“I mean, it’s not even fucking fair. Richie ain’t some amateur. One tap shouldn’t have sent me corkscrewing through the air like a—like a—”

Tyler stopped mid-gesture, his hands plucking at the sky for the right word.

“Like a corkscrew?” Josh’s shit-eating grin was not the consolation Tyler might have hoped for.

“Yeah. Like a corkscrew. Fucking useful, bro. Thanks.”

“You’re welcome.” Josh laughed loudly as he brought the axe down on a piece of wood. He was splitting firewood to stockpile in the lean-to attached to his cabin for next winter.

It wasn’t the worst place to lie around, if he had to lie around anywhere and recover. The dude ranch Josh ran was low-stress, but it would have been a lot more fun if he could do anything.

He couldn’t even chop the damn firewood. Hell, he couldn’t stand and watch like usual—Josh had dragged out a chair for him.

Tyler groaned and rocked back on two legs of the chair. “He said I won’t be getting to the next race, that’s for damn sure.”

“Sucks.” Josh winced sympathetically. “You being paid?”

“Not like I would be if I were racing,” Tyler grumbled. “And I lost one sponsorship last year. I don’t need to lose one again this year.”

He didn’t really need a reminder that last year hadn’t been his best season. He’d been distracted with… well, his friends, for one thing. The endless sprawl of single life ahead of him, if he were lucky, for another.

It wasn’t easy watching his best friends fall in love, knowing he was between a rock and a hard place if he ever wanted love himself.

Tyler shook his head. “I’m not losing another,” he changed his sentence, dropping the chair to all four legs again. “Whatever the fuck Hanson thinks.”

The drivers on the Hanson team—Richie, who had fucked up badly enough to nearly kill him, and the other three—had been insufferable this season, since getting the sponsorship he’d lost last year. It was almost enough to make him wonder if it was a deliberate attempt to hurt him.

And he had hit on Richie a year or so ago, at an afterparty, when it had seemed for all the world like Richie was making a pass at him. Then, Richie had backed off so fast he’d nearly fallen over himself to flee.

But that wasn’t enough for a death grudge. And Tyler hadn’t made enemies more than any other driver did. He didn’t swear at his competitors or make rude gestures at them. He didn’t bump draft, and he’d never even tried to cheat.

There was no reason anyone should dislike him, except for being pretty, young, and in a fast car, and that described most of them.

“You ever thought about not getting back into the seat?” Josh tossed the freshly-split wood on the pile. “Maybe not killing yourself?” He cast Tyler a concerned look. “You looked like hell in the… whatever they call it. Field center.”

“And that’s why I’m not dating,” Tyler muttered under his breath.

“What?”

“Nah.” Tyler tried to wave it off.

“No,” Josh insisted, propping his axe on his shoulder. “Why aren’t you dating? Because you’re a driver?”

“No. Because nobody would put up with me going to work, not sure if I’ll come home.” Josh was giving him a look like he was an idiot—Tyler was very familiar with these looks by now. “What?”

“You just described like a dozen different careers, dude. People date cops, firefighters, truck drivers, garbage men. God, fishermen. Loggers. You name it. Get over yourself and try it out.” Josh smirked. “You know there’s like, a hundred ladies who would do you in a second. Statistics say there should be, what, two to five guys? If you haven’t fucked them all already.”

Tyler scowled at him and flipped him off.

“You’re not that ugly, and us guys are pretty easy. Maybe ten.”

Tyler tried to ignore Josh. “Yeah, and dating and fucking isn’t the same.”

“True. So go date some of them after you fuck them. Or before. I don’t care,” Josh laughed.

“Most of those careers—people who can deal with a husband going off to work and maybe not coming home—they’re heroes, or whatever. Mine isn’t that. I’m not doing it for glory and saving other people. I’m just an idiot in a car.”

Josh hummed. “But you look sexy in the spandex.”

“Fuck you.” Tyler laughed. “Anyway, it’s all kind of pointless to think about. You know what the media would say. Even today, we don’t have anyone big who’s out. We have pretty well-known down-low gay guys, sure. I’ve slept with them already. But they’re never, ever coming out. Not as long as they want sponsorship.”

