"That was pretty good for your first try. As soon as you figure out that you can't drive the robot through solid objects, you'll be a superstar," Drake said.

I laughed. "Why didn't you tell me that before? That information would've been helpful."

As a kid, I didn't have much time to sit around and play video games. Little did I know that my lack of preparation for the real world would kick me in the ass as an adult.

We headed back into the house, and the ticking of the bazillion unnecessary clocks greeted us along with a chocolatey smell.

Annie stood in the kitchen, and when she looked up from the oven to us, she clapped her hands together. "Oh, how was the first day of driving?"

A smile rose upon my face. "It was, uh, pretty good."

"She made a lot of progress in the few hours we worked. She's good at spinning around in circles," Drake said.

Annie smiled. "Good, good, good. I'm making brownies to celebrate today, and after that, I need to get some information from you, Katie."

"What kind of information?" I asked, and the words came out of my mouth a little more quickly than I wanted them to. I grimaced. Was it her or the question that made me nervous?

"Well, group costumes are important to Team Peanut, so—" Annie began, but Josiah interrupted.

"Annie, honey, we talked about this. We're not doing the costumes anymore."

"I thought they were cute." Annie looked down at the floor. "I don't care, I'm still making us matching outfits. I want us to look like a team."

"What about t-shirts? That way we match, but Josiah still feels like a man," Drake said.

Josiah shook his head. "That's not what the problem is. She uses the cheap fabric from work, and it's too scratchy. I have sensitive skin."

"Forget it. We'll just get t-shirts. This isn't worth arguing over." Annie turned back to the oven, which still had five more minutes on the timer. "I don't have time for costumes anyway."

It clearly wasn't my place to interject, but I had to ask her about the costumes eventually. Josiah and Drake didn't care about them, and Annie prioritized peace over what she wanted. I smiled. We were two very different people.

Plus, I wouldn't have minded her getting my measurements for a costume. I wouldn't have minded at all.

There were still several days until we had to leave for my first robot fighting tournament, which meant that I could catch the race on TV. Was it even worth watching? With all the random drug testing they put me through, it seemed that NASCAR didn't want much to do with me, but Griffin was still racing, and it was Elizabeth Tonkin's first one.

I couldn't watch it. RTR left me out to dry for her. And maybe that made me a bitch, but everyone already knew that I was.

No one spoke for a moment, and the clocks kept ticking to fill the silence.

"So, Katie, why don't you tell us a little about yourself? Where are you from?" Drake said.

Anyone with internet access could have looked that up on Wikipedia in half a second, but I answered anyway. "Akron, Ohio. It's pretty much right on the other side of Lake Erie. But I've spent the past few years in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, where Roger Truscott Racing's headquarters are."

Drake nodded. "So do you still have family in Ohio?"

I hesitated. "Technically, I guess I do, but really, I don't. Family sticks by you, and they didn't."

Paul and Griffin were more of a family than anyone else.

"Let me guess, they didn't support your racing career," Josiah said.

I nodded, even though I knew that it was a lie. They supported me too much, and when I got knocked down, everyone expected me to carry on like everything was fine. Well, I wasn't fine, and when life kicked me in the ass again, everyone was gone.

Funny how that worked.

When I had my first huge wreck at Talladega, there was one person, a stranger, who visited me in the hospital besides my racing team. And he ended up my best friend.

"Everyone's either dead or dead to me. But I've made my own family, so I'm good." I laughed. "It's not the worst thing to only have a few people worry about me. Makes me feel better."

The oven beeped, but Annie ignored it and kept her eyes on me. "Oh, honey, don't say that."

"The brownies, Annie," Josiah said.

"Those can wait a second. I'm in the middle of something more important right now," Annie said.

I shook my head, then put on a smile. "Okay, let's get another thing straight. Brownies are definitely way more important than me. You don't have to worry about me, okay? A lot of what Roger Truscott said about me before I left RTR isn't true."

"It isn't?" Annie asked.

"Not at all. It's true that I didn't want to drive an Alcoholics Anonymous car, but he made up his own reason why to fit his narrative. Drinking and driving is bad, and I can't promote that, but Roger said that I was afraid to look like an alcoholic. The way he got rid of me wasn't based on fact. It was personal, and honestly, I'm glad I'm finally out of it."

Annie didn't reply to that right away.

Josiah cleared his throat. "Great, now get the brownies, would you?"

***

I didn't want Annie to worry about me. I already gave Griffin a daily heart attack and disappointed him like it was my job, and it was common knowledge in my racing circle that I didn't give a shit about anyone besides myself.

I didn't want Annie to worry about me, but I wanted Annie. She was sweet, charming, and even though she had absolutely no reason, she cared about me.

She fucking cared.

The clocks continued their ritual, and although most of them ticked completely in sync, just a split second later, there was a soft echo each second that passed. One of the clocks was quickly falling behind, and it was going to be impossible to fall asleep on the couch with that kind of nonsense occurring right in front of me.

