Page 5

FIVE

Brody

I woke with a pounding headache—not the aneurysm kind, thank God, but the garden-variety hangover kind. Still, it wasn’t the best start to the day.

Last night was a blur of sensations I couldn’t shake, no matter how hard I tried. Noah had been… unexpected. Everything about him—the way he moved, the sounds he made, the softness of his lips—was seared into my memory like a brand.

The kiss had been electric, his mouth warm and eager, tasting of champagne and something sweeter. When I’d tunneled my hands into his curls, it was like finding the anchor I didn’t know I’d been searching for. His hair was as thick and silky as I’d imagined, and the way his breath hitched when my fingers tightened… God, it had been perfect.

I could still hear the sounds he made, quiet gasps breaking free as if he couldn’t hold them back, each one more intoxicating than the last. I know it was lust, but in those moments, it felt as if the rest of the world had disappeared.

For a few stolen minutes, everything was simple. Everything made sense. And I couldn’t stop replaying it, craving it, even as I tried to tell myself it had been a mistake.

But shit, what the hell had I been thinking?

At least staying at Logan’s place was a small comfort. I didn’t have to hide here. I could freak out, spiral, and know he’d pull me out of it as he always did. And maybe I could have some Avery time because that little girl and I had fun with the capital F.

Dragging myself out of bed, I pulled on sweats and a T-shirt and followed the faint sounds of clattering to the kitchen. Logan had his head under the sink, tools scattered around him, muttering something about a gasket.

“Where are the girls?” I asked, crouching down beside him.

“Sadie took Avery to the park,” he said without looking up. “No one wants to witness me trying my hand at plumbing.”

I smirked. “Why don’t you just call a plumber? Doesn’t my thirty percent cover a plumber?” I’d wanted to give him fifty; he’d been horrified, but what was mine was his—end of story.

Logan chuckled and returned to work, but something about the easy banter didn’t sit right. The headache, the regrets—they weren’t going anywhere.

“While the girls are out, can we talk?” I said, my voice quieter than I intended.

Logan scooted out from under the sink, his brows furrowing as he scanned my face. “What’s wrong? Is it your head? Do I need to call 911?”

“No, Jesus, Logan.” I waved him off, already feeling the tension rising. “I just… I need to talk. I’ll make coffee. Meet me in the sunroom in ten.”

He watched me for a moment longer, his worry palpable, before nodding. “Okay. Sunroom.”

I busied myself with the coffee, the rhythmic motions grounding me just enough to keep the panic at bay. By the time Logan joined me, I was sitting cross-legged on the couch, fiddling with Avery’s Lego scattered on the floor.

Logan ambled in, promptly stepping on a piece. “Son of a—” He bit off a curse, glared at the offending item as if he could kill it with his eyes, and sat down, grabbing a mug from the table. “All right, what’s up?”

“I kissed a man.” I began, not going into full details.

“And you liked it?” Logan sing-songed, then stopped when he saw I was serious.

I hesitated; the words tangled in my throat. Finally, I started recounting the events of the fundraiser—the lounge, the dimly lit room, the voice from the shadows. “His name’s Noah,” I said. “And he plays hockey. In Harrisburg.”

Logan raised an eyebrow, already pulling out his phone. He tapped a few buttons, scrolling through something until he found what he sought. “Hockey player. Harrisburg Railers. Noah Lyamin-Gunnerson. Wow, he’s a type 1 diabetic. Guess that’s why he was there last night.” He turned the phone to a picture, and I nodded, swallowing hard as a picture of Noah’s wide, sparkling eyes and easy smile hit me again.

“I’m straight,” I blurted, running a hand through my hair.

Logan snorted. “Well, clearly you’re not.”

I huffed and crossed my arms over my chest. “Well, I’m supposed to be straight!”

Logan raised a single eyebrow and sipped his coffee as if he wasn’t witnessing me losing my shit. “Who told you that?”

“F1 isn’t ready for a queer driver,” I snapped.

Again, with the eyebrow thing from my brother. “Who. Told. You. That.” he said with exaggerated patience.

