Page 49 of Kiss & Collide (Racing Hearts #2)
T he start of the race neared, and the VIP suite had gotten more crowded. The atmosphere was notably more festive.
Violet cast a worried glance outside, where the vast stretch of Florida sky was growing darker. It was raining again, and the wind had picked up. Not hard enough to delay, but hard enough to turn it into an ice rink down there. And it may be getting worse.
No one was out on the balcony. Wide-screen TVs mounted all around the room displayed a constantly changing stream from the cameras positioned all around the track, but nobody was paying them much attention yet.
Waiters moved seamlessly through the well-dressed crowd, refilling champagne flutes and offering gourmet appetizers, while everyone laughed and chatted.
Carter and another man were sitting on a sofa inside. As Violet passed, he noticed her and wheeled around.
“Ms. Harper, what are you doing back there? Come sit.”
It wasn’t like she could tell him no, so she perched on the edge of the sofa next to him.
“This is Harrison, Violet.”
Violet didn’t know who the hell Harrison was, but his bespoke suit and Patek Philippe watch screamed money.
“I’ve been telling him,” Harrison told her, “once Formula One gets in your blood, there’s no getting it out.”
God bless you, Harrison, keep it up.
“I need you to explain this to me,” Carter said jovially. At least he was enjoying himself. She feared the VIP experience in the lounge might be the most exciting part of the day.
“The rain changes things,” she warned him. “The drivers will be exercising a lot of caution.”
“Here we go!” Harrison called out on the other side of Carter. “Hang on to your ass, Hammond!”
On the monitor, the lights were clicking on one by one as rain splattered against the camera lens and the light grew dimmer. Just then, a particularly strong gust of wind buffeted the VIP lounge, rattling the glass walls, and nervous laughter rippled through the crowd.
The last light came on, and the roar of the engines down on the track below them revved ever higher. This was the moment in every race when Violet’s pulse began to race with the engines, and anticipation began to simmer through her veins.
This was the moment when she remembered, over and over again, how much she loved this sport.
The crowd in the VIP lounge quieted as the tension ramped up.
And then the lights flashed out and the cars shot forward down the start/finish straight toward the first turn.
It wasn’t quite a hairpin, but it was tighter than ninety degrees.
The race leaders had gotten off fast … Will Hawley, René Denis, and Michael Pinman headed into the turn in the clear.
Behind them, the midfield clumped up, half obscured by the spray of water thrown up by their tires as they hit the brakes.
Something happened—there was a collision and a skid, blurred by distance and rain. In the next instant, five cars had been shoved off the track. The room erupted in shouts.
Violet held her breath as she frantically scanned the rain-misted chaos on screen for the silver of Pinnacle’s livery. Orange. That was Kodama. And there was a flash of Allegri’s red, Hansbach’s copper, Lennox blue …
No Pinnacle cars. It wasn’t him . He was safe.
She was still trying to identify Chase in the mess when it happened again, halfway through the turn. One of the drivers forced off the track by the initial collision came back on track and swerved into the path of another car.
A silver car. No.
The world slowed down as that streak of silver spun out across the track and hit the wall.
Violet stopped breathing. Her heart stopped beating as the camera zoomed in on the two cars up against the track wall. The driver of the Pinnacle car was already climbing out, and in an instant she knew.
Not Chase. She knew him so well at this point. The angle of his shoulders, the length of his torso … even the way he turned his head. Even at this distance, in his drive suit, helmet, and HANS device, and through the rain.
But fuck … Dieter was out of his car, which meant he was out of the race.
When she blinked and looked around, the room was as chaotic as the track, everyone talking and gesturing at the monitors. And Carter was gripping her hand. Or she was gripping his. Had she reached for him in the middle of all that chaos?
She snatched her hand back. “Oh, god. I’m so sorry—I apologize, Mr. Hammond. I wasn’t thinking for a minute there.”
“Not a problem.” He chuckled, not unkindly. “Was that one of ours?”
She nodded tightly. “That was Dieter. He’s out.”
“Where’s the other one? Mr. Navarro?”
She swallowed thickly. “I think Chase made it through.” Thank you, thank you, thank you.
Now that her heart had started beating again, it was pounding its way out of her chest, and the adrenaline coursing through her veins left her feeling shaky.
If anything happened to him, she wouldn’t be able to handle it.
