Page 16 of Pole Position

Words like ‘final chance’ and ‘time to get it together’ and ‘you’re one more fuck up from having to look for another team’ ring in my ears as I stride back to the motorhome. I’m bypassing the journalists with a face like thunder, yet it doesn’t stop them crowing about my fall from grace right now.

Sixteenth. Six-fucking-teenth. I can’t even remember the last time I placed so low. I can’t remember the last time in either my lower or top-category career to date that I’ve placed outside the top ten.

Even worse, we’ve been knocked off the top spot in the Constructors’ Championship. It’s gutting. The only thing more gutting was the look on everyone’s faces as they realised what this would mean – and then Kian’s whole face just dropped. Anders did not look happy at all.

And it’s completely my fault. I’m to blame.

I always ignore the fun police who try to get in the way of me living my life. But I’m not a complete idiot – since getting called up to Championship racing, even I’ve been more careful. At the beginning of the season, Anna laid out a clear set of expectations of the behaviour of a Hendersohm driver. A basic list of do’s and don’ts, if you will. And since I signed my contract, I haven’t deviated greatly from it. I haven’t done anything that could get me fired. Whatever Kian thinks, I want to be here. The irony is that what’s going to get me fired is something I did before the season even started.

I had a foursome about two years ago, and now it’s come back to haunt me, because of course someone made a video. My agent’s PR team has apparently been run ragged trying to contain the story. I guess I wasn’t high-profile enough before now, and my blackmailer was waiting until I hit the big time so he could get more money for it. He planned to sell it to the media, but instead I am apparently going to be buying it, with a hefty portion of this season’s payout.

There’s nothing wrong with the foursome in principle, since it was all fully consensual and everyone was of legal age, but Anders lost his mind because of course the owners, the sponsors and the VIPs would be extremely unhappy. I haven’t crossed any hard lines this season, but I know I’ve skirted some grey areas, and after the bollocking Anders gave us back in Bahrain I knew I couldn’t take the piss. But even if I had behaved like golden boy, Mr Boring Bastard, himself, this thing would still have come back to bite me in the ass. Apparently they held a senior team meeting and decided I would be on a final warning. One more fuck-up and I’m out. Whatever Kian’s been whispering in Jackson’s ear has obviously filtered up to Anders. I’m just lucky that Elijah’s not fit enough to return yet otherwise I think they’d have fired me already.

People have been telling me my whole life to get my shit together. Not to do anything that would jeopardise my career. I’ve always told them to fuck off. But they were right. They’ve always been right. Maybe that’s why I push so hard, and drive so fast – because I’m trying to escape the demons I know are chasing me. The demons that are always chasing me. The mistakes I’ve already made. If I drink enough, fuck enough, win enough, then one day I’ll be big enough that the demons can’t hurt me anymore. Isn’t that the dream of every kid like me? To leave behind the fear that one day you’ll be found out and tossed back on the shit-heap you came from? I heard someone call it imposter syndrome once, but that’s some serious therapy bullshit right there. It’s different for kids like me, the ones with nothing to fall back on, with nowhere to go and no one to run to.

I’m fucking up all over the place – with the team, with Kian, with my life in general. I’ve probably been fucking up my whole life.

Now I’ve cost the team points and possibly the Constructors’ Championship. And for what? A couple of sub-par orgasms from guys who are clearly absolute dickheads.

I can’t even call Johannes. I’ve barely seen him recently. He’s always busy with the secret he’s keeping from me, and I don’t think he’d even understand anyway. And who else would care? There are so many names and numbers in my phone, but not a single one I can call about this.

So I slump back to the motorhome and lock myself in my room.

For what feels like hours, but in reality is just too many long minutes thinking about what’s gone wrong, I lie staring up at the dark ceiling. I’m not used to so much silence.

I’m so quiet that I hear Kian return, the way he potters around the living area. He’s probably tidying, but maybe he’s looking for me? Or maybe I must be delusional to even think Kian would care what I’m doing. There’s something comforting about the sound of him moving about. I imagine him being relieved that he’s got the place to himself for a bit. Of course he wants me gone. Who wouldn’t?

Well, he’ll get his wish soon enough. I knew this couldn’t last. I knew I’d mess it up eventually. Just like I mess everything up. I don’t belong here, after all.

I turn into the pillow and stuff it into my mouth to hide the sounds I’m making, but I don’t seem to be able to stop.

