Page 128 of Jackrabbit

“Hey, Theo?” Beau called.

“Yeah?”

Beau pulled his eyes away from Colt to look at Theo. “You think I could get a radio to listen in?”

Theo watched him for a long moment before nodding. “Yeah, hun, I can.” He turned back to the pit for a moment and then focused on Beau again. “It’s hard, huh, seeing the kid you trained from this side of the wall?”

“Mhmm.”

Hoyt was leaning into the window to check Colt’s harness.

Beau hated it.

“I’ll be right back,” Theo said, then hurried away.

He was back before Colt left the stall, handing Beau a bright yellow radio with a black headset. Beau thanked him and clipped himself in. It was already tuned to the right station.

Hoyt climbed on top of the War Wagon, the huge, towable workstation littered with monitors and a seat that gave Hoyt a bird’s-eye view of the front stretch.

“Alright, Rourke,”Hoyt started over the radio.“I want you at eighty percent speed this run. Braking at the 3 Marker, smooth arc, follow the apex. Copy?”

Quiet for a long second, and then:“Copy.”

Before Colt even left the stall, Beau knew how this was going to go. Colt was a late braker by nature, and it was his edge. He was going to lose it in the first lap, and it was a fifty-fifty shot whether he got mouthy about it. Would have with Beau, full-stop. Beau would have put him directly in his place and tried to ignore the thrill it gave him.

Colt drove off, and Beau leaned over the wall to keep an eye on the first turn. Colt did exactly as Hoyt had instructed, then missed the bottom of the track, a sloppy lap that looked slow and painful.

“Fuck,”Colt hissed as he straightened out.

“Language.”Hoyt shook his head from the top of the War Wagon.“This isn’t a street race, Rourke. Keep it clean. Go again.”

This time Beau could hear the grit of Colt’s teeth when he answered.“Copy.”

The car plowed, the front tires turned all the way to the left, the car still sliding toward the right. Colt tried to make the tires grip the track, sending up a plume of smoke as he did.

Christ.

Hoyt gave it one and a half laps before he laid in, which was more than Beau would have given him credit for.“You’re missing the apex by three feet every time, Rourke. And you’re at eighty percent speed. How do you expect to hit the painted line at a hundred if you can’t do it like this?”

“I’m trying!”Colt was starting to sound panicked, the type of panic that made him sloppy. The type of panic that would have had Beau calling him in for a break, pressing a hand to the back of his neck and making him sit still for thirty seconds.“It’s like trying to turn a fucking bus around a cone, Marcus.”

“You cuss at me again, you’re going to be out here running laps the rest of the night.”Hoyt sounded like he was talking to a teenager learning to drive stick shift and grinding the transmission for the hundredth time.“And stop bouncing it off the chip in the dog-leg. You’re over-revving because you’re late on the gear. Shift when the lights tell you to shift, Rourke, not when you’re angry at the steering wheel. You’re gonna melt the valves before you hit the backstretch.”

Beau nearly took the headset off. Hoyt was going to breathe down Colt’s neck so hard that he was gonna suffocate. Liberty was way off base with this jackass. Nothing he was saying was wrong, but he was trying to turn Colt intohisdriver instead of turning himself intoColt’sCrew Chief.

Colt was silent except for his sharp, jagged exhale over the comms—the sound of a man who was about two seconds away from driving the car straight into a concrete wall just to make the noise stop.

***

Colt pressed his forehead against the cool tiles of the hotel shower and squeezed his eyes shut, replaying the day’s epic fuck-ups on repeat like a reel of his worst moments. Terrible. Fucking terrible. The worst run Colt had ever done in his life, and Marcus Hoyt had reamed him all goddamn day, then in the hauler as the sun set and he baked in his sticky, suffocating suit.

And tomorrow, Overthrow was sending a rep to get footage during the morning test run, followed by a mock race with visiting veterans and a few people trying out for other teams. He wasn’t ready, and he was going to make a fucking fool of himself, and he was going to get arrested for punching Marcus Hoyt in his stupid face.

He shut off the shower and dried himself before heading into his room to find clothes. Digging in his bag, which he hadn’t unpacked, he pulled out Beau’s Alice Cooper shirt he’d stolen. Beau, who had sat behind the pit wall and watched him fail over and over again the entire day. Beau, who had told him to sit like a dog—and he’d justdone it. Whether Beau’s reasoning was sound or not, Colt was pissed about it twelve hours later.

Pissed about everything, really.

The shirt went back into his bag at the bottom, and he pulled out a pair of loose, thin pants and a cropped jersey with‘Size Queen’written across the back where a player name would go. Camila’s present to him three years ago.