The Race

by Alice Ward

  “Stay with me tonight.”

  He paused, his entire body stiffening, and I immediately regretted the hasty offer.

  “I-I mean,” I backtracked, “if you want to. It’s okay if—”

  His mouth was on mine, his fingers still in my hair. When shampoo came dangerously close to my eye, I pulled away.

  “I’ve never spent the night with a woman before,” he admitted. “But I’ll stay. I want to stay.”

  Something strange and unfamiliar loosened in my chest as he lowered his mouth to mine again.

  After the shower, I ordered pizza, and he actually ate a few pieces.

  He groaned. “God, that’s good.”

  I smiled and wiped sauce from his chin.

  Maybe I wasn’t the only one who was changing.

  Maybe whatever was happening between us was changing us both.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Locke

  I woke the following morning, the day of the Can-Am qualifier, feeling satisfied in a way I hadn’t in years. When I stretched, though I was in an unfamiliar bed, it struck me immediately that I hadn’t felt this good for a long time. Gradually, pieces of the night before came back to me, some that I thought must have been a dream. But when I opened my eyes and saw Emma in my arms, her wild curls tickling my nose, I knew it was all real, and that she was the reason I was feeling so fucking phenomenal.

  Yes, this was shaky ground. But so what? Even if it was, I had to admit, the ride was pretty amazing.

  I looked around her bedroom. We’d given her an allowance to decorate it in any way she pleased, but Emma hadn’t done a thing. She struck me as more no-nonsense, not the type for frills. In fact, when I looked at the desk across the way, with her open suitcase on the top, I realized that she hadn’t even unpacked. She’d just been living out of her suitcase as if she expected we’d tell her this was a mistake and send her packing.

  I eased away from her, then swung my legs over the edge of the bed and pulled on my boxer briefs. Then I padded to the closet and peeked inside. Sure enough, it was empty.

  Emma, Emma, Emma. You told the reporters you were going to kick ass. Do you actually believe it? Or are you all talk?

  I looked at her, sleeping soundly in the center of the bed, the naked contours of her body curved around a pillow. She was fan-fucking-tastically gorgeous. If she’d been nervous about the race today, she didn’t look it now. Maybe I’d fucked the worry out of her. She might have talked a good game, but I got the feeling I was one of the few who saw that other side of her. The one that was scared to death about all this. As close as she was to them, Brody and her family didn’t know. Maybe I was the only one who knew.

  I moved quietly out of the bedroom, closing the door gently so as not to wake her up, and went to the great room. I hadn’t noticed it last night as I’d had better things on my mind, but sure enough, she hadn’t personalized her living space at all. It looked like a hotel room — sparse and clinical. Yes, she’d spent much of her time training, but it was showroom quality as if no one had ever lived here at all.

  I padded into the kitchen and opened up her fridge, wondering if I’d find that empty too. But no, it was filled with the basics; milk, cheese, eggs, and the produce drawer was filled with vegetables. I pulled out the eggs and milk and got to work, making breakfast in the unfamiliar kitchen.

  When she came out, I was just setting the table. She was wearing an UnCaged Fitness tech shirt, and her hair was a mess. She rubbed her bleary eyes. “Are you making pretty-boy food?”

  I stirred the eggs, grinning over at her. “Who you calling pretty-boy?”

  She shrugged and peered into the pan. “Wow, I’m shocked. Eggs, with their yolks and everything.”

  “Well, I’m not going to deny you your protein,” I told her. “It’s important.”

  She sniffed the air. “No bacon?”

  “That’s pushing it.”

  She opened the fridge and pulled out a sleeve of bacon, which she threw on the counter. “Can’t have eggs without bacon. It’s sacrilegious.”

  “I made a fruit salad.”

  “Okay. But you still need bacon,” she insisted, starting up another burner. “It’s not called fruit salad and eggs. It’s called bacon and eggs. Like peanut butter and jelly. Come on, dude.”

  “I don’t like bacon,” I told her flatly.

  “Well, I do, and I always have bacon and eggs before a big race. It makes me go faster.”