Eventually, I hear the shower turn on and I’m almost relieved that the noise of the water splashing against the tiles will cover my sobs. Maybe it will also drown out the noise in my head.

Except it’s short-lived. Kian’s either taken the quickest shower in history or he turned it on so I wouldn’t hear him shitting. I couldn’t decide which was worst, because a long shower was always needed after a race day to get rid of the stench of rubber and petrol. I carry on crying into my pillow until I’m all cried out. I think I heard Kian go out and I hope he’s just being kind and giving me some space, although I know I don’t deserve it.

The light knock on the door, when it comes, is both expected and unexpected.

Expected in that I thought he’d be straight in here the second he got home, shooting his mouth off about how shit I am, how disappointed he is, how I’ve fucked it for both of us. And I wouldn’t have even blamed him.

Unexpected, because when I mutter for him to come in there’s a bag of takeout in one of his hands and a couple of beers dangling between the fingers of the other.

‘Am I okay to come in?’ he asks from the doorway, a shaft of light creeping into my room.

I can’t remember the last time someone saw me cry. I was maybe … fourteen? That great foster home, the family I thought would finally adopt me, asked me to come in and sit down one evening. I knew exactly which conversation was coming.

Time to go. Again.

I was long past sobbing like a kid by then, but I hadn’t been able to prevent silent tears from running down my face as they let me know that the social worker would be by in the morning and they’d help me pack up my bits into a couple of bin bags. The bits which had made the room upstairs my own.

While it’s still relatively dark, I make an effort to wipe my face, just in case there’s any chance he doesn’t know. He rests the takeout on the end of my bed before whipping out two trays from under his arm. It’s a little fumbly until he turns on my bedside lamp which casts a warm glow over us both. It’s just enough light to plate up.

He’s brought a mixture of everything – noodles, rice, a variety of meats in different fruity sauces. Most importantly, salt-and-pepper chips. I’m not even sure what’s happening or why, but I can’t tell him how much I need this right now. I don’t have words to express how comforting this food is, and how much it reminds me of cheap dinners when I was young. No matter where I was living, salt-and-pepper chips from the Chinese tasted the same – and filled me up.

‘It’s not that I’m not grateful for this,’ I start, snuffling as I try to think of the best way to finish my sentence, ‘but … why?’

It’s not graceful, but then neither is the way I wipe my snotty nose on the duvet, but it’s who I am.

‘Today was shit and it’s Chinese takeout. I think we both might need it.’

He’s calm and composed as he sits on my bed, resting his back against the wall at three o’clock to my twelve. The Chinese feast sitting in between us at one and two as he starts to eat.

‘It was only shit because I was. Sorry about that, by the way.’

He looks at me like a white rabbit just hopped out of my mouth and is dancing a jig on the floor.

‘Blimey! Never thought I’d hear that word coming out of Harper James’s mouth.’ He pops off the cap of one beer and hands it to me before doing the same to his.

‘You’re voluntarily drinking a beer. Never thought I’d see the day, either.’ We clink the necks of the bottles and tuck in. I take a sip and then look at the label. Non-alcoholic beer. Some things never change, I guess.

Silence descends again, but with every mouthful I can sense him watching me. There are questions on the tip of his tongue, and queries in the way his eyes have softened at the sight of the tear tracks still there on my face. For once, I kind of want him to ask. I want him to ask so I can tell him. I think I want him to know.

But, until our plates are cleared and the leftovers are packaged back up, we don’t speak. When he leaves the room to put them in the fridge, our empty beer bottles with him, I’m not convinced he’s going to come back. He’s done his good deed of the day; he has no responsibility here. He could go to his own room, call his sister and pretend this never happened; that we didn’t have a civil moment when it felt like we could breathe the same air with fighting or fucking.

Yet he comes back, a second beer each in hand and settles himself back on the end of my bed. The way we’re both sitting makes our feet meet in the middle, and neither of us make a move to pull them away.

‘What happened?’ he finally asks. ‘You’ve held it together all season. Even the harshest critics say you’ve had an amazing first half of the season for a rookie. Tabloid headlines aside, your game on the track has been great.’

‘I’m surprised you don’t already know. Everyone else seems to. On my last chance now, aren’t I?’

‘And you thought throwing away your performance, too, was the way to deal with that?’

I almost growl at him. ‘Of course I fucking didn’t. Couldn’t get my head in the game, could I? This is literally all I’ve ever wanted.’

