Chapter 5
“Did you see that dog?” Travis asks, the second I walk into his changing room.
I laugh. “I think you mean, ‘Sorry for nearly hitting you, Jacob.’”
He grins. “Oh, please. I barely moved.”
“You left me, like, two feet of space!”
“I left you a car’s width.” He takes my wrists and tugs me closer. “Anyway, I was just making sure you know what to do in case you ever run up behind Cole Milton.”
“He walked by me earlier,” I say, looping my arms around Travis’s neck. He’s not half as sweaty as I am, and he smells really good, like mint and fresh pine.
“And?”
“And he’s kind of hot in person.”
“You did not just say that.”
I cackle. “It’s true! He has kind of a dark, broody thing going on. Very sexy.”
“You’re messing with me.”
“I am ninety percent messing with you, ten percent admitting a shameful truth.”
“If I kiss you right now, will that stop you from talking?”
I grin. “It’s worth a try.”
He presses his soft, warm lips against mine, then he rests our forehead together. “Hi.”
“Hi.”
“You did your first practice session.”
“Yeah.”
“And you did really well.”
My pulse flutters. “You think so?”
“Yeah. You were flying on that last lap.”
I laugh. “How would you know?”
“I was watching on the track screens.”
“You were—seriously?”
He shrugs. “I was on a cool-down lap.”
He says it likes it’s nothing, and I’m struck by the magnitude of the skill gap between us.
I don’t think I even noticed the track screens.
Or the grandstands, or the crowds, or anything that wasn’t directly in front of me.
There were times I literally stopped myself from blinking, because even that tiny lapse of attention would have doomed me.
“Give it a few years,” Travis says. “You’ll get used to it.”
“If I get a seat, you mean.”
“If you keep driving like that, I don’t see how you won’t. Now, c’mon.” He smacks me playfully. “Let’s get some food.”
“Did you seriously just slap my ass?” I ask.
“Punishment for that Cole Milton comment,” he says, his eyes dancing. “Don’t do it again.”
A warm pulse of blood moves through me, and as I follow him from the room, I make a mental note to do it again very soon.
We grab food at the Harper Team Hub, which has much better food than Crosswire’s.
The first few times I ate here with Travis, it felt sort of awkward, but now I don’t think much about it.
Some people at Harper know we’re dating, some think we’re good friends, and most probably haven’t given the matter any thought.
Travis isn’t a hotshot celebrity to them, he’s just a guy they work with every day.
The chefs do have a soft spot for him, though. One of them grates a little extra parmesan onto his pasta and winks at me when I notice her do it.
We sit down at a table with Matty and Heather, who are deep in conversation over half-finished plates.
Heather looks a bit frustrated, and Matty looks evasive, which is not uncommon these days.
Matty’s had a difficult season so far. His first few races were okay, fourths and fifths to Travis’s firsts and seconds, but then he had a string of bad luck with crashes and mechanical issues, and since then, his results have been… worse.
Much worse. Struggling-to-get-out-of-Q1 worse.
He slaps on a wide smile when he sees us coming, though, and says, “Yo! It’s the man of the hour.” He grips my shoulder and shakes me roughly as I sit down beside him. “You killed it out there, rookie. Five out of five stars, for real.”
I laugh. “Thanks. Did you see Travis try to kill me?”
“I did. Totally unacceptable. The stewards should give him at least a ten-place grid penalty.”
Travis snorts. “You’re hilarious.”
“Would you have preferred that he run over a dog?” Heather asks.
“Fuck, no,” Matty says. “That little bastard was adorable. Or little bitch, maybe.”
“Matty.”
“What? It’s the proper name for a girl dog!”
“Did they manage to catch it?” Travis asks.
“Nope. It slipped past, like, fifteen marshals and took off into the night. I think it might be a ghost dog, actually. It’s probably haunting the track.”
Heather catches my eye and pulls a face. I bite my lip, hiding a smile.
Matty goes on about ghost dogs for a while, and then Heather steers the conversation back to the realms of reality by asking Matty how his girlfriend, Erin, is doing. She’s a wildlife photographer, and she’s off somewhere in Botswana doing a photoshoot.
Matty doesn’t seem that keen to talk about her, though.
I think the two of them are going through a bit of a rough patch, though I can’t say for sure.
I’ve thought about asking him about it, but I’m not sure it’s my place.
Just like I’m not sure it’s my place to ask how he’s feeling about his bad season, or about the media pumping out lists of drivers who might replace him.
Don’t get me wrong, he and I get along really well, and Heather and I do, too.
We hang out all the time at races and when we’re all back home in London.
But even after months of knowing them, I can’t quite relax with them the way I can with Kelsie and Nate.
They’re Travis’s best friends, not mine.
And sometimes—not often, but sometimes—I get the feeling they’re watching me, waiting for me to screw things up again.
I can’t really blame them. I didn’t handle things well after my crash last year.
Or before it, for that matter. I was a shitty boyfriend to Travis the first year that we were going out, then I completely lost my mind after the crash and broke up with him in the hospital.
We were apart for months, and I don’t think Heather and Matty were that impressed by how quickly Travis took me back.
Actually, I know that they weren’t.
