by Kat Ransom
“Em, don’t,” I reach for her hand.
She pulls her hand away from me, which feels like a freight train plowing through my rib cage.
“We can’t do this,” she wraps her hands around herself, and her eyes get glassy, her hair whipping around as the night breeze picks up off the Danube.
“What do you want, Emily? Tell me.”
I need answers, direction, hope. I can’t have her and not have her. If she tells me there’s no chance, no way, I need to know. I don’t know how I’ll deal with it, it would snuff out any goodness, any light left inside of me.
“I don’t know,” a tear falls down her cheek, and she looks out over the river.
“Stop trying to think, tell me how you feel.” I take a step toward her, and she doesn’t retreat. I wipe her tear away with my thumb.
I fucking hate when she cries. It makes me feel totally powerless, yet there’s nothing I wouldn’t do to make it stop.
“Is there any room, at all, in your heart for me, Em?”
“Room?” She turns back to me, and her shoulders heave, tears begin pouring from the corners of her eyes, “It’s been empty and hollow all these years without you.”
“Baby,” I pull her into me and squeeze her tight, wrap my hand around her head and hold it to my chest. She locks her arms around my waist and clutches me as she cries, tears soaking through my shirt. “I’m sorry, I’m so fucking sorry, baby.”
I don’t think I can ever tell her how sorry I am, and I hope she never knows the depths or all the reasons why I’m so sorry. That would only cause more tears.
“I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what I want. I want to be mad at you. I’m supposed to be mad at you,” Emily mumbles against my chest.
“It’s okay,” I kiss her hair.
I’m plenty mad at myself for both of us.
“I need time to think about everything.”
It’s been six long, awful years. I don’t know how much more time needs to pass, but if that’s what she needs, that’s what I’m going to give her. This is all my fucking fault, anyway.
But for right now, I celebrate the win that she isn’t running away from me. Her arms stay around me, no running despite the consequences she fears.
I pull her away from me and push her wet hair back from her face, “We’ll take it slow, okay? As much time as you need. You set the pace.”
She nods then buries her head back into my chest.
Eventually, two Budapest police officers show up in their little blue sailor caps, and Emily has to convince them that I am not molesting her, which is funny on our walk back to the scooter but wasn’t funny at the time.
I was fairly certain there’d be photos of me being arrested and riding a pink Vespa in the papers tomorrow.
Still worth it.
Thirteen
Circuit de Spa-Francorchamps—Brussels, Belgium
Emily
Everything is a mess.
My head is still swimming in confusion over Cole and making out with him like teenagers in Budapest. I don’t know what came over me, I was like an animal.
Something about him calls to my body with primal, animalistic attraction. He makes me feel raw and primordial like no man ever has. I like nerdy, bookish Emily well enough, but around Cole, I turn into a fiend, desperate for him to corrupt me.
I bit him, for god’s sake!
“I’ve been avoiding him,” I update Makenna, who has been texting me non-stop for updates since I fessed up to falling off the wagon in less than two months. Six years of steely resolve, gone.
“Bitch move,” she counters as if I don’t know this.
“It’s awful. He just stares at me, all hard and dominating, with his stupid sexy smirk like he knows it’s inevitable, and he’s just biding his time.”
“Yeah, that sounds horrible.” I can feel Makenna’s eyes roll across the cell phone waves.
It’s a shitty, rainy weekend in Brussels, and I’m hiding from everyone under a huge pine tree. Mist and the occasional raindrop filters down onto me through the pine needles.
Everything about this weekend sucks.
“Stan is here making everyone miserable, he’s making everything worse,” I whine.
I hate it when I whine. I pride myself on not being a whiner, but that’s precisely what I am right now.
I need more coffee.
“What is that glob of snot doing there?”
“Irritating everyone, mostly. Running around pretending to be a big man in the paddock even though no one even knows who he is.”
