Fearless

by Katie Golding

  Everything, just everything—my ankle, my relationship, my whole life—it’s all so goddamn broken, and I don’t…

  I don’t even know where to start. I don’t know how to do anything without her anymore.

  Chapter 6

  Taryn Ledell—Back Then

  Kentucky was light-years away.

  “Magnifique, Colton,” the photographer praised my teammate again. The press room was pitch-black, neon streaks running down the dark walls with our six-foot-high numbers propped against them. Sweltering lights blasted from the ceiling, our bikes docked beside us, and a giant fan blew the potent scent of som tam and gai yang and, like, four different curries and a shit ton of rice that were set up on the craft services table.

  Everything we’d done a hundred times before, but I was having a harder time than ever swallowing the price of it all. Especially with Colton’s hand glued to my hip.

  One night. How could one night with one guy, two years before, be such a damn mistake?

  He kept towering over me as my gaze burned a hole into the wall behind his shoulder, Colton wearing the exact same leathers I did, apart from the different patches of his individual sponsors. His muddy hair was waxed, flat-ironed, and expertly tousled, and his whole soul reeked of some cologne I couldn’t name but was sure he’d probably paid too much for at the outlet mall in his New Jersey hometown.

  “Taryn, arch your back, head up, up, up!”

  Ugh. I wondered what Billy’s press shoots were like. Probably forward facing and not a single close-up of the swell of his dick in his leathers. Opposed to my infinite portfolio of side-boob shots.

  “What is wrong with you today?” Colton lugged me closer, my stomach complaining and the gluten wrecking my system threatening to rear its ugly head once more. Hopefully all over my so-called teammate. “Is this about that guy you met?”

  Dolly Parton, give me strength.

  I hadn’t wanted to tell Colton about Billy—it was so completely none of his goddamn business—but it was a convenient way to get him to back off once we landed in Australia and started our press circuit for the season. Or I thought it would be.

  All it had actually done was spur on his advances more; he hadn’t been able to shut up about me and Billy since leaving Phillip Island and heading to Thailand for the Chang International Circuit. I probably should’ve expected it when Colton lived to win, and I had accidentally served up a new rival to overtake. But as far as I was concerned, there was never a competition in the first place.

  If there was, Colton had totally lost two years before. Right around the time he stopped going down on me, moments before I was gonna climax, only to say, “You cool with butt stuff?”

  No, I was not cool with “butt stuff.”

  “Yo, hold up!” Sheldon called. I peeked over to find my publicist jogging my way. “Just a minute there, baby girl.” He smacked his gum in my face in a way that dripped of his New York advertising roots, fidgeting with my helmet and messing with my hair-sprayed ponytail. “See you been hitting the gym, eh?”

  I closed my eyes, praying again for strength, or maybe peace, or anything to keep my tongue and fists still as he pinched at my leathers over my hips and tugged up, making my wedgie even worse. And no, I hadn’t been hitting the gym. I’d been hitting the toilet with nonstop diarrhea and puking since someone had lied to me at some point the day before, and I had been glutened.

  Totally and completely glutened.

  “All right, baby girl, ass is looking tight now,” Sheldon said.

  My temper roared in my veins, and I bit my tongue to keep it still.

  “There we go, that’s the money shot…”

  I didn’t have to look to see it: Sheldon backing up, smacking his gum and his hands out in front of him like he was a movie director framing a scene. One that showed only my ass.

  Colton tightened his grip on me. “So tell me more about this new guy.”

  I blocked the spice of his cologne and remembered in detail the pine of an air freshener, dangling from a rearview.

  “Did you tell him about me?” Colton asked.

  I glanced up, disgusted by the smugness in his grin. Five more minutes. Then I was free. “No.”

  “Hey, Taryn! Actually, yeah, look at each other,” Sheldon called out. “This is gonna be great—their chemistry is fantastic!”

  “Now, that doesn’t seem right,” Colton breathed. His hand on my hip spread a little wider, his thumb hidden from the camera dipping a little lower. Toward my parted thighs. “If I was him, I’d want to know that you fucked your teammate.”

