Seven Points (Crash Test)

Chapter 1

There is an extremely handsome actor flirting with my boyfriend.

His name is Quin something—McCarthy? MacQuarrie?

—and I recognize him from that war movie that came out over the summer.

He was in some big Netflix series, too, though I can’t remember which one.

All I know is that he’s very famous, very handsome, and apparently incapable of taking his eyes off my boyfriend’s face.

“Yo, Nichols!” Matty Wright hip checks me. Matty is Travis’s teammate at Harper Racing, as well as one of his best friends. He’s dressed in his race suit, with his neon pink crash helmet under his arm. “I didn’t know you were coming this weekend.”

“Yeah, well. It was a last-minute thing.” I shrug, affecting nonchalance. Then I glance at Travis again without really meaning to.

“O-ho.” Matty follows my gaze and gives me a wide, obnoxious grin. “I see how it is. Gotta make sure no one swoops in on your man.”

My cheeks warm. “No. I’m just helping out Crosswire. Farin’s not here this weekend, so they don’t have a reserve driver—”

“Oh, right,” he says. “Of course. That’s so kind of you.” He grins again, the asshole, then he glances back at Travis. “Is that Quin McCarthy?”

“I think so.”

Matty whistles. “He’s very handsome, isn’t he? And so well dressed.” He sweeps a pointed look up and down my frame.

I scowl. “Don’t you have somewhere else to be?”

He cackles. “Yep. Cheers, friend.”

He heads off to his car on the other side of the garage, and I take a few steps backward to get out of a cameraman’s way.

He trains his lens on Travis and Quin, and a few seconds later, their faces pop up on all the track TV screens.

Anyone watching the FP2 coverage right now is getting a great view of Quin flirting shamelessly with my boyfriend.

And Matty is right. Quin is very handsome.

He has that glossy, Hollywood look about him, with bronze-gold hair, perfectly straight white teeth, and irritatingly endearing dimples.

He’s wearing a pale knit sweater and slim-fitting jeans, and even though it’s about a hundred degrees out, he hasn’t shed so much as a drop of sweat.

The cameraman pans out to show the entire garage, and I catch a glimpse of myself on TV.

Oh, boy.

The contrast between me and Quin McCarthy couldn’t be any more depressing.

My blond hair is a tangled mess, my face is flushed and sweaty, and I have massive dark circles under my eyes because I couldn’t sleep a wink on the thirteen-hour flight from London.

I’m wearing a pair of ratty basketball shorts that I usually reserve for the gym, and my wrinkled Crosswire t-shirt has a yellow-green stain all down the front.

In my defense, the stain was not my fault.

I wasn’t scheduled to come to the Singapore Grand Prix, but Crosswire’s reserve driver, Farin Leblanc, had a last-minute conflict.

I was at the factory yesterday, doing sim work for the team, when Tom Kellen, the head of Crosswire, asked if I wanted to fill in for Farin in Singapore.

Even if I wasn’t completely desperate to see Travis, there’s no way in hell I would have ever said no.

I’ve been a test driver for Crosswire Racing for about six months, and while I’ve loved every second of it, opportunities to race actual cars have been slim.

I’ve done tons of time in their racing simulator, and I’ve driven last year’s car a couple of times, but I haven’t come close to touching Crosswire’s current car.

And honestly, that’s not likely to change this weekend.

Both of Crosswire’s drivers, Mahoney and Clayton, are perfectly healthy, so unless a rogue asteroid strikes one of them down in the next twelve hours, I’ll be spending the weekend standing around the Crosswire garage.

Still, it would’ve been stupid to turn the opportunity down.

Drivers have scored F1 contracts off reserve drives in the past.

Unfortunately, because it all happened so last minute, the only seat left on the flight the team booked for me was a middle seat in the last row of economy.

The window seat was taken by a scowling teenager wearing way too much body spray, and the aisle seat by a mother and her nine-month-old son.

I offered to hold him for her when the in-flight meal came around, and my good deed was immediately punished by the kid vomiting all over me.

I had my gym shorts with me, thank god, since the stain on my sweatpants was very unfortunately placed, but I didn’t have a spare t-shirt. And then my luggage didn’t arrive, so I’m stuck in the vomit-stained one.

Did I mention I don’t smell very good, either?

I attempt to finger-comb my hair into order while I wait for Travis to wrap up his conversation with Quin. The Harper folks are starting to get a bit antsy—they keep looking at Travis and then glancing at the clock, which reads five minutes to nine p.m.—but Quin doesn’t seem to have noticed.

I edge a little closer to hear what they’re saying.

“It’s really great,” Quin says. “I think you’d like it.”

