Chapter Fourteen
Asher
The call comes as I’m pacing the abandoned race track.
The clean-up crew has come and gone; the stands are empty, with row after row of bare seats climbing into the night like skeletal bleachers.
The tarmac is pristine, cleared of debris and rubber shavings, leaving behind clean asphalt that stretches out under floodlights.
The cars for every team are tucked away in their respective garages, due to be picked up for transport tomorrow.
Unfortunately, my peace is interrupted by my grandfather. We speak regularly, but he knows how busy I get during the season and usually waits until I call him. Since that hasn’t happened yet, I assumed I’d be hearing from him soon.
I pick up and press the phone to my ear. “Grandfather.”
“Asher.” He sounds impatient, which is fitting for a man who spent thirty years building and running a multi-billion dollar luxury imports and exports empire. He only started handing the reins to my brother in the last few years. “How are you?”
“Fine. Yourself?”
“As well as could be expected. Retirement is boring.”
A smile pulls at my lips. A lifetime of being the boss of bosses has molded my grandfather into an extremely ambitious man. “How’s Grandma?”
“Good. She’ll speak to you next.” He pauses, and I know what’s coming before he says another word. I brace myself for it, but I know it’ll hurt nevertheless. “Grant needs help. If you decide to retire F1 after the season, I’m sure he’ll be pleased to bring you on board.”
That’s the most diplomatic way my grandfather can manage to tell me that he knows I’m fucking up, and he thinks I should leave F1.
“Thank you for the offer.” I manage to keep my tone cordial.
“Yup.” I hear the phone changing hands.
“Your grandfather is not trying to be a prick—it’s a natural side effect of his personality,” Grandma says in lieu of a greeting. “A trait you inherited, so you’ll understand perfectly.”
I gaze up at the sky, unable to hide my smile. Where Grandfather is curt, no-bullshit, and blunt to the point of rude, Grandma is diplomatic, kind, yet no less harsh when circumstances merit it.
“Hello, Grandma. I’m doing well, thank you for asking. How are you?”
“Quite well. The charity ball I hosted last month was a resounding success. Grant was there with his newest girlfriend; we all missed you.”
“I was preparing for the season.”
“Were you?” she sounds surprised. “Then could you please explain just how you’ve managed to fuck up so spectacularly already? With all those preparations, I expected better results.”
My jaw clenches, but I remain silent. There are very few people in this world who I respect, and my grandparents happen to be at the top of that list. Even if I wanted to snap back, I couldn’t; she’s right.
The first three races this season have been disastrous, and odds are I’m not going to get any better.
“I’m not your grandfather, brother, or father,” she says. “I don’t insist that you go into art or business to carry this family’s legacy. You were always meant to carve your own path rather than walk the ones laid out for you.”
Her support has always been a constant in my career. She was the only person to encourage me to pursue my F1 dreams.
“But you’re not carving a path,” she goes on.
“Not anymore. Something’s changed, and it’s clear you no longer have the love for this driving business you once did.
Which is why I might recommend that you either find it again, or move on.
You’re meant to be the best at whatever you do, Asher—you were born with talent and inherited a competitive streak.
But you’re not even trying, which is something you may want to reflect on. ”
I stare hard at the race track. The main straight stretches out ahead of me, white lane markings flowing faintly under the lights. “I love what this sport was. But it’s changed in ways that make me hate it. I… don’t know how to reconcile with its evolution.”
“Then decide if you’re in or you’re out. We live in a rapidly evolving world, Asher. You either change with time or get crushed by it.”
“I know,” I mutter. I’ve known that I need to buck the fuck up and move forward along with the evolution of F1 or just get out for years, but I’ve been stalling. As if waiting long enough will make Formula One racing into what it was years ago.
I don’t want to leave, but I can’t seem to move forward with it, either.
Change has never been my forte. That might have to do with being sent to a different boarding school every year.
My life was constantly upended, leaving me to make new friends and learn new languages constantly.
I always felt like I’d been left behind—by schools, by my family, by friends whenever I moved away.
I thought I’d found something consistent in driving.
Just a car, a man, and a track. But even that’s changing for the worse.
And now, I’m not behind because of unfortunate circumstances; I’m behind because I refuse to move forward.
