Page 7 of Drive Me Wild (Drive Me #2)
SEVEN
THEO
I’ve experienced a lot of weird morning afters. The one chick who claimed she was pregnant hours after we slept together. The one who refused to leave my house, and I had to call my security team to physically remove her. Oh, then there was the one girl who claimed we were married in a previous life and had to renew our vows in this one.
I thought I’d experienced everything until the pure horror on Josie’s face when she realized we slept together—that’s a new one. I know she enjoyed it. Hell, she more than enjoyed it. She wasn’t faking it when she told me I fucked her like no one else ever had. So why the hell did she act like she had committed a cardinal sin? She didn’t want another round; she wanted me to get the hell out of her apartment.
It’s been two weeks, and I still haven’t stopped thinking about it, about her . I can’t get her out of my head. The image of how goddamn sexy she looked with her head thrown back, jaw slack with pleasure, as she rode me. How her tits fit perfectly in my palms. How she blew me with such enthusiasm, it’s a wonder I lasted more than a minute. The award-winning noises she made have been playing through my mind on repeat. Fuck . Would I be down to sleep with her again? Abso-fucking-lutely. But I’m almost sure she’d rather never watch MasterChef again than have a repeat performance. I just don’t know why . It was phenomenal sex.
Now I have to watch her run around the pit garage, snapping photos on her camera, wearing a skin-tight McAllister shirt that accentuates every curve. She’s somehow acting as if nothing happened between us. As if she hadn’t begged me to thrust harder.
“Theo,” our team principal, Andreas, snaps for the third time in a minute. “Pay attention.”
I peel my eyes away from Josie and apologize with a charming smile. It won’t work on him, but it will work on the engineers. Andreas is only impressed by wins so unless it’s a Grand Prix and I’m on the podium, it doesn’t matter to him.
“Not a problem.” An engineer smiles back. Suck on that, Andreas. “We were asking about the steering. You mentioned it seemed off in the practice run.”
Formula 1 steering wheels are complicated. With over twenty switches, dials, and paddles, it’s easy to make a mistake. People can’t use mobile devices while driving, but we can operate a steering wheel with insurmountable settings while driving at insanely high speeds. Go figure. It wasn’t my fault I was off in practice, though, since there was an alignment issue. Not enough to affect me noticeably, but enough that I wasn’t one with my car, which I need to be to meet the standards I’ve set for myself. The team gets to fixing it while I head to my suite.
I play some Call of Duty: Vanguard to distract myself. I need to take my mind off Josie and there’s no better way to do that than by loading up a virtual AK-47. I’m about halfway through my second game when my phone starts ringing. I’d usually ignore it since I’m in the middle of playing, but it’s from my younger sister, Charlotte. If she’s having an emergency and I miss the call because of a video game, I’ll never forgive myself.
“Everything okay, Char?” I ask as soon as I answer the phone.
She groans theatrically. “Yes. Why does something have to be wrong whenever I call you?”
“It doesn’t.” Although I wouldn’t be surprised if it was, given the situations Charlotte gets herself into. “You know I worry about you. I just wanted to confirm that everything’s good. How have you been feeling?”
“I’ve been feeling fine. And I haven’t added any new arrests to my record, so…”
I nearly fall off the couch. “ New arrests? Has there been a first arrest I’m unaware of?”
Ten different terrifying scenarios run through my mind: drug bust, kidnapping, robbery gone wrong. How did she get bail money? Who was her one call? Why am I just finding out about this?
“Gotcha.” She laughs, clearly pleased with herself, and the familiar sound pushes away any panic. “That’s what you get for being such a worrywart. I’m more than capable of taking care of myself, Theodore. Stop babying me.”
“It’s my job to worry about you, kid.”
“Well then, consider yourself fired.”
If people think I’m outgoing, it’s only because they haven’t met my sister. I swear she puts speed instead of sugar into the five cups of coffee she drinks a day.
I prop my phone between my ear and shoulder. “What’s up?”
“Eh, not much,” she reveals. “Mum and Richard are driving out to campus to have dinner with me later.”
“Nice. Enjoy.”
Charlotte clucks her tongue. “Don’t be like that.”
“Like what?”
“God, you’re annoying,” she groans. “You love Richard. And you haven’t cared about any of mum’s other boyfriends, so it’s clear you just don’t like them dating.”