  “Oh, yeah?’

  She nodded. I stared at the chunks of it as she unrolled the package. She must have noticed because she took a piece out and dangled it in front of me. The smell alone had my mouth watering. “Yum,” she taunted. “You know you want it.”

  “I don’t.” I gave her a tight-lipped smile. “And you shouldn’t want it either. You got that big race this afternoon.”

  “Whatever. It’s five hours from now. And like I said, I always have it before a big race. It’s kind of a thing.” She let out a huff and threw it on the pan. “How can you not like bacon? Burgers? Grease?” She shook her head, disappointed in me. “Really, the first time I met you, when you ordered fish and vegetables, I thought you had a major stick up your butt. Don’t you ever want to just live a little?”

  My eyes drifted to the bacon, which had begun to sizzle slightly in the pan. Bacon had been my go-to. That and packaged treats from Hostess. McDonald’s burgers. French fries. All of it. I felt a slight pang of unease. “I live just fine without bacon.”

  She pouted and let the sizzling strips cook.

  “So bacon and eggs… where did this race day superstition come from?”

  She shrugged. “But believe me, it’s one of like… a hundred.”

  “A hundred? Like what?”

  “Some of them are pretty goofy. I have to sit in the car when the time on the dash is an even number. I have to walk in and out of the garage exactly five times before I can suit up. I need to chew Doublemint gum before the race.” She smiled, as I wondered if I’d ever seen her doing any of these things. No, the only race I’d seen her at was the one at the Volunteer Speedway, and I’d only seen her after the race. Then she added, “And I always wear my underwear inside out.”

  I stared at her. “Seriously?”

  She nodded. “All drivers have them.” She was blushing. “What? Don’t look at me like that. I swear, it’s totally normal.”

  “Oh. Yeah. It sounds completely sane.”

  She punched my arm.

  When the bacon was done, I felt like I’d gained ten pounds on the smell alone. She brought it to the table where I’d set the rest of the meal and sat next to me. She smiled and set a piece of it on my plate. “One piece ain’t gonna kill you.”

  I studied it like it was infected. The trouble was, I had no self-control. One piece would become two, and then suddenly, I’d have polished off a whole package.

  But she was studying me so closely, that I felt compelled. I broke a piece off with my fork, pushed it into my mouth, and chewed.

  At first, my taste buds rebelled. They knew it was something foreign, something that wasn’t going to do my body any favors. But by the time I swallowed, they’d embraced it, and wanted me to go in for another bite.

  Dammit. Bacon. Could there ever be anything more sublime?

  “It’s good,” I said, which was a massive understatement.

  “You act like you’ve never had it before,” she said as she dug into her eggs.

  “Not since I was in high school.”

  She raised an eyebrow. “Seriously? You gotta get out more. Why?”

  I took another bite of my bacon and shrugged. Was I really going to tell her this? I’d never told another soul. The only person who was still in my life who knew what I’d been when I was a teenager was Laura. I lived in constant fear that some news program would do a retrospective of my life and learn what a chubby nobody I’d been. It was best left in the past.

  But Emma had let me in on her own secret fears. I felt like
it was only fair to tell her this.

  “I was an overweight kid,” I said.

  She studied me, puzzled. “What?” Then she moved the eggs across her plate. “So? Lots of kids have baby fat.”

  “Trust me, this wasn’t just baby fat,” I told her, finishing the bacon. “My mother was the type of woman who thought the way to our hearts was through our stomachs. She believed in feeding colds. She thought a Dairy Queen Blizzard was a great reward for whenever we got good report cards, and our pantry was always stocked with Oreos. By the time I was twelve, I weighed over three hundred pounds. Laura was a little pudgy too, though nothing like me. Carrying extra weight runs in our family.”

  She blinked as she shoveled the eggs into her mouth. “Oh.”

  “Yeah. Believe me, I was the exact opposite of a pretty-boy.”

  She let out a gasp of disbelief. “I don’t believe it.”

  “Don’t make me show you the picture.”

  “Picture? I need to see the picture.”

  Like hell. I wouldn’t show anyone that. Instead, I deflected.

