Page 46 of Rush
‘No thanks, Meeks.’ She set about gathering her things together: sunglasses, headphones, gloves. All the while, Kodie remained silent. Music blasting from her headphones, competing with the noise of the coffee machine. Savi wanted out.
‘You know,’ Kodie ripped her headphones off, ‘you could have waited. You didn’t have to make it public so soon, Savi. You didn’t have to kiss in front of the cameras, let the whole world know about it.’
‘Ko—’
‘I’m not finished,’ she interrupted, standing from the sofa and throwing her headphones into the nest of cushions. ‘I know you didn’t ask for the attention you’re getting, but you knew you were gonna get it. And now the only thing anyone cares about is you and Marco and your perfect little love story. I’m happy for you, I am, but I just wish you’d waited until the end of our first season as a team. You made a choice, and you didn’t take Miko and me into consideration.’
‘I’m sorry, Kodie. I’m sorry to both of you, I really am.’
‘I know you are and I’m proud to call you my teammate and to be on this journey with you, but I’m still angry and I still feel let down. It’s unfair that you get so much attention just because you’re dating De Luca, and it’s unfair that you didn’t at least have a conversation with us about it. You didn’t warn us.’
‘I should have talked to you about it, let you know wewere planning to go public. Asked how you felt about it. But truthfully, we didn’t really plan it. We never talked about the implications, we just got caught up in the moment and suddenly stopped hiding it.’ Savi felt sick to her stomach for lying, but it wasn’t like she could tell them the truth so she might as well try to salvage her friendship with Kodie.
‘Yeah, you should’ve.’ She grabbed her headphones and stormed out of the trailer, leaving her racing suit still hanging in the closet.
Miko focused on her latte, smirking to herself. ‘You two are as fiery as each other, but I really respect the way you owned up to your misplaced judgement just now.’
‘My relationship with you two as my teammates is just as important as the one I share with Marco, and I hate to think that this is all having a negative impact on your careers. You’re both equally as talented as I am, both deserving of your places on this team. I don’t want to overshadow you, and I wish I could make it all stop.’
‘I know, Savi. And Kodie knows it, too. She’s just been having a hard time adjusting to the pressure of this championship and this is adding to her stress, but she shouldn’t have taken it out on you. It is what it is, and the press will do as the press does. Just live your life, enjoy Marco.’ She raised an eyebrow suggestively and Savi blushed. ‘But, if you want to keep sticking up for us like you did in there then I’m sure it would go a long way towards making Kodie feel better about the whole thing.’
‘She isn’t the only one pissed off about it. I am, too. It’s okay in small doses, more so when it’s fans making a fuss, but bombarding us during media sessions is too far.’
‘But you can get all hot and heavy with a super sexy Italian racing driver, so it’s not all bad really, is it?’ Miko grinned. ‘I’ll leave you to get dressed. See you in quali.’
Savi hurried to step into her suit and get her shoes on, making a mental note of everything she’d left in her cubby in the garage. Her helmet was still in there. She had to admit she was feeling a lot better about the whole thing, but now she was worrying that Jesse might have seen the livestream and noticed how defensive Marco was of her. Of them. He spoke as though this was real and she was his. Once again, treating her in a manner Jesse never had.
‘You ready, Cowgirl?’ Marco tapped on the window.
‘I’m coming!’ she called out.
‘About time. You realise we have to be in the garage, like, now.’ He was already walking before she jumped off the bottom step.
‘Well, then. It’s just as well we are literally feet away from it.’ Savi ran ahead, racing him inside. ‘Get a move on, Monaco, we’ve got grid positions to claim!’
18
Something felt wrong. The car wasn’t reacting the way it should, and Savi was burning up as her anxiety increased. It was race day. Qualifying had been and gone and both Revolution teams had smashed it, earning first and third starting positions. But today, everything seemed to be going wrong, and they were less than an hour into the six-hour race. Savi was up first, and she’d locked up twice already, both times with her engineer on the other end of the radio, demanding to know what was going on.
She was convinced it wasn’t her doing. It had to be the car. Savi could admit she was a little distracted thanks to a stream of angry, possessive texts from Jesse before the race, but she always left her personal life back in the garage. Always. It was one thing she was immensely proud of: her innate ability to shut the rest of the world out the second she shut the door.
‘Jasper, it doesn’t feel right. I know this car, and it’s not behaving like it did yesterday.’
‘Savi,’ her boss came over the radio, ‘I need you to be specific. What’s happening?’
‘It’s the steering. You saw me lock up, right? I feel like I’m fighting the car.’
‘Just keep going.’ Her engineer’s voice joined the conversation once again, this time a little less accusatory. Maybehe’d realised it really wasn’t the driver at fault. ‘We’ll bring you into the pits and give it a once-over.’
‘No, I’m telling you guys,’ she shouted. ‘Something’s wrong. It doesn’t feel safe.’
‘Savi, it’s fine. I can see the problem on my screen, it’s an easy fix. You’ve got half a lap to go and then we can take a look.’
‘No, come on!’ She didn’twantto stop the car and let the team down, drop out of the race. Not after her conversation with Kodie. But this wasn’t normal.
‘Savi, we believe it’s safe to keep driving.’ Jasper’s voice was stern, snapping her out of her defiance. If they weren’t going to let her stop, then she was desperate to just make it back.
She kept pushing, multiple cars up ahead of her and the race win slipping further from her grasp with every turn of the track. But she didn’t slow down, the pit lane so painfully close. And then, in the blink of an eye, the race was over. Savi spun out on a corner, tyres screeching mere centimetres away from her opponents, and her car hit the tyre wall.
