CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Emma
As I sprinted away from UnCaged’s headquarters, I knew I was probably violating some of the rules implanted in that billion-page contract that I’d signed a little over a month ago. Surely, there had to be some clause in there about how I wasn’t supposed to go anywhere without letting my owners know.
But I didn’t care.
I looked down at the CageFree on my wrist, and it beeped, showing my heart rate was way too high for what it should be. I shook it to get it to shut up, and when it didn’t, ripped it off and hurled it as far as I could throw it.
I groaned, ran to where it laid, picked it up and stuffed it in my pocket, happy I hadn’t broken the damn thing.
Had I really attempted to school a bunch of reporters? I winced as I thought of the words that had escaped my mouth. I’m honestly ashamed of the lot of you. You call yourself reporters?
God, Brody was right. I did sound like a spoiled bitch. What had he said? Something tells me you need to get your ass back to Wintersburg and get yourself a healthy dose of perspective.
I wouldn’t see my parents until the race, but at that moment, I needed them. I whipped out my phone and punched in a call to my parents, desperate to hear them on the other end. But the phone just kept ringing and ringing. My mother was probably working in Phoenix where she was a paralegal, and Daddy was probably down in the shop. Ending the call, I looked tiredly out the window at the palms swaying.
I’d never felt so alone.
Emma’s got ice water in her veins. She can be ruthless when she wants to be.
I didn’t feel very ruthless right then. I thought more about what I’d said. For your information, it doesn’t matter what the hell I’m wearing, or what my anatomy is. What matters is that I’m going to wipe the track with the asses of every one of my opponents. And you can quote me on that.
Would I? I had no experience to race against the big names. How could I make an assertion so outright ridiculous? Right then, my confidence was at a complete low, and all I wanted to do was go back home to Wintersburg and crawl under the covers. Now, the world would expect me to clean the oval with the asses of the best drivers who’d ever raced in this sport. What had I been thinking?
And Locke. God, he was probably ruing the day he’d met me and selected me to be the face of his multimillion-dollar ad campaign. I couldn’t sell nothing to nobody. He’d sat there, making me feel confident with his hand on my knee, almost too confident. And then he’d silently watched me self-destruct without a word.
He must have hated me.
When I stood in front of the training center, my phone buzzed. It was a text from Laura. Where are you?
Ugh. She was probably wondering where I was so she and Locke could yell at me for reaming out the reporters and making UnCaged Fitness the laughingstock of the racing world. I could just imagine Locke cornering me in a room and saying, I’m sorry, but this violates rule number 4,132,276 of the contract, rendering it void. You have two hours to move out of your apartment. Goodbye.
Gnashing my teeth, I was blown inside by a stiff wind. Bruce was waiting for me, and it was then I remembered that on my schedule was a three-hour four-hundred that I needed to complete.
Everything inside me sank. I almost burst into tears right there. Yes, sometimes racing made me feel better, but right now, it was everything that was wrong with my life. I wanted to escape.
I wanted to run.
“Hey, Bruce,” I said, trying to keep my voice from cracking. “I’m not feeling the simulator right now. I—”
I thought of what those asshole reporters had said, and only one excuse came to me. I have my period.
So I didn’t finish my excuse. I just walked into the gym, tore off that stupid red dress, and stared at the tag. It wasn’t Target, after all, because I was sure Victoria wouldn’t set foot inside a Target. No, it was some French name I’d never heard of. I balled it up and threw it in the garbage, hoping I could finally breathe when I was back in my old gym clothes.
But it still felt like a weight was on my chest as I laced on my running shoes.
It was all my fault. I’d failed Brody by making him seem like some poor soul who’d never race again. Maybe I’d done it for the pity. I’d failed Locke by telling off those reporters. I’d failed my parents by not being able to hold this sponsorship together.
I’d failed everyone.
And I deserved to suffer.
I grabbed the resistance chute off the shelf and headed outside. The wind was so powerful it took an effort to push open the door to the gym. When I got out to the beach, it was deserted. I stalked past the dunes, watching the giant waves crashing in the distance. I’d never seen them so big or angry before.
Seagulls squawked overhead in warning as I set out, and as I looked up, I saw their white bodies silhouetted against a black-clouded sky, approaching from the north.
With the chute attached to me I took a few steps, but it was like a firm hand was holding me in place.
Another few steps, running hard, but something pushed me back.
It was okay. You deserve to suffer after what you did.
So I pushed farther, savoring the suffering. All the crazy routines Rinaldo had put me through, pushing weighted dummies across the floor, lifting more than my body weight? This was harder.
Good.
I wanted harder. I wanted impossible. I wanted to run until I had the life slapped out of me, because maybe then I could sleep.
I hadn’t been able to sleep well after the night with Locke in the gym. I’d given in, laid myself bare for him, and I knew from the look on his face that it had gone too far. I could tell from the way he’d handled me with kid gloves as I got ready… he regretted it. And he should have. I was just a tomboy grease monkey. Making me look girly was just putting lipstick on a pig.
Maybe it’d have been better if I never tasted him at all. Then I wouldn’t know what I could never have again.
They say you don’t know what you’ve got until it’s gone. But I’d known all right. I’d known from the minute he made my heart race at that Daytona Beach restaurant, the first second I saw him, that I was a goner. I knew when he took me aside and railed me with questions that we’d had a magnetic connection. I’d never felt that way before, never had any man look at me like that before.
Now I feared no man ever would again.
The wind and the surf roared in my ears as I pressed on, fighting against the resistance of the chute. My thighs and calves burned, but it was a good burn. One I deserved.
The black clouds were almost overhead, and I wished that they would suck me in, pull me away from this place, like Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz.
Because I was done with this place. Better to call it quits now and admit defeat quietly than have it happen on national television in front of a few million people.
I slowed to a stop, but just as I did, out of the blue came a gust of wind that knocked me flat on my ass, causing all the air to whoosh out of my lungs. I sat there, momentarily stunned, wondering what else could possibly happen to me. As if I wasn’t low enough.
And then, to my horror, I burst into tears.