An annoyed scoff slips through my lips because there’s truly nothing more annoying than my little sister not only calling me out on my shit, but being right about it, too. Richard was my dad’s best friend and manager back in his racing days. He became somewhat of a mentor to me, someone I could joke around and share a beer with.
But now, he’s someone dating my mum.
I toss my controller next to me and sigh. “What’s your point, Char? Do you want me to do a little jig and have confetti shoot from my arsehole in joy?”
“Be happy for them, Theo,” Charlotte instructs, as if it’s as simple as snapping my fingers. “I don’t know why you’re making things more difficult than they have to be.”
“How am I making things hard, Charlotte?” I snap, my hands curling. “They’re the ones who changed all the dynamics when they got together.”
“You know what they say,” Charlotte answers in a sing-song tone. “Change is the spice of life. Wait, that doesn’t sound right. I think… it may actually be variety is the spice of life. But whatever, the sentiment still stands.”
“Who’s the they that says that?”
“Huh?”
I snort back a laugh. “Who says variety is the spice of life?”
“Oh. I don’t know… People.”
“So you don’t actually know who says it?” I press, knowing the more I tease, the more flustered she’ll get.
“What is this? The Spanish Inquisition? Stop asking me so many questions. You know I’ve never been good at tests.”
I ignore her sage advice and latch onto a familiar topic. “How’d that test from last week go, by the way? The one you were stressed about?”
Charlotte spends the next twenty minutes chattering on about some professor who’s an absolute terror and dedicated to making her life miserable. She only stops speaking when she realizes she’s running late—an ongoing habit of hers—and has to get ready for dinner, which takes at least an hour.
“Be safe,” I remind her. “We’ll talk again soon, yeah?”
“Course!” she says. “And Theo? Call Mum. She misses you.”
“Mm-hmm.”
Not a yes. Not a no. Things between my mum and I have been strained since I cut my trip to Australia short back in January. She knows it was work-related, but I was more than happy for the excuse to get away. Richard had just moved in with her, and I didn’t exactly enjoy not feeling at home in my childhood house. Having someone living there who wasn’t my dad, but had always acted as somewhat of a father-figure, wasn’t my idea of fun.
Picking back up my controller, I swap out my AK-47 for something a little bigger. Time to blow up some shit.
I swear Blake is a grandpa trapped in a thirty-year-old’s body. For a full year, he thought CRM were the initials of the person who helped with our marketing. His mind was blown when he learned it stands for customer relationship manager. I’m honestly surprised he doesn’t sign his name at the end of each text he sends.
Right now, I couldn’t be more thankful for his inability to grasp the importance of hashtags. His questions pour a bucket of cold water on any horniness I may be experiencing due to staring at Josie. She’s spent the meeting typing away on her computer and completely oblivious to the fact that my dick is acting like she’s the North Star. It’s not like this is the first meeting I’ve been in with Josie—we’ve sat through hundreds of them together and I’ve never once had this issue. I so do not need to be getting hard while someone drones on about reaching a different target demographic.
I screw around on Instagram for a bit to distract myself, scrolling through the messages of the many beautiful women who’ve slid into my DMs, but it doesn’t help much. When my manager texts me, I’m eager to strike up a conversation. Anything to make my eyes stop wandering back to the blonde sitting across the table from me.
Martin the Manager
Just landed.
Theo Walker
I thought you didn’t fly in until tomorrow morning! Welcome to Portugal, honey.
Martin the Manager
Surprise! Meet at my hotel room after practice?
Theo Walker
Your hotel room?! Martin… are you going to put the moves on me? I’ve never been into men, but if you put on a wig, maybe I’d consider it.
Martin the Manager
I wouldn’t touch you with a five-meter pole, Walker.
Theo Walker
Yet you want to meet in your hotel room!? Don’t deny that you love me. Everyone does. :)
Martin the Manager
I want to meet in my hotel room so no one witnesses me yelling at you for failing to mention you have an issue with James Avery.
A cold tremor runs through my body. I can list on one hand the people who know all those details: Russell, Christina, James, Blake, me. Apparently now it’s more, although I don’t know what Martin is aware of. Fuck fuckity fuck fuck.
Theo Walker
Be there by two-thirty.
