Chapter 8 #2
I stare at myself in the mirror as I wash my hands, my eyes lingering on the tiny white scar on my neck.
It’s so small it’s almost invisible, but I know that it’s there.
Sometimes, when I’m distracted, I’ll catch myself rubbing at it.
It’s the spot where the central line was inserted after my accident, the big IV they dripped medicine through to keep me from dying.
They took it out the same day they took the breathing tube out. The day before I dumped Travis and broke his heart for no damn reason.
Fuck. Fuck.
My hands shake as I turn off the tap.
The moment I reappear on track, I’m ushered to the front of the grid by a smiling FIA worker.
The national anthem is starting soon. Mahoney makes pleasant small talk with me while we wait for it to start, and I try to answer him, but most of my attention is on Travis, chatting with Matty at the other end of the line of drivers.
He notices me watching and shoots me a little smile. I try to smile back, reassuringly.
Cameras swoop around as we listen to the anthem, slowing to zoom in on different drivers’ faces.
They did the same thing before the F1 race last year in France, when they held a moment of silence for Ellis Parrot, the first driver to die after our crash.
The camera lingered on Travis’s face, his pale skin, his closed-off expression.
No one knew he was holding on by a thread, nearly paralyzed from the fear of losing me.
And then I woke up and dumped him, and told him our relationship had never been serious. And then I left him alone for months and months, and changed my number so he couldn’t reach me.
And then I showed up at pre-season testing in Barcelona and told him I missed him, and he took me back without any hesitation. Not even a moment of it, not even a second. I just told him that I wanted him back, and he said yes and kissed me, as easy as that.
I think that I’m going to throw up.
“Jacob.” Travis’s voice finds me on my way back to my car. It’s his firm, don’t-fuck-with-me tone, and as he speaks, his hand closes on my bicep. “Come with me.”
“The race is about to start—”
“Now,” he orders.
He takes me through an opening in the track wall to an empty room near the Harper garage. It’s some sort of storage area, filled with folded-up chairs and stacks of pylons. Travis puts our helmets on a dusty table and locks the door behind us.
“We have to be in our cars in, like, two minutes,” I say.
“Then you’d better talk fast,” he says. “What’s wrong?”
I hesitate for a moment longer, then the awful feeling inside of me swells up like a wave. “What if I beat you?” I blurt out.
He blinks. “What?”
“What if I beat you?” I repeat. “What if I win?”
“Er—then Heather will owe me ten bucks?”
“I’m serious.” My voice is tight and thin. “What if I win the race, and you come in second, and then in December you lose the championship by seven points?”
“Oh.” His expression changes.
“Yeah. Or what if I make a mistake? What if I take a corner too hot, and lock up, and run you off track? Or what if we make contact going into turn one, and I damage your car, and you can’t finish the race? Or what if—”
“Jacob,” Travis interrupts. “Where is this coming from?”
“It’s coming from me,” I say. “The guy who broke your heart last year. The guy who dumped you and didn’t talk to you for months.” My voice rises with my hysteria. “The guy who’s never been good enough for you.”
“Jacob—”
“No, don’t!” I say desperately. “You know that it’s true. You’re the best driver in the world, and you’re way hotter than me, and you rescue stray dogs and read books—”
“I read books?” he repeats.
“—and you deserve someone like Quin McCarthy, or someone like Trevor, if Jonathan will share, and I just—I can’t watch you lose the championship at the end of the year and know that it’s my fault! I can’t do it, Travis, I’ve fucked things up too much—”
He shuts me up by pulling me into his arms. I try to keep talking—“I can’t do it, I can’t fuck this up again”—but he ignores me, squeezing me tight and pushing my head onto his shoulder.
“Everything could go wrong,” I mumble into his race suit.
“Nothing will go wrong.”
“You say that now,” I say hoarsely. “But what if it happens? What if you lose by seven points?”
“Then I should have done a better job racing.”
“But what if I make a really stupid mistake?”
He shrugs. “Then it’s a mistake. I won’t be mad.”
“When Cole Milton ran you off the road in Miami, you called him a braindead moron.”
“Yeah, but I haven’t been sleeping with him nearly as long as you.”
“I’m serious, Travis.”
“I know.” He kisses me softly and then rests his forehead against mine. “Listen to me. There are a thousand possible outcomes tonight. And at the end of every one of them, I love you.”
I squeeze my eyes shut. It’s too hard to look into his eyes, so unendingly patient, so full of affection. “I know you will,” I say. “But I don’t know why.” I force my eyes open again, and repeat the ugly, painful truth. “I’m not good enough for you, Travis.”
“You are perfect for me, Jacob. No, don’t,” he says, putting two fingers to my lips to stem my protest. “I know that you feel that way. I do. And I appreciate the place that it’s coming from, but I need you to move past it.
You are perfect for me. You make my life perfect.
And the only problem in our relationship isn’t that I’m a better driver than you, or hotter than you—which isn’t even true, by the way—”
“Kind of is,” I mumble.
“—it’s that I know you feel like this sometimes, and I hate it.
You think I don’t see all the things you do for me?
You think I don’t see it, every time you choose to be open with me?
I know how hard it is for you, and you do it for me every day.
And if you want to do one more thing for me—if you want to even out this imbalance that you think exists between us—then do me this, okay?
” He kisses me again, gentle and warm. “Believe me when I tell you that you’re good enough for me.
Stop worrying that you’re tricking me, somehow, or that I’ll meet some other guy I’ll want to be with more.
You’re it for me, Jacob. You’re the love of my fucking life. ”
I squeeze my eyes shut again. It’s too much, too perfect, too completely overwhelming. That, and I don’t want to start crying, because the race is starting any minute and I need to be able to see.
“I really, really love you,” I choke out.
“I know you do,” he says. “And you’ll start really, really loving yourself?”
Objections are already rising in my mind. The look on his face when I dumped him in the hospital. Heather and Matty’s doubtful voices on the hotel balcony in Australia. That damn hill I have to climb over every time I want to be with him. It feels impossible to push it all away.
But Travis is asking me for this. And there is nothing that I won’t do for him.
I grip his forearms tightly, keeping his hands against my face.
“I promise,” I say quietly. I keep my forehead against his for a moment longer, loving him so much it hurts.
Then I lift my chin, kiss him hard, and summon up the cockiest smile I can manage.
“Let’s get out of here. I’ve got a race I need to kick your ass in. ”