Go.

Like a field of cars at the green flag, I charged Sacrilege toward Amazon as the spinner began to fire up like I planned.

I never even had the chance to get the weapon up to full speed against Dragon's Breath and Jingles before they tore the bot to shreds and burnt her to a crisp. But this was a new fight with all-new stakes, and I couldn't lose.

The robots collided, but with the weapons not at full speed, they didn't do any real damage.

Didn't the spinner usually start up faster than that?

There wasn't any time to think about that before Amazon chased after Sacrilege. Her fate was literally in my hands, and it was pretty clear that my initial plan wasn't going to work.

Although I kept us out of Amazon's reach, our horizontal spinner wasn't getting up to the garage door hole-punching speed I knew.

"What the hell is wrong with the spinner?" I shouted over the noise.

I noticed it looked a little odd and shaky at the end of the Clockwork fight, so did that have something to do with it?

"It's not getting up to full speed. Josiah, I thought you checked that everything was working the way it should be," Drake said.

"I did. All the driving was fine and the armor was undented," Josiah said.

I drove Sacrilege along the perimeter of the arena, but all the spinner gave me was a slow wobble.

Fuck.

How could I possibly win without a functional weapon?

"But you didn't check the spinner?" Drake asked.

Josiah didn't say anything.

So that was a no.

Amazon caught up to Sacrilege and tossed her wheels just off the ground.

We were pretty much fucked without any offense. What could I do? Run around in circles until the three minutes were up or she finally broke us down?

No.

Sacrilege still had a lot of fight left in her.

Fuck it. I drove her straight into Amazon's vertical spinner.

"What are you doing?" Drake cried.

I ran into Amazon again, and a piece of metal flew off our baby. "The fight will be a hell of a lot more even if they don't have a weapon either."

"So you're going to go all kamikaze on them?"

Obviously. What kind of stupid question was that?

My only weapon was the entire robot, and like an expensive battering ram, I drove Sacrilege straight into Amazon again.

A little smoke came from one of the robots, and with them so close, all I could do was hope that it wasn't Peanut.

Amazon backed off for a moment to assess what happened. Megha was much smarter than me, but I never liked to give people the respect they thought they deserved. I followed her back into the corner until she knocked Sacrilege up off the ground and back.

If we survived the three minutes, points were awarded for control among other factors. And if I wanted to win, I needed every point I could get.

The smoke was coming from us, but this was our last fight if we lost. And there was no way in hell I was going to go back to Moretti with nothing to show for my no-show.

But even though nothing came off the robot with the last hit and all the wheels were still in place, when I tried to move Sacrilege to the right, she didn't turn. I tried the left. No turn. The only controls I had left were straight forward and backward.

"Well, shit," I mumbled.

This was gonna end just like last time, wasn't it? And there wasn't anything I could do besides watch Sacrilege get torn up.

How did Drake do this? Didn't it hurt to watch something he built break into a chaotic mess time and time again?

The only reason I stayed on Team Sacrilege after the Madrid tournament was that Megha herself told me that I put up a good fight. But my good fight wasn't enough to compete with her, and she probably knew it all along.

There was still a minute left in the fight, but it was over. Amazon closed in on Sacrilege again, took another shot, and tipped the top end over on the side.

After two fights against flippers, I knew we couldn't flip ourselves back up.

Sacrilege didn't break, but in the end, what she had wasn't enough.

Same, Peanut, same.

Once the countdown reached zero, I handed the controller to Drake and headed for the exit.

"Can she leave like that?" someone said, but I didn't give a shit who it was.

I had to get out of there before the camera zoomed in on my face and it turned into a meme. The world had enough ammo on me already.

When I got out of the main event hall, I looked up for an exit sign and followed it all the way outside. It wasn't the same way I came in, but out was out, and that was good enough for me.

"Katie." Drake.

I didn't need a lecture from him. I needed to get as far away from this horribly thought-out mess as possible.

"What the hell, Katie? You were supposed to stay to give one last interview," Drake said when he finally caught up with me.

He was a full foot taller than me. Why the hell did I think I could get away fast enough?

"What's there left to say? I didn't win, and I'm not going to stay here and let it taunt me. I can't stand it anymore," I said.

I always knew I wasn't going to be a better driver than the people who had poured their hearts into it, but I thought maybe I'd pull off more than just one upset.

Maybe it would be a little less embarrassing to leave on a win, but how was it any different than usual?

"So where are you going now then?" Drake asked.

I shrugged. "I'll decide while I wait on my Uber. Is Luxembourg a real country, or am I just making it up in my head?"

He ignored that. "What about next year?"

"Nope. I'm done with this shit. If I was smart, I never would have done this in the first place. I would have just swallowed my pride and drove for RTR to prove myself instead of coming back to this shit show."

He frowned. "You had a clear path back to racing and you didn't take it? For me?"

"Well, it was actually a selfish move on my part in a strange, convoluted way. I don't know what the fuck I was thinking. I wasn't, I guess."

"You're a better teammate than you give yourself credit for, Katie."

I shook my head. "Well, I probably blew my chance at signing with Team Moretti. Otherwise, I'd invite you and Annie to the Daytona 500. I wouldn't have a chance there since it's a lot like Talladega, so I'd also get you two tickets to Watkins Glen, which is a cool road course in New York. But now, that's probably not going to happen with the way I turned down an easy job and pissed down my leg with this fight."

