19. Maddox
Maddox
The old Winslow Speedway isn’t much to look at anymore, but the asphalt still pulsates with the dreaminess of better days and the intoxicating buzz of freedom.
I used to come here as a kid, sit in the stands with Dad, and dream about taking the turns faster than physics allowed. Back then, on race days, this place drew crowds from as far as Bozeman and Great Falls, the bleachers packed, the air thick with exhaust and noise.
Now, there are no officials, no timing towers, no crews working the pit wall, only the track itself, solid and maintained, the asphalt repaved two summers ago on my dime.
On a clear day, you can still see where the old sponsor boards used to hang along the back straight, their brackets rusting quietly into the fencing.
It’s not Monza, the historic Grand Prix circuit in Italy.
It never was. But standing at the edge of the pit lane with the fading light glinting off the metal barriers, the nostalgia pulls tight in a way I don’t bother fighting.
This place has its own kind of pull that I’ve never been able to explain to anyone who didn’t grow up with it. I have a small team who I employ to manage the track, but no one is here today. It’s Sunday, and there are no events planned.
Blane bounces like a sugar-fueled kid as he sets up his tripod outside of the garage. “This is perfect. Light’s killer.”
Grace moves slowly along the garage wall, taking in the cars. A ‘69 Camaro Z/28 in arctic white that I’ve been restoring for the better part of a year. Beside it is a Porsche 911 RSR in Gulf blue that I picked up at auction and haven’t had the heart or time to get my hands on yet.
Outside the garage, she stops at the Lancia last—I’d just driven it out onto the track—and runs her fingers lightly along the roofline like she’s reading something in the metal.
“This is where you started?”
“Pretty much.” I slide my hands into my jacket pockets. “Before sponsorships. Before Europe. Just me, a rusted Honda, and a prayer that the brakes would hold.”
She laughs softly, the sound curling through the cooling air. “And here I thought you were born behind the wheel.”
“Nope. Just a broke kid trying not to blow up the family car.” Glancing at her, I wink.
Blane waves a hand without looking up from his tripod. “C’mon, Mad. Driver’s seat, helmet on. Let’s see that race face.”
I roll my eyes but oblige, tugging on the helmet and dropping into the Lancia Stratos.
She’s a ‘74, painted in the original Marlboro red, and she has no business being this beautiful after fifty years.
Mid-engine, rear-wheel drive, a Ferrari-derived V6 that sounds like controlled violence when she wakes up.
She was built for one thing and one thing only, and she’s never forgotten it. I picked her up at an estate auction a few years ago, half-restored and undervalued.
When I got home, I spent the better part of the first six months putting her back together in this garage. Best decision I ever made that didn’t involve a helmet.
The seat wraps around me like it was built for my body specifically, worn leather, cracked along the bolster from years of use, molded into something that fits too well and remembers too much.
“Hey, girl.” I run my hand over the wheel that sits close, intimate, the way it always is in a car built for one purpose.
The smell hits me immediately—oil and rubber and the faint ghost of exhaust baked into every surface—and something in my chest unknots before I can stop it.
I haven’t let myself do this since I retired, even on the days when I wound up here, seeking an escape or when the pull got loud. Maybe I was too scared to find out if I could walk away again.
I love my job as coach and gym teacher. It’s a dream come true, but the chance to race on a world stage and all the success I had… I only wish my dad had been there to see, to live it with me.
When I look up, Grace leans against the guardrail, arms crossed, watching me with an expression I can’t quite read from here.
I flip the visor open. “You ever been in one of these?”
She shakes her head, curls catching the afternoon light. “No. And I’m perfectly happy keeping my organs where they are, thanks.”
“Come on, Buchanan. I don’t bite.”
“That’s what all the dangerous ones say.”
I grin. “Dangerous. I’ll take it.”
Blane looks up from his camera. “Do it, Grace. Reporter and racer, side by side—that’s the shot. Behind the scenes, raw, authentic.”
