Page 146 of Final Drive

“No, you don’t.” He almost smiles. “But you’re going to.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

Reese

Zane knocks at nine-forty with an armful of vending machine food and a shit-eating grin.

“I brought sustenance.”

“That’s a bag of pretzels and four Snickers.”

“I brought what the machine had.” He comes in without being asked, which is fine. He’s been walking into rooms I’m in since the day we met. He dumps everything on the desk, then stands there looking at me. “How are you?”

“Tired.”

“Right.”

“Zane.”

“I’m going to say a thing, and it’s going to come out wrong.” He’s already talking faster, hands moving now that they aren’t full of candy. “I’m not upset about the lying. Bo’s upset about the lying, and Bo gets to be, since Bo’s the one you looked directly in the eye in the lobby. I’m upset about a different thing, and I’ve been walking around the parking lot for forty minutes trying to figure out what it is.”

I sit on the end of the bed. “Did you figure it out?”

“Yeah.” He drops down beside me. “You had the best day of your life today, and you had to have it alone.”

That lands harder than I expect.

“Everybody else got to just be happy,” he says. “We won, and that was the whole thing for us. You were sitting in the same boat with a card in your pocket and that phone call from yesterday and the fact that it was your last race, and you still had to do the thing where you look fine so nobody else has to deal with it.”

I look down at my hands while he keeps going.

“I hate it. That’s my whole position. I’ve thought about it for forty minutes, and my official position is that I fucking hate it.”

“Noted.”

“So I’m going to sit here and eat a Snickers, and you’re going to have the day now instead. Late, but you’re having it.”

I put my head on his shoulder, and we sit there for about ten minutes. Zane eats two Snickers and gives me half of one without asking whether I want it. I eat it anyway.

Beckett arrives at ten with a bottle of bourbon and Cameron behind him.

“I’d like the record to show I told him not to come,” Beckett says.

“I’d like the record to show he texted me the room number,” Cameron says.

“That was for logistics.”

Beckett shuts the door with his foot. He’s carrying the bottle and three plastic cups from the bathroom, and there’s a specific brightness to him that means he’s decided something in advance and intends to make it look spontaneous.

“Right. Here’s where we are. Nobody in this hotel is sleeping. Bo is downstairs having a feeling at Gray, Tyler has gone to bed with a spreadsheet, and Jackson and Eli have disappeared, which is their business.” He pours four fingers of bourbon into a cup and hands it to me. “You have had the worst best day in the history of collegiate athletics, and I’ve decided the correct medicine is for you to stop making decisions for approximately five hours.”

“Beckett.”

“You get to say no. At any point. Everything stops and we watch television.” The performance drops out of him for that part, then slides right back into place. “But I want it noted that I have thought about this extensively, and I have a plan.”

Zane sits up. “There’s a plan?”

“There’s a plan.”