“Yeah, I read his last book a while ago,” Travis says. “What’s the name of the new one? I’ll write it down.”

He glances around for his phone, which I can guarantee is back in his changing room.

Travis only uses his phone for three things: playing music, taking pictures of our dog, Morocco, and sending the occasional text.

One time, he asked me—entirely seriously—if I thought he could get away with just having a landline.

“I can text it to you,” Quin offers. “What’s your number?”

You’ve got to be kidding me.

I watch as Quin taps my boyfriend’s number into his phone, then he smiles charmingly and says, “You’ll have to let me know what you think of it.”

The implication couldn’t be any more obvious, and I’m about two seconds away from a total mental collapse when Travis glances around, and notices me standing there, and smiles.

All of my jealousy melts away in a heartbeat.

“You made it,” he says.

I move toward him, smiling back so hard my cheeks hurt. “Yeah.”

“Good flight?”

“A nine-month-old barfed on me.”

He laughs. “That sucks.”

“It does,” I agree. I don’t really care about the vomit stain anymore, though. Not with Travis smiling at me like that, and shifting closer like he can’t stand having two feet of space between us.

“Do you want to wear my sweater?” Quin asks.

It’s a very nice offer for him to make to a stranger, even though I’m pretty sure he only says it to draw Travis’s attention back to him.

“That’s okay,” I say. “Thanks, though. I’m Jacob,” I add, holding out a hand.

He shakes it politely. “Quin McCarthy.”

“I know,” I say. “I saw that war movie you were in. It was really good.”

He smiles a bit sheepishly, as if he doesn’t like getting compliments. “Thanks. Do you work for Harper, too?”

“Jacob is a test driver for Crosswire,” Travis says. He hasn’t looked away from me once, which I don’t think has escaped Quin’s notice.

“That’s cool,” Quin says. Then his eyes move between us. “Well—I should probably get out of the way, it looks like things are about to kick off soon. It was really nice to meet you, Travis.”

“You, too,” Travis says. He doesn’t even watch as Quin walks away, just nudges my arm and says, “C’mon.”

Twenty seconds later, at the end of an empty hallway, he pulls my sweaty, vomit-stained body against his and kisses me hard enough to bruise. It’s only been a few days since we last saw each other, but the way he kisses me, you’d think it had been months.

The way my heart races, you’d think it had been years.

“You have practice,” I say hoarsely, when we finally break apart.

“There’s tons of time.”

“There’s five minutes.”

He grins. “Yeah, well. They probably need a little extra time to check things over.”

“What happened to the car?”

He pulls a face. “Cole Milton. There was a tiny bit of rain on track earlier, and he spun out like a moron and sideswiped me.”

I make an aggrieved noise. Cole is easily my least favorite driver on the F1 grid. He only got his seat because his family is rich, and he’s an arrogant little shit on the best of days. “That sucks.”

“Yeah. It wasn’t that much damage, though.” He leans back a little and scrutinizes my face. “Did you get any sleep on the plane?”

“None. I’m pretty wiped.”

He runs an absent thumb over my cheek, like he doesn’t even care that his entire race team is waiting for him just down the hall. “Do you have to stick around here, or can you head back to the hotel?”

“I should check in with Sofia,” I say. “And you should go get in your car.”

He gives me a crooked smile. “Yeah, alright. I’ve got a bunch of media stuff after this, so just grab the hotel key from my bag if you’re done earlier.”

“I will.”

He kisses me again, a casual brush of warm lips. “You can steal a t-shirt from my room if you want, too. Unless you’d rather take that actor guy up on his uncommonly kind offer.”

I choke out a disbelieving noise. “Are you serious? He was all over you!”

He laughs. “We were literally just talking about books. Meanwhile, you walk up and say, like, ten words, and the poor guy’s offering up his own clothes.”

“You,” I say fondly, “are actually delusional. And you’re going to be late. Off you go.”

He kisses me instead, only stopping when I summon up enough willpower to push him away. “I’ll see you later,” I promise.

He gives me a swift, sweeping look that shifts the pulse of blood in my veins. “Yes, you will.”

The edges of my lips curve upward—maybe he could be ten minutes late for practice, just this once—but then his race engineer, Freddie, sticks his head out at the end of the hall and hollers, “Keeping!”

“Coming!” Travis calls back. He gives me another crooked grin and heads off, leaving me to slump back against the wall and let out a shaky laugh.

I haven’t slept in over twenty-four hours, I’m covered in some random kid’s vomit, and I’m likely to spend the whole weekend standing around uselessly in Crosswire’s garage.

And damn it if I’m not so happy to be here.