Cole’s dad is, essentially, a failure. He wasn’t even a one-hit-wonder. He drove one professional race, which he lost, and then got canned. So he lives vicariously through Cole and has inflicted trauma, pressure, and abuse on him for years.
Nothing was ever good enough, no mistake ever went unnoticed or unpunished.
I hate him with every fiber of my being.
“Did he say anything to you? Do I need wine for this?”
“Isn’t it about 7:00 am there?”
“So?”
I wipe the mist off my forehead and pull the hood of my Imperium rain jacket up more. “Cole and Liam are trying to supervise him, but yeah, as soon as Cole got in the car, Stan started in on me. He told me I was ‘all grown up’ like a total creep.”
“Eww,” Makenna makes retching noises.
Stan has been a man-whore as long as I’ve known Cole. We tried to spend as little time as possible inside his house when we were together because, nine times out of ten, some half-naked new woman would be wandering around. Sometimes more than one.
I hate that he grew up like that and I hate that, over the years, I’ve wondered how much Cole inherited those traits from his dad. Cole’s been with a lot of women, there have always been photos and stories online.
I’m jealous, I know it. I have no right to judge Cole. But I don’t even know if he is still with the Russian tennis player he’s been linked to and here I’m kissing him on the streets of Budapest.
“Yeah, and then he said he hopes I’m actually helping his son this time and not distracting him from his goals,” I finish telling Makenna about my encounter with Stan.
“Oh, fuck him.”
“Right? He’s the one distracting everyone. Cole has been storming around all weekend slamming doors. Liam is pissed because Cole is pissed. Edmund is pissed because the whole team is on edge.”
I don’t even tell her that I’ve missed two calls from the Major General.
And, I feel like I’m making it all worse by continuing to run and hide from Cole like a baby. I just wish I had the answers. I need time to sit down and concentrate, to think this through, but I haven’t had a chance.
I can’t just ignore the fact that Cole left me, broke my heart—obliterated it.
Are we even the same people anymore? How could we be? When he left the States, he was eighteen. Now, he’s almost twenty-six, he makes millions of dollars per year, has his pick of women and has traveled across the globe a hundred times over.
Have I changed?
“Which one is Liam, again?”
“Australian physio,” I remind her.
“Is he hot?”
I huff, I have too much on my mind to think about Liam. “They’re all hot, okay?”
“Are they hiring any photographers?” She giggles.
“I wish. It would be nice to have another girl here. Maybe you can visit me soon,” I tell her, but then I need to go. Qualification is starting soon, and, like it or not, I need to face the music.
I shake the water off myself and emerge from my hiding spot under the tree. I probably look like a homeless person.
Up ahead, I see Liam walking down the service road on the way to the garage and, he has enough sense to have an umbrella, so I sneak in underneath it with him.
“Hey. You look cold. Are you cold?” Liam feels my cheek.
“I’m fine, you don’t have to babysit me,” I nudge him with my sho
ulder.
“Boss says I do,” he smiles back at me.
“I’d rather you worry about him.”
“I hate when his dad is here,” Liam says knowingly. It has been a tense two nights, and we’d all like Stan to return to the troll bridge he lives under.
“Where’s he at, anyway?”
I hope he isn’t in the garage during qualification. Qualification is stressful enough as it is, the drivers are at max speeds with no fuel in the cars, and now it’s raining. It creates a lightweight rocket ship with no grip, and then Belgium thought it should open up the skies to make matters worse.
“I left him in the beer garden with a bottle of whiskey and two grid girls. Hopefully, that entertains him long enough to stay the hell away.”
Cole has to be so embarrassed. For a short while, Stan was acting as Cole’s manager and, I’m sure, taking a chunk of his earnings. I only got the online gossip blog story version, but from what I read, Cole’s job was at risk if Stan continued to manage him.
Cole fired him and hasn’t had a manager since. I can only imagine the third world war that must have caused. I wish I could have been there for him. Maybe I should have contacted him, I don’t know. But he’s the one who left me, refused to take my calls, or respond to my letters.
