High Octane

by Ashlinn Craven

  She heard Maddux’s voice from a distance, then felt him next to her on the couch, gathering her, holding her against his warm body. She pulled herself more tightly together.

  “Bad news,” she choked out.

  “So I gathered,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

  “One of my patients—we became friends. She’s been in remission for two years, and now she’s got mets—metastatic cancer.”

  She looked up.

  He looked concerned but puzzled. “She’s dying, Maddux. And she’s got two girls who need her. They need her.” She rubbed at her eyes.

  “Does it always affect you like this?” he asked. “I don’t know how you can take it.”

  “No. Sheila Jamison and her daughters are special. They’re family. My family away from family. I’ve done holidays with them, went camping once. It was hellish.” She smiled at the memory.

  “Yeah?”

  “Oh, yeah. Cold and wet—did I mention it was tent camping at the base of the Sierras and … ” Her eyes welled again. She let out a strangled laugh. “Oh, God. Sheila, she’s about the funniest person alive. God damn it. God damn it all,” she whispered. “It’s never fucking fair.”

  Maddux lay back on the couch, pulling her on top of him. He held her tightly, stroking her hair over and over until she was limp. Spent in the aftermath of grief.

  Cheek pressed to his chest, she listened to the even beat of his heart. No murmur, slight bradycardia—the slow than normal heart rate common in top tier athletes.

  “I need to call her,” she muttered into his sternum.

  “Should you give it some time?” his voice rumbled, amplified by his chest. “You know, so you won’t … ”

  “Lose it? It’s okay if I do. But if it makes you uncomfortable … ”

  “No, of course not.”

  • • •

  Maddux sat silently a foot away as Brynn called her friend.

  “Sheila?” Brynn said, her voice tremulous.

  He made a move toward her, but she huddled further into her corner of the couch.

  She listened intently for a few minutes, then laughed unexpectedly.

  “You didn’t.”

  Brynn curled further into herself. “Oh, Sheila,” she said. “I’ll take care of that. The money is a non-issue. I mean it. If that’s what’s worrying you—” She nodded a few times. “For heaven’s sake, Sheila. They’re good girls. Give them some credit.”

  A few more mmm hmms and nods and then, “I promise I’ll do that, yes. Yes, well, improved circumstances.”

  She snuck him a look.

  Wait. Was she talking about money? And why was she looking at him? Fuck. This was Dylan in the bathroom at the wedding all over again.

  His stomach plummeted. She must have plenty of money of her own. She was a doctor for God’s sake. What had that look been about?

  “I can’t go into the details of it now.” She half turned away from him. “What do you need, woman? A blood oath? You know how much I love the girls.” This said with exasperation and met with laughter on the other end of the phone that he could hear from his end of the couch.

  “How much time?” she asked.

  More nodding and then, “I love you, friend. I’ll be there, before, okay? Tell Kristy Thomas I’ll need a day or two to get back. She’ll know when to call me.”

  The tears were falling, but she was smiling at whatever the other woman was saying. “Okay, love you, bye.”

  Maddux reached for her hand and she held it tightly.

  “Sorry,” he said. He cleared his throat. “Uh, do you need something? For your friend?” He shifted, uncomfortable on the couch, releasing her hand.

  Please don’t let her ask me for money. Please don’t let her ask me for money—

  “What?”

  “Sounded like maybe you needed something.”

  She shook her head, expression puzzled. “Oh, you mean to go back? Yeah, I’d go back now if I could, but I can’t,” She cast another one of those odd, secretive glances his direction.

  Was she going to hit him up for it later? He couldn’t stand it.

  “You talked about money—improved circumstances.”

  “You heard that?”

  “I was sitting right here,” he said, impatiently. “And you looked right at me.”

  Jesus. She was not coy. Why didn’t she just ask him for it? Seems everyone else did, at some point. His chest was tight.

  “I’m lost, Maddux,” she said.

