The NASCAR Cup Series Championship was one of the best parties of the year. Music, people, food, racing—I liked to pretend it was a birthday party for me, but now that I was on the wrong side of twenty-five with no contract in sight, there wasn't much to celebrate.

I never made the playoffs and lived the experience, and Griffin had never been a part of the final four at Homestead, where the championship driver who finished the best won it all. Team Moretti had two drivers competing for the title: Tyler Bailey and Ryan Garfield, who was retiring at the end of the season and leaving a vacancy on the fourteen team.

That spot was supposed to be mine. I deserved it.

As soon as I tracked down Andre Moretti, he and I would have a lengthy discussion about that empty car, but until then, I stood by the sixty-six car and watched my old competition prepare for the race ahead.

Only four teams really mattered, and the driver of one of them stopped by on his way to his car.

"Happy birthday, grandma," Tyler said. "Twenty-six, huh?"

"Go fuck yourself. You're literally older than me," I said.

As much as he pissed me off, I missed our friendly pre-race chats.

"And aging like a fine wine, thank you for noticing," he said.

Thirty looked pretty decent on him, sure, but I wouldn't have given him a year of my time after he just about killed me if that weren't the case.

"Whatever. I hope you wreck," I said.

He smiled as he walked away to his car up at the front of the field. He had media to do, so I wasn't quite sure why he was wasting his breath with me.

My good looks, even at the ancient age of twenty-six, were a blessing and a curse, really.

"Don't let him fool you. He missed talking shit to you," Griffin said from the other side of the car.

I smiled. "I don't think I'll ever hate someone the way I hate him. It certainly would be horrible if he got spun out by the sixty-six, wouldn't it?"

I hated a few people more, but not the same way. And as teammates, he wouldn't be allowed to wreck me for fun anymore.

A butterfly popped up into my stomach. And another. And another.

What the fuck?

"I'm not gonna intentionally ruin anyone's chance at the championship probably," Griffin said. "So what are you gonna tell Moretti when you find him?"

I shrugged. "I'll figure out what I want to say when the time comes. I do my best work when I say whatever crosses my mind."

"Is that so?"

I smiled. "Yes, it is. My subconscious is a hell of a lot smarter than my conscious."

"I'll go with that." He laughed. "Just don't fuck it up. I don't know how I'll keep you from driving into a lake if you don't have something to do for another year."

"I know exactly what I'm doing. If I could talk my way into driving a robot, I think I'll be pretty convincing when it comes to something I've been doing my whole life."

With a resume of wins and championships everywhere I went besides the Cup Series, plus an All-Star Race win, I was qualified, no doubt. And maybe I had mellowed with my old age. (I definitely hadn't, but Moretti didn't need to know that yet.)

Before Griffin could respond, Truscott came up to the car and stood on the opposite side of Griffin. "Miss Moore, would you give my driver and I a moment?"

"Why? He's not in the championship," I said.

"You had your chance to be involved with RTR, and you chose against the privilege. Now if you'll let us talk alone," he said.

I let out an annoyed laugh. "Privilege? What privilege?"

"Not now, Katie. Here, play with these over by my pit box," Griffin said and handed me his sunglasses.

I frowned. There wasn't anything to do with sunglasses except popping the lenses out and using them to carve my initials into shit.

That sounded fun. Miami could use a little more Katie Moore.

I headed back to my spot with Griffin's smart people crew, took out the lenses (it wasn't like he couldn't get a new pair), and held them in my hand for the moment.

"What are you doing?" Griffin's crew chief asked me.

"Staying out of Griffin's way and playing with his sunglasses like he said," I said.

"But you broke them."

I looked up at him. "I don't like being told what to do."

"Well, that's not gonna work out for you in the long run. Sometimes you just have to follow along like you're supposed to."

I bit my lip. I theoretically knew that, but nothing would ever change if I just followed along like a second-place car too far back to make a move for the lead. I had to do something different to make up the ground I had lost over time after mistake after mistake.

Sitting up with the crew chief and lead engineer was very different than being alone in the car. With monitors with video of the car, gauges of temperatures and pressures, lap times, and probabilities of decisions going very right or very wrong, it was a smart person's game outside the car. Inside, though, was a little more forgiving on the IQ and much more harsh on emotional control and quick thinking.

I let out a sigh. Even though it was early November, the air was still warm in Miami, which would make for a tough last race of the season. Whoever won the championship would have to earn it.

"Katie?" someone said from behind me, and although I knew the Italian accent, I turned around.

Moretti.

I smiled. "You hate me, don't you?"

Although my agent hadn't told me that a deal wasn't possible anymore, there definitely wasn't any progress towards making one. The Daytona 500 was only a few months away in February, and just about every car had a driver set for the beginning of the next season except Team Moretti's fourteen team.

