Page 74 of Full Throttle

He stood and brought Colby to her feet. “Please. Trust me.”

Trust. There was that word again.Liam was asking a lot, and while she shouldn’t trust him, Colby did. “Let me clean up first.”

Chapter 26

Colby was not in the mood to do anything but curl up in bed and pull the covers over her head. She had no idea how she allowed Liam to talk her out of doing just that. Instead, she’d splashed her face with cold water, thrown on a black hoodie, a pair of dark jeans, her favorite pair of Chucks, and followed him out of her hotel room.

In the darkness of the night, Liam pulled Colby along toward Lockwood’s assigned garage.

It wasn’t cold, but she was chilled to the bone and mentally exhausted. “Why in God’s name are we here this late? The track closed a couple of hours ago.”

“I’m keeping my word.”

“What? By dragging me around and us looking like thieves in the night. We are so going to get arrested.”

Liam chuckled. “I doubt anyone mistakes us for thieves.”

Spoken from the ivory tower of privilege,Colby thought. There were barely any black people on this track during the day. Yet, she was at the Atlanta Motor Speedway after closing, wearing a hoodie with four big ass bodyguards following them. At night, they might be mistaken for a gang.If I don’t hurry up and get my ass back to the hotel.She might not even make it to jail. Black folks walking around in the dark wearing hoodies had proven to be a lethal mix. Colby lowered the hood from off of her head. “Can’t you just tell me whatever it is you want to show me?”

“Not as effective.” Liam was focused. He stopped in front of a huge garage. It looked closer to the size of a small plane hangar. “We’re here—number seventy-six.”

He turned around and faced Colby. She was utterly and completely bewildered. Liam placed both hands on her shoulders. “You ready?”

Colby hunched her shoulders. “Umm . . . I guess?” She had no idea what Liam wanted to show her, and if she were honest, she really didn’t care. Colby just wasn’t in the right frame of mind.

“I never knew when Brian bought Daughtry Racing that it would change my life. What started out as a problem I needed to help him fix has morphed into something so much more. Our goal was simply to win one race. You need to understand that I’m a man who likes order. I like certainty and predictability.”

“You also like being in control,” Colby said with a small smile.

“I can’t argue there either.” He smirked. “Nothing about this situation is certain or has been predictable. You’ve turned everything on its head. The first time I saw you drive, I knew you were special, but I wasn’t ready to admit it. I wanted to follow the plan. Win this damn race so that I could go back to my life. Then I got to know you. I saw how driven you were, no pun intended.” He smiled before turning serious again. “After that night in my hotel room, I also realized that Brian and I were part of the problem, intentionally or not. We continued the entrenched position of protecting sexism and racism by knowing you were the best driver on our team but ignoring it because you weren’t a white male. We no longer want to be part of the problem. We want to be part of the solution.”

Liam gave the signal, and the garage door slowly lifted.

“What did you do?” Colby watched with bated breath as it slowly rose. It took forever. When the door was fully open, Colby’s hands came up and covered her mouth. She was going to be a mess. Her emotions were all over the place.

In all their glory, stood her entire Lockwood Racing team. Brian stepped forward. “I want to unofficially give you Lockwood’s lead driver position. As you heard, I’m contractually bound to give that title to Asher. But we all know what’s up.”

Colby couldn’t believe it. “What? But you said . . .”

“I know what I said, but you more than deserve this. We weren’t sure if we could pull everything together before the race, so until we knew for sure, we decided to keep things status quo. Liam worked his ass off to make it happen.”

“But,” she turned to Liam, “what if I lose? Then you’ll lose—” Colby stopped short of spilling all of their family’s business.

“Didn’t I tell you that Liam always has a plan?” Brian grinned. “He has a plan for that too.”

The sound of a large semitruck caught her attention. “What’s that?”

“Oh, you think this was the proof of my faith in you?” Liam asked. “Nah. That’s not it.” He pointed toward the trailer. “That is.”

The trailer pulled up to their garage. Again, it took the damn door forever to lift. But when it did, Colby was speechless. Gonzo drove the brand-new customChevrolet Camaro ZL1 1LEdown from the ramp. It had her brother’s number—Lucky #12, and Ms. James underneath it on the doors and hood.

Shocked didn’t even begin to describe how she felt. “This is my car?”

“It is your car,” Liam confirmed. “Your team worked day and night to get her ready.”

“Y’all did this for me?” Her eyes were glassy. Colby had cried more in the past twenty-four hours than she had in her entire life.

“Damn straight,” Ben said.

---