54. Chapter 54
Beau stood behind the pit wall with his arms crossed over it and watching the crew in the pit stall scramble to get everything right.
All dressed in charcoal, electric blue, and sulfur yellow.
The car was plain charcoal with the number fifteen slapped on the sides and roof in orange tape.
Test mule car with mismatched rims and paint pen marks in neon green over every nut and bolt on the wheels so they could see if anything was vibrating loose.
Next to the car stood Colt, his hair extra wild in the humidity, pink-cheeked and nodding as Hoyt talked at him.
His arms were crossed, and he was trying to hide his fingers tapping against his ribs.
Buzzing again. Trying to hide it because these people didn’t know him yet.
He was wearing his own race suit, zipped up and buttoned tight.
Hoyt reached out and adjusted the shoulders, and Beau clenched his teeth.
“Here you go, Merc.” A slender hand with blue-painted nails appeared in front of his face, holding a paper coffee cup. Beau looked up at Theo, who smiled at him. “Figured you were probably a black coffee kinda guy.”
“Thank you.” Beau took the cup.
He liked Theo, who hadn’t treated him at all like an interloper during their tour.
He’d taken Beau right down to the chassis shop and shown him the car Colt was driving.
Sent the crew on a fifteen-minute break and didn’t say a word as Beau got under the hood.
They’d eaten lunch together in the diner down the street, and Theo had gushed about his husband, Jake, who did Dolly Parton drag.
Beau’s eyes slid back to the pit stall.
The pit crew was scattering as Hoyt put Colt’s helmet on for him. Like he couldn’t do it for his own damn self.
Fuckin’ hypocrite, Moore.
“Hey, Theo?” Beau called.
“Yeah?”
Beau pulled his eyes away from Colt to look at Theo. “You think I could get a radio to listen in?”
Theo watched him for a long moment before nodding. “Yeah, hun, I can.” He turned back to the pit for a moment and then focused on Beau again. “It’s hard, huh, seeing the kid you trained from this side of the wall?”
“Mhmm.”
Hoyt was leaning into the window to check Colt’s harness.
Beau hated it.
“I’ll be right back,” Theo said, then hurried away.
He was back before Colt left the stall, handing Beau a bright yellow radio with a black headset. Beau thanked him and clipped himself in. It was already tuned to the right station.
Hoyt climbed on top of the War Wagon, the huge, towable workstation littered with monitors and a seat that gave Hoyt a bird’s-eye view of the front stretch.
“Alright, Rourke,” Hoyt started over the radio. “I want you at eighty percent speed this run. Braking at the 3 Marker, smooth arc, follow the apex. Copy?”
Quiet for a long second, and then: “Copy.”
Before Colt even left the stall, Beau knew how this was going to go.
Colt was a late braker by nature, and it was his edge.
He was going to lose it in the first lap, and it was a fifty-fifty shot whether he got mouthy about it.
Would have with Beau, full-stop. Beau would have put him directly in his place and tried to ignore the thrill it gave him.
Colt drove off, and Beau leaned over the wall to keep an eye on the first turn. Colt did exactly as Hoyt had instructed, then missed the bottom of the track, a sloppy lap that looked slow and painful.
“Fuck,” Colt hissed as he straightened out.
“Language.” Hoyt shook his head from the top of the War Wagon. “This isn’t a street race, Rourke. Keep it clean. Go again.”
This time Beau could hear the grit of Colt’s teeth when he answered. “Copy.”
The car plowed, the front tires turned all the way to the left, the car still sliding toward the right. Colt tried to make the tires grip the track, sending up a plume of smoke as he did.
Christ.
Hoyt gave it one and a half laps before he laid in, which was more than Beau would have given him credit for. “You’re missing the apex by three feet every time, Rourke. And you’re at eighty percent speed. How do you expect to hit the painted line at a hundred if you can’t do it like this?”
“I’m trying!” Colt was starting to sound panicked, the type of panic that made him sloppy.
The type of panic that would have had Beau calling him in for a break, pressing a hand to the back of his neck and making him sit still for thirty seconds.
“It’s like trying to turn a fucking bus around a cone, Marcus. ”
“You cuss at me again, you’re going to be out here running laps the rest of the night.
” Hoyt sounded like he was talking to a teenager learning to drive stick shift and grinding the transmission for the hundredth time.
“And stop bouncing it off the chip in the dog-leg. You’re over-revving because you’re late on the gear.
Shift when the lights tell you to shift, Rourke, not when you’re angry at the steering wheel.
You’re gonna melt the valves before you hit the backstretch. ”
Beau nearly took the headset off. Hoyt was going to breathe down Colt’s neck so hard that he was gonna suffocate. Liberty was way off base with this jackass. Nothing he was saying was wrong, but he was trying to turn Colt into his driver instead of turning himself into Colt’s Crew Chief.
Colt was silent except for his sharp, jagged exhale over the comms—the sound of a man who was about two seconds away from driving the car straight into a concrete wall just to make the noise stop.
***
Colt pressed his forehead against the cool tiles of the hotel shower and squeezed his eyes shut, replaying the day’s epic fuck-ups on repeat like a reel of his worst moments.
Terrible. Fucking terrible. The worst run Colt had ever done in his life, and Marcus Hoyt had reamed him all goddamn day, then in the hauler as the sun set and he baked in his sticky, suffocating suit.