He gave a slight nod. "I'm not happy with you. You told me you were going to give me one last argument why I should let you drive the fourteen, and you didn't show up."

"One, I made my statement at the All-Star Race, and two, I never said I would drive that car. I already had a different commitment for that weekend," I said.

"A different commitment? What else do you have besides racing?"

"Not much, honestly, but I told my friends that I was going to drive their robot for one last tournament, and I would never back out of something like that."

"What?"

Right. It was still a strange concept to everyone else that I ended up fighting robots. "Well, long story short, they needed me to get into the biggest combat robotics tournament in the world, and I couldn't let them down. Not even for a new contract."

Moretti looked at his watch. "The green flag is in ten minutes, so we'll talk after that."

I nodded. That had to be a good sign, right?

Probably not.

Motherfucker.

Team Moretti had two cars in the championship, and he headed off to give them a few final words of encouragement. And even though Griffin wasn't in that group himself, I headed back down to his car where Truscott was gone.

"Truscott said something about his nephew knowing something about your deal with Moretti," Griffin said, almost like a question.

"He's full of shit. There's no deal, and Moretti's official statement is that he is not happy with me." I shook my head. "I guess that's what I deserve for losing three fights in a row."

Of course, Moretti and I still had plans to chat, but NASCAR liked winning results, not moral victories.

"You know, I wouldn't even be in this mess if I didn't feel like everyone was coming after me all the time. It's so much easier to get defensive and spew fake arrogance than to just accept that I'm—" I trailed off. "I don't know."

"I'm not gonna judge you, because I do the same thing," Griffin said.

"Do you though?"

"You don't think I was terrified to walk into your hospital room without even knowing you? I mean, Katie Moore? She was kind of a big deal back in the day." He chuckled a little.

"Yeah, five years ago when all she had was potential." I smiled to myself. Those were the days. "Why did you visit me?"

"I had an extra vase of flowers that I needed to get rid of. Don't flatter yourself."

I laughed. "You're so full of shit. Tell me why."

"Life is too temporary not to shoot your shot."

"But you didn't."

Griffin smiled. "I'm pretty sure it's not cool to ask someone out when they've just been through a seriously traumatic experience."

I nodded. That was true. "What about after that?"

"I figured you'd let me know if that was what you wanted, and if you didn't, that was cool too. I just like having you around no matter what the situation is with us."

He definitely had me all figured out, didn't he?

From Annie to Drake to Griffin to racing to fighting, my heart never knew what it wanted, but being back with Griffin before the race began felt as close to home as something could for someone like me.

The only thing that could make it better is if I was at the wheel of the fourteen.

"So did Moretti say that he'll find someone else to drive the fourteen?" Griffin said.

I shook my head. "He didn't say that, but I'm not sure how part two of our chat is going to go."

"Talking got you kicked off RTR, so it can easily get you on Team Moretti. Hell, if it makes you feel any better, after Truscott got the Instagram news from his nephew, he gave me a speech that I can't let you distract me from what's truly important."

I laughed. "Yeah, it does. He's one messed up dude."

RTR won the lottery with Griffin and got mad that I was worth the same as half a cheeseburger on the street. And I didn't want any sort of special treatment because of who I was (and they sure as hell did their damndest to make sure that didn't happen).

If Roger Truscott regretted letting me go, that was cool, but for me, there was nothing to regret. I tried to convince myself that it was all gonna be okay, and it was. Everything was fine.

Maybe that was some test God needed me to pass before he gave me a car again.

Yeah.

***

Andre Moretti was one of the most famous drivers internationally back in his day of Formula One racing, and he still kept involved after his retirement by owning a team there and one in NASCAR. It was an expensive sport to be involved with no matter the type of car, and I never really was good with money whether it was with those who had it or my own.

We met by a water stand, which was as quiet as we could get it, but with forty seven-hundred horsepower cars, it was a little difficult to escape the rumbling in the walls.

"So what do you want me to say?" I asked.

Moretti raised an eyebrow. "I don't think you're good at purposely telling people what they want to hear."

"Not at all, so you know you're always gonna get the truth from me." I paused. Well, usually.

People passed by on their way from their seats to the water and back to minimize the time they missed.

No one stopped to ask for a picture or autograph. How quickly irrelevance fell upon me.

"Then let's get the truth about what has been happening with you," Moretti said. "So why didn't you show up to race at Kansas in your old car even though it was a perfect opportunity to prove yourself?"

"I don't think I have to prove myself any more than I already have. I'm a former champion, so clearly I can handle pressure, I won the All-Star Race with a makeshift team and shit car, so I can drive at this level, and I had friends who needed me more than I needed that race."

"For what?"

"To drive their robot in the biggest combat robotics tournament there is. It's gonna be on TV and everything."

