Fast & Hard (The Fast 1)

Twenty Four

Headline: Disastrous Finish for Gibbes, Engine Failure at France GP

Headline: “No Explanation” from Celeritas for Mechanical Issues Causing Gibbes France DNF

“There's just so much goddamned weight on my shoulders, all I'm trying to do is live my motherfucking life. Supposed to be happy, but I'm only getting colder. Wear a smile on my face, but there's a demon inside.” - Five Finger Death Punch - Jekyll and Hyde

Lennox

“Mal, why’s your phone locked?” I call to Mallory who’s just stepping out of the shower at my place. Only Matty and Jack are in the residential building with us at headquarters, so she’s been able to spend the night and not sneak off before morning comes.

I don’t like the sneaking at all and wish she’d just come out with it, let us be a public thing, but she’s insistent it’ll get her fired or ruin her reputation. It doesn’t make me feel great that being with me could be career damaging but I know I’m taking that personally when I shouldn’t, so I quit bringing it up.

And then I took advantage of the sneaking. Late at night, I took her on the hotel balcony overlooking La Sagrada Familia in Spain. Ate her on the deck of a boat on the Mediterranean Sea in Monaco. Licked maple syrup off her body in Montreal in my hotel room. That one wasn’t my most creative, but I was short on time and she had no complaints after the cleanup shower led to Round Two.

I planned to make up for it in the French Rivera but then I was in no mood after my engine blew up and caught fire due to a “mysterious” oil leak and I didn’t even finish the race, lost out on all the points. I know what that was all about, more corruption inside the snake pit. But I’ve bitten my tongue, figuratively and literally, and tried to shield Mallory from it as much as possible.

Plus, Mallory’s been exhausted, up late working on her laptop and phone. She’s been awake before me the past few days, which isn’t like her. She says it isn’t her parents causing trouble but I know she’s worried about her job here despite me doing my damndest to not cause her any additional stress.

“I didn’t hear you, what’d you want?” She steps out of the bathroom with a white bath towel wrapped around her body, another one drying her long, wet hair. She’s so beautiful I lose track of my thoughts when she’s around. I’m out of my skull for this girl. She’s the most real thing in my life standing before me right now. Exposed, wet, raw, honest.

“Come back to bed. Dick-on-Demand is having a big sale. A real blow out. Huge savings.” Like the crass asshole I am, I point to the size of the bargains currently tenting the bedsheet.

“As much as I love a good dick sale, I have a meeting with Sandra. Then we have the sponsor event with Hintz-Hegmann in London.”

I groan. There’s been a lot of phone calls and meetings with the Dragon Lady lately. Maybe sponsorships are picking up since I’ve been behaving myself, which was half the goal for Mallory’s nanny position. I guess that’s good, for her. I’ll deal with more glad-handing if it helps her. “Hintz-who?”

“Hintz-Hegmann. They’re new. Synergized Eco-Centric Middleware.” She makes air quotes around the words and I look at her like she’s speaking pig latin, which she may as well be. “They reinvent real-time functionalities,” she continues.

I may drive cars around in circles for a living, as Robert Mitchell so ignorantly stated, but I am not a stupid man. Another stereotype, of not just me, but all the drivers. We’re some of the most honed athletes on the planet and we’ve been trained and educated for decades to get here, the pinnacle of motorsports. Well, those of us who didn’t buy our way in. That said, what the fuck is eco-centric middleware? “What does that mean?”

“I have no idea, just look pretty and smile for the cameras,” she shrugs.

“Mmmmkay,” I shake my head. I should probably be a good little boy for Celeritas and Google that before the event. “Anyway, I was going to Airdrop the photos from home to you but the password protection is on,” I hold her phone up to show her. Her old phone, the one she burnt to death and sent to an ashy grave in my fire pit, was never locked.

“Oh,” she swipes it from my hands, “it’s the new phone, must not have updated the settings. Go ahead and send the pics now.” She walks back into the restroom with her phone and I send the photos to her from mine.

Scrolling through the selfies she took of us, I find myself lying in bed smiling like a schoolboy. They remind me of better days when it was just us at home. Her in my sweatpants, kissing by the fire, spending the whole day in my bed, watching her investigate tide pools along the shore.

I haven’t been home since. It’d be easy to blame my schedule but I haven’t made an effort to go home, either. It will feel empty without her now. Even more empty than it already is. When I go back home, I want her with me and she’s been too busy. I watch her get dressed and blow-dry her hair through the bathroom door and picture her in Scotland permanently. I imagine her at Mum and Pop’s on Christmas morning with Bram and Jack and Matty and I. I’m a lovestruck boy when she kisses me goodbye.

A couple of hours later I’ve worked out and am dressed in team gear ready to act like a dancing bear at the circus for whoever Hintz-Hegmann are. Mallory has her little black Celeritas skirt on and her ass looks fantastic. I can get through the event if I focus on that visual. We head out of our building and I open the doors to the LaFerrari to help her in for the drive into London.

She seemed off after her meeting with the Dragon Lady but was rushing to get ready. I need to make some serious decisions, Abu Dhabi will be here before I know it and I now accept I don’t want her to go back to New York. Like a selfish prick, I find myself wondering if she’d consider opening her firm somewhere in Europe. Even if she wanted to, she’d need to be in London or Berlin or Paris, not on an isolated island in the Hebrides.

I don’t know how but we could figure something out. Once I’m out of my contract maybe the next team will be headquartered in a city that would work for her. We’d be apart so much, though, with me on the road more than half the year. I sigh, knowing I’m jumping the gun, but I could make something work.

“Oh Ms. Mitchell, will you be joining me for the drive to London?” The hair on my neck stands up as I spin to see Dickhead DuPont prancing through the parking lot in his boat shoes, the lights of his Hummer flashing as he unlocks it with the key fob.

“And why would she be riding with you in that monstrosity you drive to compensate for…” I wave at the ugliest vehicle ever to drive onto the Celeritas lot, but Mallory cuts me off.

“No, I have work to discuss and will be riding with Lennox,” she calls back and scurries into the car. “Please just get in, Lennox,” she looks at me with pleading eyes while trying to pull the gullwing door down.

Dickhead winks, actually winks at me, but I close Mallory in the car and get in my side, not letting him provoke me again. “The hell is that about?” I ask her as I start the car up.

“I don’t know, he’s an idiot. Please ignore him, Lennox.” Her foot is tapp

ing against the floorboard and I sigh, hating that he’s making her uncomfortable, that this situation between us is making her life more difficult.