With my friend Drake and my enemy Josiah, my phone on the table, and a big-time win under my belt, everything was pretty damn good for being in LA while unemployed.

There was one thing missing, though. Annie was all the way across the country in a town in New York, and I knew her well enough to know that she would have loved to be with us.

But it was for the best. She didn't need to be around Josiah (or Drake, for that matter) until she sorted out her life for herself. There was no doubt in my mind that she was smart and talented enough to do whatever she wanted, even though the two of us were just about as different as we could be. She created, and I destroyed.

And as much as I wanted to talk about her, I couldn't. She had just gotten out of a long-term relationship with Josiah, and Drake was slightly in love with her. That was a fight waiting to happen.

Drake and Josiah were chatting about the adjustments Sacrilege needed to stand a chance against Dragon's Breath, and I didn't understand anything they were talking about. All I did was drive the robot.

A few drinks later, my phone rang.

"Wait, wait, wait. Who's calling me?" I closed one eye, but I still couldn't read the words on the screen. "Goddammit, being drunk and dyslexic makes everything much more difficult than it has to be."

"Be real with yourself. You're fucking illiterate," Josiah said.

Drake shook his head. "It's Griffin."

I gasped and put the phone up to my ear. "Oh my god. It's Griffin. It's been so long since I heard his voice."

"What?" Griffin said.

"It's been so long, Griffin. Too long."

"It's been a few days. Are you drunk again?"

"I'm a winner, bitch."

He laughed. "I was just gonna ask how that went. But I have Elizabeth Tonkin here, and she wanted to talk to you about an issue that makes me pretty uncomfortable."

"She and I aren't friends."

"But you're the only one who can even come close to understanding, so you're just going to have to listen to her."

"Tell her that it doesn't affect me what she does—"

Griffin interrupted me. "Here she is."

With that, he handed the phone over to her.

My boyfriend was an asshole. He didn't like her either, but for some reason, she always found her way where I used to be.

The goddamn Mississippi Queen was younger and cuter than me, and maybe there was still a part of me that thought Griffin had a feeling or two for her. But I did my best to keep that out of our conversation this time around.

"What?" I said.

Elizabeth gave an annoyed laugh. "Well, you're just as pleasant as I remembered. All I wanted was to ask is if you think I'm making the right decision, but fuck it. I'll shut you up on the track next season."

"What does that mean? You're not having the baby?"

"I'm twenty-two and have that part of my life ahead of me. Right now, I just want to drive."

I bit my lip. "You know, this bullshit might have cost me a contract with Team Moretti."

"What do you mean?"

"I didn't take your place in the ninety-five car, Moretti's gonna be pissed that I didn't even try to prove myself to him, and unless I spin the story, I'm fucked. So thanks for that."

"You think I wanted all this to happen? Do you honestly believe that I scared the shit out of myself just because I wanted to inconvenience you?"

"No, but I don't think you're sorry about it."

"Oh my god," Elizabeth muttered. "Your girlfriend's a bitch, and I'm done trying to talk to her."

She must have handed the phone back to Griffin, who sighed.

"She interrupted my celebration with my friend Drake and Josiah, who's not my friend," I said.

Everything was better when Drake didn't expect too much from me and I didn't expect too much from him.

"Would you stop being so damn hot-headed for two seconds? This is serious, and you're making it all about you," Griffin said.

"Then maybe she should stop bringing me into this shit. I don't like her," I said.

"She obviously didn't mean for any of this to happen. And she was just the person Roger picked to replace you. You're too harsh with her, and I think it's because you're jealous."

"Jealous of what? She's jealous of me, Griffin," I said. "If she's such a saint, maybe you should be dating her instead."

"I never said that."

"You know, it's that kind of shit that—" I trailed off before I could say what was really on my mind. It was that kind of shit that made him incapable of keeping a girlfriend for longer than a week, but the same logic applied to me. If we didn't tolerate each other, who else would?

What in my system reminded me of that? It sure as hell wasn't the tequila.

Besides, I kinda liked him usually. Unless he was taking the bitch's side instead of mine.

"What do you have to say?" Griffin asked.

It's a trap. Abort mission.

"It's late where you are, and I'm just sober enough to know that I didn't mean what I was gonna say. But I absolutely meant everything else," I said.

Nothing happened on the other end of the line. Did I lose him?

I cleared my throat. "Hello? Griffin?"

"No, I'm still here. I just think you're getting sick or something. I honestly don't remember the last time you ever held your tongue."