"And people watch it?"

I nodded. "It's literally robots kicking the shit out of each other. It's entertaining as hell."

"May I assume you did well there?"

"We didn't even make the championship tournament. We won one fight out of four," I said.

He rose his eyebrows. "That's surprising."

"Not really. I was a rookie against the best teams in the world."

"You know, everyone says that your biggest problem is that you have no character when things get tough. You bitch and drink until someone caves to what you want."

I bit my lip. There were about twelve million reasons that wasn't true, including the fact that I didn't want to drive an Alcoholics Anonymous car because it was clearly designed to make fun of me for something that wasn't true (and also that got my parents murdered in a drunken rage), and I got told to shut up and do it anyway. And I had to take five random drug tests in a row, and when I pointed out that it was a little shady, I got fired. And I got kicked off of Team Sacrilege temporarily for speaking the truth to a woman that her six-year-old kid was a pussy for not being able to handle a few uses of the word fuck during Sunday brunch.

But yeah, I was a spoiled bitch who didn't earn what she had.

"People are always gonna have a problem with me. I say and do what I want and don't feel bad for it," I said. "Everybody has two sides to them: the one people see and the one that only a few people see."

I was always one hundred percent myself for better or for worse. But only the people who stuck around for every lap of the race knew the whole story.

"I was just about to say that some views of you clearly aren't fair. The second Katie, as you put it, sticks to her word and is loyal to her team."

I grimaced. Was that true? I was trying to prove that, so did it really count?

Well, I guess I won't find out until St. Peter tells me all the reasons I didn't make it into heaven.

"Moving on, you and Bailey have a history, don't you?" Moretti said.

"Not a good one. He almost got me killed, and I still dated him for a year, so I don't really know what that says about me," I said with a laugh.

"To me, it says that your decision-making isn't all that great."

"Well, no, but I'm older now. And I don't really want that kind of misery again. Winless seasons with Truscott were worse than his bullshit."

"Would you be able to work as teammates?" he asked.

"I'll stay out of his way if he stays out of mine."

"I'm gonna need more than that, Katie. The ten and the fourteen are the two best teams on Team Moretti."

"You want me to be able to work with him?"

He nodded.

He almost killed me and my career at Talladega on two separate occasions, and I was supposed to work with him?

It was like I had just taken one shot of tequila too many.

Don't vomit. Keep it together.

The room heated up like the AC had shut off suddenly.

Am I gonna pass out? What the fuck?

"Fine. I'll just let everything slide."

Were those my words? Was that me?

"Then I think you can handle the level of camaraderie we expect on Team Moretti. A one-year, three million-dollar prove-it deal. What do you say?"

The room stopped spinning and cooled down like magic.

"One year sounds great," I said. God, that sounded stupid. With endorsements and good finishes, the money would increase a little, but that wasn't what I wanted.

A short-term deal wasn't a commitment for me or much of a risk for Moretti, and I wasn't unemployed either.

He held out his hand, and what was more real than an old-fashioned handshake deal? I shook it. The pen and paper later would be nothing more a formality.

"Can I just make one request?" I asked.

He nodded. "You can make one, but I'm not making any promises."

"You know that pit crew I had during the All-Star Race? They passed a lot of the field for me, so is there any chance I could at least get a few of those guys on the fourteen team?"

"No."

"Shit," I muttered. "What about Paul York as a crew chief?"

Moretti sighed. "Katie, things here aren't going to be like Roger Truscott Racing."

"I know that, and trust me, I'm excited to get a fresh start. Believe it or not, but I wasn't exactly happy at RTR."

"You can't have what you left behind when it becomes convenient again. That's in the past."

"I never—"

He interrupted me. "Paul York is Elizabeth Tonkin's crew chief now. Griffin Gallagher isn't your teammate anymore. Tyler Bailey is. You don't fight robots; you drive cars. This isn't a restart after a caution flag. This is a whole new race."

"I understand that." As the words came out, the smile fell from my face. "But the things that are really important are staying the same. My friends are farther away, but they're still there. We're moving to Charlotte, but me and Griffin are still together."

As much as I forced everything else to change so I wouldn't feel trapped, there were a few people I never wanted to lose. I may have been born for the road, but it was better when Griffin, Drake, and Annie were in the car with me.

Was that the secret about myself I was missing the whole time? Or did I know all that?

Maybe I did. My subconscious was much smarter than my conscious.

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Hello everyone! Thank you so much for reading! We only have a couple chapters left after this one (which was pretty long and hopefully not boring!), and I'm sure most of you know the drill by now. I'm freaking out.

So for this chapter's question, do you have any phobias?

My biggest and are small spaces and heights. Fortunately, I'm not in those situations all that frequently, otherwise, I'd lose my mind. :)