Wreckless

by Katie Golding

  2.443

  40

  4

  13

  Donato MALDONADO

  2.804

  22

  5

  11

  Massimo VITOLO

  4.748

  49

  6

  10

  Harleigh ELIN

  7.547

  25

  7

  9

  Rainier HERRE

  8.228

  9

  8

  8

  Mason KING

  10.052

  40

  9

  7

  Cristiano ARELLANO

  10.274

  48

  10

  6

  Galeno GIRÓN

  13.402

  8

  11

  5

  Cesaro SOTO

  15.431

  5

  12

  4

  Timo GONZALES

  18.473

  5

  13

  3

  Aurelio LOGGIA

  20.156

  15

  14

  2

  Deven HORSLEY

  26.706

  24

  15

  1

  Fredek SULZBACH

  28.513

  13

  16

  Elliston LAMBIRTH

  36.858

  23

  Not Classified

  Gregorio PAREDES

  3 Laps

  23

  Gustavo LIMÓN

  5 Laps

  0

  Diarmaid DEAN

  12 Laps

  2

  Lorelai HARGROVE

  19 Laps

  65

  Chapter 7

  Lorelai Hargrove—May; Le Mans, France

  “How’s she feel?” Frank asks as I pull into my garage, my crew propping up the back tire for me once I come to a stop.

  “Gimme a second to breathe.” I haven’t even gotten my helmet off. As soon as I do, I limp toward the folding chair set up for me in the corner, grabbing my phone and earbuds. The week and a half since Jerez was not as long as it normally was. And even with how much I slept, I’m still not as healed as I expected to be by now. Which royally freaking sucks.

  Frank doesn’t even try to argue about me needing to do a debriefing. He just brings me two aspirin and ice packs for my shoulder and ankle. “You sure you don’t wanna—”

  “Nope.”

  I hook in my earbuds and Frank walks off, my crew already prepping the bike to make adjustments based off the endless statistics the computer feeds back about gearshifts, RPMs, and a thousand other things that can’t actually explain why my practice time was nowhere close to where it should’ve been.

  But it’s fine. I’ll be fine on Sunday. I just need to rest.

  Sitting back in my chair, I close my eyes, letting the music bleed through me and calming the adrenaline still coursing through my body. I’m not going to think about how Massimo was right and I’m in so much pain from my practice, I don’t know how I’m going to race tomorrow. I’m absolutely not going to think about how last year, I spent all of Le Mans in a daze and barely at the track.

  I was too busy letting Etienne whisk me from wine bar to wine bar, making out with him under the arches of Gothic cathedrals before falling into bed at his family’s château. Those rolling green parks where we picnicked and I busted my diet on rillettes and baguettes while he waxed poetic in liquid French? Those places no longer exist.

  An engine screams over my music from Billy and the Q2 group tearing up their final practice laps, and I adjust the ice pack on my shoulder, resisting the urge to peek at my crew. I hope whatever they do to my bike, it helps. After losing out on any and all points at Jerez, I need a top three finish here at Le Mans more than ever.

  My earbuds are tugged harshly out of my ears, my eyes popping open in shock at the murder of my postpractice soundtrack. “What the hell?”

  I half expect it to be Mason, wound up with nerves about the coming race and looking to avoid the inevitable by losing to me in poker. But it’s Massimo.

  He grins, swiping a hand through his sweat-soaked hair. He should be doing his own debriefing, far, far away from my pit box. Yet here he stands, in the same pose—facial expression included—he uses for his more risqué press shoots.

  It’s disgusting. And horribly sexy. And the fact that it’s both and not just the former does not help the acid gurgling in my stomach.

  “God, what now?” I take off my ice packs and toss them aside. I should keep them on, but I refuse to look any shade of weak after he saw me all busted up in that awful hospital gown.

  “Relax, Lulu. I only came to say hi to my friend. After my friend finished her practice.”

  The last sentence earns me a whole new look. The kind that usually comes from my inner critic. I know my practices haven’t been great—I don’t need him to tell me that. And I don’t have to answer to him. We don’t…we’re not…

  “We’re not friends,” I tell him, because technically, that’s the truth. Ask anyone, and they’ll testify to it. There are even pictures and videos and a couple of magazine articles that could be admitted into evidence.

  Except I don’t know if that is still true after what happened in the hospital. He only kissed my cheek, but I felt it everywhere. I’m still feeling it. Everywhere.

  Massimo arches an eyebrow, nodding a little like he’s considering my answer. If my heart was racing before, it’s probably registering on the Richter scale by now.

  What is wrong with me that I’m always such a bitch to him, even when he’s trying to be nice? I hate the idea that we’re always going to be enemies, but it also can’t just come from him. I have to try too.

