Mack knew she was being a hypocrite. He may not have told anyone, but she’d told Laurie.
“I don’t sleep around with people at the track,” she told him now. “If anyone finds out ... I’ll be the woman who slept her way into a job and you’ll be the badass dude who fucked his teammate.”
He dropped his hands from his hair and stared at her as if she were speaking in tongues. “I had nothing to do with you joining JJR.”
“I know that, but no one will care if they find out I—” She tossed a casual hand in his direction.
“We,” he emphasized, “are two adults. Is it messy that we’re teammates and attracted to each other? Sure, but we don’t have to say or share anything until we figure out what we want to do.”
“What we want to do? There’s nothing todo, Leo. It was a mistake. Anything more than a professional relationship is a mistake.”
Her words reverberated through the small space, made extra loud by Leo’s silence. He hadn’t looked away from her face since they entered the bus. After a painfully long moment, he said, “So ... that’s it?” He looked at her in a way that made her feel white-hot rage. Like she’d actually hurt him.
“Leo, how many women do you see in the paddock?” Even though her stomach boiled with frustration, she waited patiently for him to answer. He conceded with a shake of his head. “Exactly,” she said with fury. “Whether I want it or not, I’m the example of what a woman in motorsports looks like. If I’m anything other than professional with my teammate, I’m proof that women can only succeed if they sleep their way to the top. All it takes is one person finding out to ruin my reputation and the reputations of other women in racing.”
She stopped before she said the thing that had kept her awake through the weekend, the other half of why she couldn’t indulge in Leo Raisman: No matter what happened in qualifications, even if she made the race, she’d end her Indy 500 bid with a trip right back home while Leo moved on. She’d never introduced Shaw to a man and she wasn’t going to start now. In her lowest moments, she realized that she’d never let herself be in a relationship until Shaw no longer lived at home. The one time Mack had let Shaw stay with Kelley, he’d left Shaw with a girlfriend and she’d come home with a fracture and sores. Shaw was older now but Mack would never again trust anyone so easily with herdaughter. Wes had dated Billie for months before Mack would let her spend supervised time with Shaw.
“It was a fun night, Leo. But that’s all it was. One misguided night.”
His eyes moved back and forth between her own, as if looking for a hole in her argument. She uncrossed her arms and hoped she projected more stern resolve than she actually felt. Leo inhaled deeply, bobbed his head in a quick nod, and said, “If that’s what you need.”
She nodded emphatically. That was what she needed.
“But we’re still cool? As teammates?”
The sharp look Leo gave her was gutting, like she’d offended him. “Yeah, we’re still teammates, Rookie.” He glanced at his watch. “Teammates who need to get to the garage. C’mon.”
He led her out of the bus and Mack had the sinking feeling that by choosing what she needed, she’d ruined something she wanted.
No matter, because she couldn’t have it anyway.
If she thought things would feel less edgy on the track, she was sorely mistaken.
The all-driver orientation was long and intense, full of reminders of all the risks they would face. IndyCar worked tirelessly to increase safety measures both in the cars and on the tracks: using ethanol fuel prevented catastrophic gasoline fires, shock-absorbingSaferbarriers replaced deadly concrete walls, the entire chassis was designed to deflect impact away from the driver, and the relatively new aeroscreen protected the driver’s head from flying tires or debris. The safety team walked them through a series of rules and best practices—never pass the pace car, use the aprons if you’re a danger to other cars, flip your visor up to signal that you’re uninjured after a wreck—and Mack tried to commit it all to memory, but she was too keyed up to focus.
After the meeting, the other drivers greeted each other, asking about babies and boats and plans for the summer. Most people in theroom spent the entire season racing against each other, making friends or rivals. Everyone she met was polite, even kind, but she lingered only for a moment before leaving by herself. She told Leo she needed to focus on racing and that was what she would do.
But once she was in the car, she was bludgeoned with reminders that she was a rookie. It was one thing to drive two hundred miles per hour when she was the only one on the track, but a different beast when dozens of other cars zipped around her on all sides. The first time another car passed her, she rode so high up the outside of the track that she lost traction on the small marbles of rubber left by degrading tires and almost tank-slapped the wall. Only her quick reflexes and a heaping dose of luck kept her from wrecking. In the pits, she overshot her marks so badly that she almost hit a crew member.
She spent most of the first day trying to not piss herself, barely breaking two hundred eighteen miles per hour. Not nearly fast enough to qualify.
At the end of practice, she parked in her pit box and yanked her seat belts and radio cords with flailing fury. Furious at herself and pissed at her team for giving her a brick to drive, Mack stomped down pit lane, blowing off Jimmy and walking past her crew like she didn’t even see them. When Leo called out to her, she gave him double middle fingers and told him exactly where he could go.
Back in the garage, she threw her gloves and kicked her helmet and growled in rage. She knew she was having a temper tantrum but she was too angry to care. Never had she been so disappointed in herself—not when she’d wrecked during a championship race, not when she’d found out she was pregnant, not when she’d messed up the books for the family business. She was infuriated with her performance on track but more than anything, she was pissed off that she’d let a man distract her. She’d heard all the jokes about female drivers:Don’t get too close, she’ll wreck you out! She can’t go any faster, she’s checking her nails!Mack had wanted to come to this hallowed ground as a fighter, as a real contender, and instead she was no better than she’d been ten years ago, making shitty choices and letting their shitty consequences ruin her career.
“You wanna act like a toddler or talk like an adult?”
Mack was so busy jerking her equipment bag out of the tiny locker than she didn’t hear Janet enter the garage.
“I’ll be better tomorrow,” she said over her shoulder, giving her bag a final tug to release it from the locker. She stood and faced Janet. “I can do better.”
“No shit,” Janet said. She skewered Mack with an assessing look. “You’d better apologize to every single person on this team for acting like an entitled brat.” Janet tucked her sunglasses into her nest of frizzy hair. “Especially Raisman. What happened between you two?”
Mack froze, her entire body going into fight-or-flight mode.No no no no.She made sure to keep her face very, very blank as she asked, “What about Leo?”
“The entire paddock heard you tell him to fuck off! He was trying to talk to you about the understeer and you flayed him alive. You might learn something from him if you weren’t so busy shouting at him to go to hell.”
Her shoulders fell and Mack rolled her eyes to cover her relieved exhale. Mack could handle a reputation as a bitch, but not as a slut.
