25. Chapter 25
“You got too much energy for eleven at night,” Beau mumbled as Colt bounced around him. “Jackrabbit.”
“So long as I'm not a coyote.” Grinning, Colt tried to undo one of the ratchet straps securing a tire to the trailer. Beau slapped his hand, and Colt danced away, unbothered. “I'd be scared of flying breakfast food.”
“Get your ass down there and gear up.” There was no heat behind the words, and he could tell Colt knew it.
“Yessir.”
He bounded off the side of the trailer and opened the passenger door to grab his duffel. There was rarely quiet with Colt. While he dressed, he hummed. But Beau was used to it now—liked it even, though he'd keep that to himself on pain of death.
When the ugly ass yellow car was unstrapped, Beau walked down the ramp like a normal human. His leg ached, a deep sort of pain that meant there was rain incoming.
“What do you think?”
Colt was standing by the trailer in his new suit. Black with vivid, electric blue capped shoulders and one stripe down each side, the suit fit Colt beautifully. The black was sharp against the white of his skin, and the blue made him look just as vibrant as he actually was.
“Looks like it fits,” Beau said, just so that he didn't say what he was really thinking. Which was, unfortunately, something a lot less PG. He stepped up and adjusted the hems so they sat right.
Colt shifted on his feet—hadn’t stopped since Beau had told him they had the track for practice. “I think I look pretty.”
The collar was undone at the throat, unzipped partway down Colt’s chest. The wasp gleamed under the floodlights. “Mhmm. Pretty stupid, maybe.”
“Rude.”
Beau's jaw ticked. His knuckles brushed the hollow of Colt's throat as he fastened the collar, and he felt Colt swallow under his hand.
He pulled the zipper up slowly and deliberately, his other hand steadying the fabric at Colt's sternum.
When it was closed all the way to his neck, Beau tugged at the shoulders to check the fit.
"Arms up."
Colt obeyed, and Beau watched the range of motion. He adjusted where the suit sat across Colt's back, telling himself that he was being thorough, not looking for excuses to touch.
"Good," he said, stepping back before he did something stupid. "Gloves and helmet, then we'll go over the car.”
“Beau.” Colt grabbed Beau's forearm. “If I have to go over the car one more time, I might literally explode. I know. You've drilled it into my brain to the point where I can name every part. In your accent.”
“Better not try,” Beau warned, but he took the point and tossed Colt the keys, who beamed at Beau with both dimples at full force. “Get in and back her up. I'll make sure you're strapped in right. And don't you give me that look. You'll let me check, or I’ll take the wheel off.”
Colt hauled himself into the cockpit and clipped the six-point harness like they’d practiced.
Beau leaned in through the window to check the straps, running his hands along them to make sure there were no twists.
He yanked them a little tighter before humming in satisfaction, and thunder rumbled in the distance.
Once he was done checking him over, Beau put his hand on top of Colt’s helmet. “Alright, boy. You show me what you got.”
The engine roared to life, and Beau patted Colt’s helmet twice. He jogged off the track, and Colt waited exactly three seconds after Beau was safe to peel out. Too fast on the start, but Beau had expected that. Everything Colt did was fast. It was gonna take hard work to convince him to slow down.
***
Nothing could have prepared Colt for how different driving a late model stock car on a track was from everything else he’d ever done.
He accelerated too quickly, the momentum throwing him back into the seat as his tires kicked up smoke.
It didn’t matter, though, because the car was sticking to the track, the engine was screaming like a banshee, and Colt had never felt so fucking alive.
His neck strained despite the conditioning he'd undergone, and as he approached his first turn he remembered Beau drilling into him to trust the brakes.
He did, but too soon, braking like he was taking a turn on a street despite all his time in the sim.
When you took a turn too fast on the street, you either drifted, or you spun out and, if you were lucky, just fucked your car.
So when he was coming up on a turn doing eighty-three, his instinct and muscle memory screwed him.
It took him three turns to get the braking right, to feel that sweet spot. But once he did, his body remembered for the next turn, and the next.
He'd never admit it, but the first few minutes, he was scared out of his goddamn mind. The sensory overload was unreal, he was roasting like a fucking turkey in his suit, sweat sluicing down his neck and into his collar, and the markers were coming faster than he could track.
The first lap was shit.
But on the second—as the harness bit into him hard enough he wondered if it would bruise—and he stopped looking at the wall, started his turn before he even saw it coming, he hit his line and time ceased.
The third lap, something shifted. His body knew the track now.
Brake points came naturally. His hands moved smoothly on the wheel.
The car stopped feeling like something he was fighting and started feeling like an extension of himself.
And when he came through another turn and rolled into the throttle instead of jamming it, the rear squatted and gripped. He hoped Beau had seen that.
Beau wasn't moving. Colt could feel him there—a shape at the edge of the track every time he came through the front stretch—but he wasn't waving him in, wasn't stopping him, wasn't doing the thing every other person in Colt's life had ever done, which was try to hand him the answer.
