Wreckless

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Wreckless Page 12

by Katie Golding


  I glance down, realizing my hand is clenched in a fist over my heart, and I recross my arms. He’s fine. It doesn’t stop the ice crystalizing down my back when Massimo appears on my screen, a microphone in his face.

  “I am verbally giving you express permission this one time—”

  “Both of you shut up!” I snap.

  Something-something in Italian, the guy on the TV says, then my name, and that’s when Massimo’s eyes change. But it’s not just his eyes. His whole face changes from frustrated to feral, defensive to predatory, and the guy interviewing him goes dead freaking silent. Massimo walks off.

  “Wha…” I sputter, but when I check the subtitles, I barely get a chance to mutter, “Oh no” before the image on the screen changes to the photo from last year. “Shit!”

  “See?” Billy says. “This is why we don’t watch this crap. Mason, turn it off.”

  “You turn it off! And stop telling me what to do all the time!”

  I claw my hands through my hair, but the damage is done. Has been for a while. And it was just another simple little crash, except that time, we crashed together.

  He claims I hit him. I distinctly recall the opposite. But considering we both received a pit lane start penalty and walked away, no one cares about that. What they still can’t shut up about was the picture of us squaring off in the dirt, which, if it hadn’t caused such a PR nightmare, I might have appreciated for the artistry.

  But screw that.

  The day is gorgeous in the background, the colors vivid and bright, and it’s an expertly framed shot of Massimo leaning toward me, full tilt, screaming in my face. His arm is outstretched over my shoulder because he was telling me to get out of said face, and sport, and country, and life, and I…

  I am perfectly opposite him. Black MotoA leathers to his white ones. Also screaming. My braid blowing gloriously in the wind. Flipping him off with both my middle fingers.

  The photo graced the cover of every Italian newspaper, motorcycle magazine, sports show, and even a couple of late nights in the United States with the caption “No Mercy for Wreckless.”

  They’ll probably still be showing it at my funeral.

  The anchors on the sportscast share a presumptuous look that does nothing for my mood, but thankfully, they cut to a clip of Giovanni Marchesa celebrating his win.

  “Hey, they didn’t show me,” Mason complains. “How come I never get any love from the sports shows?”

  The hotel door unlocks, and I rush to grab the remote and change the channel, but I barely get it clicked to an action movie before Frank booms behind us, “Okay, so that’s done. International flights are still cancelled. Breakfast is downstairs in the morning. Billy and Mason, get out.”

  Mason flinches and looks at me, but my eyes are darting past him to gauge Billy’s reaction. “I’ll call you back.” He lowers his phone and slowly rises. Sometimes, I forget how tall he is until he unfolds all the way like that. “Everything okay?”

  “Yeah, of course,” Frank says, smiling and fidgety and waving him off. “You and Mason just…go to Mason’s room and hang out for a minute. Play cards or something. I need to talk to Lori. About a, uh, birthday gift. For her mom.”

  Liar. Her birthday was three weeks ago, and Frank sent her a bottle of Dalmore 25.

  Mason looks between us. “So…go talk to Lori in her room. Why we gotta move to mine? I already took my boots off.”

  Frank doesn’t react as Billy rolls his eyes, then grabs his brother by the scruff of his neck and hauls him up, marching him toward the door. “We’ll be next door,” he says to Frank, glancing back at me with a pitying look just before he shuts it behind himself and Mason.

  Billy sent my mom flowers for her birthday. Like he’s done every year since he first worked for her. He knows this isn’t about her.

  I turn back to the TV. It’s nearly impossible to look at Frank. He’s always so upbeat and more confident in me than I am in myself. It’s exactly why I can’t stand to see the disappointment on his face. I’m falling apart just when I finally made it. And the fact that it’s even happening…it feels like someone’s playing a bad joke.

  This wasn’t supposed to happen to me. The most focused, most dedicated. Racing has been the only thing I’ve thought of for as long as I can remember. I don’t even rodeo anymore, unlike some people.

