“Seems kinda pointless, though,” Owen muses. “He’s not even in the top three this season, and the worst I can finish is second. Why would he bother?”
“Because he’s bitter,” I say, grimacing at the memory of my encounter with Womack in the hotel corridor. It had seemed perfectly innocent at the time, but looking back, I feel like there was a glint of malice in his eyes. I just overlooked it because my mind was somewhere else. “This was supposed to be his year, but then you came along and blew his doors off. So to speak.”
“True, but it’s not just me. Biggs and Herrera have both finished ahead of him in every race, too.”
“But Womack probably always expected Biggs to be stiff competition, since he’s the reigning champion. And Herrera might be a rookie, but he built a bit of a reputation on the European circuit last year. What you’ve done is… practically unheard of. Guys with no name recognition riding for a mid-level team do not just come in and dominate the competition in their first year. To be honest, I’m a little surprised no one’s filed a protest against you already.”
Owen gives me a hard look. “Are you saying you think I’m cheating?”
“God, no!” I shake my head vehemently. “Never. You wouldn’t, and you don’t need to. But I can see why other riders might be suspicious. It’s got to be easier on their egos to think you’ve got an unfair mechanical advantage than to admit to themselves that you’re just that much better than they are.”
“I am pretty fucking good,” he says, and the grin that makes my insides get hot and squishy spreads across his face. Really, the shirt isn’t helping a whole lot here.
He’s also pretty good fucking.
Stop that.
“But if Womack thinks I’m cheating, why warn me about it by going after you? Why not just protest me after this weekend’s race and see what happens?”
I sigh. “I don’t think he really believes you’re cheating. He decided to go after me for two reasons. First, because he has a reason to dislike me. I was one of the people who predicted he would be this year’s golden boy, and then there I was, writing all these glowing articles about you, not him. Even if that’s not my fault, it’s got to grate on him.
“But he also came after me because he wanted you to know he was planning to protest you this weekend. And he wanted to be able to prove that you knew, so that if the teardown came up empty, he could claim it was because you knew you were about to get caught and had Darnell take out the illegal modifications. The NMA would probably have no choice but to disqualify you for the rest of the season, which means that even if they don’t overturn your previous wins, there’ll always be a question in some people’s minds as to whether you did it fair and square.” Grimacing with disgust, I shake my head. It’s not just the championship he stands to lose; it’s everything: his reputation, his endorsements, his career. How can he not see that? “You played right into his hands by coming here. Now he’s going to get exactly what he wanted.”
Including the end of any future for Owen and me as a couple. Because I can’t see any way Owen will be able to forget that I’m a big part of the reason his life is in tatters. He told me he loves me, but how long can that really last when he’s going to lose everything he’s worked for? My vision blurs, and I blink to clear the tears, determined not to cry until it’s really, truly over.
“Hey, hey.” Owen reaches across the table and caresses my upper arm. “Womack is not going to get what he wants. I’m not going to let that happen.”
“How are you going to stop it?”
“Easy,” he says. “He can’t file a protest against me if I don’t run the races.”
My eyes widen. “You can’t just drop out of the last three races of the season!”
“Of course I can. It’ll cost me salary and prize money, and Paul will probably be pissed off, but it’s worth it.” His smile gets just a little evil, but in a decidedly happy way. “And since Womack can’t protest past races, there’s not a goddamn thing he can do except whine.”
“But you could lose the championship,” I point out, my stomach still churning.
He shrugs. “I could lose anyway. There’s no guarantees in motocross. But the worst I can finish now is second place. I want to win, but if I have to choose between suspension or disqualification for something I didn’t do and second place, I’ll take second place.”
The knot in my belly loosens a little bit. Second place in the NMA championship isn’t the end of the world; in fact, it’s seventy-five thousand dollars of not the end of the world. And it’s not the only series. A few weeks after the motocross season ends, the Supercross season starts and Owen’s going to be just as dominant there. My heart sinks again.
