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Chapter 23: Prove It
publish date:
2026-11-03 17:25:38
Latest chapter
The Racer I Pretend To Hate Chapter 25: The Frame
I almost deleted it.The morning session had been cleaner than the day before. The setup Rex’s engineers had been fighting with looked more stable through the first runs, and the car held its line with the kind of authority that made for strong but expected frames. I shot the usual sequences from the pit wall and from a secondary angle near the exit of the final corner. Professional. Controlled. Safe enough that no one would accuse me of chasing danger for its own sake.Then I moved.During a longer stop while the team adjusted wing angles, I walked the length of the garage and found a gap between equipment carts where the light came through the open bay doors in a hard white sheet. Rex was standing alone near the front of the car with his helmet tucked under one arm, looking down at the data on a tablet someone had left on the nose. He did not know I was there. The usual armor he wore around the crew was missing. His shoulders were slightly dropped. His mouth was set in a line that h
The Racer I Pretend To Hate Chapter 24: Challenge
The message from the publication was still unanswered when I got to the circuit.I checked my inbox twice before leaving the house and once more in the parking area. Nothing. The silence made the previous day’s stubborn choice sit heavier in my chest. I had the work. I had the proof. What I did not have was control over how long someone else would take to decide whether it mattered.Rex was already in the garage when I walked in. He looked up from a conversation with Marcus, held my gaze for half a second, then returned to the tablet in his hands. The distance from the night before was still in place. So was the awareness underneath it.I took my usual position and started the morning the way I always did, checking light and angles, trying to treat the day like any other workday. It lasted until the first practice window was about to open.Rex walked over while the engineers finished the last checks on the car.“You’re on the main garage today,” he said. Not a question.“That’s the sc
The Racer I Pretend To Hate Chapter 23: Prove It
I submitted the portfolio before sunrise.Sitting on the guest room floor with my laptop, I refined the selects until my eyes burned, then sent the link before I could talk myself into another round of second-guessing. The confirmation email landed in my inbox with a polite, impersonal note. Review timeline unknown. No promises.It should have felt like relief.Instead it felt like I had put a piece of myself into someone else’s hands and would now have to wait to find out whether it was enough.At the circuit I arrived early and went looking for work that had nothing to do with Rex’s clearance or his unofficial advice. The media coordinator mentioned a secondary assignment no one else wanted: a full morning covering the junior support series on the far side of the complex, limited access, awkward angles, and almost no prestige. I took it before she finished describing the drawbacks.If the portfolio was going to stand, it would stand on more than proximity to one driver.The junior p
The Racer I Pretend To Hate Chapter 22: Her Ambition
The careful distance held through the next morning.I left for the circuit before Rex finished in the kitchen. Separate cars. Separate arrivals. At the track I threw myself into the work with more intensity than usual, partly because the schedule demanded it and partly because focusing on frames and light was easier than focusing on the rule sitting between us like a third presence in the house.A message from a major racing publication landed in my inbox mid-morning.I stepped away from the pit wall to read it twice. They had seen some of my recent independent work. They wanted a portfolio submission for a possible feature assignment covering the next round of the championship. Not a guarantee. An opening. The kind of opening I had been building toward for years while taking every freelance scrap that kept me near the sport.My hands were not entirely steady when I put the phone away.For the rest of the morning the camera felt lighter. I shot with a sharper sense of purpose, hunting
The Racer I Pretend To Hate Chapter 21: Morning War
I woke up alone.For a disorienting second I thought I was back in the guest room. Then the darker sheets and the faint scent of Rex’s cologne pulled the night into place. His side of the bed was empty but still warm. From downstairs came the sound of cabinets and the low hiss of the coffee machine.The rule floated up before anything else.No getting attached.I sat on the edge of the mattress and pressed my fingers against my eyes. Two nights. That was all it had taken for the careful structure we had built to start looking decorative. The deal. The house rules. The new rule spoken over coffee like it could hold against the weight of what we were doing in the dark. None of it felt solid in daylight.I dressed in yesterday’s clothes, ran water over my face, and went downstairs prepared for distance.Rex was at the island with two cups already poured. He looked freshly showered, hair still damp, expression unreadable.“Morning,” he said.“Morning.”I took the cup he pushed toward me a
The Racer I Pretend To Hate Chapter 20: New Rule
Morning light cut through the blinds in thin stripes.For a few seconds I didn’t move. The bed was not the guest room bed. The sheets smelled like Rex. My body ached in places that made the night before impossible to dismiss as a dream. When I finally turned my head, he was already awake, lying on his side watching me with an expression that was calmer than it had any right to be.“Don’t say it was a mistake,” he said.My voice came out rough. “I wasn’t going to.”“You were thinking it.”I sat up, pulling the sheet with me. The air in the room felt heavier in daylight. Everything we had done was still written on my skin. Everything we still had to face sat between us like unfinished business.“I need to shower,” I said.Rex didn’t stop me. He just watched as I gathered enough clothes to make it down the hall without putting on a full performance of dignity. In the bathroom I stood under hot water until my pulse slowed, replaying the way he had pinned me, the way he had made me say I w
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