  “You’ll just have to take my word for it. I had everything going wrong with me that you can think of. Fat, glasses, freckled pale skin, a ginger. Plus I liked to hang out in front of my computer way too much, coding.” I shrugged. “I was the kid people like your brother Brody probably loved making fun of.”

  “I still need to see the picture.”

  “You’ll see the picture over my dead body.”

  “Is that a challenge?”

  I motioned her forward. “Come at me.”

  “Brody didn’t make fun of people. He mostly just picked on me.” She grabbed for an extra piece of bacon. “What made you want to change?”

  “I didn’t want to be bullied anymore. So I got this bodybuilding book and started lifting weights. Started cutting out the extra desserts. And then everything else just fell into place. I kept coding and developed my first fitness app when I was seventeen. At first, I just used it for myself, but then other people wanted it. I sold it a year later for twelve million dollars and used that money to start UnCaged once I got out of college.”

  She stared at me, openmouthed. “You were a self-made millionaire by the age of eighteen? That’s impressive, Locke. Bet those bullies stopped making fun of you then.”

  I shrugged. “Yeah. But you don’t get over shit like that. I still sometimes wake up with their voices in my ears. You’re worthless, you’re a loser, you’re a fat piece of shit. That’s why we started the Cage Foundation, to prevent bullying in schools, get kids to be kind and stop that shit before it starts.”

  She swallowed, and a flash of worry crossed her face.

  “What?”

  “Nothing. It’s just that, UnCaged is such a good company. It has a good mission, good products…” She jiggled the CageFree on her wrist.

  “Oh, so you like the thing now?”

  “I’ve gotten used to it. And UnCaged has good people, and—”

  “An extremely sexy CEO?” I put in.

  “Right. Totally,” she said, giving me a sly roll of the eyes. “It’s all very, very good. I’m honored to be a part of it. But I don’t want to let you down today.”

  “You won’t,” I told her. Then I reached over and took another piece of bacon from the plate. What the hell. I’d workout an extra hour later to burn it off. “Just do like you did in practice yesterday. Stay on it. Don’t feel like you have to fight your way to the front right away. It’s a short race compared to what you’ve been trying for, but don’t get cocky. Take it easy and don’t burn yourself out. All right?”

  She nodded. “I can’t believe I’m going to be racing in a Daytona qualifier. I never thought I’d actually be in the Monster Energy series. I thought I’d be Xfinity, tops, which was incredible in itself. But this is beyond anything I ever could have imagined. And… a little terrifying.”

  I raised an eyebrow. “What happened to wiping the oval with the asses of your competitors?”

  She dropped her face in her hands. “God, I wish I’d never said that.”

  “Well. Keep in mind. We don’t expect miracles. We’re not expecting you to win pole or anything. Hell, if you don’t qualify, that’s okay with us. You just do your stuff out there and consider it practice for the rest of the season. Okay?”

  She frowned. “I’m still gonna try to win,” she said under her breath, looking sheepishly at her plate.

  I laughed. “Don’t get yourself killed, okay? You’re a little fish in that pond, racing against a lot more experience.”

  She scowled at me. “Stop. You’re giving me jitters. Let’s talk about something else.”

  “Okay, anything but about how much of a loser I used to be when I was a kid,” I said, polishing off the second piece of bacon. I really could have gone for a third. And a fourth. Everything in moderation. The problem was, it was my competitive spirit. I never had enough. I always wanted more, more, more. “So, when you dreamed of making it big, did you dream of winning the Daytona 500?”

  She shook her head. “Nah. I want to win in Phoenix. That’s where I grew up, and where I hitched all my dreams. If I can do something in that one, I’d consider that the pinnacle. Couldn’t beat that.”

  “Phoenix. So that’s… when?”

  “April. Or November,” she said, a flash of concern on her face. I had to wonder if she was thinking about when her brother had gotten hurt there. “That, and I guess the Daytona 500. But only after ISM.”

  “So, you have a bucket list, huh?” I leaned forward, interested. “What else is on your bucket list?”

