Right? Right.
“He’s a kid. He’ll adjust.”
“Not without a guiding hand. Which is where you come in.” Jacques drops the casual pretense and leans forward, propping his forearms on the table. “He’s not clicking with his race engineer. He needs a softer touch. Someone who can funnel information to him without overwhelming or frustrating him. And there’s no one better at handling young, inexperienced drivers than you.”
The flattery’s nice, but it will get him nowhere. “What if I don’t want to come in?”
Jacques arches a single, bushy brow at me. “Are you seriously telling me you don’t miss racing? The teamwork? The adrenaline rush? The cheering crowds?”
“The pressure. The anxiety. The stress-induced ulcers.” All of that is true, but none of it’s the reason why I’m no longer in the pits. “You know why I left. And why I can’t come back.”
“No one blames you, Ben.”
He’s wrong.Iblame me. If I had been paying more attention, if I had made sure the crew checked the calipers one more time that last pit stop, my best friend would still be racing and not in a wheelchair.
“What about Elodie?” I ask, changing the subject.
“What about her?”
“You can’t tell me she’ll be happy with me on the team.”
Jacques may not know I slept with his daughter, but he’d have to be blind, deaf, or living under a rock not to have seen the tension between us. The circuit’s small—ten teams, twenty drivers, and the various support staff, from designers to mechanics to catering and public relations. As much as I’d like to avoid Elodie, it was impossible not to run into her every once in while.
Jacques tips his head back to study me. “It was her idea to bring you on board.”
I find that hard to believe, but I can’t question him without getting dangerously close to revealing the reason why. So I don’t. Instead, I change tacks, going for blunt bordering on rude. “Not interested.”
“You haven’t heard the rest of my sales pitch.”
“There’s nothing you could say that would change my mind.”
“How about a hundred grand, plus a ten grand bonus if your boy finishes on the podium?”
It’s a generous number—almost twenty grand more than I was making with my last team, not counting the bonus he’s dangling in front of me. And I’d be lying if I said it didn’t tempt me, at least for a split second.
But then I remember the final turn of that last lap at Albert Park. Stefan, seconds away from the podium. His panicked voice over the coms, yelling that he’d lost the brakes. His car pitching into a spin and hitting the barrier head-on.
My heart races and my palms start to sweat, making me almost drop my damn coffee cup, and the moment passes. “Thanks, but no thanks. I’ve got everything I want right here.”
Liar, liar, coveralls on fire. I gesture around the coffee shop, like overcooked eggs served with a side of local gossip is a sufficient substitute for the roar of the automotive grease and the smell of the crowd.
Jacques motions to the waitress for more coffee. Brave man. “And another hundred K to help Stefan get his charity off the ground.”
Okay, that one’s got my attention. Unlike me, Stefan hasn’t let the accident define—or defeat—him. And it hasn’t dampened his enthusiasm for racing, either. Another difference between us. He’s hell-bent on starting an organization to make motorsports more accessible for people with disabilities.
But a couple hundred grand is like pocket change for Jacques. The guy practically shits money, and he throws it around like candy. In addition to the F1 team, he’s got at least three homes—one of them on his own damn island in French Polynesia—a garage full of vintage sports cars, and an eighty-foot superyacht that he keeps docked somewhere in the Caribbean. Then there’s his newest purchase—a Gulfstream G700.
So if I’m even going to think about taking him up on his offer—and that’s a gigantic, Sebring-International-Raceway-sized if—he’s going to have to cough up more than a lousy two hundred G’s. Not for me. What he’s offering is more than enough to maintain the simple, comfortable lifestyle to which I’ve become accustomed. I’m talking about Stefan. It’s going to take way more than a hundred thou to get his charity up and running.
After everything he’s been through—everything I put him through—he deserves the chance to make his dream a reality. And if there’s a way I can help him to do that—even if that means heading back to the racetrack—well, I guess that’s the least I can do. No matter how much it’s going to kill me to do it.
And trust me, it’s going to kill me. Just the thought of being back at the racetrack has my stomach churning with fear and loathing. I’m not even sure if I’ll be any good to Jacques or his rookie driver in the state I’m in. Although if I do agree to work with this kid—Grady—I’d have to make sure I was up to the task of keeping him safe. I’m not about to risk another driver’s life because I’m a fucking mess.
But this is bigger than me and my mess and my guilt. It’s about Stefan and all the lives he can touch. And the least Jacques can do if he wants my services so damn bad is pony up some more cold, hard cash.
He senses my hesitation and pounces, like a tire gunner at the start of a pit stop. “It’s only for the rest of the season. That should give Grady enough time to get his feet under him.”
Or enough time for you to decide to cut him loose. No matter that the kid’s racing royalty. This sport is brutal. If he hasn’t shown improvement by the end of the season, Jacques won’t hesitate to dump him. Not with a line of hopefuls waiting in the wings—otherwise known as F2 and F3—to take the wheel.