“Then he’ll just wait to protest you in Supercross.”
“And he can be my guest. Supercross is AMX, not NMA, and they don’t give a shit what happened during the NMA season. He can ask for all the teardowns he wants; they’re not going to find anything, and they’re not going to act on something that didn’t happen at events they don’t sanction.”
Damn it, he really is a genius. Why didn’t I see that? I know all this as well as he does.
There is one more possible hitch, though. “You don’t think Womack will protest Joy this weekend if he can’t protest you?”
“Well, he can’t. The protest has to be filed by someone in her race group. And the protester has to put up a bond to pay for the teardown. He was probably planning to pay someone to file the protest for him, but I doubt he’ll bother if he can’t protest me, too.”
“But he could still do that, couldn’t he? And at least cast some doubt in your direction since Darnell’s your mechanic, too.”
“He could, but I’ll be careful not to contact Darnell between now and Sunday. If Womack goes for the protest, when the teardown doesn’t find anything, it’ll just be a waste of his money because he won’t be able to show Darnell had any way of knowing beforehand that it was going to happen. Not only that, but it would put me in the clear, too. So there’s no way he’s going to do it. I think Darnell and his wife are safe.”
“If you think s—wait. What?” My brain catches up to my ears. “Joy Chen is Darnell’s wife?”
Owen lets out a low rumble of amusement. “Oh, haven’t I mentioned that yet? Yeah. Apparently, they met because Joy read your article about Darnell and went to ask him for help with her bike before Southwick. They got married yesterday morning at the courthouse in Blountville.”
Holy shit. Southwick was less than four weeks ago. “Um, wow.”
“I know,” he says, shaking his head in disbelief. “But it did get me thinking…”
My heart jolts into sudden action as Owen rises from his chair and starts around to my side of the table. He is not going to… No, surely not.
But he is and he does.
He goes down on one knee beside me, looking like a sex god in his fitted white T and boxer shorts, and takes my trembling hand in his. “I want to ask you—”
“Owen,” I interrupt, “I don’t think—”
“Shhh. Let me finish,” he says, his voice gentle but firm. “I want to ask you—"
My breathing gets quicker, shallower. He’s already said he loves me, but it’s way too soon to think about…
“To do me the honor of—”
Oh god, oh god, oh god.
“Agreeing to…”
I squeeze every muscle in my body. What am I going to say?
“Spend every possible minute of the next three weeks with me instead of waiting until the season’s over?”
An explosion of relief and joy makes me sag forward, and he wraps his arms around me to steady me. I burrow into the embrace, his head cradled against my breasts, and press my lips to the top of his head.
“You. Are. Terrible,” I wheeze. But I’m laughing now.
He lifts his face from my chest and grins up at me, his blue eyes crinkling at the corners. “Sorry,” he apologizes, except there’s nothing particularly apologet
ic about his tone. “I couldn’t resist. And I am going to ask you to marry me, so I needed the practice.”
“Well, next time you get down on one knee,” I tell him severely, “you’d better mean it.”
His expression grows sober. “I would mean it now. I know I love you. I know I want to marry you. But I also know we have a lot of things to figure out before that can happen, and we can figure them out sooner if we start now." He reaches up to trace the line of my jaw with the back of one finger. "So, what’s your answer? Can we start being together now? Because it looks like we’re both going to have some free time on our hands.”
My answer, of course, is yes.
MotoRacer Magazine
LENART EARNS NMA CHAMPIONSHIP DESPITE SCRATCHING LAST THREE EVENTS
By Aaron Kresge
It was a near thing, but rookie Owen Lenart secured the NMA Piston Prime Championship when Tyler Biggs finished second in the final heat of the season at Budds Creek Raceway in Mechanicsville, MD. Biggs needed a win in that heat to take the championship from Lenart, who withdrew from the competition with just three weeks to go after dominating the series. Alex Herrera, another NMA rookie, beat out Biggs by making a dramatic pass in the penultimate corner, thereby denying Biggs his second consecutive championship. Nick Womack, predicted by many to be a contender for this year’s championship, came in a disappointing sixth and has expressed some doubt as to his future on the NMA circuit. Lenart was not available for comment.