  My heart screamed in my chest, and all I wanted was to shove at his. I’d been new to the sport—young, vulnerable, reeling with culture shock—and he totally took advantage of me. I found out pretty damn quick who he really was.

  But it didn’t matter how much I hated him. It didn’t matter how much I wanted to punch that smirk off his face. I wasn’t in a position to throw fits. Not if I wanted to keep my job.

  “Taryn, if you could now turn around, s’il vous plaît.” The photographer twirled his finger at me.

  Finally. I knocked Colton’s hand from my hip and turned all the way forward, moving my helmet between us, determined not to listen to another word out of his wretched mouth. I was a professional, and I could get through the photo shoot. Then his ass was mine on the track: three practice sessions, two superpoles, two races, and there was only going to be one winner as far as I was concerned. Anyone but him.

  “Hands on hips, perfect!” the photographer hailed. Sheldon whispered his way, then threw me another thumbs-up. “Lean to me, yes! Fierce eyes, Colton, fierce. So perfect. You’re gorgeous, Taryn, gorgeous! Now, open your mouth for me, chérie.”

  The fuck? Who stands around with their mouth open like they were a frog catching flies? But I knew exactly what this was about and what Sheldon hoped men would imagine putting in my mouth and why they would buy countless magazines to do so.

  My eyes searched for my manager as Colton snickered, everything in me so far past exhausted and with so much more in the day still left to do. But between the Thai makeup girls, the hair stylist, and the modelesque assistant hired to guard the cappuccino machine no one had even looked at, Mike was nowhere to be found. The jagged line in my heart cracked a little further.

  A room full of people, and no one to save me.

  There wasn’t anything else to do. I told myself, like I’d done too many times before, that I was fully dressed in my bulky racing leathers: angelic white and liquid-fast blue. I reminded myself how I’d fought through hell for the chance to even wear them, and I wasn’t going to give up hitting heavenly speeds while an engine roared between my legs just because I was flashing my bottom row of teeth. I knew my worth.

  Fuck it.

  “Su-per, Taryn,” the photographer schmoozed, creeping ever closer. “Little more, beauté.”

  I dropped my jaw another click, tilting forward and desperately wishing the acid sloshing in my stomach would choose another time to make an appearance. I didn’t have the time or the energy to keep throwing up anymore.

  “I know you, Taryn,” Colton whispered beside me. “And this guy may like you now, but he’s gonna bail when he figures it out.”

  His voice swept over me like a plague. I wouldn’t take the bait. I focused on every other person in the room, every other sound. A side door opened, my manager, Mike, finally coming inside. One look at me and his big brown eyes drooped like a bloodhound’s, his hand covering his face.

  “More,” the photographer begged between every snap of the camera, the guy squatting down and crawling toward us. “Chin up, up!” Lights blared in my eyes, blinding me, nausea rippling out as a cold sweat under my leathers. None of it saved me from hearing Colton’s words between the clicks of the camera as the photographer kept begging, “More.”

  “I know
what you look like, sound like, taste like…” The words dripped thick and slow from Colton’s polluted tongue. “I’ll always have been inside you before he was.”

  The acid erupted like a volcano up my throat, gagging me and spewing out toward the photographer. He toppled backward in his crouch, vomit painting his front. “Merde!”

  Mike ran toward me as I stumbled forward, clasping my hand over my mouth. “Taryn!”

  Tears bit at my eyes, shame and disgust roiling through me and calling up another wave when I heard Colton’s voice again.

  “Oh, fucking sick!”

  “My camera!”

  Mike caught and steadied me, tucking me against his burly chest. The long hairs of his beard tickled the back of my neck, the smell of peppermint Life Savers flooding my senses. I couldn’t find the strength to stand all the way up, but it didn’t matter.

  “I gotcha, T,” Mike breathed on repeat, fixing his grip on me and turning us so I was thankfully shielded from everyone’s prying eyes.

  More peppermint floated down to me on his breath, my teased and sculpted ponytail like sandpaper against my cheek. Sour axes bit at my throat, my heart hamming out of control as goose bumps raked over my skin.

