Page 2 of Final Drive

My phone buzzes.

Mother: We need to talk. I may have spoken hastily yesterday. Call me.

“Everything okay?” Bo asks, his voice pitched just for me.

“My mother wants to talk.”

“That’s good?”

“It’s damage control. She called me a whore in front of witnesses and now she’s trying to spin it.”

His hand tightens on my back. “You don’t have to.”

“I know.”

Gray’s phone rings. He checks the screen and his jaw goes tight before he smooths it over.

“I need to take this.” He’s already moving toward the back door.

Through the window I watch him pace the deck with the phone against his ear. His shoulders stay rigid the whole time and his free hand keeps opening and closing at his side.

“Harrison won’t let this go,” Tyler says, following my eyes. “The Lockwoods don’t lose. They regroup and come at it from a different angle.”

Gray comes back inside with his face locked down. “He wants to meet. Tomorrow, lunch at the club.”

“You’re not going,” Jackson says.

“If I don’t show up he’ll take it as a declaration of war. Right now he still thinks we’re negotiating.”

“Negotiating for what?” I ask.

Gray looks at me. Actually looks, steel eyes on mine for the first time since the dock. “Me. He thinks he can talk me out of this.”

“Can he?”

“No. But I need him to believe he has a chance, and it buys us time to get the paperwork filed.”

I nod and look down at my phone, pretending to check it. There’s another message from my mother, and one from somebody else.

Quinton: Saw the race coverage. You were incredible out there. Congrats on the sweep!

Then, a minute later:

Quinton: Coffee this week? I know things are crazy but that project won’t finish itself

The smart move is to delete it, block his number, and forget Quinton Whitmore exists.

My thumb hovers over the keyboard anyway.

Quinton doesn’t want anything from me. He doesn’t need me to be his Omega or his coxswain or his angle against the administration. He asks about my classes and makes bad jokes about Professor Hawthorne and talks to me like I’m a person instead of a problem on somebody’s whiteboard.

Me: Thanks. Maybe on the coffee. I’ll let you know.

I pocket the phone before anyone can see it.

“We should practice this afternoon,” Gray is saying. “AVNC qualifiers are in two weeks.”

“We just swept a championship,” Zane protests. “Can we have one day?”