Josh couldn’t argue with that. He sighed, rubbing his neck as he gazed over the fields, clearly trying to come up with an argument. Then, he shook his head and grabbed another log to split.

“You know I’m right,” Tyler smirked. “And besides, I’m not putting myself through that hell for nothing.”

“It wouldn’t be for nothing.”

Tyler rolled his eyes. “For some boyfriend, yeah. True love and everything.”

“You wait ’til it happens to you,” Josh laughed. “It’s always at the worst time possible.”

“Says the chronically single guy,” Tyler pointed out.

“That’s what everyone else says. And they should know.” Josh had him there. The rest of their friendship group—seriously, all four of the six guys—had found boyfriends in not even a year. Several of them were engaged now.

Which left him and Josh as the sad, lonely, single outsiders. If one looked at it that way. If, instead, one chose to think about the no-strings-attached sex and parties every week? It wasn’t a bad outlook for him.

Tyler just felt bad for Josh, who worked from dawn ’til dusk at the farm and rarely had time to meet eligible guys. He deserved better, but he’d never stop and take time for himself.

“Why can’t you come out? The media cares less these days,” Josh finally said, after a few minutes of peace and quiet punctuated only by the sharp chopping sounds of his axe.

“Because—Jesus. We’re talking southern states, right?” Tyler shook his head. They were both Tennessee boys, born and raised, so they knew as well as anyone the likelihood of being shunned as a pariah for something out of their hands. “They’d have a field day. My image would be gone. No more sponsorships means less money, more chance they’ll yank me from the car. If they don’t already do that, after I fucking totaled it, I’ll count myself lucky. I don’t need to add any more stress to the situation.”

Josh had paused again, setting his axe aside. “What happens when you meet someone who’d be bad for your image but good for the real you?”

Tyler couldn’t answer that one. He didn’t want to, because he had the horrible, sneaking suspicion the answer wouldn’t make him look good. He looked away, over the fields and toward the guest cabins.

Josh read into his silence. “Yeah. Being the perfect southern gentleman for the cameras is one thing. Being a monk because you’re not allowed to chase a hot ass and the cameras are watching? And what about love? You gonna ditch that because you can’t afford to? When does it stop?”

“Yeah.” Tyler shook his head. He’d tried not to think that far ahead. Despite the bad season last year, his last couple years had attracted a lot of attention, and he didn’t want to give that up. On the other hand, it made him a lot more vulnerable.

He’d never been closeted before racing. He just hadn’t brought it up directly on the track, all the way from his go-karting days as a kid, because work was work and home was home. Not everyone thought that way, of course. Some drivers flaunted their trophy wives in order to get into the headlines more.

The right company might see him as an opportunity rather than a risk, but it was a hell of a big risk to overcome, too.

His team knew. He’d always seen that as enough. But was it?

Tyler blew out a sigh. “Why are we talking about some theoretical situation? I’m supposed to be getting pissed off that I broke myself, not that I don’t have a good lay.”

“Oh,” Josh grinned. “We can talk about those if you’d rather.”

He lived vicariously through Tyler’s afterparties. He’d come as Tyler’s best friend to a few of them, but out of consideration for Tyler, he’d never taken anyone home from them. Tongues would wag too easily, and suddenly Tyler would find himself in a tabloid article about wild gay threesomes.

“Anyone else decide they want a walk on the wild side with you?” Josh pressed.

Tyler’s sexuality wasn’t quite at open secret status yet, but word had to be getting around by now. He knew damn well that he was living on the knife’s edge, but that was the point of life. The thrill of the race, the chase, or nearly getting caught. Adrenaline. The rush of victory or the bittersweet taste of loss.

If you didn’t live a lot, why bother living at all? He tried not to apply his life philosophy to his dating life. That was different, he told himself. Josh couldn’t be right about every single thing, all the time.

And that definitely wasn’t a pang of loneliness that stabbed through him whenever he watched couples on their honeymoon, wandering around the ranch like they had eyes for nobody but each other.

Tyler bit his tongue, his sigh lost in the crack of splitting wood. “So, there was this guy a couple weeks ago who wanted to drink champagne off me.”

If he wasn’t good for anything else, he might as well tell a good story.