  “So we can do this in a funny accent…” Frank rubs his hands together as he comes around to stand in front of me. “Or we can make up some rule like we’re not allowed to use the letter T—your choice of letter banishment, of course—but either way, we’re talking about this.”

  I shake my head, changing to another channel. Some cooking show. Lots of butter. “We’re not. Go deal with Mason or Billy. His ankle is bothering him again.”

  Frank sighs. “Ignoring what’s happening isn’t going to help you or anyone. You have to face it sooner or later, and I’m not above printing it on a billboard. I’ll even use that picture from your eleventh birthday with your cake smashed in your face, and you’ve played poker with me, girlie. You know I suck at bluffing.”

  I turn off the TV, then look at him, furious. “I don’t have to face anything, because everything is going to be fine!”

  Frank’s eyes flare, his jaw locked tight. I swallow, shrinking into the tufted sofa. I never talk to him like that. Mason does sometimes when the pressure gets to him, but Billy and I don’t.

  “Now is not the time to turn on me.” Frank’s voice is deep with a lack of humor that shrinks me to about six inches. “This is the time for us to pull together and figure out what we’re going to do. Because I can’t…I can’t keep making promises I don’t know if we can keep.”

  My heart seizes, everything in me going cold as I look up at him. “What promises?”

  My manager swallows, his eyes softening along with his voice. “I just got off the phone with Dabria. After three crashes and with no sign of improvement in your practices or qualifying, along with the fact that the constructor is technically right in telling them it’s not a tire issue or anything mechanical that’s causing the problem—”

  “But my gear—”

  “Has been cleared by Dabria and your sponsors and everyone else repeatedly, and now…your contract is coming into question.”

  I clench my hands into fists to keep them from flying to my mouth in horror. It’s happening. I always knew it was there, and at my worst, I told myself it could happen. That it would happen. But self-deprecating internal threats and someone actually taking your bike away are two entirely different things.

  My gaze drifts from Frank to the open curtains, the lights of the city shining just outside. Stars twinkle as my entire future flashes and blinks out before me: packed stadiums flicker into empty fields, podiums melting into suffocating horse stalls. It takes everything I have to keep my voice steady. “What’s the condition? How close are we to being in breach?”

  Moving slowly, as if his movements ache, Frank slumps into the overstuffed chair Billy was just in. Guilt owns me. He must be exhausted after days of watching me fumble during practice and qualifying, then crashing again at the Sachsenring. “It’s not a breach per se. But the only way to ward off replacement by a wild card rider is for your point tallies to be higher and to climb faster. They want to be on the podium for World Champion.”

  My eyes close. Holy hell. Before, I would’ve laughed. It would’ve seemed so simple. Too simple. Now? I may as well have to lug my bike up the Himalayas. “Can that even happen?”

  Frank clears his throat.

  I open my eyes and look at him, my voice cracking when I repeat, “Is it even mathematically possible for me to make the podium?”

  He nods, his hands folded in his lap. “It’s possible. But it’s going to take everything, absolutely everything, plus a miracle or two that I don’t want to wish happening to anyone else.” He lea
ns forward, resting his elbows on his knees as he stares me down. “There is no room for mistakes anymore, Lorelai.”

  My jaw drops. “I’m not making them on purpose! I’m doing the best I can, and I don’t care what everyone says. I know what’s right, and there’s still a problem with my safety equipment, and you know it too, Frank.”

  I’ve never felt unsafe on my bike. I’ve taken too many safety seminars to count, and I’ve even promised little kids there’s nothing to be afraid of as long as you’re wearing the right gear. But when I saw my bike coming for my face, I knew it wouldn’t make a difference. That nothing would keep my skull from crushing, my neck from snapping.

  It did—keep my skull intact, my neck safe. I don’t know how. No one knows how. No one seems to know what happened to my helmet either, seeing as it disappeared from Jerez before the officials could get their hands on it. But they said not to worry. Just keep trusting in the equipment, since it obviously works.