  He crouches in front of my chair, his gloved hand landing on my knee. I jump back out of instinct and glance toward my crew, but they’re too busy to notice: rushing around to get my bike ready for tomorrow.

  “Ah, Tigrotta,” Massimo drawls. “We could be friends.”

  He winks and puckers a kiss at me, and—

  Oh yeah. That’s why.

  I knock his hand off my leg, storming to my feet so abruptly that he falls backward on his ass. “Don’t touch me. Ever.”

  He rolls his eyes but stands calmly, his boots squeaking against the floor as he
brushes off the backs of his leathers. But there’s also something in his expression that looks…almost like he’s happy I’m mad at him? Like it was exactly what he wanted.

  God, he’s such a dick.

  “Bene, Lulu. I only came to say that it is supposed to rain tonight and the track will be fast domani. The second turn—the Dunlop—you need to brake a little sooner than you like. And same in ten and eleven.”

  My head jerks back. “I know the track, ass.”

  “Not like this. And now is not the time to be taking risks, Lorina. Now is the time to let your body heal. If you want to get better, you need to think about being safe.”

  My eyes narrow. I know Massimo, and with as many times as he’s gone after me, trusting my life to the pads and plates I wear, I know this isn’t about me being safe. It’s about him taking advantage of me being vulnerable, planting doubts, and making sure he wins.

  It’s always about who wins.

  “You’d like that, wouldn’t you? For me to doubt myself. Well, guess what? I made it through practice and qualifying without your help.”

  He shakes his head. “Per poco. Only by a little.”

  My back stiffens. I may be starting in tenth place, but it’s better than twentieth. I only wobbled twice, and I didn’t crash.

  “You need to leave,” I tell him. “I have a race to prepare for, and somehow, I don’t think your little freak-out is part of what my premier manufacturer would consider a suitable pep talk.” Not to mention that Billy would officially lose it if he knew his teammate was giving me pointers before a race.

  Massimo grits his teeth, taking another step closer. “If you are afraid, they will know, Lorina. And they will use it against you. So I am asking you, as your friend, to think about something other than a trophy for once in your life.”

  My heart slams in my chest for a whole new reason, and it has everything to do with how stone-cold serious he is. At the concern in his eyes, searching every facet of my features as if this may be the last time he sees me.

  I can’t afford to catch his fear when I have enough of my own.

  I lift my chin. “I’m not scared of them. And I’m not quitting.”

  “Lori,” Frank calls over. When I look at him, he waves me toward him.

  “Do me a favor,” I say to Massimo, waiting until he steps back. “Don’t ever come in my garage again. I don’t need you spoiling my victory tomorrow with your rider beware bullshit.”

  I push past him, joining Frank and Gianni huddled around a new readout. When I check over my shoulder, Massimo is thankfully on his way out, his shoulders taut and his hand raking harshly through his hair.

  So much for not being afraid of anything.

  ***

  Locked in place by the red lights, I stare straight ahead at the coming turns of Le Mans, the world tinted through my face shield and my bike rumbling beneath me. My hands tighten into fists, and I knock them together, fighting through the ache of my broken bones.

  I refuse to sink. I will defy those who question my loyalty to the sport I love. I will work harder, train longer, give the middle finger to the fear vibrating in my veins. Once my hands stop shaking.

  I did fine during the warm-up lap. Not great, but not awful. Now, I’ve got seventy-three miles of tight first gear corners, conquered by braking just a little too late and then barreling out of the turn, my future hanging on how much traction my rear tire can claim.

  Rolling out my neck and my left shoulder, I blow out a long, smooth breath. I already know, just like Massimo warned my manager—this is going to hurt. Everywhere.

  The crowd rages, my eyes surveying the grandstands and the sun too bright for the day. Cameras pan and rise on cranes, the world full of disjointed colors on rippling flags and signs, some with my name on them, most not.

  I wonder if it was the same for Alberto Puig before he crashed so badly that Le Mans was taken out of the circuit after being declared unsafe. It took five years before the track was back in play, following a behemoth of safety improvements. Too bad nothing is safe enough when you spend your life on a tight wire, bridging wildly fun and terribly dangerous.

  People still crash here. They still get hurt, and some die. All while one hundred thousand spectators look down upon us, some worried over whether we will make it back in one piece, some foaming at the mouth for the opposite. And those who are eager to see the blood spill, like Romans rooting on soon-to-be-buried gladiators, are not all in the stands.

  Santos looks back at me from the fourth pole, and it’s a sight I can’t stand: not just him but the endless tailpipes in front of me. That I’m staring down the backs of nine other men instead of having a clear path ahead.