“Everyone! The media, the teams, the sponsors… shit, everyone, Lo.”

He waited for a beat and sighed again. “Our grandfather?”

“It’s a man’s sport,” I whispered and closed my eyes when Logan nodded sadly. “He always said… and I always… I’ve had girls–models and actresses–on my arm. I mean Grandfather loved Jemima, said it was the perfect match, and…”

“And?”

“I’ve never even thought about guys like that.” I glanced up at Logan who raised an eyebrow once more. “Shit, that’s not true. I’ve looked before, and I’ve…” I bunched my hands into fists. “I’ve wanted, but I’ve never…”

“But this Noah guy?” Logan prompted.

“I was drunk; I was miserable; I was overwhelmed; and he was kind. He smiled at me, and he has these long curls, and these beautiful, all-knowing eyes, and he made me feel…” I wasn’t sure how to finish the sentence.

Logan studied me before setting his mug on the table. “Happy?”

I didn’t have an answer. I didn’t know if I’d ever have one. All I knew was that Noah had ignited something in me that I couldn’t ignore. Something that scared the hell out of me—and made me feel alive.

“Yeah,” I said miserably. “For a little while, I was happy.”

Logan counted off his fingers. “One, you are a former driver; two, Grandfather is a bigoted racist, sexist asshole; and three, what’s stopping you when one and two are taken out of the equation?”

Three-year-old Avery launched herself onto my lap with enthusiasm. Her eyes were bright, and she grinned at me. Her tiny hands grabbed my sweater to steady herself.

“I hadta’hav two Skittles, Uncle Brody!” she announced, her voice full of excitement.

“Wow,” I said, smoothing her hair and settling her against me.

She beamed; her excitement infectious. “But I’m okay, and I went on the swings! And there were ducks!” she continued, her words tumbling out so fast I couldn’t keep up. She leaned against my chest, her small hand waving as she tried to mimic the ducks swimming. I loved holding her like this, feeling her tiny frame against mine, her chatter filling the room.

I caught Logan watching us as Avery rambled about the park and the ducks. He smiled, his expression searching.

“What?” I asked, narrowing my eyes at him.

Logan leaned back in his chair, folding his arms across his chest. “What’s stopping you?”

My stomach twisted, his question hitting too close to home. I looked away, focusing on Avery as she chatted about the colors of the ducks’ feathers. She didn’t have a care in the world, warm and trusting in my arms. And God, I loved this family—Logan, Sadie, and Avery. They were my safe place, the only thing that felt real when everything else spun out of control.

But Logan’s words stuck with me, echoing in my head long after the conversation shifted back to Avery and her Skittles.

What was stopping me?

* * *

I never told Logan I was visiting our grandfather.

Not that he would have stopped me, but I’d have to listen to ten minutes of him cursing about me stepping into the lion’s den.

Given my aneurysm was small, stable, and not causing symptoms like dizziness, seizures, or vision problems, the doctor had cleared me to drive, and I always kept one of my cars in Logan’s garage.

Thank fuck for that.

He didn’t need to drive me anywhere, which meant that when I said I was leaving for home, I could go wherever I wanted.

Including the big old house where my grandfather lived.

I don’t know why I answered the summons—but he’d found out I was in Washington and expected a visit. I thought he’d given up on me. After all, I’d already had speeches ranging from emotional to deranged about giving up racing, and our grandfather was one of those on the list of people I hadn’t told about the aneurysm. I fed him the lie of retirement, and he hated it.

I’d spent my entire life carrying the weight of the Vance name in motorsport like a badge of honor—and a noose around my neck. Admitting to the aneurysm? That would be like admitting defeat, like proving him right all along. Weak. A coward. The words he’d never said outright but had always been there, hanging between us, unspoken but sharp enough to cut.

He wouldn’t see the aneurysm for what it was—a goddamn ticking time bomb in my skull. No, he’d see it as an excuse, a way to explain why I wasn’t good enough. Another reason to question my worth was to remind me that I was failing the family name.

Weakness wasn’t tolerated.

