“Nope.Just a broke kid trying not to blow up the family car.”Glancing at her, I wink.
Blane waves a hand without looking up from his tripod.“C’mon, Mad.Driver’s seat, helmet on.Let’s see that race face.”
I roll my eyes but oblige, tugging on the helmet and dropping into the Lancia Stratos.She’s a ‘74, painted in the original Marlboro red, and she has no business being this beautiful after fifty years.Mid-engine, rear-wheel drive, a Ferrari-derived V6 that sounds like controlled violence when she wakes up.
She was built for one thing and one thing only, and she’s never forgotten it.I picked her up at an estate auction a few years ago, half-restored and undervalued.
When I got home, I spent the better part of the first six months putting her back together in this garage.Best decision I ever made that didn’t involve a helmet.
The seat wraps around me like it was built for my body specifically, worn leather, cracked along the bolster from years of use, molded into something that fits too well and remembers too much.
“Hey, girl.”I run my hand over the wheel that sits close, intimate, the way it always is in a car built for one purpose.
The smell hits me immediately—oil and rubber and the faint ghost of exhaust baked into every surface—and something in my chest unknots before I can stop it.
I haven’t let myself do this since I retired, even on the days when I wound up here, seeking an escape or when the pull got loud.Maybe I was too scared to find out if I could walk away again.
I love my job as coach and gym teacher.It’s a dream come true, but the chance to race on a world stage and all the success I had… I only wish my dad had been there to see, to live it with me.
When I look up, Grace leans against the guardrail, arms crossed, watching me with an expression I can’t quite read from here.
I flip the visor open.“You ever been in one of these?”
She shakes her head, curls catching the afternoon light.“No.And I’m perfectly happy keeping my organs where they are, thanks.”
“Come on, Buchanan.I don’t bite.”
“That’s what all the dangerous ones say.”
I grin.“Dangerous.I’ll take it.”
Blane looks up from his camera.“Do it, Grace.Reporter and racer, side by side—that’s the shot.Behind the scenes, raw, authentic.”
She hesitates, lip caught between her teeth, glancing between us, eyes landing on me.“You just want to see me scream.”
“Definitely.”Blane jumps in like her comment was for him, and the smirk he gives her is lazy and familiar, loaded with something that has nothing to do with camera angles.“Like old times.”
A green-eyed monster roars to life at the base of my spine, instinctive and violent, and ready to destroy.
If I weren’t strapped in with seconds to go before she joins me—because she doesn’t know it, but I’m about to take her for the ride of her life—I’d be out of this car, burying my fist in his jaw.
The idea of him knowing how she sounds—what she looks like… It’s enough to make me rip out the steering wheel.
I’m fucked.
I rest my head back for a beat and clear the thought, willing the beast to sleep.I’m not a violent man, but Grace…
Then I shake any lingering tension away and stretch across the seat to push open the passenger door.“Seat’s yours.”
She stares like the car might swallow her whole.Then, muttering something under her breath that sounds suspiciously like “stupid idea,” she climbs in.
Victory blooms across my chest, intensifying when her thigh brushes mine as she settles in, the scent of her shampoo surrounding her.I can’t move, can barely breathe.
“You good?”My voice comes out raspy.
She fastens the belt, glaring.“Just drive, Mad One.”
Damn right.