When we make it inside the garage, I shake off my soaked raincoat and take my seat. It’s damp, cold, and grey. I rub my hands over my arms to get rid of the goosebumps.
The drivers are running wet tire compounds today because of the rain, so I’m eager to see how they perform for the first time. Edmund’s had me working with the aerodynamic team the last several days, then he was out sick for a while, so I haven’t had as much time to harass Olivier about the information I still don’t have.
I feel Cole enter the garage before I even see him, my heart rate picks up, and my senses go on high alert. He and Dante stroll in, both tall and full of swagger, though I can tell Cole’s still on edge. He’s been cracking his neck all weekend and does it again now.
Dante’s either in a good mood or trying to cheer Cole up. I see him make a hand gesture like he’s squeezing melons and Cole chuckles with his eyes down and shakes his head. Liam notices Cole’s neck cracking tick, too, and Liam—always watchful—swoops in and starts feeling Cole’s neck muscles.
Cole slaps his hands away, and the two of them start laughing and joking, and it makes me happy to see Cole smile again. They chat for a second, then both turn to look at me.
I don’t even pretend that I’m not staring anymore, there’s no point. I couldn’t stop myself if I wanted to, Cole Ballentine is beautiful.
I quirk an eyebrow up at them both, they’re clearly talking about me. Then Cole struts over to me. He walks like an alpha predator moving through the jungle, and I forget to breathe.
His eyes are intense and locked onto mine as he crosses the garage. He reaches the stool I’m sitting on, shrugs his dry Imperium jacket off, and slips it over my shoulders.
I peer around Cole’s frame and scowl at Liam for tattling. He shrugs and throws his hands up.
“Better?” He asks, running his hands over my arms to get me warm. He has no idea how warm I’m getting from him touching me.
He’s being obscenely sweet to me, he’s been nothing but respectful since we got home from Budapest, following my lead in all of our conversations. I asked him for time, and he’s given it to me, and I’ve been acting like a bitch.
Figure your shit out, Emily.
“I’m sorry,” I look around and whisper to him quietly, so no one else hears us.
“You have nothing to be sorry about, gorgeous girl,” his palm comes to my cheek, and he runs his thumb along my bottom lip as if there are not thirty people flitting around the garage. He’s looking at me like I’m the only one here, and he doesn’t give a shit about anything else.
If we were alone, I’d suck that thumb into my mouth and swirl my tongue around it.
“I’m figuring things out,” I tell him.
“I know,” he beams with confidence.
Then he’s off, getting strapped into the car, and I wrap his jacket around me and breathe in his smell enveloping me.
The first qualification session nearly gives me a heart attack. All the cars are struggling for grip on the wet track, sliding around corners, and one of the other teams loses a car into a wall, which red flags the session.
It’s still raining during the second session, and I don’t understand how there are so many rules in F1, yet they let these guys race in a monsoon. Several cars have spun out or gone into the grass.
I’m gripping Cole’s jacket around me and rocking in my stool, on edge, watching the wet tire data come in. The way they work is so different, their tread designed to push water and dry the track.
“I can’t see shit,” Dante complains over the radio.
The cars are kicking up so much water spray that it’s making it impossible for the drivers to see well.
This is madness.
On my computer screen, I see Dante’s brakes lock up, and I look up at the television monitor. His front tires are locked, but the car is still skidding into the La Source hairpin. In the blink of an eye, the backend of the vehicle spins. It's pointing in the wrong direction on the track, then round and round he goes.
I add to the collective gasp of the crowd, audible even in the garage, and leap from my stool. Two other cars are barreling at Dante, skidding, and trying to steer around him.
An engineer next to me grabs my elbow, all eyes are on the television monitors. Dante’s spin finally comes to a stop after two rotations, and the other cars narrowly avoid hitting him.