  “Why don’t you just come out with it?”

  She wouldn’t meet his eyes; instead she played with her fingers in her lap.

  “You want,” he tried to swallow the anger, “money from me.”

  She froze at his tone, lifting reddened eyes to his.

  “Oh my God,” she said, standing.

  He stood, too, confusion warring with bone-deep disappointment.

  She picked up her phone from the table and stalked into the bedroom, gathering her charger, her toothbrush, her purse, and the little duffel she’d bought hoping to make her overnight clothing changes look like a gym bag.

  “Hold on,” he said.

  Had he misread something here?

  She ignored him.

  He blocked the door with his body, folding his arms across his chest.

  “Wait a minute, Brynn.”

  She stared at him like he was a stranger. Her body was rigid with anger, her complexion flushed.

  “Step aside,” she said, in a dead voice.

  “If I misinterpreted, I’m sorry.” But he hadn’t misinterpreted those looks in his direction. He’d heard her tell her friend that her circumstances had changed—and she was talking about money. He’d bet his life on that.

  He hadn’t known she didn’t have money. She was a doctor. He didn’t know how much they made but it had to be a lot, relatively speaking. Not the twenty million he’d made last year, but well into the six-figure mark, surely. Maybe she spent everything she made. She certainly dressed well.

  “We’re done,” she said. “Move.”

  He moved until his back was to the wall.

  She walked out of the room without a backward glance.

  Chapter 15

  Nearly three weeks later, Brynn stared out at the whitecaps on the Black Sea. Here she was in dreary Sochi. Camped out in a Radisson villa next to the hotel, steps from the brand new F1 track.

  “I keep telling you, you can’t do this,” Brynn said, turning back to face her patient, striving for calm and failing. This was the seventh conversation about the same thing in as many weeks. “You can’t keep this kind of schedule—meetings, social events, races, exposing yourself to people harboring God-knows-what all in their bodies.”

  His health was deteriorating, and at this rate he’d be stage two before they arrived back in the United States, which would jeopardize his stem cell procedure in December. The longer they waited the more frantic she became.

  Any crisis would mean an admission to a hospital here in Sochi. The result from his last round of lab work hadn’t come back, but she’d be willing to bet the myeloma was worse. She wouldn’t be surprised to find the blood tests that measured his kidney function abnormal, too. The disease had affected his spine; his gait was less sure. He was in pain. If it got worse they’d have to consider a transfusion, and there was no way she would do that here in the hinterlands of Russia. If the hotels hadn’t been online in time for the Olympics, there was no telling the state of the medical facilities. It wasn’t like they were in Moscow or St. Petersburg.

  “Yeah, yeah,” her patient said, wearily collapsing onto the couch across from her. “God,” he groaned. “I’m winded. Isn’t there something you can give me? The erythropoietin?” he asked, hopefully.

  “If I ever get your lab results back, and if you’re severely anemic—which I suspect you are—and if, big if, we want to take the risk of clotting that comes with that drug if you fly.” She paced the room. “Belamar, this is so not the way to man
age your illness.”

  “We’ll be heading to Texas in less than a week.”

  “At least then I won’t have to get a Life Flight on standby.”

  “No. I’ll manage. There’s nothing else?”

  “We’ve been over this, Carl. I don’t dare. Your liver enzymes are elevated thanks to the immune modifiers—and your kidneys?” She sighed. “It’s a delicate balance. We can’t be hopping you up on anything. What you need is to give your body a break, more downtime, rest. Less exposure to people. If you don’t listen to me this time, you’ll end up in crisis—and then we’ll have no choice but to admit you, and it will become public knowledge. Go to an event. Go to the race if you have to. But you can’t do all these events.”

  “Fine,” he said, switching on the television. “Stop nagging. Go—somewhere. Whatever happened to Maddux?”

  She stiffened and frowned at him from across the room.

  “None of your business.”

  “What did he do?”

