SEVEN YEARS WASTED

The last time I’d been face to face with the smirking, overly confident man with hands crossed on his chest, eyes daring me to challenge him, I was seventeen, and those eyes were laughing.

My grip on the phone is tight, vision blurring as his photo is swapped out for another competitor.

“How did this happen? You said Kane Motors weren’t interested in the SLAT.” My voice comes out harsher than I ever used with my father. He doesn’t mention it because he feels similarly to how I feel, although with a different motive.

The Kane's have been the Delta’s rival from before my father was born. The rivalry however deep and long, is not the reason I made the decision to join the competition only after making sure Harrison Kane was as far away from the it as possible.

And now here he is, smirking at me. Taunting me.

How is this even possible? Why?   

“It’s the SLAT. The shocker was them deciding to compete with just their cars.”

Goddammit. I raise a shaky hand through my hair, dragging the strands and tugging on them as if they were the reason K-1 joined the race out of nowhere. And yes, the Kane Motorsports decided to brand him K-1 to mock us or rile us up, I’m not sure.

“It doesn’t matter. The boy races for fame. We don’t have that luxury. We’re going to win.” Father says, his irritation at his rival bleeding into his voice. He doesn’t wait for me to say anything else, dropping the call and leaving me to stew in the confusion.

The camp… I’d have to spend weeks training, living alongside him.

“Is something wrong?”

I flinch as Marcus’s voice pulls me away from the edge of a memory. Dropping my phone, I start to dress up, shrugging on a shirt and pants. There’s too much to do, to make sure I saw wrong. Someone from SLAT had to have messed up.

He had a thing, a promotional event in Italy. I personally followed up on his schedule, double checking twice a day to make sure I didn’t miss it. My father is right. Harrison Kane is a flashly racer. I’d been sick to my stomach just watching all the endorsements he has stacked up.

But because of those endorsements, he shouldn’t be competing.

“Damien–”

“Go home, Marcus.” I say curtly. Redoing the buttons of my shirt. I only use this penthouse to meet with whoever was on my rooster. It’s impersonal, but our family butler knows where to reach me if he had to.

“Will we see each other before you leave for camp?”

No.

These meetings were to scratch an itch I couldn’t reach on my own. It usually turned the itch to a low hum under my skin, but after seeing that face… the itch has turned into a full fledged burn I cannot put out.

My steps are hurried as I leave the penthouse to my car parked downstairs. On the drive to the office, I call Tyson, my eldest brother.

“Harrison Kane, how come?” I ask the second the call connects. My thumb taps against the steering wheel as I weave through traffic.

“My contacts say there was no talk of him joining until he did. Jon thinks he’s a plant, and he might not even be qualified to join–”

“He is.” I say with a frustrated huff.

Jon is our brother and he’s wasting his time if he thinks Harrison’s spot isn’t guaranteed. I checked before applying. Unlike me who took a break from the sport, Harrison hasn’t taken any breaks. He doesn’t have as many awards, but he’s held his own. He’s even broken a record and has held it.

He’s no plant.

“You don’t think it’s a play to pit D-1 VS K-1? Do you know how many people will pay to see that??” From the inflection in my business minded brother, I’d say he’s already thought of ways to milk this.

I refuse.

I have gone out of my way to make sure Terrasfield was big enough  city for both of us. This cannot be the reason we’d be in each other’s orbit again.

“Don’t tell me you’re thinking of bowing out.” My brother’s voice had turned to the same voice that spoke in my ear when the sun was down and the night suffocated me.

“You’re a Delta, we don’t quit. Certainly not to favor a Kane.”

A shaky breath escapes me as I ease the car into the Delta Industries building. To meet with my team. The very people I’d be entrusting my life with for the next few weeks.

“Not thinking about it.”

A bold faced lie.

The thought of facing him again makes me want to turn right back around.

“Good. You know we need this. If Jon or I made the cut off, we wouldn’t have made you do this.” Tyson shows a bit of an elder brother in a rare moment. His words hit the way he wants them to.

Everything is riding on this.

Every single thing.

Putting my head against the steering wheel, I force Harrison out of my head. He’s one of the many contestants. Nothing more.

“I understand.”

“Good. Now, go out there and show them what it’s like to be a Delta.”

 Delta Industries is one of the leading automobile manufacturers. Of course, Kane Motors is right next to it. I’d lived and breathed cars from the moment I was born. While I did racing for a period of my life, what really caught my attention is working on it.

Building it piece by piece is where I found the voices in my head went quiet.

 “Hey,” Amber, my closest and only friend, greets the second I enter the team room. The team I hand picked personally once I found out we couldn’t afford a racer and I had to come to the forefront instead of under the car like I wanted.

She wipes her hands on a rag as she pulls me in for a hug, smearing my cheek with oil from hers.

“Congrats, you did it.”

“We did it.”

She’s as good as I am with tinkering with cars, in fact, that’s how we bonded. Not with family names or whatever.

The guys track out of the back rooms, my old team from my racing days. Rafael, my race engineer, Amber the chief mechanic, Jayce, performance engineer, and Milo, the Pit crew chief.

A ragged breath escapes me when I meet their eyes.

They’re all smiling, beaming with pride as if I brought the championship to them.

“We got in.”

“We had no doubts.” Rafael, my coach with more salt than pepper hair since the last time we gathered before a race.

“They have Harrison Kane and others. This might be our only celebration.” I say with way too much bitterness attached to the name.

They groan.

“And we have D-1. The original.” Milo says, slapping my shoulder, his smile big and large that I almost laugh. Almost. I’m not sure I know how to do that anymore.

My heart is thumping too loud, offbeat, each beat uneven.

“Hey, you okay?” Amber says when the rest of the guys go back to talk strategy.

I blink once and twice to settle my vision.

“Yeah. It’s not just a race that decides the future of Delta Industries, it’s also the first time in seven years I’ll be seeing his face again.”

 Amber presses her lips together in pity, handing me a tablet.

“SLAT camp assignments came in.”

I look down.

GROUP A.

DAMIEN DELTA– D-1

HARRISON KANE– K-1

My stomach drops.

I stare at his name.

Seven years of avoiding him.

And SLAT has given us three weeks under the same roof.