Page 53 of All That Glitters
I flipped him off, but he just laughed, though there wasn’t any humor in the sound.
“I’m not your enemy, Ashton.”
“Aren’t you?”
“No. The enemies are in your head. We’re your friends, your teammates, your brothers. We’ve been through shit with each other for years. You turning on us doesn’t do you any good. No one is out to get you.”
“Maybe not all of you,” I said flippantly.
“None of us.”
“That’s not true and you know it.”
“Whatever, man.”
He turned away and I could’ve let him go. I could’ve let him leave the same way he came in and I should have… But I didn’t.
“Do you know he wants Hale to drive for Glitterati?”
That stopped him in his tracks so suddenly that his sneakers squeaked against the floor. He turned back to face me.
“What? Who?”
“Who do you think?”
“Your father said that? Told you that?”
“I overheard him talking.”
“You must’ve heard wrong.”
“I wish I had.” I could still hear my father’s voice in my head, still hear the words. “He said if Hale wasn’t under the current contract, he’d pull him in to run for Glitterati.”
“Shit.” Brax hung his head, rubbed at the back of his neck, frustration radiating off him. “That’s fucked up.”
“Yeah.”
“To replace you? Or me?”
I felt the smile that wasn’t anything close to friendly cross my lips.
“A little more nervous now?” I shook my head, not giving him a chance to answer. “C’mon. You know the answer to that. The old man doesn’t trust that I’ll be ready to race anytime soon.”
“He wouldn’t replace you. You’re his son, Ash. He —”
“He would in a heartbeat. The way he is right now, the way I am… He’d replace me.”
“While I think it’s fucked and that it would be a mistake to put anyone else other than you in the seat permanently, can you blame him for thinking about it? You won’t even get behind the wheel of a car”
“I’ll be ready.”
“How? You haven’t been out to the test track, to the speedway. You haven’t been out to practice, to take any runs, to test any setups. Not even to test yourself.”
“I don’t need to test.”
The lies fell from my lips with so much ease that even I was alarmed.
“That’s so messed up. We all need to test. We all need to try things out. Changes to the cars, changes to the tires. Jesus… Don’t be stupid. Before all of this, you couldn’t be kept out of a car, and now…” He shrugged and let the words trail off, but the look on his face said everything else.
