Chapter 24: Travis
There are seven other bikers in the locker room with me. They’re getting changed, taking showers, and warming up. I’ve been in locker rooms like this hundreds of times, and normally, I’’ve got a pretty simple routine. Get dressed, get clean, and get out on the fucking track, you know?
But this time, it’s a little different. I take my time getting dressed, waiting for everyone else to leave, one by one. Then, when I’ve got the room to myself, I sit on the bench and take a long, deep breath.
Those other guys might not know it yet, but they don’t have a chance in hell. Not after what happened last night. Seeing the look on Laney’s face when she finally, finally realized how I really feel about her…
I might never lose a race again.
Last night, as we sat down and watched the fireworks, Laney mentioned that it reminded her of a dream she had when we first got to the hotel. Apparently, while she was calling me a pervert, she was rolling around in that king-size bed, dreaming of me laying her naked body down on the sand and licking her until she screamed.
And then, after making her little dream come true, we slept out there on the beach, woke up at the crack of dawn, and walked all the way back to the hotel. It was pretty much the perfect fucking morning, and I play it back in my mind as I sit on the bench.
Just the two of us. Exactly the way it should be.
Outside the door to the locker room, I can hear the other bikers rev up their engines and ride out into the entrance tunnel. I open my locker, pull out my helmet, and tuck it underneath my arm. They’re probably going to send someone in to come get me soon, but I want to stay back just a little bit longer.
After all, this is going to be a big race. Much bigger than anyone out there realizes right now.
I lean against the lockers with my eyes closed, getting ready to head out into the tunnel and smoke my competition. A couple seconds later, I hear the locker room door, and I assume it’s Paul, coming back to make sure I’m alright.
But it isn’t Paul. It’s Anna, Laney’s boss. She’s standing between me and the bench, arms crossed, looking at me with this weird, self-satisfied look on her face.
I think she’s expecting me to be surprised, but honestly, I’m really only surprised this didn’t happen sooner. I guess she wanted to wait until the last minute.
I smirk at her, zipping up my jacket and putting on my gloves. “You’re going to miss the show.”
Anna raises an eyebrow. “You’re fucked.”
“Last time I checked, I’m tied for first place. All I have to do is finish in front of the Brazilian guy and I’m going to win the whole thing.”
Instantly, her evil smile turns into a glare, and when I try and walk past her into the tunnel, she grabs my arm.
“I don’t think you understand, loverboy. Unless you want your little stepsister to get some very embarrassing news on national television, you’re going to stay right here and hear me out.”
I look at Anna. “Say what you want to say.”
Anna pulls out her phone and holds it in front of me. On the screen, there’s a blurry night vision picture of me cuddling with Laney on the beach. “Not so cocky now, are we? Did you really think I wasn’t going to have somebody on a boat going up and down the beach?”
She scrolls through a couple more pictures, all of them pretty much the same thing.
“And that’s not all. When I saw these pictures, I had a little hunch and checked out the Nevada state marriage records from the weekend you two were in Vegas...and I think you know what I found.”
Anna pulls her phone away and grins like an evil cat. “So here’s what’s going to happen. I’m going to hold onto these pictures, and you’re going to do what I tell you to do for the foreseeable future. You’re going to hook up with who I want to hook up with, you’re going to party where I want you to party, and you’re going to say what I want you to say in interviews. Nothing I make you do is going to be this bad for your reputation, but let’s just say you’ll be giving me exclusives for a long, long time.”
I almost have to laugh at the look on Anna’s face. She’s so fucking sure that I’m going to do what she wants. That I’m so concerned about my public image that I’ll do whatever she says to protect it. That I should live in fear of what other people are going to think about me and Laney.
But I’m not scared of her. Shit, I feel sorry for her. She’s famous too, and since she makes her living exposing everyone else’s secrets, she can never, ever have one. It’d fucking ruin her, and she knows that better than anyone.
So I don’t get mad that she’s trying to blackmail me. I just pull out of her grip and walk right past her, shaking my head.
“You can’t be serious,” she says, “You’re actually going to let me break this story? Are you insane?”
With on hand on the door handle, I turn back and look at Anna. “I’m not going to let you break the story. I broke it myself twenty minutes ago.”
