Total pages in book: 24
Estimated words: 23821 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 119(@200wpm)___ 95(@250wpm)___ 79(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 23821 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 119(@200wpm)___ 95(@250wpm)___ 79(@300wpm)
I had no idea how everyone kept themselves sane amid the constant bustle, the lights, the noise, the crowds of people, and the rules. Just what you had to know was daunting. Where to sit, where to stand, the riders had to line up on the grid according to their qualifying time, all the races had points, and… It was mind-blowing.
“Why are you worrying?” Varro teased the night before the race, pulling me into the tiny room we shared at the back of the motorhome. The room held two stacked beds that could be pushed up flat against the wall, a closet, and a flat-screen on the wall. “They named me the wild card. I’m in, that’s what we all wanted.”
His desire, not mine.
“All you have to do is watch me ride really fast out there tomorrow. I need the best time. That’s all there is to it.”
But I found that watching was not the exciting experience I thought it would be. It was simply terrifying.
And it wasn’t that I didn’t like danger. I was as much of an adrenaline junkie as the next guy, and having him race legally on tracks was so much better than when he had been riding roads that could only loosely be called that, at altitudes between one and a half and three miles above sea level. But it was terrifying because of the speed. He could be gone in an instant.
But nobody, including him, read that on my face.
“Oh, mate.” Aidric grinned at me over a drink in Jerez almost a month later. “You’re lucky, you are.”
I squinted at him.
“He looks at you and he thinks he can fly.”
“Is that a compliment?”
“’Tis. If I hadn’t seen the man shag three and four girls a night before you joined us, I’d wonder about you two.”
But there was nothing more between me and Varro than there had been our entire lives. And when I looked up and saw Varro emerging from the back of the club we were in, I was reminded yet again that the man was a whore.
“Oh shit,” I heard a girl say at the table next to us. “I want that.”
Varro was making his way through the crowd to reach me and Aidric.
Jesus.
Head held high, a loose-hipped, fluid stride combined with the wicked curl of his lip—he made people stop and stare. His frame was powerful and strong; his clothes clung to his long muscular legs, broad shoulders, and wide chest.
The thick, glossy black hair he had inherited from his mother was pulled back from his face in a queue, and the rest hung to his shoulders in a silky fall. Even the stubble, of which I was normally not a fan, was sexy on him.
When he reached us, I could smell the smoke and perfume clinging to him. My stomach rolled. “Gettin’ laid?” I inquired snidely.
“Yes, sir.” He grinned big.
“How many is that tonight, mate?” Aidric teased.
“Three. Or, I mean, does it count in a bathroom stall?” he queried his head mechanic, his hooded brown eyes looking liquid in the light.
“It does,” I informed him petulantly.
His grin was evil. “Of course it does, baby.”
I growled. He grabbed me, and though I was still five ten to his six two, the man was much more muscular than me, and he easily pulled me off my chair and into the forced embrace.
“Hug me back,” he demanded, soft and husky in my ear.
But he reeked of perfume and cigarettes and cum, and he was trying to show me again, for the billionth time in my life, that we were brothers. Friends. And in that second, I had the weirdest moment of absolute shining clarity.
It was funny, but it was like something actually clicked in my brain. I shoved him off me, and he looked wounded for a moment before I grinned wide.
“What’s this? You’re not actually going to lighten up, are you? Wouldn’t want you to break something in your face,” Varro sniped.
Epiphanies came at the weirdest times, in the oddest places.
What a bastard I must have been for him to say something like that. There I was, thinking I was hiding everything, when my thirst for him, my hunger, consumed every second. I was making him miserable too; I had to be.
The things I wanted—him with me, not drinking, not fucking the paddock girls or any of the other thousand women milling around—were not possible. I had to let it go.
He was straight, no matter what foolish dreams my heart had conjured up, and I was supposed to be his best friend. I had completely lost sight of that.
It was time to make the best of it.
“Brian?” He sounded worried. “You all right?”
I took his face in my hands, realized who he was, what he was, and finally—after a lifetime—let him go.
“Baby?” And even the nickname would not stop the severing, not this time.