She hesitates, lip caught between her teeth, glancing between us, eyes landing on me. “You just want to see me scream.”
“Definitely.” Blane jumps in like her comment was for him, and the smirk he gives her is lazy and familiar, loaded with something that has nothing to do with camera angles. “Like old times.”
A green-eyed monster roars to life at the base of my spine, instinctive and violent, and ready to destroy.
If I weren’t strapped in with seconds to go before she joins me—because she doesn’t know it, but I’m about to take her for the ride of her life—I’d be out of this car, burying my fist in his jaw.
The idea of him knowing how she sounds—what she looks like… It’s enough to make me rip out the steering wheel.
I’m fucked.
I rest my head back for a beat and clear the thought, willing the beast to sleep. I’m not a violent man, but Grace…
Then I shake any lingering tension away and stretch across the seat to push open the passenger door. “Seat’s yours.”
She stares like the car might swallow her whole. Then, muttering something under her breath that sounds suspiciously like “stupid idea,” she climbs in.
Victory blooms across my chest, intensifying when her thigh brushes mine as she settles in, the scent of her shampoo surrounding her. I can’t move, can barely breathe.
“You good?” My voice comes out raspy.
She fastens the belt, glaring. “Just drive, Mad One.”
Damn right.
I flick a switch, and the engine roars to life, low and hungry. Her fingers curl around the seatbelt, and I bite back a grin.
We pull onto the track, the tires humming against the asphalt, and I take it easy at first. The curve of the road familiar beneath my hands, the afternoon light spilling across the windshield. Her tension slowly eases, curiosity replacing fear.
“Not so bad, right?”
She exhales, a reluctant smile tugging at her lips. “I’ll admit, this is… something.”
I glance at her. “Something?”
“Fine. Incredible. Happy?”
“Hell yeah.”
I downshift and hit the straightaway, and the car surges forward, pinning us back in our seats. She lets out a startled laugh—half shock, half exhilaration—and her hand grips my arm, unthinking. Electricity crackles through me.
“Holy—Maddox,” she shouts over the engine.
“Relax, Buchanan. I’ve got you.”
“God, you sound so sure of yourself.”
“I am.”
She turns toward me, eyes wide, cheeks flushed, and completely unguarded. “You really loved this, didn’t you?”
My throat tightens. “Yeah. Too much.”
We take another turn, slower this time, the air between us shifting into something thicker and quieter. She’s watching my hands on the wheel, the way I lean into each curve, reading me the way she does, like I’m a language she’s determined to learn.
“Why’d you quit?”
Just when I was letting myself forget she’s here for a reason.
I force a smile that doesn’t reach anything. “You’ll get your quote, Inkslinger. Just not today.”
She studies me a moment, then nods. “Fair enough.”
The sun dips lower, the world washing out in amber and indigo as I bring the car to a stop in the pit lane and cut the engine. Silence settles between us, my pulse still running hot from the thrill of being back in the cockpit—or from her, I’m not entirely sure anymore.
When she reaches for her seatbelt, her fingers brush mine. Neither of us moves.
“Thank you,” she says quietly.
“For what?”
“For letting me see this side of you.”
I swallow. “Careful, Buchanan. You might start thinking I’m not the enemy.”
Her lips curve into a slow, devastating smile. “You make it hard to remember that sometimes.”
For just a moment, her gaze dips to my mouth, but then she pushes the door open and steps out. I stay where I am, hands still on the wheel, wondering how a woman I should be keeping at a careful distance keeps finding her way further in.
Blane waves from across the track, shouting something about perfect light and one more shot. I ignore him until he jogs over and makes himself impossible to ignore, insisting on a few more before we lose the light.
I indulge him, though not because he’s growing on me. Grace has shifted into reporter mode, calling direction, laughing at something through the viewfinder, completely in her element. That’s the only reason I’m still standing here.
The ride back home is different. Grace is quiet beside me, arms tucked loosely around herself, hair wind-tangled, cheeks still flushed from the cold air or the adrenaline or both.
