Page 35 of Hot Lap
"That the Oyster bird’s real name?"
Reece glares at his brother. "Don’t call her that." Fuck, that disrespect pisses him off.
Wyn raises both hands in surrender. "Sorry. Didn't mean it like that. It's just..." He trails off, frowning. "Graham’s nicknames are catchy, right? Even when you hate them." He should know; their father’s been calling him Whine for years.
"She’s bloody talented."
"Hey, no judgment from me. I saw the same show you did." Wyn keeps stretching. "If you’re happy, I'm happy. Just... Christ, Reece. Did you think this through at all?"
Reece meets his brother’s eyes across the mat. "Not even a little bit."
Wyn huffs a low laugh, but Reece knows he’s trying to come off as casual.
"Guess I can see why Dad’s worried." Wyn straightens and pulls a towel from his bag. "He thinks she’s just, you know, looking for a quick fuck and a quicker buck."
Reece goes still. Cold. Sharp.
Wyn keeps talking, pretending to be oblivious. "He figures you’ll wake up one morning with a ring missing and a bank account lighter. But if you don’t, well...” Wyn shrugs. “He says she’s an ideal marketing tool while she lasts. Exotic and disposable."
Reece knows exactly what his brother's doing. Mind games, same as always. And bloody hell, he's taking the bait anyway.
He stands slowly, every muscle tight as he holds Wyn’s gaze for one long, simmering second. "I don’t want to hear Graham’s bullshit, Wyn. Not now, not ever.” He steps closer to his brother. “If you don't have an original fucking thought in your head, maybe ask yourself why. Because right now? You're just his mouthpiece."
Before Wyn can answer, Ona steps between them, her voice crisp. "Shower, Reece. Now."
He snatches up his towel and stalks toward the locker room. As he passes through the doorway, he glances over his shoulder.
Wyn keeps stretching and pretending. Ona and Haran stand off to the side, heads bowed in quiet, intense conversation and eyes cutting toward him like they know exactly what kind of damage he’s helping to cause.
The shower does little to wash away Reece’s frustration, but having a routine grounds him. Fresh PNW Nitro polo and trackies. Hat with sponsor logos perfectly positioned. By the time he strides through the paddock toward the team's hospitality unit, he's locked his personal life behind the professional mask he's perfected over years in the spotlight.
Next up is a strategy meeting and he needs his head in the game for that. He can’t let Wyn throw him off. That’s how hisbrother gets on the podium; he starts competing before they’ve even gotten into their cockpits.
The Nitro briefing room is a shrine to data. A mass of monitors displaying telemetry, circuit maps, and weather patterns dominates the space. Scribbled calculations and track sector times fill an enormous whiteboard on one wall. It smells of coffee, dry-erase markers, and sweat.
Reece enters with Ona still shadowing him. She takes her usual position in the corner, tablet ready to note any concerns that might affect his driving.
Coy doesn't look up from his laptop. "You're late."
"Sorry. The media's here early and being bloody persistent." Reece drops into a chair at the central table. He was waylaid three times by reporters between the fitness center and this office.
Coy raises his eyes, expression neutral. "Are you not entertained?"
"Thrilled."
Misho Leroy, Reece's race engineer, spins in his chair to face them. His French-Moroccan accent is thick, even after fifteen years in the sport. "We have bigger problems than reporters."
Asuka Shimamura, Nitro's chief engineer, doesn't bother with pleasantries. The Japanese woman's posture is ramrod straight, her expression unreadable as she brings up a complex series of graphs on the main screen. "The sim data from the factory indicates significant understeer in sectors 1 and 3. We need to address it before FP1."
Her matter-of-fact tone makes it clear she couldn't care less about Reece's personal drama. The car’s performance isher only concern. Nitro's test driver is back at their British factory headquarters running setups in the Driver-in-the-Loop simulator and working with their engineering team.
"I felt it in the little sim coming out of turn 4," Reece says. "Really unsettled in every run." He and Petra have a small portable setup for running simulations while they're at the circuits. It helps them home in on the data the factory team gathers from the six-million-dollar DIL.
Misho nods. "Your telemetry confirms it."
Zara Devi, their New York-born strategist, flicks through data on her tablet. "The issue worsens with tire degradation. We're looking at potentially two additional stops if we can't solve it."
Misho taps at his own tablet, bringing yesterday's simulation data to a secondary screen. "The wind direction is tricky here. It's creating instability on corner entry."
