Page 94 of Kiss & Collide
But at least Chase would be okay. He was free now to go to Allegri.
Chase.
It felt like someone was sitting on her chest. She took a breath and refocused on Rabia.
Rabia, whose tablet glowed with plans that would never come to fruition. Carter had made her promise not to spread the word of the potential sale, but fuck that. What did it matter now?
I should have just told Chase.
She pushed the thought aside. Well, she couldn’t undo that, but she could help Rabia. Rabia deserved to know that none of this was going to happen.
She passed the iPad back across the table. “Rabia, I have something to tell you.”
When Violet had finished sharing the bad news, Rabia sat back in her chair, deflated. “Fuck.”
“I know. Fuck. Double fuck.”
Rabia’s eyes skated over the glowing screen of her iPad. Usually she was so no-nonsense and unsentimental, but for a second, Violet saw a flash of genuine sorrow in the other woman’s eyes. The look on Rabia’s face was like a knife to her chest.
“Guess that’s that, then.” Rabia sighed, pressing a button to shut down her iPad. “I should have known.”
“You couldn’t have seen this coming, Rab.”
“Not this, but I’ve been beating my head against the wall in this industry long enough to know better. Do you have any idea the kind of shit I’ve put up with to get here? There are more women in the garages these days, but when I was starting out, that wasn’t the case. And Brown women? Forget it. I was top in my class at uni, and yet I took a job atPinnacle, because it was the only team that would hire me.”
“I’m sorry.” Violet tore her pastry into pieces. “And I can’t imagine Oscar made it any easier.”
Rabia scoffed. “He was a fucking nightmare. And I didn’t dare say a word because as bad as this team was, at least I washere. But if Hammond’s decided he’s done with us … honestly, I should just give it up. Move over to aerospace and be done with all this racing nonsense. Nine to five in an office, home with Rajan every night, watch the races on the telly like normal people.”
Her words were at odds with her eyes, so full of frustration and sadness. Walking away from racing would kill her, for all those same reasons Chase had given her back at that bar in Eldham months ago. People who worked in racing did it for one reason—because this sport was buried in their souls. Their hearts beat in time with the roar of the engines.
Fuck this. Fuck all of it. They’d all worked so hard, and for nothing. So some investor class assholes could strip them forparts. It wasn’t fair, and she hated—absolutelyhated—feeling helpless to prevent it.
She was good at one thing. And that was her job.
If she wanted or needed something done, she just kept pushing until it happened, like making Chase a star, like yeeting Oscar Davies into the sun, like pummeling this ragtag team into something marginally competitive. So why not now?
“Rabia, maybe I’m delusional, but what if we could convince Carter not to sell?”
“You want Carter Hammond to keep running a Formula One team?”
“Why not? We’re figuring out how to make it work, aren’t we?”
“Carter’s not interested in racing, Violet. I can’t imagine finding an angle that suddenly makes him interested.”
Violet’s mind raced as she flew through every angle she could think of. “He likes good press, though. He’s been paying attention. What if we pitched him? On what we could be? Every Pinnacle success is a Hammond success.”
“Do you think he’d really go for that?”
“I have no idea, but we won’t know until we try. Are you in?”
Rabia threw her hands in the air. “Why not? What the fuck do we have to lose?”
The jolt of inspiration, of purpose, had powered her through the rest of the afternoon, but once she was back in her hotel room, all alone, the walls began to press in on her. She put in her earbuds and blasted some Black Flag, but it didn’t bring the release it usually did. A vodka on the rocks didn’t help. Neither did two. She felt restless and unsettled.
So she decided to do what she always did when she wanted to get out of her own head—she went out.
ILM Cloud Storage was considering sponsoring Pinnacle next season, and Zak, the company rep who’d come to the race weekend, had invited her to a party they were hosting at Mexico City’s Museum of Modern Art. She hadn’t planned on going, but as she pulled up, she was sure this was just what she needed. It was hard to get lost in your own head when you were lost in a crowd.
