"I'm sure I don't have to tell you both why you're here," Andre Moretti, the owner of my fourteen car, said to Tyler and me from the other side of his desk.

I scooted my chair away from Tyler. Gross.

"Look, it was an accident. We were both going for the win, and the next thing I know, we're both in the wall," Tyler said.

I rolled my eyes. "That's real easy for you to say when you were the guy in second and have more than one win on the season."

And it certainly wasn't like he had a history of wrecking me when I was in first and he was in second. That hadn't happened before ever.

"If she didn't have a win yet, I would be much more upset about this. You can't wreck your teammate, Bailey. A first and second finish is a great day for Team Moretti, and I didn't get that because you're too impatient. You had three laps to go. It's just stupid," Moretti said.

I nodded. "So stupid."

"And don't start running your mouth, Moore."

I shut up. At least on Team Moretti, I had someone willing to treat his drivers equally.

The most recent trophy in my collection was from Pocono (which was one of the fastest tracks that didn't treat me like shit), and as great as it was to outdo my performance at the All-Star Race and snag the title of the first woman to win a Cup Series race, it wasn't enough. I had my eyes on many more trophies in the future, and not all of them were shiny.

"What do you want from me? It was my fault. I promise I won't do it again," Tyler said.

That wasn't true most likely, but I was willing to accept his shit apology. I had better places to be than Moretti's office.

Moretti shook his head. "You promised that you wouldn't do it ever. I only have space for one complete moron on my team, not two."

"As long as I'm the moron that stays, I don't care. Can we wrap this up? I have a different meeting I need to be in," I said.

"Is this for MGR?"

I nodded. "And it's super important. We're so close to signing Samantha Townsend, and I wanted to meet her before we inked her to anything."

And that little angel was the latest trophy needed to add to my collection.

"I thought your only responsibility was putting your name on the team," Tyler said.

"I mean, yeah, we have managers and investors and crews doing most of the work, but I'd like to get to know the driver that's gonna be on Moore-Gallagher Racing. I'm sure if Moretti really got to know you, he never would've signed your dumb ass." I looked over to Moretti.

He neither confirmed nor denied it. "I guess you can go. This meeting was more about Bailey's behavior on Saturday night than yours."

I smiled. "Thank you."

With a win at NASCAR's highest level and championships from everywhere else, I wasn't exactly a stranger to forging my own path wherever I went. Hell, I even spent time driving robots and IndyCar. But one place I hadn't yet been was owning a team, even if it was with Griffin. Someone had to be the Gallagher in Moore-Gallagher Racing.

When I was eighteen years old without a clue of how I was supposed to go on after the deaths of my parents, the Automobile Racing Club of America, conveniently abbreviated to ARCA was the series of stock car racing that kept me distracted and on a path forward. And I wasn't the only person whose career was born there. Griffin took the same path, as did Tyler Bailey.

It was an honor to buy and have my name on a team for ARCA. And I wouldn't be a team owner like Truscott. I was more of a hands-off type of person.

***

After touching up the red lipstick to let everyone know that I meant business, I headed into our house for our meeting with Samantha. It was more of a formality than anything else, since I already knew damn well that I loved her and needed her on MGR, but what better way was there to welcome someone onto our racing team than to welcome them into our work in progress of a home?

With Penny running around the kitchen table (and blissfully unaware that she was no longer a puppy and couldn't fit into small spaces like she used to), Griffin held out a decorated envelope to me.

"What's this?" I asked.

"It's a save the date for Annie and Drake," he replied.

My mouth fell open. "They're already getting married? What the fuck?"

"She told you that they're engaged."

"Well, yeah, but I feel like that's—" I thought for a second. "It's a little sudden, that's all."

"None of us are getting any younger, Katie."

"Thanks for the reminder." I shook my head.

Of course, Annie never got a ring from Josiah even after six years, but she and Drake were on the same page. But damn, they were reading a completely different book than I was.

But there were some things that just felt right, I supposed, like driving at two hundred miles an hour or signing the spunkiest teenage driver available. Maybe marriage was like that for some people.

From all the stories that Annie told me, I pieced together the big picture of how the two of them ended up together. With Annie in school after leaving Josiah and Team Sacrilege behind, Drake told me that he never loved me (but I never loved him more, so I won) and always had feelings for Annie since his divorce. She took care of him when he was at his worst, which sounded a little too familiar to me, so who could blame him?

But she was gone and focused on making a new life for herself, and there wasn't a goddamn thing he could do about it.