I smiled and shook my head. "If you want, I'll tell you what I was gonna say."

"Tell me when we're both in Charlotte for next season."

With every second that passed without an angry call from my agent or Moretti, the chances of that got smaller and smaller like a car driving away over the horizon. And if the plan fell through, where would I go?

I'd probably end up like that car driving away.

***

One win wasn't going to be enough to get us into the final tournament to compete for the Giant Nut trophy (which was still funny as hell to me), but it was nice to prove that I was better than the ex-driver and ex-wife.

As long as everyone let me do my own thing without judgment and a million comments, we had a chance. Drake always told me that I was a lot smarter than I gave myself credit for, and maybe there was a tiny bit of truth to that. There was a method to my madness, and the fact that I didn't know what it was didn't make it any less valid.

But the teams that knew exactly what they were doing and had it perfected down to a science had a pretty decent advantage over us. Back-to-back losses against two powerhouses, Dragon's Breath and Jingles, later, we sat at a record of one and two, which wasn't going to qualify us for the tournament of sixteen teams.

"Don't worry about it. You've fought Amazon before, and that was much closer than any of us expected. Two and two might be just enough to get us in the tournament if we can pull off the win," Drake told me.

Megha Ratti and her team Amazon were in a similar boat as us, since this was her first time at BattleBots too. Drake and Josiah knew all about her from previous lesser-known tournaments, but in the lights of the cameras of LA, how much did those encounters mean?

Big stages were where legends were born, and the greats never let the pressure of any situation get to their minds. And there was no denying that she was better than me, but upsets happened all the time. Hell, I wasn't supposed to win the All-Star Race or literally any robot fight.

I liked it when I had the controls in my hands, and when the time came, I would have three minutes to prove myself. And if I didn't, at least I could get started on convincing Moretti that everything he thought he knew about me was wrong.

The championship race at Homestead was in less than a month, and although Tyler was still in the running to win it all, there was nothing I could do to keep him from getting more than he ever deserved. At least I wouldn't have to play nice and be his teammate if Moretti decided he didn't want to take a chance on me anymore.

But I couldn't focus on that. I had another fight in the next twenty-four hours, and I went through what I remembered from my first fight with Megha and Amazon.

Well, she kicked the crap out of Sacrilege, she's insanely pretty, and she was way too nice outside of the arena but brutal inside. If I had known we'd meet again with such high stakes, I probably would have done something earlier to get into her head, but Annie probably wouldn't have let me anyway.

Annie.

I hoped she was doing okay.

With her living her new life, I didn't want to remind her of the past, especially since I was with Drake and Josiah. Unless she reached out to me, I wasn't going to bother her. Besides, waitressing, living in a car, and planning for the future really took up a lot of her energy, I imagined.

Amazon fight. Focus, Katie.

What was there to focus on? We only had a little bit of a plan for each of the previous three fights, and we won one of them. And I already had a little bit of a plan for this fight: pure aggression. It didn't catch her off guard the first time, but it gave us a chance up until I hurt Sacrilege.

There was a lot to focus on, actually.

Amazon had a vertical spinner that tore robots to bits and pieces, Megha was one of the most brilliant minds Drake knew in the business, and I almost had her beat during our last fight with my lack of experience and predictability.

Maybe I really could pull off a win against her. That would shut Josiah right the fuck up and remind Drake why he even gave me a chance in the first place (even though it was actually mostly desperation).

***

With Amazon set up across the arena from Sacrilege, I peered across to see Megha and the rest of her team making their final adjustments to their robot. It was the exact same setup as the first time we fought, and Sacrilege hadn't changed much either.

A good old-fashioned rematch. Nice.

Of course, I was still the underdog, but wasn't I always? I did better that way, and if the pattern held up, since I lost a close one at Talladega then won the All-Star Race, the close fight I lost against Megha was just the necessary step to winning this fight.

"There's no pressure, but if you fuck this up, we're leaving you here," Josiah said to me.

"As long as you didn't give me a piece of shit to work with, I think we'll be fine. I did the math, and I don't think we're as big of underdogs as others think. Hell, I think we're the favorites," I said.

Drake nodded. "Confidence is good, but you still have to fight, Katie."

That was how I lived my whole life, so I certainly didn't need him to tell me that. I had half a million invested in this robot fighting team, and I was the only one who could make every penny worth it.

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Hello! How's it going? thank you so much for reading!

Do you think Katie and the rest of Team Sacrilege are going to win this fight?