Page 30 of Downforce

CHAPTER 9

Max

There are specific races that I remember when I knew before the race started that I was going to come out on top.

Not all races, and certainly not every race that I’ve won did I have that feeling. But maybe three times, I awakened on the day of a race and just knew … before I’d gotten out of bed that morning, before I put on my helmet, before slipping into my car, it was mine to lose.

Something hung in the air, an electricity that couldn’t be seen, only felt. An energy that was all mine to harness, demanding that I take it, store it inside of me, and use it up to hit every corner precisely, to slip past every car in my way, and to demolish the clock.

Before those races, all of the expectations, doubts, inquiries happening inside of me would silence. It’s the closest thing I’ve ever felt to what my dad once referred to as drifting. I’ve never quite gotten that euphoric feeling he described, but maybe I’ve been close.

Either way, thoughts of those moments came crashing into my head as I walk past Annalise on the phone. I should’ve kept going, relating my thoughts to my upcoming race. Motivation to open my season by making pole before going on to win the damn Grand Prix.

That’s not what I do, though.

When I hear Annalise mention Formula 1, I slow down until I come to a stop. Then I continue to stare at her long after she’s hung up the phone, glaring in my direction.

“No? Then what will?” I reply to her comment about my eavesdropping.

She cocks her head to the side, and strangely my eyes drop to the slope of her golden colored neck. Why does it match so well with her fiery red hair? Hair that she’s pinned in a large, ivory butterfly clip, giving anyone who looks at her for too long an excellent view of the slope of her neck and shoulders.

My attention remains like a magnet to that slope. For no reason at all, the lesson I learned in my year six algebra course—that when a negative and a negative are drawn together, they create a positive—passes through my brain.

Her smile is sharp, and I know her next comment might sting a little bit.

I’m ready for the burn.

“If you haven’t figured it out by now then no one can save you.”

I raise an eyebrow, questioning.

“It’s simple,” she continues. “Remove head from sphincter then drive.”

My expression compresses into a narrowing of my brows and wrinkling of my forehead. “Is that a line from a movie?”

It sounds familiar but I can’t place it.

“It is, but I’m certain the film is above your comprehension level,” she snarks.

“I doubt it.”

“And I doubt that standing here with you is the best use of my time,” she says as if she’s made the decision to cut this conversation off and go on about her day.

Not liking the feeling of being dismissed, I say, “It’ll never happen.”

This gets her to rethink that step she’d just taken and look up at me.

“What?”

“Bree Walters. She doesn’t belong in Formula 1.”

To be honest, she probably doesn’t belong in Formula 2. Not only do I think that second part, I mention it out loud to Annalise.

It’s brief, too fleeting, but fire flares in her ridiculously beautiful eyes. I briefly wonder if they’re even real.

A princess like her wouldn’t hesitate to get some sort of work done while she cosplays as her brother’s assistant. The number of women who hang around motorsport in hopes of becoming an F1 WAG is … a lot.

My mother was one of them.