She’s closer than before, more middle of the bench than window. Blane’s gear is piled against the door like he owns every inch of available space.
In the back seat, he falls asleep somewhere around the county road, head tipped back, mouth open, the picture of blissful obliviousness. This is exactly how I like him.
Every few minutes, her knee bumps mine when the truck dips on the road. Each brush lights a slow fuse under my ribs that I have no intention of acknowledging and can’t seem to stop noticing.
The sun hangs low over the mountains by the time we pull into the driveway. Grace slips out before I’ve fully parked, head tipped back, eyes tracing the sky like she’s trying to hold onto the color before it goes.
Blane stumbles out after her, stretching like a man who’s run a marathon rather than slept through one.
“Big day tomorrow.” He slings his camera bag over his shoulder. “School should be good. Still think we need more track footage, though—interview setup, the works.” He glances between us, something glinting in his expression. “Natural chemistry like that doesn’t come cheap. Hard to manufacture.”
I cut him a look. He smirks, unbothered, and heads toward the porch.
Grace lingers by the passenger door. Her fingers skim the metal edge, and when she finally turns toward me, the soft look in her eyes nearly knocks the air clean out of my lungs.
“You didn’t have to take me out on the track today.” There’s an unusual shyness to her that I don’t quite know what to do with.
I default to our natural rhythm. “Didn’t see you complaining.”
The corners of her mouth lift. “Fair.”
A slow breeze winds through the yard, tugging at her hair. She catches one strand and tucks it back, misses another, and it falls forward across her cheek.
Before I’ve decided anything, my hand is already there, catching it. Her breath hitches and I halt, fingers hovering at her temple, close enough to feel the warmth of her skin without quite touching it.
We’ve already crossed one line. Maybe more. I’ve lost count. It wouldn’t take much to cross another.
I drop my hand. “Your hair was—”
“I know.” Another strand comes loose, and she doesn’t fix it this time. “Thank you.”
The silence that follows isn’t empty or awkward so much as full, overflowing with everything we’re not saying, not reaching for, not allowing ourselves to want out loud.
“Dinner’s in an hour.” I step back before I can do something I can’t take back. “Remember, it’s Sunday. My sister and brother-in-law will be here, and Mom always cooks enough for a small army.”
She smiles. “I’ll help.”
“You don’t have to.”
“I know. I want to.” The simplicity of it lands somewhere willing and open in my chest.
From the front door, Blane calls her name in that proprietary way that gets under my skin more than it should. She stiffens, turns, then hesitates, and in that small pause glances back at me—one last look before she disappears inside.
I let the air settle around me, let the band in my chest loosen just enough to breathe.
This is a bad idea.
All of it—Grace being here, me letting her in, whatever this is quietly becoming.
But when I finally step onto the porch and hear her laugh drift from the kitchen—light, relaxed, the kind she doesn’t give freely—one thing is certain, and it scares me. I’m already in deeper than I meant to go.
The house is filled with the warm, rich smell of Mom’s cooking, and Grace stands at the counter beside her, sleeves rolled up, slicing vegetables. They’re laughing and joking like they’ve done this a thousand times, and my heart stupidly flip-flops.
The scene is a little too familiar, echoing another time, years ago, when Dad was still here, and my dream was still to teach and coach. My mom and another girl doing the same thing at the same counter.
But this is different. In every way that matters.
Blane hovers near the doorway, camera in hand, pretending to check his settings but watching Grace too closely. He’s a complication. She’s a risk. And the two of them under the same roof feels like a lit fuse with a short lead.
Mom spots me and waves a spoon. “Go clean up, honey. Dinner’s almost ready.”
Grace turns toward me, expression open and bright, and whatever moment we’re in deepens in a way neither of us is ready to name.
I nod and turn to head down the hall, the sound of their voices following me. Grace fits here. Too easily. Too naturally.
It’s everything I didn’t want to feel and can’t seem to walk away from.