She couldn’t handle even thinking about it.
By now, the red flag had been called and the announcers were running through the compound collision in slow motion, identifying who was who and what, exactly, had happened.
On the approach to the turn, Elian Pena rammed into the back of Gunnar Larsson from Optima, sending them both sliding straight across the track just as half a dozen cars were entering the turn.
They took out three other drivers like bowling pins—Laurent Demarche from Hansbach, Qian Hai, also from Optima, and Matteo Gatone, whom she knew well from back at Lennox.
Just as they were picking apart that collision, Rolando Castenada from Hunter had collided with Dieter and sent him into the wall.
Violet checked the Pinnacle WhatsApp chat for any kind of update, but unsurprisingly, everyone was busy. In minutes, though, the damage was clear. Dieter was forced to retire the car from the race, along with Matteo, Laurent Demarche, Elian Pena, and Gunnar Larsson.
Half the front-runners and half the midfield, out of the race in the first minute. They still had fifty-seven laps to race.
“It’s exciting, that’s for sure,” Carter said.
Races like this made for exciting viewing, but they were dangerous as fuck for every driver out there. She’d gone into today praying for some miracle that allowed one of the Pinnacle drivers to score big. Now all she was praying for was Chase to walk away in one piece.
CHASE’S NECK ACHED in unfamiliar places. His shoulder muscles felt locked into position. Even his hands ached after gripping the wheel for so long.
It had been a long and brutal race, starting with that fucking ridiculous double pileup thirty seconds after the start, and the fifteen-minute red flag while they’d cleared the five cars disabled in the wrecks.
Then, in Lap Thirty, as if there hadn’t already been enough carnage out here, Michael Pinman and Giulio Conti got a little too close taking Turn Seventeen.
In these conditions, all it had taken was Giulio’s nose clipping Michael’s tire and they were both off the track, into the wall, and out of the race.
The field had bunched back up behind the safety car, then Bence Takács, who was literally last on the grid at present, had misjudged a turn and sent himself into the wall.
Eight cars out of the race. Eight . There were only twelve of them left with ten laps to go. It was practically like fucking qualifying. The rain had ended and the sun had come out, but the previous forty-six laps had taken far longer than the usual ninety minutes.
“Nine laps to go,” Emil barked in his ear, as he crossed over the start/finish line.
As he dipped into the Marina section of the grandstands, he glanced in his mirrors and caught a glimpse of a towering black cloud formation behind him, just north of the circuit.
If that caught them, they’d have another run in the wet before all was said and done.
The first fat plop of rain hit his visor as he exited Turn Sixteen.
In seconds, when he was halfway down the straight, the skies opened up.
Rain fell so hard and fast it was ricocheting off the track and back up.
The sky was still blue over most of the circuit.
It was a classic Florida pocket thunderstorm.
Up ahead, he saw Liam and Kai Nolan hit Turn Seventeen and slide off the track. Though they managed to recover, his instincts kicked in.
“I’m boxing.”
There was no way his current slick tires would be usable in the next lap if this rain continued.
“Confirm, boxing,” Emil replied. “Which tires?”
“Inters,” he replied, again on instinct.
Emil paused. “Inters. You sure?”
No. Maybe.
“Yes.” He’d seen loads of these storms when he’d run a racing series in Florida as a teenager. Brutal, but brief, which meant he might be driving on a dry track again before the race was over. If that happened, he’d be glad to be on inters.
As Chase entered the pit, the team garages were all in utter chaos.
Teams were struggling to get tires out of blankets and crew into the pit lane in preparation for panicked drivers arriving for an unexpected stop.
Every driver had called in to box, but nearly everyone had been past the pit lane when the rain started.
Only he, Liam, Axel Nystrom, and Kai Nolan had made it in on the current lap.
It took under three seconds, despite the late warning. As they dropped him off the jacks and he accelerated back out, he spotted both Axel and Kai still up on jacks.
Fuck yes.
Emil crackled over the radio, “You just jumped up two spots—ninth place, Chase.”
But could he hold it?
VIOLET STOOD AT Carter’s side, chewing on her thumbnail, destroying her manicure, while Chase flew through his last pit stop a few feet away.
Earlier, when the rain had stopped, she’d brought Carter and Corrine down to watch the rest of the race from the garage. Then the rain had started again and so had the chaos.