‘I don’t get why you act like you don’t care, then. All the partying, drinking, and one-night stands … you’re your own worst enemy. It’s almost like you’re self—’ He stops suddenly, as if he only figured it out while he was saying it. ‘It’s self-sabotage, isn’t it? Harper?’

He shoves my shoulder.

‘Messed up, right?’ I shrug because there’s no point trying to hide anything now. It’s not like we’re talking about my future in the sport I love, the only thing I know how to do. ‘I don’t know how to stop.’

‘Why, though? You’ve got the world at your fingertips right now. What are you so scared of?’

That the thing I want more than anything won’t want me back.

Tears sting the backs of my eyes. How is there anything left in my ducts right now?

‘I think it’s called abandonment issues.’

That’s what the therapists said, anyway. I saw several when I was a teenager, but it was always patchy and inconsistent, depending on where I was living at the time. I was never with any one therapist long enough to learn how to open up or be vulnerable, and life taught me not to rely on anyone but myself. ‘Probably some trust issues, too.’ I’ve always managed to skate over the top of team psychologists and performance coaching as part of my professional career, and now here we are.

Here we are, I think to myself. He’s here, and he’s asking, and I want to tell him.

I take a deep breath and launch in.

‘I was an accident. Teen parents, still in college, who definitely didn’t want me, but found out too late to do anything about it. I think they still tried, though. I don’t remember them really, but they kept me till I was almost six and then dumped me on my grandma and disappeared. Or at least, that’s what my file says. Gran was great, but when I turned ten she was diagnosed with stage four cancer and was gone within five months.’

Kian reaches for me and I let him pull me into his side. It can’t be comfortable for him but it feels nice for me. ‘I went into care at that point. No other blood relatives would take me and my parents were long gone. I was just about old enough to understand that nobody cared about me, nobody wanted me, and there wasn’t a single person in the world who loved me.’

Kian tenses against my side. I don’t know what he was expecting, but I’m sure it wasn’t this. He has his arm around me and he’s holding me against him like his life depends on it. Or like mine does.

‘Over the next eight years I bounced around nine different foster families, and none of them wanted me, either – not enough to keep me. Other kids I knew were fostered and never came back. They were adopted, and I wasn’t, and that cemented it for me, I think.’

‘I didn’t know…’ he starts, but I shake my head, cutting him off. Obviously he didn’t know. It’s not something I’ve ever talked about publicly.

‘Don’t get me wrong, most of the families were good to me. The last family really tried – they paid for my karting, tried to get me into therapy, tried to make me feel like I belonged, but I think all my walls were up by that point. The damage was done. It’s easier to be constantly on the defensive. No one can hurt you if you don’t give them a chance.’

‘Christ, Harper! If it didn’t make sense before, it does now. I know you want this because I can see it – everyone can – but you fuck about because you want to make sure that you have plenty of reasons tucked up your sleeve to explain why you got kicked out so it can never be because you aren’t good enough.’

‘Jesus. Maybe you should go into therapy when you retire.’

He groans. ‘Not you with that word again.’

‘Why does it make you so angry?’

I see the way frustration pulls at his face every time a reporter asks about his plans once this season is over.

‘I’m not angry. I just feel like it’s a done deal in everyone else’s mind but mine. I’m not thinking about it until after this season is over. I’m here and I want to hold on to my title, and that’s all that matters. I’m not sure if it’ll be my last or if I’ll have five more.’

‘You’re having a great season, but sometimes it seems like you’re not having a very good time. Like you don’t love it anymore. Like you don’t want to be here.’

I’ve noticed this, I realise now. He still seems excited about every win, but at the same time detached from the magnitude of how great he is and not able to actually enjoy the experience.

‘I don’t always want to be here, that’s why.’ His words are so simple, and I know he means it.

‘Because of me?’ I’m almost afraid to ask, but this might be my only chance.

‘You know about my mum, right?’

I nod. Of course I do. The whole of the UK was rocked when the news dropped that Chastity Walker had been diagnosed with early onset Parkinson’s.

‘She’s gone downhill a lot and my sister is now her primary carer. Elise has given up so much to look after her, and then there’s me, gallivanting around the world as though it’s not my responsibility’

‘I can’t see your mum disapproving of you living your dream. I mean, isn’t that what she did? I think I read an article that said she took you and your sister on tour when you were younger.’

