Page 18 of All That Glitters (Endurance #1)

Ashton

“You know, the car won’t move, no matter how long you stare at it.”

“Fuck you, Brax.”

“No thanks.”

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.

He wasn’t wrong. Not about any of it.

“Again, fuck you, Brax.”

“Look, if you’re happy to crash and kill yourself, that’s on you, but don’t endanger the rest of us because your ego and pride can’t handle the limitations you’re faced with right now.”

I surged to my feet, ignoring the stiffness and pain, and stepped into Brax’s personal space. He didn’t back up the way I expected him to. He stood his ground against me.

“Get out of my garage.”

“It’s mine, too, Ash. I’m your blood, whether you like it or not and I’m on your side. All of us. We’re all on your side. We want you back on the track. You make the whole sport better when you’re behind the wheel but use your goddamn head. You’re not ready.”

“Say it again. I fucking dare you.”

“You’re. Not. Ready.”

He enunciated every word and I didn’t realize I was going to hit him until my fist flew through the air. Brax didn’t flinch. He didn’t duck. He took the punch square across the jaw.

I expected him to throw his own, but he didn’t. He swiped at the trickle of blood. The fact that he didn’t raise his hand to me pissed me off. I clocked him again.

He took it, this time letting blood trail down his nose to his lip.

Several of the guys who’d been working on engines and parts on the other side of the wall came rushing out, but Brax lifted a hand to hold them off.

“You can hit me all you want, Ash, but I’m not going to give you the fight you’re looking for.

You need some help, and you need to stay off the track until you get it.

You’re my family and I love you, but I’ll go to your father.

I’ll go to the officials. I’ll go as high as I need to go to keep you from getting into a car until your head is on straight again.

I won’t let you endanger any of us, including yourself. ”

“Get out,” I ground out, angry with him, with myself, with Hale, with Helen, with my father, with the whole fucking world of racing.

There was so much rage flowing through my blood, so much tension collecting in my muscles and no matter how hard I worked out, how hard I worked my body to get back into physical shape, to rebuild myself, it didn’t help. Nothing helped.

For every ounce that drained out of me, more filled the empty spaces.

I didn’t know what to do.

The longer it took, though, the longer it would take for me to get back on the race track. Brax wasn’t wrong about anything that he said. I didn’t like it, but he wasn’t wrong. Not even about doing what he needed to keep me out of a car.

Asking for help from Helen, showing up at the Troye house in the middle of the night, then punching Brax… Anger filled every pore of my being. It never let up. It was all-consuming.

My physical therapist once said the anger, the tension, the stress that I held in my body was part of the reason I wasn’t able to heal completely, that I risked injuring myself further.

With my body so tense, my reflexes weren’t sharp, my movements weren’t easy or natural, weren’t quick.

I didn’t know how to get around the fear and if I didn’t know how to get around the fear, I didn’t know how I was ever going to get my life back.

If I couldn’t get my life back it meant that I wouldn’t ever be allowed in a race car again, and it meant my brain was somehow just as broken as my body was.

“Ash…”

“Get out, Brax. I mean it.”

“C’mon…”

“Get. The. Fuck. Out.” I yelled as loud as I could, loud enough that the wall beside me vibrated.

It was those moments, the ones where the outbursts couldn’t be contained or controlled that scared the shit out of me.

I didn’t know how to handle things when nothing was in my control.

I’d never been through anything like this and it fucking scared me.

I hated it. I hated everything. I hated myself, the me I had become.

Almost more than I hated Hale.

Almost more than I wanted Helen.

No. That was a lie. I wanted Helen more. When I realized that just her being near calmed the noise inside me… It was why I asked her for help. It was why I went to her. I could have her and she would take me. I could fuck her and destroy her and take it all out on her and she’d still love me.

She hadn’t said it, but she hadn’t needed to say a word.

I saw it in her eyes here in the garage.

I saw it in her eyes in her bedroom.

She’d let me do whatever I wanted, however I wanted as long as she believed she was helping me.

I didn’t know if any of it was going to help me. I didn’t know what would help.

But when it came to her, I didn’t care. The near silence in my head was worth it.

The soothing presence that she was… Her smile, her voice, her touch…

It was all worth it. I wanted to use her to hurt Hale and that was still the plan, but there something deep inside a place I didn’t want to look that told me the plan wasn’t going to work out the way I imagined it would.

“You need to get right with yourself, Ashton. We’re not your enemies.

Not me, not your father, not even Hale. And deep down you know that.

You’re just too much of an asshole to give a shit about it, to remember it.

I hope you do before you fuck up everything that you’ve ever worked for.

As for your father and Hale driving for Glitterati…

Maybe he should. I don’t know that any of us can count on you.

I don’t know that any of us can count on you for anything anymore. ”

Brax looked at me with something akin to pity before he pushed past me and left out the back of the garage.

I didn’t watch him go. I didn’t even look up at the engineers and mechanics. I felt their stares. I didn’t need to see them.

I’d wanted some peace. I’d come here looking to just sit with the cars. It used to be a favorite thing, a favorite way to spend a few minutes, watching the cars being built. Watching the designers. Watching the technicians.

I learned so much by watching, asking questions when something intrigued me.

I spent as much time learning about the cars from the sketches and renderings and throughout the build as I learned from behind the wheel.

And now, it all seemed foreign to me. A didn’t lead to B .

I thought about what Brax said about my father. I should talk to the old man about what I’d overhead. I should tell him the truth of how I was feeling, of what was going on in my head, but other than with Helen, I hadn’t been able to put it into words.

That fucking fear again.

It dogged my every step.

Every time it reared its head, the anger flooded my body until I couldn’t think, until I could only react.

“That was unnecessary, son.”

“I warned him.”

“I think you should stay away from the garage for a while, stay away from the shop.”

That statement brought my head up.

“But I need to be here.” There were no truer words I could think of to say even though they tore through everything inside me leaving a trail of carnage in their wake.

I needed to be near the cars, near the smell of them, the view of them.

I needed them as much as I needed air to breathe. Maybe more.

I wasn’t ready to let go. I wasn’t ready to give up.

But that didn’t make the shit in my head stop taunting me, stop pushing me ever close to the edge.

“Then you need to come when no one else is here. You’re destroying everything you built.”

“Hale —”