I’ve put myself in a self-fulfilling prophecy of failure by remaining stationary.
The only way to keep a position in F1 is to constantly, rapidly learn. I’ve failed at that spectacularly.
“In other news, I’ve bought tickets to the Dubai race, and I’ll be watching all of your races this season. I very much look forward to tracking your progress. Until then, my boy.” She hangs up without a goodbye.
My heart rises into my throat, then plummets to my toes.
Effectively, Grandma is giving me a push forward. Either I give up F1 altogether so I don’t make a fool of myself in front of her—the one person in my life I actually want to please—or I figure out my shit. I climb out of the self-fulfilling prophecy, or I stay comfortably inside it.
I walk the race track in its entirety once, then twice, lost in thought.
The overpass bridge looms ahead on my second lap, with the back straight cutting above me where the track crosses over itself.
It’s Suzuka’s famous figure eight, which I used to think was the most brilliant piece of circuit design in the sport.
Somewhere along the line, I lost my appreciation and sense of wonder.
The feeling of brightness and newness that invigorated me instead of frightening me.
If I’d stayed up to date and taken every new season as a learning opportunity, I think I’d still have it.
It’s late, very late by the time I come to a decision.
I’m not ready to leave F1. I fell in love with it for a reason.
But I am so far behind that I won’t be able to catch up with the changes it’s had alone. I won’t be able to improve enough to get contract offers on my own.
Even if I read the manuals front to back and spent the next two weeks in a simulator… I have about three years’ worth of strategy shifts, regulations, rules, and mechanisms to learn. I can barely stand to admit it, but I’ll need help.
And the one person who might still be willing to put up with my ass—mostly because her future in the sport is partially entwined with mine—is an infuriating little intern who I can’t decide if I want to fuck or kill.
It takes me an hour to track down her room in the team’s designated hotel. If I were a more sane person, I might wait until the morning to speak to her, but I have neither the patience nor the desire to put this off.
An urgency hums in my gut after my phone call. Decide if you’re in or you’re out.
I want to be in. When the pressure of racing is absent and I stop worrying about the constant changes to cars and rules, I tap into the peace that I used to feel on a racetrack.
The sensation of flying through space and time at a speed and force so immense it’s unstoppable.
For years I would desperately chase that feeling, the high that came with it… until I lost it.
The other day in the simulator, I almost came close to finding it again, until it slipped just out of reach. That, combined with the wake-up call Grandma just delivered, lights something as close to a fire under my ass as I’ve come to feeling in years.
I don’t pause to analyze why I’m choosing to go to the most junior and inexperienced member of the team to talk.
Instead, I knock on the smooth wood of her hotel room door.
Three times at first. Then five times. Then ten, the knocks increasing in speed and intensity, until I hear the shuffle of footsteps from inside the room.
I hear a faint, “Are you fucking kidding me,” before the door swings open.
Fuck. Me.
Victoria’s wearing a thin silky camisole and short shorts… and nothing else. Her top is thin, sheer, and exposes a bare stretch of midriff. Her shorts leave nothing to the imagination about those shapely, toned legs that she hides under all her other outfits.
For a second, I forget why I came here.
If I knew she looked this good under her shitty jeans and shirts, I might’ve been nice to her a lot sooner—
“What the hell are you doing here?” Victoria pushes up a pair of black-framed glasses perched on the bridge of her nose, and the gesture prompts me to tear my eyes away from her body. “It’s 3am.”
“Were you asleep?”
“No, but that’s not the point. Again, what are you doing here?”
When I only gape at her, she scowls. “If you’ve officially managed to get me fired, that’s a talk I’ll have with Ilya or Declan in the morning. For now, let me work in peace.” She tries to slam the door in my face; I flatten my palm on the wood to keep it open.
A growl bubbles in her throat and bursts from her full, cupid-shaped lips. I almost tell her she sounds like an infuriated kitten—more adorable than menacing—but decide such a comment might not be the best way to go.
“This isn’t about your job.” Focus, Asher. “It’s, um…” my gaze gets caught on her navel again. Would her skin be as smooth and silky as it looks if I ran my tongue over it?
“What’s wrong with you?” she demands. “Jesus, are you drunk?”