  It doesn’t feel like it to me.

  Sure, I’ve always walked away. Yes, I walked away this time. But every crash, my equipment gets weaker. Cracks. Splinters. Stress. And I’m checking it constantly, but no one sees the wear in it that I do. No one will replace it when I say the plates are too thin, that my helmet doesn’t feel right. They just keep putting me back on the bike, and it’s not my fault I can’t find the speed I need when I’m gauging how many Gs my chest plate can take before it shatters and pierces my sternum like buckshot.

  “The fact that you believe that…” Frank shakes his head, then rises, heading toward the door of the hotel room. “We may as well go home tomorrow and not come back.”

  The door slams behind him, and I flinch. How the hell is that supposed to make me feel any better?

  ***

  Back in my own hotel room, I repack my suitcase for the sixth time in the last ten minutes. I tug and curse once more at my jeans sticking out of the side of my carry-on, needing to be ready to board the plane home to Memphis the very minute I can. But the hem is caught in the zipper, and it won’t come free.

  “That’s it!” I give up, completely melting down by the time I sit on the edge of the bed. My stiff and aching shoulders curl in on a choked sob that I don’t let reach the geometric carpet or the silk striped wallpaper.

  Nine races down, ten to go, and that’s it. These could be the last ten races of my career.

  My head hangs at the thought, a cold emptiness spreading through me. It feels like the dark desert in my nightmares, and I shiver under the chains of failure, the desolate nothingness when I try to imagine what else my life could be. But it’s impossible. There was only ever winning. Only ever racing.

  The worst part is that it’s not just my bike I’m losing. It’s not just the life or the speed. It’s the people. My crew who I’ll never see again. Frank will be busy managing Billy and Mason and no longer with me every day, nine months of the year. I’m going to lose whatever weird, broken, and backward relationship Massimo and I have been piecing together.

  Pull it together, Hargrove.

  I lift my head and wipe the tears off my face, making myself breathe and trying to dislodge the thoughts before they stick. I can’t break yet. I can’t think this way. I have time to figure this out. Three weeks of home. Of horses and my closet and my mom. Of Taryn and Billy bickering every minute they’re not sneaking off to have sex, and Mason following them around like a lost dog because he doesn’t know what to do if someone’s not telling him what not to do.

  Closing my eyes, I push away the smell of circulated air and imagine the smell of the barn and the color of the dirt, the weight of reins in my hand, and the hard seat of my saddle on my mare’s back. I know that life, that world. It may not be my favorite, but I know it, and Mason was right. It’s exactly what I need.

  Then my phone rings.

  I don’t even look at it, just unfurling on my bed and pulling one of the spare pillows over my face. My mind bleats how it could be my mom with news of the foals, or maybe it’s Taryn, finally off the phone with Billy and ready to regale me with a curse-filled retelling of her latest catfight with Miette. But I already know who is calling me.

  It happens after every race now, and there’s nothing he can say I want to hear. But there’s also something weirdly comforting in the fact that he lets it ring until it goes to voicemail. He doesn’t know how to give up.

  I wonder if that’ll change once I lose my contract and he no longer respects me as a racer—if he ever did. He may have been right not to.

  My phone chimes with a new message. I groan, my masochistic tendencies out to play when I toss the pillow to the side, then check the voicemail.

  “Lorina, you cannot hide from me forever. Answer your phone, or I will come to your room.”

  Empty threat. He doesn’t know where I am.

  Then again, he’ll probably have Vinicio call Frank and find out (which is how he got my phone number), and then Massimo will burst through the door, because subtlety is not his style.

  My phone rings again, and I roll my eyes, answering. “What?”

  “You went too big on turn thirteen—”

  I hang up. I wasn’t the only person who crashed today, and the hypocrite needs to focus on his own recovery—if he even has any injuries—rather than blowing up my phone. It’s not like I ever have answers to the facts he shoves down my throat every Sunday night: the endless list of mistakes I’m making.

