Page 35 of False Start

“Shocking that they don’t want this race flooded with influencers and cocky athletes.” The edge of her lip lifted in a shadow of a grin.

“And yet, you brought me here, anyway.” I ducked my head, my lips brushing her hair and inhaling the faint scent of cherries. “It’s like you don’t even want to win.”

“I didn’t have much of a choice.” She sighed a breathy exhale. “Fine. You’re our social media coordinator.”

“We need a team name. What did you and Derek come up with?”

She ripped her gaze from Tom. “I had to fix a whole ass car. I didn’t have time for cutesy names and social media accounts.”

“That’s not a winner’s mentality.”

“We won’t win,” she hissed under her breath as Tom’s voice grew louder. “I already told you.”

Unfazed, I wracked my brain for a team name. “Trent and Kit Go South?”

“Really? Ew.”

“Kitten and Texas Hit the Road?”

“Absolutely not. Besides, that’s a whole ass novel.’”

“Roadside Renegades.”

She pulled her attention from the guy screaming at us over a bullhorn. “How do you come up with these so fast?”

I considered the question for a moment. “I’ve been on lots of teams. And you can’t spend your whole life being the ‘green dinosaurs.’”

She snorted. “Green dinosaurs?”

“It’s a dumb team name. You’ve got to come up with something cooler if you want to win.”

“Fine, but we’re about to go, so just come up with something half-way decent and move on. I don’t want to hear you workshopping names and dropping the ball on your navigation duties.”

“Or my driving duties?”

“Those are on hiatus until you can be trusted not to wreck the transmission.”

“If we could cut down on the sidebars so everyone can hear the instructions, that’d be great!” Tom boomed over the bullhorn.

Kit shrank back.

“As I was saying,” Tom rambled on from his perch on the station wagon. “This is an honor system event. You can bribe, steal, cheat from anyone but the judges. We need clearphotographic or recorded evidence of task completion, and you need to use the correct hashtags to get your points. I’m not combing through your makeup tutorials and trips to the beach to figure out if you actually saw the world’s biggest rocking chair or not. If you find something cool not on the list, take a picture for consideration for extra points. There’s a hashtag for that too. Everyone can come up and grab their guidebook from Ashley. Good luck out there! The race is on!”

TWELVE

KIT

The clusterof racers made a mad dash for Ashley, enveloping her. I started forward, but Trent held out a hand, holding me back. “I’ll grab the book. You start the car.”

I backed away from the melee. I doubted a five-day race would be decided in the first few minutes, but Trent took off as if it might. He rounded the crowd, coming up behind Ashley. He whispered into her ear, placing a hand on her shoulder before grabbing his guidebook and sprinting back in the car. Despite starting at the back of the crowd, he sped to the front, sliding across the hood and through the passenger side window, Dukes of Hazzard style.

“What the hell, Texas?” I shouted, flinching at all the injuries that could have happened thanks to the rust-covered hood and the barely stable window.

“We gotta go!” Trent pumped his fist like we were at a club.

“This isn’t an actual race. It’s a rally, and you’re going to break the car pulling shit like that,” I scolded, shifting the car into drive. “We don’t even know where we’re going yet.”

“Just drive.” He flipped through the book with a worrying speed. A level of speed that meant he wasn’t reading anything.

---