Page 3 of Heart of the Race

THREE

T he breadth of what I had to learn staggered me. The places we went in the off-season before the official start of the MotoGP calendar left me dizzy. Those races were not, strictly speaking, legal. Our trip to the Atlas Mountains was terrifying, and learning from Aidric that the race wasn’t sanctioned by anyone confused me. But apparently the money was good because of the threat of imminent peril.

Varro was looking for a wild-card spot before the racing season began, and if he got it, more cash would be needed to maintain the bikes and pay a larger staff.

The year before, after his injury, Varro lost his premier-class status when he failed to collect enough points to keep it. So even though he was riding a Honda RC213V—a 1000cc bike—over the Stelvio Pass in the eastern Alps in Italy (where we were right after Christmas), he would not be riding it once the official racing season started unless he could win the wild-card spot. Currently he was in the Moto2 class, which meant he was racing a 600cc bike.

“I’m lost,” I admitted to Aidric as I stood with him two weeks later on the Guoliang Tunnel Road in China.

“There is MotoGP and Moto2 and Moto3.”

“I got that part.”

“Well, Varro needs the FIM/Dorna to nominate him as the one wild-card entry for the MotoGP class at each Grand Prix.”

“Who?”

“FIM is the Fédération Internationale de Motocyclisme.”

“And Dorna?”

“Dorna Sports is the company which administrates MotoGP.”

“Okay.”

He waited.

“So it could be a different guy each time, right?”

“That they nominate at the Grand Prix?” he checked, and I nodded. “Aye.”

“But if Varro wins, it stands to reason that they would pick him again and again?”

“Yes.”

“And his backup plan is to run in the Moto2.”

“Don’t say it like Moto2 is not?—”

“Yeah, okay.” I was trying to wrap my brain around everything. “Now explain about the bikes.”

“Well, like I said, Varro used to ride for Quad Ducati, so he had a bike made by the manufacturer. But since he lost his sponsorship, now we’re runnin’ a satellite bike, which means that the bike itself is still basically factory, but Honda doesn’t sponsor us.”

“And what about those guys with the CRT bikes?”

“That’s a team that claims special status because they race bikes that are modified.”

“And your bike isn’t?”

“It’s more than one bike, mate.”

Of course it was. “How come he doesn’t ride a Ducati anymore?”

“When Varro had his accident in Jerez, and then again in Mugello last year, he just couldn’t keep coming back in time to race.”

“Which was why he was doing the Isle of Man TT when he got hurt again,” I summarized.

Quick nod from him to confirm.

“But the places where he—” I couldn’t bring myself to say “crashed,” it wasn’t enough of a word. “Won’t we go back to all those this year?”

“Aye, my lad.”

I had to absorb that. “Sorry, go on.”

“Well, once he was released from the team, they took the bikes back. I talked him into getting a Honda. Everyone runs better on a certain kind of bike. Sometimes it’s as simple as the shape of the fairing, but for Varro—he seems to do better on the esses on the Honda.”

He was talking about turns. On the switchback ones, the hairpin ones, the esses, Varro, for whatever reason, maneuvered better on the Honda. Everyone swore by a different kind of bike, and as far as I could tell, every rider could make a case for why his was the best. I just wanted Varro to stay vertical—or at an angle—without losing his balance. How he could even hold the curves, slanted as he was when he took them, like he could have turned his head and touched the pavement with his nose, was a feat of balance I could not imagine. The physics of it was lost on me, but science had nothing to do with him believing. I was there, so he could have flown if he needed to.

Every day, Varro stared into my eyes as he got on the bike. I looked at the helmet and the red and black racing leathers and thought, How can that be all? Shouldn’t there be more padding? Armor, maybe? But that was all there was, because otherwise how was he going to hunch over the bike and fly down the course?

I didn’t say anything; it wasn’t my place. The words be careful never passed my lips. I just prayed them over and over in my head.

Each of the Grand Prix events lasted three days, and during that time, we lived in a motorhome. We had two—one for the crew, one for the rest of us—and quarters were tight. We parked in an area called the paddock, and really, by the time we were in Qatar for the first race, I was certain I was going to need tranquilizers.

I had no idea how everyone kept themselves sane amid the constant bustle, the lights, the noise, the crowds of people, and the rules. Just what you had to know was daunting. Where to sit, where to stand, the riders had to line up on the grid according to their qualifying time, all the races had points, and… It was mind-blowing.

“Why are you worrying?” Varro teased the night before the race, pulling me into the tiny room we shared at the back of the motorhome. The room held two stacked beds that could be pushed up flat against the wall, a closet, and a flat-screen on the wall. “They named me the wild card. I’m in, that’s what we all wanted.”