And worse, I knew how much he thrived on control. If I told him, it wouldn’t end there. He’d take that vulnerability, twist it, use it against me. I’d spent years trying to prove I didn’t need him, that I could stand on my own two feet, and telling him the truth would feel like handing him all the power I’d fought so hard to take back.

I hated that I was standing in this house, surrounded by walls that hadn’t changed in two decades, feeling like a kid again, crying in my grandmother’s arms after everything had fallen apart.

I stopped outside my grandfather’s office and paused, staring at a photo that had hung there for as long as I could remember.

The three Vance kids—Logan was twelve, me nine, and Charlie, only seven. We all looked so much alike, with our mom’s dark hair and our dad’s pale gray eyes. It had been taken a few weeks before the accident—Mom, Dad, and Charlie—gone in an instant. A plane crash—Dad piloting, probably drunk—that shattered everything we knew. After that, it was just Logan and me, two grieving kids trying to navigate a new world. Of course, we had family; our grandparents took us in, but living with our grandfather became both a blessing and a curse. He was a racer like me, more of a legend in motorsport than I could ever be, and he poured everything he knew into us. We had every advantage to reach the pinnacle of racing: the best trainers, the best karts, the sponsors, and the legacy of what our grandfather–and to a lesser extent, my father–had achieved.

Everyone knew one of the Vance boys had to drive.

It was an inescapable destiny.

But then, Logan turned his back on racing, paid his own way through college, and met Sadie. Grandfather had never spoken to Logan with anything less than open hostility after that. It infuriated Grandfather that Logan was my manager and handled contracts for several other high-profile athletes. He’d become a success on his own terms.

Shoulders back, jaw tight, I knocked once—sharp, purposeful—and then, opened the door without waiting for him to shout about me wasting his time loitering outside. Because he would’ve, and we both knew it.

“Sit,” he barked as soon as I stepped into the room, his tone cutting.

I swallowed the lump in my throat, schooling my features into the calm, detached mask I’d perfected over the years. I sat slowly, my back stiff, my jaw tight, waiting for whatever storm he was about to unleash.

His office was a shrine to his eighties glory days, a museum of the man he still believed himself to be. Photos lined the walls—him grinning with a champagne bottle in hand, standing next to his world championship-winning car, girls in tiny outfits kissing his cheeks—none of them my grandmother. Helmets were displayed on a shelf–pristine and untouched by time–and a massive cabinet gleamed with trophies he’d collected over his career.

And in the center of it all, behind a vast oak desk that seemed to fill the room, was the man I loved and hated equally.

At seventy-five, he was still strong, his presence as dominating as ever. His gray hair was neatly combed, his face lined but sharp, his pale eyes—still piercing. In this room, he wasn’t just my grandfather. He was the king of an empire he’d built from nothing, off the back of an engineering degree and a racing career that had made him a household name.

I respected him for what he’d done. For racing in an era when cars were little more than death traps, on tracks with unsafe barriers, in a sport where death wasn’t only a risk—it was an inevitability. He’d seen, survived, and built something legendary from it.

But I also hated that he was stuck in that time when he was my age and had the world at his feet. He wore his glory as armor, clinging to it so tightly it had become his identity. And God help anyone who didn’t live up to the standard he’d set for himself back then.

I respected the man, but my irrational temper was already flaring, and he hadn’t opened his mouth yet.

He leaned forward in his chair. “Okay, enough is enough, Brody.” His voice rose, and he slammed a hand on the desk, echoing through the room. “I have sponsors contacting me, asking what’s going on. I have journalists calling every hour, digging for answers. I’ve lost contracts because of you. Do you have any idea how this makes me look? After everything I’ve done for you?”

Wow, not even a hello. I opened my mouth, but he didn’t give me a chance to respond.

I flinched despite myself, hating how he could still make me feel small, as if I were nine years old and being scolded for scuffing my new kart. He had this way of distilling pure contempt into his words, hard and cold, and hurling them right where they would hurt the most.

“Grandfather, I retired?—”

“Enough!” His eyes narrowed, drilling into mine, and his voice dropped, colder now, sharper. “What are you? Afraid? Is that it? Are you too much of a coward to get back in the car? Too weak to face the pressure? To face the legacy I handed you on a silver platter?”