  “What happened?” Sheldon yelled. “Is she pregnant? What the hell is this?”

  Pissed-off French followed, and I squeezed my eyes shut, telling myself to suck it up.

  “She just needs some water and a minute. She’ll be fine.” Mike patted my back, breathing down to me, “Come on, T. I know you’re hurting, but we gotta get this done.”

  I nodded and somehow, somehow, pulled myself upright. I kept my hand over my mouth, taking a sorry kiss on my temple from Mike, then shuffled off toward the bathroom.

  With the door firmly shut, I was able to block the bickering in three different accents. I didn’t look at myself in the mirror, keeping my eyes down as I scooped water into my mouth, gargled and spit, then repeated until I couldn’t spare any more time. But I’d almost gotten the taste all the way out. Almost.

  What a fucking disaster. And only the second track of the season. At least the racing, the actual racing, made it all worth it.

  Still, I bet Billy didn’t have to put up with this shit.

  * * *

  Three turns to go. Two hundred and ninety kilometers an hour. And I was right on Colton’s ass.

  Taste this, motherfucker.

  The world blurred by as my tires clung to the track with everything they had left, the earth flat and hot and chewing up my rubber faster than I could burn it down. But the sky was blue and the stands were full, the Thai fans on their feet and bellowing out their cheers and chants every time we soared past.

  My pulse thundered in my ears, sweat soaking through my leathers and pooling in my sports bra. Nineteen grueling laps, giving it everything I had. But my bike was liquid speed, strong and vibrating and mine. And as my eyes zeroed in on the coming turn, fury and determination blazed hot through every single one of my bones.

  They may have published those pictures of my ass all over the world, but I swore to myself that it was fine. Good, even. Because when it mattered, all Colton—or anyone else on this racetrack—would ever see was the back of me. They may as well get used to it.

  Colton hung his leg in preparation for the turn, both of us downshifting once, then twice. The growl of his transmission was a perfect match to mine, but Colton’s Jersey style was always sloppy. In everything he did.

  Hundredths of a second ahead of us, Sophie Bennett—my best friend on the circuit and a devilishly fast Brit—leaned perfectly into turn ten. Half a heartbeat later, Colton moseyed into the apex like he was cruising the boardwalk. I kept my knee tucked. Waited to brake until the last moment. Then I cut past him sharply on the inside, my body laid flat and the track whizzing past my helmet.

  G-forces clenched my muscles as gravity called to me like the toxic lover she is. But my lean angle was perfect, and a grin took my lips as Colton’s bike seemingly streaked backward beside me.

  “Shit!” I heard him yell as I popped the clutch and accelerated through the rest of the turn, yanking my bike vertical and riding the torque into a wheelie more than I should’ve. But fuck it. A satisfied roar barreled out of my lungs, tingling from my hair to my boots as I let myself feel every delicious lick of the victory, securing second place.

  Two turns to go…

  Sophie was dead ahead, her black and neon-green Kentaro bike clearly holding first place. She barely touched the soft right of turn eleven before ducking down in the straight to turn twelve. Damn, that woman could find a line. Pride knocked at my heart for her, but she and I would celebrate later. We always did, no matter who finished where.

  The fans started calling her home, the checkered flag out and dangling above the finish line. I glanced over my shoulder to check the gap between me and my dick of a teammate. But Miette Serieux and her Dabria Atrani were cutting around Colton with the precision of a deadly red shark on the hunt.

  Ha ha, fucker!

  Then Miette ducked low, coming for me.

  Oh shit!

  I bent low over my MMW, my adrenaline climbing as I pushed my engine faster, faster, my biggest threats closing in from behind while my best friend stayed the course ahead, the last turn of the race upon all three of us.

  Sixth gear, fifth, fourth, third gear, and lean…

  * * *

  “I don’t think tha’ was a fair question,” Sophie slurred into her lotion bottle in her best/worst Colton impression. “Clearly, I was having mechanical problems today. But my team will have it sorted before Aragón, you can bet my spermy hair gel on it.”

