Throttled (Dirty Air 1)

Does she have a great body? Sure.

But at this moment, her smile draws me to her. I want to keep them all to myself and bottle them up for the bad days. Don’t get me started on her laughs. I feel them all the way down to my cock, every single time.

Champagne sprays all around me, but I barely pay attention, too enamored by her.

And fuck, it scares me.

I smirk one last time at the sight of her before turning back to the rest of the crowd. They chant my name, and although it feels great to hear them, nothing beats the smile on Maya’s face as she watches us.

My dad paces the motorhome’s lobby after the winners’ ceremony. He follows me to the private suite area, his agitation evident in his jerky steps. The sounds of our shoes against the smooth floor distract me. I pull him away from others because we don’t need an audience for his explosion. He enters the suite first, and before I have a chance to close the door, he shoves me toward the center of the room. His dirty move catches me off guard. My feet trip on the slick tile, but I right myself before hitting a couch.

So this is how today is going to go.

“What the fuck, Noah? You call that racing?” His voice echoes off the walls. Someone’s cranky about my second-place win.

“Last time I checked we called it racing. But maybe the concepts have changed since you last drove. It’s been a while.”

My dad’s chest heaves up and down as his eyes dart around, wild and uncontrolled. It’s the same look he gave me every time I failed to land on a shitty kart podium or crashed my F2 car. A glare he saved for our alone time in his office before he smacked my ass into the next day. Lucky for us bruises aren’t visible when you wear race suits daily. Not a single scar was left on my skin except for the mangled remains of my heart, a mistrusting organ ruined by the man before me. A cliché of the worst kind.

“I don’t sponsor this team to see a shitty performance like that from my own son. I don’t buy your crap with the steering wheel. All the tests came back fine; nothing seemed loose.” His voice gets louder as his agitation grows. My face remains flat because I don’t feed into his anger. The fallout from his rage is a lesson I don’t wish to revisit anytime soon, at least not in this lifetime.

I look over his shoulder and catch the suite door ajar, a shocked Maya staring back at me through the crack with a hand covering her mouth. Acting like Spanish Nancy Drew piecing together what

I did.

Just a bad day in racing. Steering wheel problems happen all the time.

“There was something off. Hopefully they find out what happens before the next race, that way I can get first place next time.”

“Bullshit! Don’t try to pull something over on me, acting all coy. You know I basically fund your career here. People would kill for your seat. I could replace you like that.” He snaps his fingers.

“Go ahead. I’m sure McCoy would offer me a seat in a heartbeat. That team probably pays more than Bandini does anyway. Wouldn’t you like that?”

A resounding crack fills the small room as my head snaps to the side. My dad fucking backhanded me. I try my hardest not to start something with him, my breaths becoming labored as my self-control teeters. Maya’s gasp and the whooshing sound in my ears make it difficult to make out any other noises.

I wipe away blood trickling down my mouth. It feels like I’m ten years old again, getting third place in a kart race, my dad pissed and taking his anger out on me. Looks like old tricks never die.

“Oh Father, I thought we were past this. You should put more meaning behind a hit like that; maybe age is getting to you.”

“I thought we were moving on from your shitty attitude, but I guess I was wrong. Fix yourself up. You look like a fucking mess.”

Thank fuck Maya has the foresight to disappear because my dad barrels through, ending our crappy conversation. I take a deep breath before looking into the hall, surprised yet relieved to find it empty, a nosy Maya long gone.

13

Maya

Holy shit.

Holy fucking shit.

I can’t get the image out of my head of Noah’s dad hitting him because how does someone hit their thirty-year-old child?

My brain runs a million miles an hour, unable to keep up with the surplus of information. The steering wheel problems, the race, his dad freaking hitting him across the face. The way Noah’s eyes looked into mine, sad and so damn lost. It gutted me to see him like that. Stripped down to nothing more than a man with weaknesses and a fractured past. Nothing like the cocky man I see daily, unaffected and disinterested in the people around him.

My family shows up in Santi’s suite five minutes after the Slades’ fight. No one notices my silence or how my leg bounces up and down while I mull over what I saw: a family dynamic no one knows about. I took an Intro to Psych course, and I know the stats about parents hitting their kids. This is not a one-time thing, a fluke because of a messed-up steering wheel or a lost race.

Noah’s dad is a messed-up man who lives through his son.