Page 13 of The Fast Track

Behind me, Cameron pushes himself up. “Frank’s going to flip when he finds out.”

The thought of more tedious punishment sends a wave of dread through my body.

A thick, overgrown cluster of bushes lining the path gives me an idea.

I grab the dented edge of the rack on top of the cart and pull. “Come on, give me a hand.”

Cameron stares with his mouth half-open. “You’re joking.”

I brace myself, attempting to hoist the cart above the shoulder-height hedges. I’ve pulled off heavier 1 rep maxes during conditioning, but it’s too unbalanced without someone holding the other end and drops back down with aclang.

I glare. “This would be a lot faster if you shut your mouth and make yourself useful.”

“You’re gonna get caught.”

I push aside the coils of doubt in my mind. “No one ever comes up here, and if they do, who’s going to stick their head behind some random bushes?”

“What if maintenance notices a missing buggy?”

“Didn’t Caleb and Grayson walk off last year with two bottles of champagne meant for the annual gala and no one noticed?” They still brag about it at the top of their lungs. I clasp my hands together and put on the most pathetichelp meface I can summon. “Do you want Frank to give us another car to build from scratch on top of the one we already have to put together? That means at least twenty more hours like the one we just had.”

Cameron bites his bottom lip, the gears in his head turning as he weighs Frank’s wrath and additional forced proximity withme against the sweet, sweet potential of no one ever finding out. He finally sighs. “Not a word to anyone.”

“Thank you.” I clap my hands and hop up and down. This feels like a victory, even if the dubious prize is Cameron helping me dump a golf cart behind some bushes. “Come on, hurry up.”

He seizes the other end. In two seconds, we’ve hoisted it over the hedges.

“See? You won’t notice unless you get off the path and stand right over this exact spot.”

“You’re mad.” He shakes his head.

My phone dings again. Three minutes.

The OTC is a half mile away from here. I’ve done six-minute miles before. This can all still work.

Turns out, being super in shape from training to withstand g-forces and operate heavy machinery doesn’t turn one into Usain Bolt. I make it to my Dietrich meeting five minutes late and panting like Mom’s brother Uncle Jun whenever he walks up a flight of stairs.

The OTC canteen, crammed at mealtimes with everyone from strategy directors to design interns, is empty this time of day except for a couple of the kitchen staff having late lunches. Dietrich sits by himself at a table near the center, staring into a notebook. The late-afternoon sun pouring in from the canteen’s floor-to-ceiling windows bathes him in an ethereal glow, like a racing god come to grace earth with his presence. Which he basically is. His pedigree is legendary—his father is an ex-F1driver, his mother a former Euro karting champion who got pregnant before she could move up to higher categories. He’s got more racing blood in his pinkie than I have in my entire body.

I don’t know if it’s the half mile I did in Birkenstocks or if this is just what happens when you’re about to have your first one-on-one with a giant of the sport who also happens to be incredibly cute, but I can barely feel my legs as I approach him.

I get all the way up to the table before he looks up from his notebook. “Hello, Justine.”

“Hi,” I say, my knees feeling all knobby and like they don’t have any joints. “Sorry I’m—”

“Five and a half minutes late.” Dietrich glances at the large clock on the canteen wall that’s impossible to read because of its minimalist design. It’s literally two silver hands with no labels or ticks. “Orbital should get our junior drivers more accurate watches.”

I flush. “I was doing an—assignment for Frank and got caught up.” No need for him to know I got put in a penalty box for fighting with my teammate, then dug a hole ten feet deep in said penalty box as a result of fighting some more with said teammate.

Dietrich’s gaze sweeps up and down my legs. A spark of pleasure shoots through me—I know it’s supposed to be insulting being objectified and all, but it’sDietrich Lange—until I realize he’s staring at the bright red cuts on my knees, not the curves of my calves. In my hurry, I completely forgot to clean up in the bathroom beforehand.

“What was the assignment?” The corner of Dietrich’s mouth twists. He looks startlingly like Cameron trying to hold in a snort in front of Frank.

“Assembling the FC-80. I got cuts when… one of the blunt parts slipped.”

“You got a cut from an old car part? I think you need a tetanus shot, no?”

When I fantasized about how this meeting would go, it involved me strutting in and wowing Dietrich with my determination, my talent, and maybe my tastefully curated outfit. What it did not involve was… whatever you call this.