And tomorrow, Overthrow was sending a rep to get footage during the morning test run, followed by a mock race with visiting veterans and a few people trying out for other teams. He wasn’t ready, and he was going to make a fucking fool of himself, and he was going to get arrested for punching Marcus Hoyt in his stupid face.
He shut off the shower and dried himself before heading into his room to find clothes.
Digging in his bag, which he hadn’t unpacked, he pulled out Beau’s Alice Cooper shirt he’d stolen.
Beau, who had sat behind the pit wall and watched him fail over and over again the entire day.
Beau, who had told him to sit like a dog—and he’d just done it.
Whether Beau’s reasoning was sound or not, Colt was pissed about it twelve hours later.
Pissed about everything, really.
The shirt went back into his bag at the bottom, and he pulled out a pair of loose, thin pants and a cropped jersey with ‘Size Queen’ written across the back where a player name would go. Camila’s present to him three years ago.
He considered calling her, but couldn’t face the shame. She’d be at home, probably, sitting at the dinner table with her parents, and there was no way he could admit how horribly he’d just failed in front of all three of them.
A knock sounded at his door, sure and hard, and Colt didn’t have to look through the peephole to know who it was.
Beau, of course.
Colt dropped his bag on the floor and sat on the edge of the bed instead of answering.
Beau knocked again, and Colt didn’t move.
Again.
“Colt. Open the door.”
With a growl, Colt yanked the door open to find Beau standing outside with wet hair and holding a fast-food bag. Fried chicken. Bastard.
“What?” Colt snapped, and Beau raised both eyebrows at him before pushing past and walking in.
“I wanted to talk,” Beau said as he set the bag down on the table next to the gray couch and turned to catch Colt’s eye. “Today was—”
“Shit,” Colt finished. “It was shit. I was shit. I know it. You don’t have to tell me.”
“Wasn’t gonna.” Beau watched Colt with steady eyes. “I came to check on you.”
Colt ground his teeth and crossed his arms. “I’m fine.”
Bullshit. He knew it was, Beau knew it was, but neither of them were going to say it.
Beau stepped closer, and he smelled like his soap and cologne—it ached. “Colt, let me—”
When Beau reached out like he was going to touch Colt’s shoulder, his neck, Colt did something he’d never done before—he backed away. Quickly, clumsily, hitting the backs of his legs on the coffee table.
Beau flinched. Actually winced like he’d been struck, let his hand fall to his side.
“Don’t.” Colt dug his nails into his side, his heart hammering against his ribs.
“I just want to help,” Beau assured him, though he didn’t step closer again. Kept his voice soothing.
“You can’t.” Shaking his head, Colt stepped around the coffee table and moved back further. “I need to figure this out on my own, Beau. You—I can’t rely on you anymore.”
“Yes, you can.” Beau closed some of the distance between them, his shoulders rounded forward like he was trying to make himself smaller. “I’m here, aren’t I?”
“For, what, two more days?” Colt threw up his hands, his voice rising quicker than he’d meant it to. “And here for what? You just—you sat there! All fucking day, you sat behind that wall and watched me drowning and didn’t say a single word. You—why are you even here?”
Fuck, that wasn’t fair. He knew Beau’s hands were tied, that he didn’t have a choice, and he was trying to respect Colt’s career. But it didn’t matter. The wound was open and hemorrhaging and Colt couldn’t stop.
Beau would have been well within his rights to get mad, to lash out, to tell Colt he was being an asshole and leave. He didn’t. Instead, he watched Colt with a look so full of understanding it was nearly painful. Like he saw right through Colt’s anger to the writhing, ugly core of the wound.
And that pissed Colt the fuck off.
“Darlin’, listen—”
“Don’t! Don’t you dare call me that right now, are you kidding me?” Colt ran both hands through his hair and tugged, angry tears springing to his eyes. He should stop. This sucked, and he was spiraling. But he couldn’t. “Just—just get out.”
“Colt—”
“Get the fuck out of my room, Beau.” Colt stormed to the door and threw it open, pointing into the hallway. “Go. Go home.”
Not go back to your room.
Go home.
He didn’t mean it.
Didn’t take it back either, let it linger between them and suck out all the air in the room.
Beau didn’t move. He stood by Colt’s table like he was made of stone, something raw and cracked open in his expression.
“I won’t leave you like this.”
“This is what we agreed to, right?” Colt’s voice cracked, and he hated it. “Clean break. So consider it—”
Colt saw the hit land before he threw it.
“—broken.”
Beau’s expression flickered—Loss? Hurt? Something young and soft that Colt wasn’t meant to see—before his jaw tightened and he tried to pull it back. Tried and failed, but he stepped out of the door anyway.
He paused before Colt could close it on him and said over his shoulder: “I’m in room 412. If you need me.”
‘I won’t’ was on the tip of Colt’s tongue, loaded and ready, but the look on Beau’s face when he’d ended things lingered like an afterimage from looking at the sun. He blinked and stayed silent, and when Beau left he shut the door softly behind him and leaned his forehead against it.
He stayed like that until he had his breathing under control before stripping off his shirt and tossing it to the floor. Then he dug the Alice Cooper shirt out and put it on before crawling into bed and dropping one of the pillows over his ear.