Page 9 of King of Wands

Case in point: the very next thing out of Richard’s mouth. “What the hell is an ethnography?”

“An on-the-ground study of a culture,” King replied without looking away.

I blinked, almost positive I was still asleep. Jess’s paper ball was fake. Jess was fake. This whole meeting was a figment of my imagination.

And then King touched my hand, sending an electric jolt up my arm, disproving everything.

Oh, I was awake. I was very, very awake.

“Fine,” he sighed, “I’ll beg. Isabel, please do this. It’s my entire future and right now the only people I have in my corner that I can trust are you two and my chief strategist. Everyone else is looking out for themselves. I can race the wheels off my car, I can out-drive everyone else, but if I don’t make a mark by the end of this season—onandoff the track—my future stops here.” He still had a finger on top of my hand, which was weird but also delightful.

Richard didn’t seem to notice because he sat back in his cushy conference chair to pinch the bridge of his nose. “King is right. As far as the team is concerned he’s got one year to prove he’s worth the money. If he doesn’t they’ll replace him with another driver with potential.”

For some reason that made the breath catch in my lungs. It was so...harsh. My fate was generally in my own hands. It was research. How hard I worked, how well I interpreted information, even how eloquently I wrote it up, was all in my control. But for King, most of it was out of his hands. He couldn’t control how well Yedlin raced or the efforts of his engineering team, just as he couldn’t will the management or team owners to want him.

All he had was his own ability on the track and a chance to win over the fans. And even then...the owners might not care.

“But surely another team would pick you up?”

King smiled but it was the sad kind. The you-really-don’t-get-it look of exhaustion. “It’s possible, but remote.”

Richard mirrored him. “King’s too talented not to land somewhere, but it might not be in F1.”

Once upon a time I had a fantasy where two men were begging me. I did not think this was how it would play out in reality. “Fine. I’ll stop freaking out about this. But the minute you realize you’ve made a terrible, terrible mistake please feel free to fire me.”

“It’s not a mistake,” King said, his fingers grazing from the back of my hand to the inside of my wrist. For the briefest of moments it felt like he was touching me everywhere all at once. “You’ll see.”

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