A vein twitches in Anna’s neck. “No,” she whispers, looking down and furiously tapping at her phone, “No no no no no…”
And as much as I’d like to stick around and watch Anna freak out, I’ve got a race to get to, so I put on my helmet and walk through the door, letting her figure out what I did on her own.
See, this morning, while I was sitting in our suite, listening to Laney sing in the shower and getting ready head out to the stadium, I typed up a little message to my fans. A message where I tell my own story of the past few weeks, completely and honestly. I didn’t know for a fact that anyone saw us last night, but I wanted to make sure that if the story got out, it was going to get out through us.
And that’s why I know I’m going to win this race…because ever since I hit that fucking send button, I’ve been feeling completely unstoppable.
I steer my bike up into the entrance tunnel, looking out at the packed stadium in front of me. As I wait for the race to start, I scan the crowd, looking for any sign of Laney. I spot Nina first, sitting near the back of the stadium. She’s alone, though; there’s no sign of Laney or Laney’s dad sitting anywhere near her.
Loud electric guitar blares through the speakers, and Paul comes out of the tunnel on the other side, waving to the crowd as he heads our way. I didn’t fucking mean to give him the biggest event of his life, but looking at his face now, I’m pretty glad I did.
He walks over to the tunnel, where the eight of us are all lined up, ready to hit the gas, and stands next to me. “Ready?” he asks.
I nod, he raises his hand up in the air, and the crowd gets up on their feet. I take one more look around the stadium, and that’s when I see Laney. Right in the front row, looking at me with a smile on her face.
I’m ready, all right. I’m ready for whatever comes next.
When Paul’s hand comes down, I slam my foot on the gas, letting the roar of the engine fill my ears as I barrel around the first turn of the track. The race is eight laps around the track that circles the trick area from yesterday. There are rough patches, hills, and dips in the path, but it’s nothing I can’t handle.
I take an early lead and cut into the inside of the track, taking the first hill so well that the crowd screams louder than my engine. It’s not an easy track, but for me, it feels like I’m moving across it in slow motion.
For the first three laps, I feel like nothing can stop me. I hit the hills perfectly every time, stick to the inside of the track, and take the quickest possible path through the rough spots. Every time I pass Laney, I look her way, and when I see her adorable face smiling down at me, it’s like somebody pours rocket fuel into my engine. I don’t think she’s seen the post, yet, though.
I think a couple people in the audience have, though. I can feel the eyes on me every time I finish a lap, and the jumbotron is spending an unusual amount of time following me.
But there’s a reason you don’t watch the jumbotron in the middle of a race: everyone else is watching the track. So before I know it, I’ve got another biker right on my ass. I whip my head back to see who it is, but I probably didn’t need to look. Of course it’s him. All black, Brazilian flag on the front of his bike. He’s in this to fucking win.
I take my eyes off the jumbotron, the crowd, and everything else but the dirt in front of me, and grind my foot down into the gas pedal. But I’m just a second too late: my opponent launches himself off the hill and passes me in midair, landing just a little bit in front of me when we come down.
Fuck, he’s good. I’ve never seen this guy before, but he’s probably one of the best people I’ve ever raced.
I push myself against the handlebars and give the next couple laps everything I’ve got, but I just can’t cut into his fucking lead. Three more laps go by, and even though I’m as close to perfect as you can fucking get, he’s matching every little move I make as I do it.
But I’m not losing this. It’s not about the prizes or the publicity that I’m going to get from winning. I’m not losing this because it’s time for me to control my own fucking story. And that story starts with me winning this race.
Two laps left. I’ve gained about an inch on my opponent, but I’m going to need to do more than that to come out of this shit ahead. Putting every last ounce of strength I have onto the gas pedal, I try and outmaneuver him. He thinks he can copy me? Let’s see what happens when I do what he does, but faster. A quicker turn. A better landing. Every little move gets me closer to him by a fraction of an inch.
One lap left. I’ve been watching the track for a while now, but as I cross the starting line one last time, I look over at Laney again. She’s leaning over the railing, hands cupped around her mouth, shouting, “Go Travis!”
And I don’t know how it’s physically possible, but the sight of her cheering me on motivates me so fucking hard that before I know it, we’re exactly neck and neck. So close that you’d have to call it a tie if it we crossed the finish line like this. That’s how we stay for most of the last lap, matching each other move for fucking move. And as we round the last turn, speeding towards the final stretch of the race, it’s like everything flashes before my eyes.
