Adrenaline

bonus chapter 03 | end game pt. i

BRASIL, DEC 2023

"Have we got any barf bags we can take to the track or do we think Windsor has some I can borrow?

Seira raised a brow in my direction. "Are you planning on giving them back after they've been used?"

"Maybe. Depends on if they screw up his race again."

She snickered but didn't say anything else, returning to reading My Dark Vanessa while wearing a sheet mask with a panda face on it. Since she had good taste and was staying up with me while my nerves were still in overdrive mode, I wasn't going to judge.

It was probably a good thing that Brendon was staying in a different hotel closer to where the rest of the Windsor team was because I would have only kept him up late before one of the biggest nights of his career. Due to a slew of poor decisions made by the Windsor team, what should have been a clean sweep of a season turned out to be even more difficult than last year, but Brendon pulled out his hand of magic tricks to keep himself first in the standings for the past few races, so that was hopeful. All he needed was a P8 finish and the championship title would be his, but as we had seen last year, nothing was guaranteed. Everything could be torn away from him in just the last few laps of the final race of the season.

All of that was why I couldn't sleep, and after bombarding Seira with another irrational question she could never know the question to, she had decided to use her time productively and whipped out the book and skin care. Rami should have considered himself lucky that he booked his own room instead of sleeping over with us in ours. I couldn't say for sure whether Jun and Lauren both decided to book a couples retreat during this race weekend specifically to avoid my anxious disaster brain, but I wouldn't put it past them if they had.

"You don't actually think Bash is going to lose, do you?"

"I'm trying to be the cautiously optimistic girlfriend, Seira." Doing a shit job of that. She had to take away my phone so I wouldn't accidentally tweet something about Windsor or fight one of Bash's haters. I told her she was being overdramatic because there was no way that could have been a bigger nightmare than Maverick and I fighting Twitter on behalf of Midnights, but I probably couldn't trust myself either.

"And how's that going?"

"Don't ask."

After sliding her bookmark back into place, she plopped the book down on the nightstand and worked on peeling the face mask away. "If it makes you feel any better, may I remind you that Maverick is such a fake fan he booked their plane tickets two days late and has yet to arrive?"

Seira was good at that, making me laugh when all I wanted to do was cry for no reason. "Genuinely don't want to know how Roman took the bad news."

"Two fewer days of watching his boyfriend race toward a championship?"

"Brendon is his husband."

"Husband," she repeated with a flourish. "Not sure how tall Roman is but I'm guessing he was ready to squish him."

"I... don't think he's that tall either." I glanced over at the TV that had the volume turned down but couldn't get myself into the mood to watch anything. Not that there was anything good on right now considering how late it was in São Paulo. "Everleigh gave me the condensed version of Roman's near meltdown. But they're at least making it for race day, so that's gotta count, right?"

Seira scoffed. "Assuming they make it here. Mav did book the tickets."

I winced. When Everleigh broke the news their trip had been delayed for Maverick-related reasons, I felt bad for not booking it myself. Hell, Jenny would have booked it for them if anything. (I elected not to tell her about his mishap.) (Saved her from the headache of hearing about it, but I could still picture the look of disappointment on her face anyway.)