I overheard them talking about it once. It was way back in April, at the start of the season. Travis and I had only just gotten back together, and I flew with him to Melbourne for the first race of the year.
It was early Thursday morning, and Heather and Matty were having breakfast with Travis on his hotel room balcony.
I was down at the hotel gym, but my headphones died halfway through my run, so I popped back up to the room to steal Travis’s.
As I walked toward the balcony door to tell Travis I was taking them, I heard Heather say, “So…how are things with Jacob?”
I stopped dead in my tracks. She didn’t ask it in a casual way. She said it carefully, like she was minding her tone.
Travis must have heard it, too. “Don’t say it like that,” he said.
“Like what?”
“You know like what.”
There was a soft clink of cutlery. “I told you, I like him.”
“And I told Sky Sports I respect Cole Milton as a driver,” Travis said. “Doesn’t make it true.”
Matty snorted, but Heather just sighed. I should have stopped eavesdropping on them then, but I was rooted to the spot.
“I do like him,” Heather said. “I just don’t trust him.”
Another sigh, this one from Travis. “I told you, it’s different than before. Things have been really good—”
“For, like, two weeks,” Matty put in.
“Not you, too,” Travis said.
“Hey, I’m not saying I don’t like him.” I could picture Matty holding his hands up defensively. “I just think—”
“What?”
“I don’t know. That you were a little quick to forgive him, that’s all.”
My face lit on fire, though his words weren’t a surprise.
A couple of days earlier, when we were all having lunch with Matty’s parents in London, his mother asked how Travis and I had gotten back together, and after I told her the PG version, I saw Heather and Matty exchange a subtle, pointed sort of look.
Like they thought it wasn’t a very good story, or something.
I pretended not to notice, and they never said anything about it, but hearing them talk about it so bluntly with Travis…
I’m not going to lie. It fucking sucked.
I was about to flee back to the gym when Travis spoke again.
“Matty,” he said. “Remind me, what happened the last time you babysat Morocco?”
There was a brief pause. “Er—”
“You let her eat a cooked chicken bone, and she was sick for a week. I had to take her to the vet, twice.”
“I didn’t know dogs couldn’t eat cooked bones!” Matty protested. “Dogs eat bones, that’s just, like, a thing. If anything, I blame the media, perpetuating this dog-and-bone myth—”
“And Heather,” Travis interrupted. “Remind me how Cole Milton knows that I’m gay?”
“That was an accident!” Heather spluttered. “How was I supposed to know he was hanging around the parking lot like a creeper?”
“You could have refrained from making a very loud gay joke in the middle of a parking lot.”
“I said I was sorry!” Heather protested. “And you said you weren’t mad.”
Travis chuckled. “Yeah, and I meant it. You apologized—both of you—and I forgave you. Would you rather I have dragged it out for days, making you feel bad and expecting you to apologize over and over?”
“Well—no,” Heather said.
“But that’s different,” Matty argued. “Jacob dumped you. He completely broke your heart—”
“He was recovering from a crash that nearly killed him. A crash that did kill two other people. And he had a lot of other stuff to deal with. His family’s not like yours, Matty.”
“You’re defending him dumping you?”
“I’m saying I understand why he did it. And, more to the point, he apologized, and I forgave him. I don’t need him to, like, grovel for me, like he’s so far beneath me he has to beg me to take him back.”
“I mean, you could’ve made him grovel a little,” Matty said.
“That’s not how you treat people you love. You either forgive someone and get on with it, or you don’t. Even if someone dumps you. Or if they out you to Cole Milton, or try to kill your dog.”
He said the last part with warm humor, and Matty and Heather chuckled reluctantly. Meanwhile, my heart was trying to beat out of my chest. I felt—
I don’t know what I felt. But my hands were shaking, and my pulse was thudding in my ears, and I wanted to walk out onto the balcony and throw myself into Travis’s arms.
“I get what you’re saying,” Heather said. “No, really, babe. I do. But what if he hurts you again?”
“He won’t,” Travis said.
There was a long silence, then Matty heaved a loud sigh. “I still don’t think he’s good enough for you.”
“Yeah, well, I don’t think you’re good enough for Erin, but you don’t hear me whining about it.”
Matty laughed. “Touché.”
“I want you both to trust him,” Travis said. “And I don’t want to talk about this again.”
“That’s us told,” Matty joked.
“Yes,” Travis said. “It is.”
He said it in his firm, don’t-fuck-with-me tone, and Matty was wise enough not to joke again. After another, longer silence, Heather said quietly, “Fine. You trust him, we trust him.”
Matty didn’t say anything, but he must’ve nodded or something, because Travis said, “Good.”
Then Matty said, “Look at that weird bird!” and the conversation moved on. And none of them ever knew that I’d been standing there listening. Falling in love with Travis all over again.
“Hey.” Travis nudges my elbow, calling me back to the present. “You good?”
I clear my throat and sit up straighter. Matty and Heather are piling up their empty plates and cutlery, getting ready to leave. “I’m good,” I say. “Spaced out for a bit there, sorry.”
Travis frowns. “You sure?”
I press my leg against his under the table. “Yeah,” I say. “I’m sure.”