Page 3 of All That Glitters (Endurance #1)

Helen

“Hale? Are you okay?”

“I…” He held up his cell phone. “I just got a call from Ashton.”

The surprised shock on his face matched the surprised shock I felt inside. After months of radio silence, why would he be calling now?

“Really?” My brow furrowed. “How did he sound? What did he want?”

The look morphed into the familiar uncertainty that I’d been seeing on his face as the new racing season drew closer. We were only a couple of weeks away now.

It was no secret that I was worried about him, but my concerns were dismissed anytime I brought it up.

“To come by tomorrow. He’ll be here around noon. And he sounded…fine, I guess. I…”

He settled in the nearest chair and I walked further into the room to take a seat on the coffee table in front of him. “Are you okay with that? Maybe you should meet him somewhere… I don’t know. Public?”

“Why? Do you think he’ll take a swing at me?”

“Are you sure he won’t?”

“Yeah. He’s my best friend outside of you. All of us are best friends. That has to count for something.”

I wish I shared my brother’s optimism. “We all were best friends, Hale. No one seems to know what’s going on with him.”

“I know. I hear things in shop and around others that no one has seen him, there’s no talk about press or anything really, but he’ll come around, right?

” He stared at me with questions swirling in his eyes, questions I didn’t know how to answer.

“He’ll realize… After all this time, he’ll have realized that… ”

I placed my hand on his knee as some form of comfort. I doubt it did any good at all.

“Ashton Glitterati isn’t the most level-headed man at the best of times, and I’m pretty sure all that he’s been through hasn’t changed that part of him.”

“It was an accident,” he said, the words soft and pained. My brother had been through a lot of emotional and mental shifts since the wreck that sent Ashton into the nearest barrier and being life-flighted from the track.

Hale had gone to therapy, but if it helped him, I didn’t know. He rarely talked about the wreck, his sessions, his prep for the season… He wasn’t the same man, either.

I started to say something, anything, but instead I just sat with him.

That one crash had changed all of us. Friendships. Business relationships.

Hale scrubbed a hand over his face and up into his hair that was the same shade of midnight black as mine.

He fisted and tugged on the short strands before surging up, treading heavily across the room.

He was fidgety – hands in his pockets, arms crossed over his chest, fingers pressing into the wall. He was never calm and casual anymore.

“He should know it was an accident. He has to know.”

The uncertainty and the lack of confidence broke my heart every single time.

“He should,” I agreed.

Hale saw the best in people until they showed him a different side. He wanted to believe Ashton would see things clearly, but I didn’t have that same faith. Ashton was the do first, think later type. He ran roughshod over everything and everyone in his way. It was what made him dangerous.

Great.

Exciting.

And he was last man I needed to still be crushing on, the last man I needed to want in the worst possible way. Not seeing him for so long had been hard when we were used to seeing him all the time.

My brother struggled to get through the rest of last season after the accident that ended Ashton’s follow up to his championship the year before. Hale finished second to last when he should’ve finished first or at least runner-up.

The wreck shook everyone associated with racing, especially within the series itself.

“Do you know anyone who’s talked to him?”

“Outside his family? No. Brax said Ash spends most of his time alone and is pretty harsh when he has to be around anyone.”

“Yeah, when I went down to Daytona for promotional ops at the end of December, there was a little murmur about the fact that he wasn’t there and no one knew if he was going to show up…”

“Glitterati may be doing Ashton’s preseason press kits on their own. Maybe they don’t want to field questions, yet.”

“Maybe.”

Everything to do with Glitterati Racing was handled in house, from their drivers to their sponsors to who was allowed access to all marketing and branding and social media. They were a tight run, tight-lipped operation.

As the VP of marketing at our family’s firm, Troye, LTD , I oversaw Hale’s marketing and branding, along with several other drivers and a few niche entertainers.

And even though Glitterati kept everything pretty close and quiet, Ashton not being around for any outside preseason photo events was odd. He’d never met a camera he didn’t like.

His absence also added fuel to speculation and rumors.

I might be a VP, but I knew enough people and I was accessible enough that I always heard most things before the media did and recently, some rumors had been swirling that put me a little more on edge than usual for the start of a new racing season.