The moment my manager opens the door to his suite, I start asking more questions than a reporter during a press conference. “What did Avery say? Did he tell you I’m a horrible driver? Because it’s absolute bullshit. He’s just trying to ruin my career. Did he say something to you? Or did he say something to William? I don’t get why he’s talking about me at all. It’s rude to talk behind people’s backs.”
Martin’s eyes widen behind his tortoise-shell-framed glasses. “Um, hello to you, too, Walker.”
“Hi.” I push past him and walk into his suite, collapsing onto the couch. A knot of nerves sits in my stomach, and I pray my manager says something to unravel them. “How’d you find out?”
“Find out what?” Martin heads into the small kitchenette and turns on the Nespresso. “Right now, all I know is that James Avery doesn’t seem to like you very much. Care to tell me why?”
“He’s blowing things out of proportion.” I push my open palm into the cushion beneath me and the material makes a weird whoopee-cushion-like noise. “I dated his daughter. We broke up. End of story.”
Martin sighs dramatically as he waits for the machine to pour his coffee. “Please expand on the story, Theo. I need to know what I’m working with here. Now is not the time for you to suddenly get all shy and skimp out on the details.”
“Why do you assume it was me who did something?”
“Because I know you,” he says like this should be answer enough. “And you have a reputation for accidentally getting women to fall in love with you and then breaking their hearts. Have you never wondered why the tabloids switch between calling you Walker of Shame and Wet ’n Wild Walker ?”
I open my mouth to say something before deciding against it. I’m certainly not going to fill the silence by digging my own grave.
“Listen, I get it,” Martin says to soothe me. “You’re young and you want to have fun. But you have to know that, sometimes, fun may bite you in the ass.”
I rest my head against the back of the couch and groan. “It was a few years ago, Martin. I told her from the beginning that I didn’t want anything serious. She just?—”
“Thought she’d be the one to change you.”
I nod solemnly. More so now than ever, my career is my main focus. You don’t work your whole life toward something to not give it your all. I told Christina I wasn’t looking for a relationship, and that Formula 1 would always be my number one priority, but she—and pretty much every woman I’ve ever dated—never took it at face value. Instead, it was a challenge. What she heard was, “I’m not looking for a relationship right now ” and “My career is my number one priority behind you .” No matter how many times I repeated myself, she could never grasp that I was taking the whole “honesty is the best policy” thing very seriously.
“Was it just a bad breakup?” Martin presses. “Run of the mill, dad-hates-boy-who-broke-daughter’s-heart thing?”
“Yes,” I lie through my teeth. There’s no way I’m getting into the details of how things actually went down. There’s nothing normal about her faking a pregnancy and then me having to file a restraining order. “Regular breakup.”
“Okay.” He removes his now-steaming mug from the counter, pressing it to his lips. “I can work with that.”
I tap my fingers against my thigh. “What did Avery say?”
“Nothing,” he admits before taking a sip of his coffee. “I met with Andreas to see where McAllister’s head is at regarding contract negotiations.”
I draw in a deep, audible breath. Contract negotiations usually don’t happen until a bit later in the season, but I’m appreciative that Martin’s being proactive. Always good to get a quick pulse check, especially when the body may as well be a cadaver.
“Don’t act so surprised.” He shrugs. “You pay me well because I’m good at my job, Walker.”
Pay him well is the understatement of the year . I’m the reason he can send his kids to private school with enough left over to buy his and her Ferraris for him and his wife.
“Anyway, Andreas gave me the impression that Avery was going to pussy-foot around and draw things out longer than necessary because of you ,” Martin continues. “I asked Russell if he knew anything, and he said I had to talk to you about it.”
“Oh.”
“Yep. So I wanted to get ahead of any drama,” Martin says. He runs a hand over his bald head, the smooth skin gleaming under the harsh hotel room lights.
“I wish I could rub your head.”
Coffee dribbles down his chin as he opens his mouth. “What the fuck?”
“Like a crystal ball. That way I could predict the future of my contract negotiations,” I explain with a grin. “Martin the Fortune Teller has a nice ring to it, eh?”
He laughs deeply, shaking his head. “You’re weird, Walker.”
If the paparazzi called me Weird Walker instead of my other names, I probably wouldn’t be in this fucking situation.