My head snapped up at that, the words hitting me like a punch to the gut.

My throat tightened, his words hitting every raw nerve I had left. Coward . Weak . Words from him I’d spent my entire life trying to outrun, words I’d built my career to silence. And now, he was dragging them out into the open, daring me to deny them.

But what could I say?

Tell him the truth.

“You owe me, Brody. Do you understand that? You wouldn’t be where you are if it weren’t for me. Every victory you’ve had, every podium and contract comes back to me.”

Tell him.

The words were stuck in my throat. I didn’t want his pity. I didn’t want him to coddle me like a broken toy or, worse, weaponize my condition in whatever power game we were always playing. I’d be damned if I’d let him turn it into another reason to control me.

“I’m not going back.”

“You’re the same as Logan,” he spat, his face flushed. “Ungrateful, selfish, weak. I gave you everything, and this is how you repay me. By ruining everything I’ve worked for? Everything our name stands for?”

My heart pounded, and his words reverberated in my skull. I stared at him, the man who had dominated my entire life, who had been both a mentor and a jailer. My grandfather had been a master of discipline, believing every mistake was an opportunity to be better—sharper, faster, more focused. He’d drilled that into me from the moment I first sat in a kart, calm but relentless, pointing out every flaw, every misstep, every tiny detail.

Focus, Brody. Again. Do it again until it’s perfect.

And I had. Over and over. I wanted to make him proud, and I scrambled for every approval, which rarely came. It made me a strong driver—a better one. I couldn’t deny that. The focus and the ability to block out everything except the track in front of me came from him.

But it had destroyed parts of me too.

Every time I fell short, every time I wasn’t perfect, it felt as if I wasn’t just failing him—I was failing myself. That constant need to prove I was good enough, fast enough, smart enough had carved something raw and unrelenting into my chest, a wound that never quite healed.

I learned how to handle and thrive under pressure, but I also learned how to tear myself apart when I didn’t live up to it. He never yelled or raised a hand, but his silence when I messed up was worse than any punishment.

And now, years later, I could still hear him in the back of my mind whenever I faltered. “Focus, Brody. Again.”

It had made me a champion. But at what cost?

“Right, I’ve decided what’s happening. I’ll allow you to take this year as a sabbatical,” Grandfather said, his tone leaving no room for argument. Not that it mattered—he always talked as if his word was law. “Get back to training Because, look at you, you’re soft. Your neck muscles are diminished, and have you put on weight?”

I clenched my jaw, my hands curling into fists at my sides. “Only a couple of?—”

“Then, get back with that woman. The singer. She’s doing okay, and you could use the good publicity.”

“Jemima? No, I?—”

“We’ll announce you’re coming out of retirement,” he continued, leaning back in his chair with confidence. “Something about rediscovering your passion, some… woke thing about finding yourself. People eat up that kind of nonsense these days. It’ll be perfect. And then, we’ll get you back, and this time, you won’t fuck up and miss the championship by twenty-three Goddamn points!”

He spoke as if it were a done deal.

It took everything in me not to snap, not to stand up and yell that soft didn’t mean shit when you were fighting to stay alive. That no amount of training could fix a goddamn aneurysm in your brain. But I stayed silent.

Because what was the point? He’d already decided. And in his world, what he decided was reality. Whether I liked it or not.

I stared at him. I didn’t have an answer.

And then, I stood.

I didn’t say a word. I didn’t yell, didn’t argue, didn’t explain myself. I just turned on my heel and walked out of the room, his voice following me down the hall.

“Don’t you dare walk away from me, Brody! You hear me? Don’t you dare!”

But I didn’t stop. I didn’t look back. Because, for once, I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction.

“We’re not done! I know where you’ll be.”

He expected me to go to the house on Lake Michigan, my apartment in Monaco. Or maybe that I’d stay with Logan, Sadie, and Avery.

“Well fuck you, old man,” I snapped.

I peeled out of the gates in my Maserati, heading for the open road, and drove north to find somewhere else to hide.

Harrisburg.