I hated the rumor mill. I hated the doubts it created. I hated how it undermined good deals and good people.

“Everything good with your car for the season?”

Hale raced for Billy Greene Motorsports .

They were a small operation based in the Midwest with two cars in two different classes.

One all professional, and one pro-am. They usually brought everything down to Daytona at the start of the year, rented some warehouse space for set-up. It just made things easier.

“Yeah. It looks great. The new sponsors have really done wonders with the money and the green and white designs are stellar. I’m ready to get back to it, get back on the track.”

I’d had to work closely with Billy Greene himself to get that one new sponsor for Hale after the wreck.

He’d had a few pull back and a big one drop him for what they thought was dirty driving.

After the dust settled and penalties were served and statements were made, the marketing landscape softened and we were able to get someone to come in and put up the primary sponsor money alongside the manufacturer.

As I studied Hale from beneath my lashes, I wondered if he really was ready to get back to racing.

He was only out of the car for one race following the wreck.

That was one of the good things about endurance racing.

They didn’t race each week. He’d effectively taken six weeks away from it.

He’d been mildly injured and that gave him some time to recover, but I still wasn’t sure he’d recovered mentally or emotionally.

I would bet the family business that my brother wasn’t sleeping and that he was still reliving that day.

It took me months to stop seeing it play out in my own head. Ashton’s car briefly engulfed in flames. Hale’s car sliding nose first into the tire wall on the other side of the track. It took me months to sleep through the night.

I could only imagine how Hale must’ve felt on the inside.

Ashton’s family.

Fans, other drivers and teams, other racers from all over the world.

Social media and doomscrolling hadn’t helped. There hadn’t been a day since that videos of the wreck weren’t posted or re-posted from fans. There hadn’t been a day since that those videos weren’t clipped and edited and used as memes.

It was disgusting. We’d grown up with social media, but once I began working in marketing, I’d learned to hate it more than enjoy it. It wasn’t what it used to be and I’m not sure it ever was anything we needed.

Hale wasn’t interested in social media anymore. He only went online now to race. Ashton used to be the same. I didn’t know if he still was. I hoped so.

We had a social media manager that kept up with everything and I’d never been more grateful for anyone in my professional life as I was for Val.

She posted stuff on behalf of Hale and our other drivers.

She kept me updated on what was being said and if there was anything that needed my attention.

Before the wreck, everything ran smoothly.

After the wreck, the trolls and bad actors came out of the woodwork.

For the most part, Val’s work allowed me to still enjoy the sport I’d loved since the first time I climbed into Hale’s kart. After that, I’d begged our parents for one of my own.

Racing was in my blood as much as it was in Hale’s, Ashton’s, Brax’s… As much as it was in the blood of everyone that took to a track.

“When was the last time you saw him?”

Hale’s question confused me and pulled me out of my head.

“I, uh…”

“I know you went to the hospital, but have you seen him at all in the months since?”

“No. You’d have known if I had.”

As soon as I was able to, I went to visit Ashton.

He hadn’t known I was there. His mother saw me, hugged me, thanked me for coming to see him.

She asked after Hale, told me she didn’t blame him and when I expressed my thoughts that Ashton likely wouldn’t feel the same, she told me not to judge him too harshly, that given time, he’d see it for the accident that it was.

I still had my doubts about that.

“I should’ve gone more,” he said. “I should’ve spent time with him. Talked to him and not let things fester and get out of hand.”

“Hale…”

“It was my fault. It was an accident, sure. They happen all the time in racing, but there’s always someone at fault, even when everyone says there isn’t.”

I stared at him from across the room. He’d turned his back to me again. “Is there something you haven’t told me about it?”

He shook his head. “No.”

There was something in that one word that gave me pause, but I also figured he blamed himself every second of the day and night. I wished I knew how to help him. I wished I knew how to mend his friendship with Ashton.

I wished I knew how to be friends with Ashton again. We hadn’t spoken since before that race. He hadn’t reached out to me and I hadn’t reached out to him.

Everything seemed so uncertain and uncomfortable. That’s what silence did.