  I study the telemetry readouts, and I memorize them and plan like I’m supposed to. But when I’m on the track, I can barely remember how to shift gears, much less how to push them to the limits.

  I don’t know how I ever did half the stuff I did.

  A few minutes go by, then my phone rings again. God only knows why, but I accept the call. Maybe it has to do with the fact that Taryn has been impossible to reach lately, completely caught up in her and Billy’s new chapter of ranch ownership. So it sometimes feels like Massimo is all I have in the world. Him and Tigrotta.

  I hold the phone to my ear, covering the receiver so he won’t hear me when I take a shaky breath, trying to hold it together.

  “Lorina,” he says, his voice calm. “You are Wreckless. You are Centauro. So be Wreckless. Be Centauro.”

  I nod, even though he can’t see me through the phone.

  “Today was difficult. It is okay, Lorina. Domani, we will do better.”

  “Okay,” I breathe, wiping at my face and sniffling.

  He pauses for a moment, and his voice is so soft that I barely hear him. “Per favore, cara, non piangere.”

  My eyes close, my shoulders shaking in exhausted laughter. I’m monumentally drained, incredibly sore, and so confused as to why it’s comforting that he never cares I don’t speak Italian. “I don’t understand what you said.”

  But the only answer I get from Massimo is, “Not today. Maybe domani. Maybe tomorrow, I will tell you.”

  I let out a quiet laugh. “Fine. Be like that.”

  Massimo clears his throat, apparently not in the hurry to hang up that he usually is. At least there’s no muffled club music in the background; half the time he calls, I can barely hear a word he says. But it’s an easy way to tell it’s him, especially when it’s super late and he doesn’t say anything after I answer. Probably pocket dialing me.

  I get up and wander over to my bag—which now unzips no problem—then I take out Tigrotta and carry her back to my bed, sitting up against the pillows.

  “You have been crying, even before I called you,” he says.

  “It’s fine,” I lie, smoothing my hand over Tigrotta’s orange and black stripes.

  “Dabria…did they stop your contract?”

  He says it so easily. Like it’s not the worst possible thing that could ever, ever happen. The very words make my stomach lurch into my throat, and I know, I know, I shouldn’t answer. My contra
ct isn’t his business, especially when he rides for a competing manufacturer. Billy would completely lose what’s left of his shit if he knew Massimo and I were even talking about this stuff.

  Still, it’s Massimo. And technically, I’ve known him longer than I’ve known Billy. It’s the excuse I cling to as I hear myself mutter, “They’re thinking about it. I have to place on the podium for World Champion. But after this weekend, I don’t even know if they’re gonna bring me back after the break.” My heart aches at the possibility I have no idea how to face, how close I am to having nothing to do with my days, my life. No purpose, no place. “Frank said we were gonna prep for Czech Republic like normal but to be ready for them to call up a wild card.”

  Silence.

  Massimo blows out a breath. “Okay.” His voice is stronger the second time. “Okay.”

  “Okay? That’s easy for you to say. When was the last time you finished lower than—”

  “Basta. Enough,” he interrupts. “You…this…this is not Lorina. Not the Tigrotta who fought for her place in moto when people said there was no place for you.”

  My mouth twists, memories flooding me that feel like they belong to someone else. “Is that what I did?”

  “This fear you are letting control you, it is death, Lorina. And now…” He hesitates, then grits out, “You are dying.”

  “I don’t know how to fix it,” I whisper, ashamed. “The more I try, the worse it gets. And there’s…something’s wrong with my safety gear like it’s—”

  “Cosa? Has your constructor said this? Is this with your helmet, Lorina, or your plates or…?”

  “All of it. It feels like it’s all just gonna…shatter. And they keep telling me nothing’s wrong with it, but I don’t know, Massimo. It doesn’t feel right. And they don’t believe me.”

  He blows out another breath, then starts muttering to himself in Italian, and my whole heart is in my chest over what he’s going to say when he switches back to English. Whether he’s going to be on my side or theirs. “Lorina, you should come sit with me.”

 

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