  I burst out into laughter at her subsequent finger guns, accidentally spitting champagne all over her rose-gold bedspread and silk pillow.

  “Girl!” Sophie swiped her bottle of celebratory champagne from my hands, chuckling as she took another deep swig.

  “Sorry! Stop making me laugh.”

  “Like it’s hard when he’s such a wanker,” she said, passing the bottle back to me. Not that I needed to drink more when we’d been celebrating in her RV since escaping the rager on the paddock. All in her most well-deserved honor.

  Predictably, Colton had pouted and grumbled through all our postrace interviews, refusing to congratulate me or Sophie. I’d never felt prouder.

  “Okay, moment of truth.” Sophie clasped me by the shoulders, fierce determination in her eyes. “Are you too drunk for this? Because honestly? I’m too drunk to do it myself.”

  I trilled a low kitty growl through my teeth.

  “Stop flirting with me, you American milkmaid.”

  I cracked up laughing again, nearly doubled over sideways.

  “Can you do this? Or am I better off shaving it again and going full Lupita?”

  “Yeah.” I chuckled, setting down the champagne bottle and holding out my arms. “I got this.” What I got was Sophie collapsing backward into my lap with a happy sigh.

  I shook my head with a smile, dropping a kiss to her forehead before I started smoothing down her edges. It honestly kinda sucked that I hadn’t met her until I was in my twenties. Sophie just got me, never expected me to be perfect, just real. And she didn’t judge me, no matter what.

  “Are your hands clean?” she suddenly snapped.

  I rolled my eyes. “Clean enough. Now sit up.” I hoisted her forward, then very carefully, I started to part and twist her hair into a tuck and roll. Not that I was probably doing the best job of it in our wobbly condition. “Moment of truth,” I said once I’d finished, Sophie groaning as she got up and stumbled her way to her bag. She took out two mirrors, holding them up to check my work.

  I only got half a lip snarl. I must’ve been improving.

  “Good enough,” she said, tossing down the mirrors and grabbing up a silk scarf. I got up and turned down her bedcovers a
s she tied it around her hair with expert speed. But I only barely had the sheets turned down when she hip-checked me out of the way, then crawled into bed, hugging her pillow with a warm moan.

  “Congratulations,” I whispered with a smile, covering her up.

  “Mmm, you too,” she moaned again, patting my hand once she found it on her shoulder. “Say hi to Cowboy Billy for me.”

  I snorted, carefully adjusting her head wrap so it covered a section she missed. Then I backed up and turned off the lights, shutting her door behind me. “She’s out,” I whispered to her manager, taking a sleepy high five from Derrick, dozing on the RV’s sofa.

  “Have a good night. And hey—congrats again. Hell of a race today.”

  I smiled my way out of Sophie’s RV, then headed to my own, rushing through my shower and barely even getting all the soap off my body after scrubbing myself clean of racing exhaust and sticky champagne. Heading to my room, I traded my towel for my favorite Baylor sweatshirt, not even bothering to hang up my leathers before I practically dove into my bed.

  The world outside might’ve been bustling with people, food, music, languages, and the pure beauty that was Buriram. But inside my cell phone was a whole other world: one with Osage orange trees and sunny fields and a slow-drawled cowboy who smiled sweetly next to his golden horse.

  I stretched out and covered up, my legs sore from racing and my abs sore from puking over the past couple of days. But a smile was already spreading across my face, flutters all a-fluttering when a quick swipe of my thumb opened my phone straight to my messages.

  I don’t know what these are called.

  But I saw them this morning and thought they were pretty.

  m.y.

  A bouquet of wildflowers was propped up against his crossed boots, sunlight raining down and blue skies in the background like he was stretching out in a field somewhere. The ends were still fresh with dirt and roots like he took care when he picked them, not just grabbing and ripping, and a red ribbon was tied around the stems, the petals a delicate mix of soft blues and pastel purples. The image was also focused purely on the bouquet, but when I looked at the blurred background, I could clearly see his horse running around in the pasture.