His desire, not mine.

“All you have to do is watch me ride really fast out there tomorrow. I need the best time. That’s all there is to it.”

But I found that watching was not the exciting experience I thought it would be. It was simply terrifying.

And it wasn’t that I didn’t like danger. I was as much of an adrenaline junkie as the next guy, and having him race legally on tracks was so much better than when he had been riding roads that could only loosely be called that, at altitudes between one and a half and three miles above sea level. But it was terrifying because of the speed. He could be gone in an instant.

But nobody, including him, read that on my face.

“Oh, mate.” Aidric grinned at me over a drink in Jerez almost a month later. “You’re lucky, you are.”

I squinted at him.

“He looks at you and he thinks he can fly.”

“Is that a compliment?”

“’Tis. If I hadn’t seen the man shag three and four girls a night before you joined us, I’d wonder about you two.”

But there was nothing more between me and Varro than there had been our entire lives. And when I looked up and saw Varro emerging from the back of the club we were in, I was reminded yet again that the man was a whore.

“Oh shit,” I heard a girl say at the table next to us. “I want that.”

Varro was making his way through the crowd to reach me and Aidric.

Jesus.

Head held high, a loose-hipped, fluid stride combined with the wicked curl of his lip—he made people stop and stare. His frame was powerful and strong; his clothes clung to his long muscular legs, broad shoulders, and wide chest.

The thick, glossy black hair he had inherited from his mother was pulled back from his face in a queue, and the rest hung to his shoulders in a silky fall. Even the stubble, of which I was normally not a fan, was sexy on him.

When he reached us, I could smell the smoke and perfume clinging to him. My stomach rolled. “Gettin’ laid?” I inquired snidely.

“Yes, sir.” He grinned big.

“How many is that tonight, mate?” Aidric teased.

“. Or, I mean, does it count in a bathroom stall?” he queried his head mechanic, his hooded brown eyes looking liquid in the light.

“It does,” I informed him petulantly.

His grin was evil. “Of course it does, baby.”

I growled. He grabbed me, and though I was still five ten to his six two, the man was much more muscular than me, and he easily pulled me off my chair and into the forced embrace.

“Hug me back,” he demanded, soft and husky in my ear.

But he reeked of perfume and cigarettes and cum, and he was trying to show me again, for the billionth time in my life, that we were brothers. Friends. And in that second, I had the weirdest moment of absolute shining clarity.

It was funny, but it was like something actually clicked in my brain. I shoved him off me, and he looked wounded for a moment before I grinned wide.

“What’s this? You’re not actually going to lighten up, are you? Wouldn’t want you to break something in your face,” Varro sniped.

Epiphanies came at the weirdest times, in the oddest places.

What a bastard I must have been for him to say something like that. There I was, thinking I was hiding everything, when my thirst for him, my hunger, consumed every second. I was making him miserable too; I had to be.

The things I wanted—him with me, not drinking, not fucking the paddock girls or any of the other thousand women milling around—were not possible. I had to let it go.

He was straight, no matter what foolish dreams my heart had conjured up, and I was supposed to be his best friend. I had completely lost sight of that.

It was time to make the best of it.

“Brian?” He sounded worried. “You all right?”

I took his face in my hands, realized who he was, what he was, and finally—after a lifetime—let him go.

“Baby?” And even the nickname would not stop the severing, not this time.

I took a step back and exhaled a decade of craving.

“What’s going on?”

“I’ll stay until the end of this season,” I informed him. “But then I’m going back to the States, picking a city, and buying my own place.”

“What kind of place?”

“Not sure yet.” I grinned. “But I think I can be a good boss, ya know?”

“Bri—”

“Go get your kink on, V,” I replied, sitting back down beside Aidric. “We’re gonna get drunk while you get laid.”

“Are we now.” Aidric laughed, his hand on my shoulder like it never was, companionably. “You think you can outdrink a Scot?”

“Hell yeah.” I waggled my eyebrows.

Varro was at a loss.

“Just go,” I said cheerfully. “Don’t worry about it.”

He was suspicious. “Just like that?”

I nodded. “You can only carry a torch for so long before you finally have to drop it.”

“I don’t— What? What does that mean?”

“Everything’s gonna be good,” I promised. “I swear, baby.”

He visibly jolted.

“What? Only you get to say that?”

“I—”

“Off you go.” I dismissed him, turning to Aidric. “Get me a pint, will you, mate?”

Aidric’s grin was huge and crooked. “I like you this way, Mr. Christie.”

Everyone did.