It all happens in seconds, but it felt like an eternity. Dante is yelling over the radio, more Italian swearing, and I don’t blame him. This is insanity. They need to delay qualification before someone gets hurt!
The television monitor eventually shows Cole’s car rounding a turn, thank god he’s okay. I storm out of the garage to the pit wall and pull one earphone off Edmund’s head.
“They have to delay this,” I plead. “Everyone is going off, they’re going to get killed!”
He turns toward me, and there’s a warmth in his eyes I’ve never noticed before. He wraps one arm around my shoulder, “They’ve driven in much worse, it’ll be okay.”
Worse? This is ridiculous. This is some macho bullshit, right here, that’s what this is.
Edmund pats me on my shoulder, and I make my way back into the garage. I need to calm down, I need to breathe.
Both our cars stop in the garage for a brief moment as we wait for the third and final qualification session to start. I want so badly to go to Cole’s car and, I don’t even know what. Shake him, kiss him, drag him out of the car?
You cannot do that. He needs to concentrate.
And his stupid dad has been here all weekend upsetting him. I’ve been acting like an asshole.
This is terrible.
Both cars leave the garage again, and I’m on the verge of a panic attack. All I can do is stand here wrapped in Cole’s jacket and pace. I can’t even look at the computer monitors, my eyes are glued to the television as I watch all the cars struggle and slide.
Cole starts his timed lap, and the cameras follow him through the corner Dante spun in. He nears the steep hill into the most iconic turns in motorsports history, Eau Rouge and Raidillon.
It’s such a steep incline that drivers can’t see the other side of the hill, they just have to point the car in the right direction and hope the road will appear in front of them where it should be. If the conditions were dry, Cole would take those turns flat out at over three hundred kilometers per hour and 5gs.
He can’t possibly do that in the rain.
A brief glance at my computer monitor tells me he is.
A chain of cars blasts up the hill into the corners. I can barely breathe. Cole is one second behind a car which hits the peak of Raidillon when it loses its grip and begins to spin in the middle of the track
. Cole can’t even see him as he reaches the summit, headed straight for the disabled car.
“NO!” I scream.
I register that there are voices in my headset, but I don’t know who they are or what they’re saying. One-second goes by as if it’s an hour. Cole sees the disabled car as he crests the hilltop, locks the brakes up, and pitches the car sideways.
The car turns violently and skids rear end first, the screeching of tires piercing the air and plumes of blue smoke filling the television monitor. His car sails backward into the runoff area and smashes into the yellow and red tire barriers. The whole back end of the vehicle scrunches up, bits of debris fly everywhere. One of the tires is pointing straight up into the air.
“Cole!” Yelling at the monitor, I turn to race out of the garage to run up the hill toward him.
“Hey, hey,” Liam wraps his arms around me from behind and tries to hold me still.
I thrash against him, and he lifts me off the ground, “Let me go,” I wail.
“It’s okay, he’ll be okay, it’s okay,” he chants and puts me back down, but he won’t let go of me.
I don’t know when they started, but tears are streaming down my face.
“You all right?” I hear Edmund’s voice through my headset.
I hear Cole take a few gravelly deep breaths on his radio like the wind has been knocked out of him, and then finally, after both a few seconds and a lifetime, I hear his voice, “I’m okay.”
I break down and lose my shit in the middle of the garage, as Liam holds me up. I don’t care who sees me or what they think, I only want to see Cole get out of the car.
Liam hustles me to the back of the garage, my eyes glued to the television monitors as we walk. Cole finally flings his head restraints off, then pulls himself out of the car, and I sob against Liam.
He’s okay. He’s okay. He’s okay.
Marshals are already on the scene, and a medical car zooms up the hill.
“They’re just there as a precaution,” Liam soothes me. “See, he’s walking around, he’s okay.”
I nod into his side and suck in snot as he leads me out the back of the garage. “I need to see him,” I gurgle.