  Even from the distance between us, I can tell Santos’s shoulders are shaking in laughter when he looks forward. I haven’t spoken to him since the crash, and I won’t. If I get close to him, I’ll do something incredibly rash and risk my career even more than he did. The only chance I have at any sort of revenge is to make sure that when we cross the finish line, I’m first.

  Winning is the only thing that matters. The only thing that’s ever mattered.

  I focus on the clock tower. Bile rises in my throat. The red lights look like sirens on an ambulance. Like blood, my blood, spilt and thickly dripping, staining the steel gray of the track that seems more like a morgue slab than a trampoline to immortality.

  The red lights disappear. I flinch, pushing off seconds late.

  ***

  My left side slams hard into the ground, ungodly pain surging through my already-broken body.

  I cry out in my helmet from the white heat of it burning me everywhere, straining to keep my head off the track as momentum slingshots me toward the curbstone. Blue sky laughs above, clouds tinted the color of lead fleeing in the opposite direction with a speed too fast to be real. My arms cover my head, terrified of the tires of the four men who were behind me. For the one who warned me to go slow, but I didn’t listen, because all I cared about was winning.

  My eyes squeeze shut, listening to them coming around the corner, and for the longest half second of my life, I pray for gravel. When I find it, I pray for death.

  The curbstone is a launch pad, spiraling me toward the sky. When my shoulder and hip crash back onto the ground, the pain rips me apart all over again.

  A yelp tears from my lips as I tuck my hands into my body, protecting them as I roll without end. My helmet bangs the earth, and I squeeze my eyes shut against the torture of tumbling over leagues of rocks, trying to center myself through the dizziness.

  Somewhere in the middle, the cold hands of physics reach up and grab me, and my roll morphs into a long skid on my back. My heart pounds as the tire wall encroaches, my eyes searching in desperate flings for my bike. She’s tearing up the bailout four feet away, gouging a line of failure with her right side fairings. But she’s not flipping, not coming for me.

  I plant my feet, my body catapulting up until I’m running through the gravel. My ankle shrieks and tries to roll as people burst from behind the gate: safety officials and medics running toward me. They’re gonna have to get over it.

  I turn and bolt toward my bike.

  I’m three feet away from her when vertigo takes me.

  My knees hit first, the world tilting sideways as blurred people rush closer from my right. I tip farther and finally fall, my screwed left shoulder catching the brunt of my weight. I shout in agony, squirming onto my back and still cradling my hand to my chest as medics swarm in, the crowd growing silent.

  I was there. I was right there.

  “Mademoiselle Hargrove, stay still until the ambulance can arrive,” someone says in a French accent. “You are going to be okay.”

  “No.” My voice is thick with tears as I roll onto my stomach. “I can keep going.”

  “We need to check you first… Your health is more i
mportant.”

  I bat away the medics. “I’m fine! Just get her up!”

  This is my job, and no matter how much I want to quit right now, I can’t.

  A scream tears out of my throat when my wrist gives, my chest slamming back to earth. Dusty gravel becomes a cloud of lonely horror, and I bite back another sob as I pull my wrist under my chin, trying to stand once more. Encouraging applause from the French spectators finds me when I get to my feet, stumbling toward my bike.

  Why didn’t I listen to him?

  “Mademoiselle Hargrove!”

  “Get her up!” I scream at the medics. I grab hold of the handlebars and pull with everything I have, using all the muscles in my back and legs. Something sharp bites through my lower spine, the pain in my shoulder and ribs nearly buckling me. I try again, but at 300 lbs. and my body barely held together with ACE bandages and aspirin, she’s too heavy for me to lift on my own.

  I’m not strong enough to do this.

  It takes four of us to get her vertical, setting her on her thankfully still-inflated tires. I swing my leg over, praying she’s rideable. Her right fairings are fucked, the front forks scuffed, but they don’t look bent. I can’t tell if the swingarm is damaged. I start the engine, and it stalls.

  “Come on!” I yell, starting her again. Her engine barks and then snarls to life, loud and angry. I freeze. This new bike hates me. I can feel it in my bones.

  The blast of motorcycles rushes past on the turn behind me, sounding faster than ever, their engines a demonic snarl that used to be a symphony. Fury and shame clench my throat as I watch them fly past: orange and red and yellow and blue. Freaking blue.

  They all see me, here, in the dirt. That alone should be enough to have me peeling out behind them, but all I can do is close my eyes, trying to stifle the noose of fear around my neck.

  I don’t know if I can do this.

  “Mademoiselle,” a medic says. “Please, let us check you. You can race another day.”

  His hand lies on my arm, and I flinch away from his touch, my eyes flying open. Nausea swarms me from the recollection of having my shoulder snapped back into place without the doctors waiting until I was unconscious or at least under the influence of numbing painkillers.