  “Carl, just as Ellen is none of my business, Maddux is none of yours.”

  “Is it over or—”

  “Yes.”

  “Just as well.”

  She put her hands on hips. “Oh yeah?”

  “You don’t want to get involved with a driver, Brynn. You’re far too soft.”

  Her mouth dropped open.

  “Soft?”

  “Drivers at this level are extraordinary.”

  Now she was soft and ordinary. She didn’t know whether to laugh or scream.

  “Thank you, Carl.”

  “These men are gifted, Brynn. I’d say at the very top, they’re genius.”

  “Yes, Carl, genius.”

  “I can hear the sarcasm. I’m sure you’ve encountered plenty of geniuses in medicine, and I’ve encountered my share in business and technology. But this guy, this Bates, he’s got it,” he mused.

  Belamar was ramping up for a lecture. Yet again.

  She picked up her purse from the desk.

  “Fine, they’re all genius drivers.”

  “I’m not joking, Brynn. The fact that you could spend so much time around Maddux and not realize it—just goes to show how incapable you are of operating in the real world.”

  Her temper flared. “What in the hell is that supposed to mean?”

  “I mean you buried yourself in school work, research, and patient care, living in the ivory tower while the rest of us have been down here in the real world.”

  She inhaled.

  That hurt. But it was total bullshit of course. He was a billionaire used to having his every whim catered to. A self-involved, arrogant bastard who wouldn’t know the real world if he sat on it and it bit him on the ass.

  His stare was calculating.

  Was he baiting her? Picking a fight out of boredom?

  She wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of her annoyance.

  “You should be grateful for my dedication, Carl.” She had to work to keep the anger from her tone. “No one wants a physician who finished in the bottom of their class, who isn’t dedicated to their job.”

  He shrugged. “What I was saying was, he’s the one driver of his generation who has it.”

  She couldn’t help herself. “Has what?”

  “Greatness. The ability to be a champion over and over like Schumacher and Senna—that’s mental. That’s focus.”

  “It’s not shaping up that way this season, is it?” There was no way Maddux Bates would repeat his championship. He couldn’t make up the points. Pantech-Windsor was unbeatable.

  “No, but even great drivers have lousy years—it’s a limitation of the technology. Maddux is stable, his ego manageable. But he’s got that internal drive. He doesn’t care what any of us think of him. He knows his greatness.”

  “In medicine, we call that narcissism.”

  “You’re deliberately misunderstanding me. He has the intelligence combined with the confidence—that unshakable ego. He’s got it all.” Carl’s gaze was shrewd. “It’s only about winning for him.”

  Winning and money, Carl.

  “I’m going to go for a walk.”

  She grabbed her coat off the hanger and closed the hotel door.

  Three weeks after that scene in Nagano, she was at a loss how to describe her hurt. Heartbreak was surely too strong a word for a month-long … well, whatever they’d had. Something between a relationship and a hookup. The look on Maddux’s face when he’d accused her of hitting him up for money still made her ill. There was such rage in his face, such disgust in his tone.

  As if she’d ever ask him for money. How could he have thought that from her conversation?

  But it was nice that he’d revealed that side of himself, effectively shutting down her growing feelings. When she did think of him now, the leaden lump in her stomach fired up, burning her with flames of humiliation and anger.

  And though she would never have accepted money from him, she had to wonder how a twenty-six-year-old—no, he’d turned twenty-seven in some obscenely expensive party in Nagano after the race in Japan—had become so miserly in the face of his $20 million paycheck.

  Selfish, Belamar had said. Single-minded. Genius.

  Warped.

  She hadn’t had long-term aspirations with him, but that was one character flaw she couldn’t get past.

  The overcast skies were more than threatening now; cold drops started splattering the pavement. She spied a coffee shop with a red and white awning across the street, one of the few places she’d passed that was open, and ducked in, shaking the rain from her hair.

  She smiled at the man behind the counter. “Café au lait?” she said.