I’m not about to admit that I’ve read every article there is about Tyler Heath and Chastity Walker.

‘The difference being that neither of us was sick. She didn’t abandon us for her dreams. She made sure we had the best life, even when we were living out of a tour bus.’

‘But you didn’t have a normal life. It can’t have been an easy childhood, and you paid the price for her achieving her dreams. It proves she was willing to do anything to have her pop career. How is that different to what you’re doing?’

It stumps him for a while, almost like he’s trying to wrack his brain to prove me wrong. But he can’t and that should be a good thing, yet it clearly isn’t. He looks as shattered as I feel.

We both still smell like the track, and sadly not like drivers who’ve been sprayed in victory champagne – something that definitely should’ve happened in Austria. We were the favourites to win P1 and P2 and we threw it all away. Well, I did at least.

We might be a team, but right now I don’t feel like there’s anything we can do to make things right for each other. And I find I actually want to make things right for Kian. Not because his father is Tyler Heath or because he used to be my idol. But because tonight he tried to make things better for me.

So I do the only other thing I’m good at outside of racing. I lean into his personal space, eyes searching for any signs that he doesn’t want this as well. When the signs don’t appear, I capture his lips with my own and silently plead for him to open up for me more in this way instead.

When he does, I sense it immediately and I don’t hesitate. It takes only seconds for me to be on top of him, our tongues tied together, hands cupping each other’s faces in a moment that feels sweet and sensual. It’s not the sexy explosion I’ve imagined a thousand times with Kian as I’ve laid in bed alone, wondering whether he’s thinking of me, too. Somehow I know he won’t pull away this time, so I slow down and take my time, no longer desperate to get in and get out before I’m rejected.

The whole thing is overwhelmingly different as a result. From how leisurely we’re moving together to the way we’re both sporting rock-hard erections but neither of us is rushing to get naked or move on to the next stage.

Even this kiss doesn’t feel like it’s just a precursor to sex, even though I’m hoping we’ll get there eventually. It’s almost as if we’re finally getting what we want from each other, what I’ve needed from him since the second he put me in my place on the jet to Bahrain.

It’s like I’m consuming him, sampling everything he has to offer, and properly savouring it like it’s enough just to be doing this. But then, hands finally roaming, I find the hem of his T-shirt. I play with it until he gets the message and breaks the kiss to whip it over his head.

Kian’s a beautiful specimen. He has a wide, toned chest with a smattering of dark hair poking through and V-cut that I know is the result of some spectacular gym work and yoga. He needs to get a full body wax soon so that the suit doesn’t ruberfect the dusky pink nipples that I’m dying to play with. I plan to worship it, to give it the adoration it surely deserves.

Except he takes control. I’m not sure why I’m surprised, since he performs best when he’s in charge, and honestly I’m happy to sit back and let it happen. The thing about going slowly is that it feels like there’s going to be time for everything. It’s a new experience for me.

He nips and sucks at my bare chest, his other hand undoing the drawstrings of my sweat pants so he can force them over the curve of my ass and down my thighs. His joggers quickly follow suit until only boxers stand in the way. Mine are not doing a good job at all of restraining the heavy bulge between my legs, and I hope he knows it’s all for him.

He reaches his hand inside and curls his fingers around my cock, rubbing up and down over the head. I let out a hiss – I’m not sure why everything feels so hypersensitive but I love it. He starts to pump up and down and I reach for him too before I lose my mind completely. He’s just as hard as I am, and he feels so fucking good in my hand.

Every ounce of patience goes out the window at this point and suddenly we’re a sweaty, frantic mess grinding against each other. We discard our boxers so our erections can slide along each other, creating that delicious friction we both seem to be craving. I grab his ass, the ass I’ve been fantasising about for weeks – no, months – and pull him hard against me. He cups my face again while he kisses me, and I think there is a sweetness to the moment that I’ve never known before. There is enough space between the action for me to feel, too, and I find I am not afraid of it.

It doesn’t take much for us both to be panting, moaning messes. And when Kian’s hand leaves my face to tug my balls, there’s no holding back for me.

‘I’m coming,’ I pant. He’s only seconds behind me, though, and two last pumps has him following suit on mine.

There are no words.

None are needed.

The high I feel isn’t wearing off anytime soon, and in the blissful state that follows, there’s nothing else I can do other than fall asleep pressed tightly against his side.