Page 4 of Start Your Engines

The room remains silent as eyes dart back and forth between us.

I scowl at her, but she doesn’t flinch.

I take a breath. “Hold?—”

“Own you,” she repeats before silencing my comeback with a hand.

She turns to the board members, who stare with their furrowed brows. “Everybody out. I want you back in here for a strategy meeting in thirty minutes.” I move slowly to the door, but her eyes flash as she swivels back to me. “Not you. I’m not done with you. Sit.”

I fold my arms, staring her down. She rolls her eyes.

As the board departs, I reposition myself nearer the wall. My nostrils flare as I square my shoulders, and I clench my teeth so hard my jaw hurts.

“You’re the new driver Niki has saddled me with.” Her shoulders are tight, and her left eye twitches.

I hold up my hands. “Saddled? I didn’t sign up to be ‘owned’ by you, but don’t forget that I’m one of the best drivers on the circuit.” Or I was.

“And one of the biggest liabilities, when you’re not seducing everything in sight.”

The stench of vomit fills my nostrils, and I tighten my lips. She doesn’t know exactly how much of a liability I am or why. Maybe this is a chance to get out of my contract. If I was in a better mental state, I’d consider this is fate telling me to recompense her for what I did to her.

“I’m not what you?—”

She holds her hand up again and connects her phone to the conference room screen. I will bust a vein if she keeps doing that. I study her fingers as I count to ten. Several marks suggest she’s not sitting in her office like a hands-off boss but continues working on cars. The line of the scar has embedded itself in her skin. I fist my hands. If I could go back…

I shake my head. I can’t go back.

Niki’s face appears on the screen.

Senna gasps, “Your hair.” But it’s so quiet that he doesn’t hear.

His head is completely shaved. The burns, still healing from his accident, make myhellofreeze in my throat. It took mere seconds for the rescue crew to remove him from the car and extinguish the fire during his last race. I’m under no illusion that the damage could’ve been more than burns and broken ribs. The videos of him stretchered away haunt my Senna-free nightmares.

I close my eyes. This isn’t the first time I’ve considered walking away from racing like he did. At twenty-eight, I’m not one of the young racers anymore. I could retire. Each time I get into my car, the adrenaline no longer fuels a desire to win. Instead, a desperation to stay alive controls my hands.

“What the hell, Niki?” Senna’s grumble forces my eyes open.

I eyeball my best mate as he pops a cap on his head.

“I couldn’t have said it better myself,” I grunt.

The three of us haven’t spoken like this since the day before Senna’s accident when Niki was ill with the flu and told us he couldn’t race. If he’d been there, Senna would have remained safe. I shake the memory away and sink my teeth into my lip again, desperate for pain.

Niki smiles. “Look at you two getting on. You’re already agreeing about things.”

I want to drag him through the screen and smack him, even though I love the guy.

“If you were here, I’d punch your beautiful face,” Senna replies. She needs to stop speaking my thoughts. “Why is Dane the Dick here, and where’s my other driver?”

“No ‘how are you, bro’? ‘Where are you?’ I expected better of you, little sis,” Niki says, although his smile falters. A plain white wall is behind him. His turquoise Coulter Racing team tee gives away nothing about where he is or what he’s been doing.

“Niki,” I snap. “Get to the point. I came here for you. You begged me to join the team.” When I was about to walk away.

Senna glances at me with her big hazel eyes. When we were teenagers, I’d stare at her when she wasn’t looking, just to decipher the colours swirling through her eyes. She says they’re brown, but I’ve stared at them long enough to know.

I check myself. This isn’t the time to reminisce or open the box of emotions I closed when I saw her last year at the wedding. I meet her stare, and she looks away quickly. The room smells like every boardroom in this building: coffee and diesel with a hint of Old Spice as most of the directors are men over the age of fifty. But there’s something else. I breathe in and get hints of orange blossom. I want to get close to her and find out if it’s her fragrance.

I slam my palm against the wall.

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