"And you're also a much better friend than you think."

I bit my lip. I definitely wasn't, but it sure was nice to hear that after we were at each other's throats for a while.

"Look, you have a knack for getting places, even if it doesn't make total sense. Who would have ever thought you'd end up fighting robots?" he asked.

"Because we were both desperate," I said.

"Well, yeah, but everything worked out just fine, and we ended up here. We both got a lot more out of this than we should have."

I thought for a moment, then nodded. He wasn't wrong.

But none of that fixed the fact that LA sucked and I needed out. I had seen Megha and Amazon before, and I still couldn't beat them. I wasn't cut out for fighting robots.

If Luxembourg was real, it seemed like a good option for me to go, and there was always Boston or some other east coast city.

"I don't regret anything about this at all, and I hope you don't either. I'm proud of what we accomplished in such a short time together," he continued.

Where would I have ended up if I didn't meet a guy with a bowtie and an asshole with a screwdriver in Vegas?

"I am too," I said.

But this couldn't stay. It was a chapter in my rearview mirror, and I needed to leave it where it belonged.

NASCAR hadn't seen the last of me, dammit, and I earned that spot on Team Moretti. I just had to remind him of that fact.

"And this isn't your fault. I gave Josiah the responsibility of making sure we were ready for the fight, and we weren't. You did the best you could with what we had," he continued.

"So? We lost, all three of us. It doesn't make it any better to know that he fucked up more than I did," I said.

"This is the biggest stage we've ever had, and we got here because of you and lost it because of him. How am I supposed to let that slide?"

I shrugged. "You're the captain. You have to deal with your people."

"Do you think I should let him go?"

I rose my eyebrows. "What?"

He gave a small smile. "I mean, he's practically unmanageable at times, and I kinda love his ex-girlfriend. I want to have a real chance with her."

"That'd be a start, then. She deserves someone who respects her talents, her work, and her dreams even if she doesn't know what they are yet," I said.

"She does. She always did her best to help me with everything from my team to my issues, and I want to help her now."

I smiled. "Then give her a real chance on the team, captain. She's physically incapable of disappointing anyone."

He chuckled. "I don't even know if she would want that."

"Then listen to her. Josiah never did."

"Got it. Anything else?"

"Take her to see me, even if I'm nothing after this all blows over."

The chances of that were high, but Annie would fix it all. She always had that effect on people.

***

"Thanks for picking me up. I know I kinda threw it on you at the last minute, but this is the only place I want to be right now," I said.

Griffin smiled. "Even more than Paris?"

"Obviously. France sucks." I laughed. "Besides, you get plenty of the culture here in Louisiana."

Baton Rouge. Out of everywhere in the world, I picked Baton Rouge for my post-loss trip.

It wasn't difficult really. I had Griffin waiting for me, and after a little bit of thinking, the only decent option was for me to come back to the city where I built a name for myself and crashed it into the side of a Taco Bell.

"I'd say welcome home, but that's just about over. RTR's moving to Charlotte for next season, and I don't know what that's gonna do to us," Griffin said.

I had been running on the assumption that I'd get the contract with Team Moretti and move there too, but with the embarrassment in LA, that seemed so far out of reach.

"I could always be the girlfriend who's so far out of your league but is with you for your money," I said.

Griffin laughed. "If that's your plan, you better learn to cook or something. Looks fade, babe, and I'm only two years older than you, so I won't die before you get old."

"Plastic surgery, dumbass."

"Oh god, don't ever go that route." He laughed. "The last thing I want is for my trophy wife to look like a cyborg after the surgeon gives you the wrong nose or something."

I smiled and shook my head. "Trophy girlfriend. Until I have a brand new Lamborghini and ninety-karat ring, you can't sell me your last name."

I missed this. No pressure to please him, no dancing around words hoping he'd get it, no other thoughts in my mind. Just him and me. Just us.

I always knew we'd get back to ourselves.

"Okay, new plan. We buy a racing team and put you in the driver's seat. Sound good?" he said.

I gasped. "We can buy RTR. Wouldn't that be the power move of the century?"

"How long does that keep you with me? A year? It's only a multimillion-dollar investment, after all."

I smiled. "If you pulled that off, I would sell my goddamn soul to you. You want a sandwich, you get a sandwich."

He laughed. "I fucking love you."

"How much?"

"On a scale of one to ten, you're probably an eight."

"So is that enough to go Instagram official, take me to the championship race, and let me loudly make my case to Andre Moretti that I'm not as shitty as I seem?"

He didn't even hesitate. "That's level seven shit, so you're good."

When I first left for LA in a panic, I had it all planned out in my head—what I should say, what I should do, and what I had to offer. Although the fights weren't pretty, nothing really changed. Maybe my case was even stronger by not making the tournament.

I smiled to myself. Josiah may have fucked up his job by not doing the one thing Drake kept him around for—meticulously checking and rechecking every detail—but he sure as hell didn't fuck up mine.

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Hello everyone! Thank you so much for reading! I'm sorry that I took last week off of writing, but I just didn't want to, so I didn't. I even posted this chapter a little early as a thank you for your patience!

With the loss against Megha and Amazon (again), do you think Katie has a chance to come back from it? Where do you think she'll end up?