Beau understood, better than anyone ever had, that Colt had to feel it before he could be told it.
There was no instruction manual that would ever make sense to him.
If he got it right, it locked for him. If he got it wrong, he could feel that too and had a point to start.
He was finishing up lap four when Beau hiked himself partway up the pit wall so he could wave him in, and the world that had faded slipped back into focus by measures. The heat. The sound. The ache of his hands on the wheel, his foot on the brake, his neck fighting the HANS.
Play time was over, and Colt was buzzing to hear what Beau had to say.
***
Colt pulled up next to Beau, and the engine was still ticking as he fumbled his harness open and pulled down the window netting so he could haul himself back out the window.
He was stumbling like a newborn calf, but grinning as he took off his helmet and trotted the few steps over to where Beau was standing.
Sweat plastered his hair to his skull, there were red marks along his cheeks from his helmet, and his eyes were vibrant. He ran a shaking hand over his wet face.
Fuckin’ beautiful.
“Beau, oh my God!” Colt went to set the helmet down on the car that wasn’t next to him, put it under his arm instead, and nearly dropped it. Then he set it on the ground at his feet and shook out his hands. “Did you see that? Holy shit. Holy fucking shit.”
Beau couldn't help the way his lips twitched into a smile as he watched Colt vibrating out of his skin. Boy was pure kinetic energy. Beau chuckled. “Yeah, boy, s'the whole point, isn't it? Me watching.”
Colt laughed, and it was startled, unrestrained, and relieved. The comedown from adrenaline, the thrill of finding his stride. “Yeah. Yeah, I know. But— ”
“Holy shit, I know.” Beau settled his hand on Colt’s shoulder and squeezed. “Take a breath. You wanna pass out before you hear what I saw?”
Colt took a shaky inhale, then another. His shoulders dropped a fraction under Beau's hand.
"Alright." Beau squeezed one more time before letting go. He put his hand in his pocket so he didn't reach out again. "You came in way too hot on that first lap. Knew you would—street racer habits. Jamming the throttle, braking early in the turns like you're about to drift through."
Colt's face shifted, the grin fading just slightly, but he kept listening. Good. The boy wanted to learn, not just be coddled.
"But you adapted fast. Found your braking points by lap three—that's quick for a first session.
Your hands smoothed out, line got consistent.
That throttle application coming out of six on lap three?
" Beau paused, made sure Colt was listening.
"That was clean. Smooth roll-in, no wheelspin, you felt the weight transfer and worked with it.
That's not street racing, Rourke. That's proper technique. "
The way Colt's whole face lit up—that shy, pleased smile trying to hide behind cocky—made Beau's chest feel tight.
The boy tried to play it cool, ducking his head and running a hand through his wet hair, but his shoulders straightened.
He had a glow Beau was starting to recognize, one that said he'd done good and knew it.
"You've got natural feel," Beau added. Almost to himself. "Can't teach that.”
“And you doubted me when we first met.” Colt grinned at him. “Surprised you, huh, old man?”
“All the time,” Beau admitted because he was tired and Colt’s elation was contagious, and maybe because he wanted to see that shy smile back.
Which was inappropriate.
“I wanna go again,” Colt said after a minute. “I was so close to—”
The desert had her own ideas. That distant thunder rumbled again, and it wasn’t so distant anymore. Lightning zipped across the sky and threw the whole track into sharp relief.
“We're done today,” Beau told Colt as he glanced up at the dark, churning clouds. “But I told you we'd be out here every night. Same time tomorrow.”
Nodding, Colt undid the collar of his suit and pulled the zipper open. He rubbed the back of his neck. Colt had to be aching something awful after being on the track for the first time.
As they loaded the car back onto the trailer, the first drops of rain slapped down against the back of Beau’s neck. And he wondered if Colt had a hot compress at home, if he should give him one. If he should bring Colt back to his own house and set him on his couch and make sure he ate.
Probably not. Not with the way he couldn't seem to bring himself to stop looking after last night. With the way he'd gone to bed at the asscrack of dawn, trying not to think about what Colt was doing with that girl.
“I'm starving,” Colt said. He'd stripped off the suit and was standing in pink shorts that showed too much thigh and a black long-sleeved compression top. “Come eat with me? There's a place on the way.”
“It's late.”
“Uh-huh.” Nodding, Colt pulled his necklace back out from under his top and let it rest on his chest. “But if you don't come, I'm going anyway. And who's to say what I might get? Horchata. Fatty, fatty refried beans. Maybe a concha for dessert.”
“Alright.” He pushed the gate of the trailer up and latched it just as the rain picked up. It was only practical. The place was on the way, Colt did need to eat, and Beau was running on nothing but a protein shake now himself. “But you're having chicken and black beans.”
They opened the doors of the truck, and the sky opened up properly. Colt paused with his hand on the handle, tipped his face up into the downpour, and grinned. The first monsoon rain in three weeks. The heat broke, a cool, wet breeze shifting Beau’s shirt.
Beau watched water run down Colt's throat and told himself to look away.