone to her older sister about how she hadn’t known she was pregnant. They’d used protection, every time, and she’d had no idea until it was too late. She’d confessed to her sister that she didn’t want to have a kid, she wanted to race.Please, Laurie, fix it, please fix it, please,she’d begged. Laurie had listened in stony silence. They’d never spoken about it again.
Graffiti-covered boxcars lumbered across the tracks in front of them. Mack felt the grubbiness of her skin and badly wanted to wash away the dried sweat and tiny rubber particles. A certain truth about life in Indiana was that a train would come whenever you were desperate to be on the other side of the tracks. Mack closed her eyes and rubbed her gritty eyelids. As much as she wanted to say something mean and sharp to hurt Laurie right back, there was truth in her sister’s words.
Mack couldn’t afford to lose racing over a man. Again. Even if she’d be spending a lot of time with Leo Raisman’s dark-lashed doe eyes. She could still picture him holding her gaze while she panicked in the cockpit.
“I know better now,” she said, humiliated.
The crossing arm lifted and Laurie slowly accelerated, as if she knew the bumps of the track would further unsettle Mack’s stomach. They rode in silence as Laurie turned right on Meridian Street. Ahead, the Soldiers & Sailors Monument peeked over the surrounding buildings, the wings of the bronze figure of Victory at the top glowing with the final rays of the setting sun. The defining feature of the Indianapolis skyline, the monument reminded Mack of where she was. Reminded her to keep her head screwed on right and remember why she was here. For the Indy 500, nothing else.
Texts Between Billie Summit and Mack Williams
Billie[5/3, 8:14 p.m.]: check out the pic—everyone loved my lentil burgers with vegan sriracha mayo!
Mack[5/3, 8:14 p.m.]: wow, really? can’t believe dad and shaw ate that. is she still awake? i’ll call to say goodnight.
Billie[5/3, 8:15 p.m.]: no, poor thing fell asleep during family movie time! . Yard work wore her out! She’s been asleep for over an hour.
Mack[5/3, 8:15 p.m.]: yard work?
Billie[5/3, 8:16 p.m.]: a little spring fresh up! I’ll send pic when the knock out roses bloom.
Billie[5/3, 8:18 p.m.]: P.S. I looked online but can’t find any Mack Williams fan swag! Do you have any t-shirts or banners?????
Chapter 10
3 weeks until the Indianapolis 500
Light barely broke the horizon when Mack walked into Body Work. It smelled like a standard gym, disinfectant and stale socks, and even looked like a regular gym, but the exercises were uniquely designed to support race car drivers. Most people assumed that driving a race car was physically undemanding, but staying in control of a seven-hundred-horsepower engine embedded in a carbon fiber frame required strength, focus, stamina, and extraordinary reaction time.
Mack wasn’t afraid of the workout, but she was unsettled by what she saw near the bank of cubbies at the back of the gym. Or rather,who. Leo Raisman stood talking with two other drivers, both famous enough that any American race fan would recognize them, and they were all looking at her. Mack smoothed a hand down her cutoff sweatshirt and snagged leggings and tried not to show her self-consciousness.
“Williams, you made it! Come meet the slowest guys on track.” Leo waved her over, way too chipper for five in the morning. Morning people were the worst.
Jericho Blair, or Jericho Junior as everyone called him, needed no introduction. The spitting image of his father, a Scottish Formula One legend who died racing the Nürburgring shortly after Jericho Junior’s birth, he won last year’s Indy 500, edging out Leo by half a car length. The crowd had gone positively mad celebrating the win of a belovedson. The shorter, stockier man was Boomer Compton, the son of yet another racing legend, quietly chasing down his father’s championship records.
The three men glanced from Mack to each other, and she braced for a barrage of either sexist bullshit or coded questions about her inexperience.
“Okay, I gotta ask,” Leo said, eyes sparkling. “Your dad is Wes Williams, right?”
Mack blinked in surprise. “The one and only.”
“Ho-lee shit!” Jericho hooted. “A damn legend!”
“Trust me, he knows it.” Mack rolled her eyes as she tightened her ponytail. A palpable energy filled the gym as more people rolled in. She recognized a JJR crew member and the logos of several other teams.
“I met him once in Charlotte,” Boomer said. “After he won the Outlaws Showdown. 2002, maybe? I was a kid and he was so cool. Tried to give me a beer.”
“Sounds like Wes. It was 2003, I think,” Mack said. “He hated that place. So hard to pass on the outside.”
Leo frowned thoughtfully. “Is he still racing?”
Mack hesitated, protective of Wes’s privacy. Someone as vibrant as her dad wanted to be remembered for winning races, not living in a La-Z-Boy. “He retired awhile back.”