  Unsmiling, the man barked out something. She pulled out her wallet and offered him a bill. Judging by the way his eyes lit up, she’d offered the wrong one.

  The door opened and shut, and a couple of people lined up behind her. The barista eyed them, went to the cash register, and didn’t give her change.

  She moved aside for someone else to order and found a laminated table toward the rear of the shop where she could sit with her coffee, staring into space, wishing she were home.

  A man with a ball cap approached, his face in shadow, but she’d know that body anywhere. She’d had her hands on the long, lean length of him more times than she could count—she knew the spots that made him writhe and groan, the slight furring on his chest, the happy trail… “Brynn?”

  He took a seat across from her at the table and she stood.

  “Please, give me a minute. I’ve had lots of time to think about what happened and—”

  “There’s nothing to say.”

  The coffee, the empty stomach, the sight of him combined to make her acutely nauseated.

  “At least listen to my apology.” He gestured to the chair.

  “Two minutes,” she said, scanning the shop for other F1 people, keeping her expression as neutral as she could. A scene was the last thing she and Belamar needed, and she wouldn’t put it past Maddux to make one.

  “I just … money is a tough subject for me.”

  “I wasn’t asking you for money,” she hissed. “Whatever you thought you heard—”

  His frown deepened. “Then you were talking about asking him for money.” he said.

  “I’m not asking Belamar or anyone else for money,” she replied, tamping down her temper.

  “You need money for your friend,” he said.

  “My friend needs money,” she corrected. “Is that your apology? Because it sure didn’t sound like one.”

  “Look.” He reached across the table for her hand and she pulled back, thrusting her hands into her lap. “I’ve given money to friends, to family—it doesn’t work out. It alters the relationship, and—”

  “My friend is dying, Maddux. They live paycheck to paycheck on her salary. A salary she can’t collect anymore, since she’s dying. Health benefits her girls won’t have, again, because she’s dying.”

  “And she doesn’t ha
ve insurance? Can’t hit up the girls’ father?”

  Brynn stared at him.

  And Belamar had accused her of not living in the real world?

  “Good God, Maddux. How far removed from reality are you?”

  He sat back. “What’s that supposed to mean? I’m trying to help you.”

  “No, you’re not, you’re being an asshole.”

  “I just don’t get why it’s your responsibility to help her.”

  “You wouldn’t, would you?”

  “Brynn, I’ve been approached by dozens of people, friends, strangers, all with one sob story or another, all wanting one thing. Money. I must have plenty to spare, right? My earnings are posted all over the Internet. Formula One and my accountant helped me set up a trust. Now I have to decide on a cause. I need the tax break so I give to a non-profit. Giving to friends will drag you down,” he said, bitterly. “They’ll come back for more. They turn on you. You’re a doctor, she’s a patient, it’s … isn’t it unethical or something?”

  “She may have started out as my patient, but she’s my friend now. I’m not treating her, my colleague is. It’s a non-issue.”

  “It’s no wonder you don’t have any money if you’re this vulnerable to a sob story.”

  Her fists clenched. She’d imagined she was falling for this guy? He had the compassion of a twig.

  “Maddux, I don’t know why you think I don’t have any money.”

  “You’re traveling with a seventy-year-old man because you need a bloody vacation.”

  “Keep your voice down. And that’s not—you have this whole thing wrong. Me, money, friendship. I mean, Belamar aside, why are you so angry about my giving money to a friend?”

  He slumped in his chair, scowling. “I told you. People are constantly coming after me for money.”

  “Sounds like you have a lot of experience being used.”

  He stared, his expression stricken.

  She felt stirrings of pity and tamped them down. She would not feel sorry for him.

  “Why would you say that?”

  “You said it. You said ‘they’ll come back for more; it will alter the relationship.’ Who are you talking about? You sure as hell aren’t talking about my friend.”

  Hi jaw clenched.

  “My parents,” he said finally.