I still had to read that ridiculous packet that Josiah and Drake printed out for me, but I wasn't going to do that to myself. Everything happened so fast, and now that I didn't have a racecar to drive, I couldn't keep up.

There were several parts of the house that I still hadn't really checked out yet, and even though I knew the most important rooms, the character of a home wasn't in the kitchen like Chip and Joanna Gaines wanted everyone to believe. It was in the rooms that guests didn't get to see.

I wasn't really a guest anyway. I was the new piece in the robot-fighting machine they had. It was broken, sure, but broken cars sometimes won the race.

Everyone else had gone to bed, and there was no way in hell that I'd fall asleep with the one out-of-sync clock, so I snuck down the hall and to the staircases. One led up, and the other went down, and even though I had been in both directions, there was plenty that I missed. I headed downstairs, and although they kept most of their tools and such in the garage, there was still a pile of scrap in the corner of the partially finished basement.

Just like the garage, the walls only had splashes of color, but I hadn't noticed another small room attached to it before. I took a peek inside, and wine bottles filled shelves and racks.

"Wine cellar. How classy." I laughed. "But when I have three kitchen cabinets dedicated to liquor, that makes me an alcoholic."

I was just like anyone else my age. I wasn't made to be an inspiration for others.

With the clocks upstairs and all the excitement of new beginnings, I hadn't gotten a wink of sleep in the previous twenty-four hours, and maybe the wine would do me a little good. I scanned the selection, and none of them seemed too fancy to take, so I finally picked a white one.

"You're not very good at being quiet, you know that?" a voice said from behind me.

I jumped and tightened my grip on the bottle. It was only Annie. I turned around. "Oh yeah, I know. It got me fired."

Annie smiled. "I spend a lot of time in here too. I don't drink much, but the bottles are pretty."

"Bullshit. You're a wine person. I can tell," I said.

"How?"

"You live with two men who can't take care of themselves and pour all their energy into building a robot to fight other robots."

Annie smiled again. "Well, let's get a couple glasses. I bet we can finish that bottle off before Josiah wakes up without me."

"I need something to take the edge off. Those damn clocks are going to drive me batshit crazy." I shook my head. "What's up with those anyway?"

"It's some OCD thing Josiah has. I don't know." She pulled a couple glasses out of a cabinet, and she took the bottle from me. "I'm a little afraid that I'm enabling you here, but—"

"You're not enabling me. I told you, I'm fine. You can't let the media tell you who I am as a person, because they don't know shit."

Annie hesitated. "You're right." She handed me the glass, nearly filled to the brim.

Did Roger really paint me to be the bad guy in the situation? Because it sure as hell seemed like Annie bought it all.

"I wouldn't even blame you if you were an alcoholic. You lost your parents at a young age," Annie said.

I took a sip of the wine. "I wasn't that young. You Googled me, didn't you?"

Annie nodded. "I was curious."

"If only Drake and Josiah were smart enough to do the same thing, then we wouldn't be in this mess. Maybe you'd have a driver that knew what they were doing."

Annie laughed. "I doubt it. We'd been looking for a driver for six months."

"Really?" I rose my eyebrows. "They made it seem like your last one passed away super recently."

"Oh my god." Annie rolled her eyes. "Our last driver didn't die. He left because he couldn't stand Josiah."

Of fucking course.

I shook my head. "Well, whatever. I'm here now. But if they try to lie to me again, then we're going to have some issues. I'd rather hear a brutal truth than any fucking lie."

Annie refilled her glass of wine to the top, even though she hadn't finished it off quite yet. She didn't say anything, and her cheeks already had a pinker tone to them.

I didn't say anything either. Even though we came from two different styles of life, we had more in common than she did with either Josiah or Drake.

After a while, the wine started to lose its taste, and the only reason to keep going was because it made me feel a little more relaxed. There was something about Annie that made me nervous, as well as my shit show of a future.

"You don't have to sleep with those clocks. I'm sure it would make Josiah feel better if you went somewhere else anyway. No one can hurt his babies," Annie finally said.

"Then where should I go?" I asked.

Annie shrugged. "I don't know. Drake's room." She laughed. "Oh, people are sleeping. We have to be quiet."

Drake's room? That sounded about as appealing as getting hit by a truck.

We'd figure something out later, since it was obvious that I couldn't sleep in the same room as the symphony of clocks, but I doubted I'd be able to sleep much anywhere until I finally got into the combat robotics arena with Sacrilege.

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Hey there! I'm sorry that this chapter is late, but I've been sick, and I kinda just said "fuck it" to this. But anyway, thank you so much for reading!

I don't really feel like asking a plot-relevant question today, so instead I'll ask if you could have any super power, what would you pick?

I would probably pick being able to talk to animals. My cat likes to talk, and I want to know what she has to say. Also, I'd like to know that she understands me when I tell her not to eat plastic. I also want to tell mosquitoes to fuck off. And I want to tell wild deer that I am their ally.