  “Hmm.” She thought for a minute. “I don’t have one of those.”

  “You want to travel? See things?”

  She shook her head. “Not really. I don’t like traveling. I just want to…” Pink started to bloom on her cheeks. “Well, there is one thing.”

  “Tell me.” Now, I had to know. From the way she was blushing, it had to be something juicy.

  “No,” she said, thinking hard on it. “Hell, no.”

  Now I was burning with desire to know this secret. “What?” I made like I was going to lunge for her. “Don’t tell me I have to tickle it out of you.”

  “You touch me,” she said, lifting up her useless butter knife. “I will stab you with this.”

  I sat back down, not sure I could put assault with a butter knife past her. After all, I’d seen the way she’d slugged her brother. “Then tell me.”

  “No. Well, what about you? You have your fortune, Mr. Teenage Millionaire. Do you have anything on your bucket list?”

  I scratched my jaw. It was true, most things, if I wanted them, I just went out and bought. I liked to travel, but I’d done that, to every continent, having active adventures like cliff diving and scuba diving and rappelling along the way. Anything I’d wanted to try, I’d already done. That was called taking life by the horns, making every day count.

  “Nope,” I said, studying her as something floated into my head.

  She narrowed her eyes at me. I could tell she didn’t believe me. And she was right. There’d been something on my bucket list, ever since I’d had that fantasy in the shower about her. But hell if I’d tell anyone that. Unless…

  “You tell me yours, I’ll tell you mine,” she said, dangling the challenge in front of me.

  I crossed my arms. She knew just how to sway me. She knew I couldn’t back down once the gauntlet was thrown. “You drive a hard bargain.”

  “Well?” She was egging me on now. “You go first.”

  “Fine. But if I tell you, you have to make it come true.”

  She smiled. “Is it within my power?”

  I nodded.

  “Okay. But you’ll have to do the same for mine then.”

  I conceded to that.

  She lifted an eyebrow. “So, go.”

  “All right, all right.” I crossed my arms. “I’d love to see you naked on the hood of your racecar. I’d love to take you, right the
re.”

  Her eyes widened just before a sultry smile spread across her face. “Really?”

  I nodded and took a sip of my coffee.

  “Wow. I’m flattered. All the things in the world, and you pick that?”

  I smirked. “I’ve done all that other stuff. At least, the stuff I’ve wanted to do.”

  “Yeah? Spoiled pretty-boy.” She tapped her chin, thinking. “I don’t know how we could do that. The cars are usually locked up and—”

  “You’re inventive. I’m sure you can find a way.” I put my mug down. “Now, you.”

  “Okay, okay.” She put her fork down, looked around conspiratorially, as if there might be someone listening. “I. Want. To. See. The. Picture.”

  It took me a second to remember what picture she was talking about. I frowned, picked up my fork, and pointed it at her. “When I’m cold and dead.”

  She smiled triumphantly.

  I waited. When she didn’t say more, I groaned. “Seriously. That’s it?”

  Her face turned serious. “No,” she said. “All right, all right. Here it is. Don’t laugh.”

  “I won’t.” I crossed my heart and held up my hand in solemn promise.

  “Okay. Truthfully, I’ve always wanted to have a spa day.”

  I looked at her, waiting for the punchline. When it didn’t come, I burst out laughing.

  Her eyes widened. “Didn’t you just say you wouldn’t laugh? What’s so funny about it?”

  “Nothing. Absolutely nothing. I just, from the way you were looking at me, I thought you were going to announce something really bizarre.”

  “Well, it is bizarre. I’ve never even had my nails painted until I met Adlar. Brody’d probably think I was going soft on him. As a James, we’re supposed to have grease under our fingernails at all times. I’ve never seen my momma wear a lick of makeup.”

  I smiled. “Well, you said you didn’t want that massage, you being ticklish and all.” I lifted my empty plate, paired it with hers, and carried them to the sink. “What if I booked you in at a place for tomorrow. After the race?”

  She chewed her bottom lip, suddenly looking nervous. “Um. By myself?”

  “What, you want me to go with you?”