I always thought Drake loved his robot too much, but the truth I missed was that he loved the team. And with no one left, he relocated Team Sacrilege to Saratoga, New York, where Annie was just beginning her art degree and waitressing to support herself and no one else for the first time in forever.

A couple of months later, they were engaged, and what felt like a moment later, they already had a date for the wedding. I knew better than anyone else that life changed quickly, and usually that was one of my favorite parts of my lifestyle, but that was too fast even for me.

Annie used to tell me that I wasn't giving Drake all the chances he deserved, but maybe that was because she could get so much more out of him than I ever could. And a grand gesture like moving meant more to her than it would ever mean to me.

All the time Annie spent with Josiah, she also spent it with Drake. Maybe marriage wasn't as crazy as it sounded.

Nope. It was totally crazy. Drake already blew one marriage, and Annie was way too open-hearted for her own good sometimes.

I looked over at Griffin. Owning a racing team together was a pretty serious step and costed way more than any ring. And what the hell could be better for us?

"Griffin," I said.

He looked up at me from the rest of the mail. "Yeah?"

"Would you ever want to get married?"

He rose his eyebrows. "Why? Are you dying?"

"Is that a no?"

"It's not a no. It's a not now," he said. "Don't you think we have enough going on right now?"

I nodded. "I'm just glad we're on the same page. I love you, but I'm gonna need more than a few months of dating, you know?"

He laughed. "Does their commitment really have you nervous for them?"

I paused. I loved them both, and their style was pretty different than what I had in mind for the roadmap of my life. How was I not supposed to worry for them? Clearly they had no idea that they were potentially ruining their relationship by treating it like a superspeedway.

But before I could spew something about how they were absolutely making me nervous, Griffin changed the subject. "You think Samantha will be nervous?"

God, I loved him. He knew what was going on in my mind better than I did most of the time.

I nodded. "Hell yes, she will be. It's you and me, for God's sake. We're intimidating."

He laughed. "You really think so?"

"She's an eighteen-year-old kid, Griffin. She probably thinks it was forever ago that we were in her spot."

"It wasn't that long ago," he said.

It was ten years for him and eight for me, but I didn't remind him of that.

Even though Griffin was pretty pissed that we had to leave our Baton Rouge neighborhood for Charlotte, North Carolina, it wasn't taking too long to get our house fixed up the way we wanted it. We couldn't get someone in to replace the flooring in time for the meeting with Samantha, so she would just have to look at our shitty non-pine floors. Griffin definitely cared more about that than I did. I didn't care at all, really.

His eyes shifted to the floor, but he didn't mention anything about it, even though I knew it was bothering him.

Our house was full of discomfort, wasn't it?

I let out a chuckle. "What the hell is going on with us? We're both nervous wrecks today."

Usually, I had no choice but to swallow every ounce of insecurity and self-doubt (and gain a few too many pounds in the thighs as a result), but the confident aura I had perfected over years of pressure in the spotlight wasn't working the way it was supposed to. And Griffin didn't have a single reason to be worried about anything ever. What didn't he have going for him? He was dating me, for God's sake.

Oh, good. My aura was back.

I took a glance at the clock on the stove behind Griffin, and Samantha wasn't supposed to arrive for the informal interview for another ten minutes. I was pretty sure there was some rule that people were supposed to be at their interviews fifteen minutes early, but I didn't care as long as she wasn't three hours late. That was the latest I ever was to a meeting with Truscott, so I couldn't judge up until that point.

He stood up from the table and walked over to stand in front of me. "We've got a lot going on, Katie. I don't think it's our fault."

I shook my head. "I don't want any negative energy in this house when Samantha gets here. We both know how important it is to make a good first impression, because then she'll be willing to put up with a lot of bullshit in the future."

"Speaking from experience?"

I smiled. "And to this day, I can still make sense of picking Truscott just because I knew I'd be teammates with someone who wouldn't try to move me out of the way to win and accidentally put us both into the wall."

"Speaking from experience?" He smiled back at me.

"Like, three days ago, yes."

He reached out and grabbed my hands, and even though he broke eye contact for a second to look at the flooring he wanted to be replaced, I ignored it. And the moment his lips met mine, all the negative energy was shoved into a closet for a moment, and hopefully, it'd stay there until we locked Samantha Townsend up with a handshake deal.

I never thought I would want to own a team after I was a part of one that was poorly managed by an asshole and one for driving robots instead of cars, but it'd be nice to do things my way. And Griffin's. It was MGR, after all.