Lenart’s decision not to contest at Blountville, Jacksonville, and Mechanicsville has puzzled many NMA insiders. Some speculate that he was uncomfortable with the limelight brought on by his sudden launch into fame outside motocross circles when several pictures of him went viral on Twitter—and later on Instagram and Facebook—under the hashtag #hotcrossbuns. Those close to him, including his mechanic and best friend, Darnell Lewis, deny this is the case but can offer no explanation except to say that Lenart simply needed a break after nearly seven continuous years of racing at nearly every level of motocross.
At a press conference following the race at Budds Creek, Biggs called Lenart "the most daring and most technically skilled motocross rider I've ever seen" and said he felt Lenart's win was fair despite his three-week absence. "No one else had a chance to win it as long as Owen was on the track. Whatever his reasons for choosing not to run, he deserves the championship." Biggs, who will turn thirty in September, also hinted that he has big plans for the future, but that those plans don’t include winning another championship. What that means remains to be seen…
Epilogue
Owen
Yeah, I won the championship anyway. And the hundred-thousand-dollar prize that goes with it, though, of course, Darnell gets half of that.
He has some decisions to make now, since he can't be my mechanic and his wife's unless he figures out how to clone himself. (The NMA runs men's and women's races in the same series, but AMX separates them. Don't ask me why.) I'm not keen on running the Supercross series without him, but I'm not going to get in the way of his relationship with Joy. I mean, come on, best friends don't do that.
I took three of the twenty endorsement offers. None of them were for underwear, but I did take one for a well-known brand of jeans. So, if you see one of those billboards—and you'll know which one I mean if you've seen them—I'm their spokes-butt. Between the championship prize money and the endorsements, money is not an issue for the first time in my life.
Which is why me and Lucy are cooling our heels—okay, warming our heels—on the Riviera Maya for a week, although the truth is we've spent at least as much time in our room as on the beach. Maybe more. I still can't get enough of her, and she can't seem to get enough of me, either. Not sure when the time will be right to get down on one knee again, but I plan to be on our honeymoon this time next year.
When Supercross starts, Lucy will have a new "beat" writing a series of features for MotoRacer over the next year called The View from the Inside. They plan to gather the articles and release them in a coffee table book, so they're sending a photographer with her. It's her first full-time, salaried gig as a reporter, so she's pretty stoked.
And stroked. By me. As often as possible.
Now and always.
The End
Afterword
If you’re familiar with motocross racing, you know that the women’s side of the sport is not nearly as rosy as it’s portrayed in this book. My fictional National Motocross Association—unlike the real American Motocross Association—sponsors both men’s and women’s races at all its events and the competition in the women’s events is as robust as in the men’s. I wrote the story that way not because I’m unaware of the struggles in women’s motocross today, but because I wanted to portray the world I’d like to see, not the one that exists.
I hope you enjoyed reading Holeshot. For the rest of 2021 and 2022, I’ll be focusing on writing historical romances, but I have written and published a few other contemporary romances that you might like.
Semi-Tough Luck is a novella set in the Motocrossed world and stars Lucy’s roommate, Sylvia, whose semi is stolen, leaving her stranded in Nowhere, Nebraska. Lucky for her, hockey player Ivan is also headed to the west coast. She hitches a ride and…you guessed it, there’s only one bed!
Can’t Take the Heat was originally written as the first in a series set in Las Vegas. I never wrote any more titles in that series because after my son died in 2014, I found I wasn’t able to tackle the second story, in which the heroine is widowed. Can’t Take the Heat features a firefighter/EMT heroine who is struck on the head during a rescue and gets temporal amnesia, forgetting that she broke up with her hotel magnate boyfriend three years earlier.
—Best, Jackie
Holeshot: A Motocrossed Romance Page 13