Waking up in Vegas, checking into our suite, making Laney laugh, making her blush, pretending to be Greg and Natasha on the Pacific Ocean, our first kiss, our first night as lovers, realizing what how we really felt about each other.
Crab cakes, fireworks, fortune telling, sleeping on the beach. And now, this.
We’re almost at the finish line now, and there’s no sign of this guy slowing down. If I don’t do something, this is literally going to be a fucking tie. The crowd is on their feet, but I can’t tell if they’re making noise or not. I can barely hear the rumbling of my own engine. And as the two of us come within a couple feet of the finish line. I get an idea: a crazy, stupid idea that I’m not sure will even work. But hey, I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for a crazy, stupid idea. So here goes nothing.
I keep my foot on the gas pedal until we’re less than a bike’s length away from the finish line. Then, at the last possible second, I swing my foot up and kick the center of the handlebars as hard as I possibly can and put all my weight onto the front of the bike. The back tire lifts off the ground, I hold onto the handlebars for dear life...and I watch as the front tire moves forward one inch ahead of my opponent, right before it crosses the finish line.
What do you know? It actually fucking worked. And now it’s time to pay the price. Right after my front tire crosses the finish line, my bike leans too far forward, and the front of it comes into contact with the ground. This pushes the front tire hard to the side and launches me over the handlebars. My bike twists around in the air, bouncing off one of the ramps and hitting the side of the stadium. Meanwhile, I fly in a totally different direction, hitting the dirt and skidding deep into the center of the coliseum.
When I’m done sliding, I’m lying on my back, looking up at the jumbotron and an audience that’s going absolutely wild. It’s a fucking rush, but right now, there’s only one person out there that I care about, and she’s sitting right in the front row. At first, Laney’s cheering along with everyone else. But then, when the jumbotron cuts to her and doesn’t cut away, she looks confused. And then, when the whole audience starts cheering for her, she looks really fucking confused. She looks at the camera for a couple seconds, her eyes get huge, and she pulls out her phone. A few seconds later, I can tell she found my message, and watching her face as she reads it feels even better than the race I just won:
I’ve got something that I need to say, and it can’t wait one more fucking minute.
Whoever you are reading this, whether you’re my biggest fan or you hate my guts, you probably feel like you know me. Maybe you even think you know everything about me. And hey, I can’t blame you. After all, I can’t even have breakfast in public without it becoming national news.
But there’s something that none of you know about me, and I need to set the record straight, because if I don’t, all the endorsement deals and photo shoots in the world aren’t going to mean shit to me.
I’m taken. Her name is Laney. And I love her.
For the past couple years, I haven’t been able to say that to anyone, not even myself. I know I’m supposed to be single, available, hooking up with every girl that gets within a five foot radius of me. My publicity guys are always telling me that that’s my story, that that’s what people want to see.
But you know what? I don’t give a shit about that anymore. I’m taking control of my own story, and if that means losing everything I have, then so be it. It’d be worth it ten times over to spend my life with this amazing fucking girl.
And that’s exactly what I plan on doing. Sorry to all the girls out there with posters of me up on their bedroom walls, but I’m head over fucking heels for this girl, and I don’t think that’s going to change anytime soon.
Does that surprise you? Does it change everything you thought you knew about me? I’m okay with that. Love it or hate it, I’ll be fine, as long as it means I get to be with the girl I love.
By the time Laney gets to the end, she’s smiling and crying her eyes out. I didn’t know what was going to happen when I sent that message, but when I see the look on her face, and hear the way the crowd cheers as I get up off the dirt, pull my helmet off, and head towards Laney’s corner of the stadium, I know exactly what’s going to happen. My stupid, crazy idea is actually going to work.
When I reach the edge, I jump up and grab the stadium railing, pulling myself up until I’m face to face with my accidental wife.
“It’s our story now, babe. Everyone else is just living in it.”
Laney smiles through her tears. “We’d better start writing it, then.”
She gets out of her chair, pulls herself up against the railing, and brings her lips to mine. Twenty-thousand people watch us kiss.
And they’d better get used to it. Because I have a feeling we’re going to be doing it a lot more often from now on.