Under the Table

He sits directly across from you.

Of course he does. He drops into the one empty chair with the easy grace of a man who has never worried about where to put his hands.

You stare at your risotto. Your risotto has never been so interesting.

"So, Jace," Bex says beside you, in the bright, terrible voice of a woman who has just put two and two together and gotten Vegas. "What do you do?"

Your heel finds her ankle under the table again. Hard.

"I drive," Jace says.

"For a living," Maren adds, with a little flourish, like she's presenting a prize. "Jace drives in the Apex Series. The number forty-four car. He came third in the championship last year."

"Fourth," Jace says. "Somebody took me out at Monterey."

"Somebody," Holden says dryly, "being the wall."

"The wall was in a weird place."

Everybody laughs. You laugh a half second late, and your laugh comes out like a hiccup, and you feel Jace's attention land on you like sunlight through glass. You don't look up.

He drives for a living. He told you, in a dark hotel bar, he drives for a living, and you, an educated woman with a doctorate and a working knowledge of the human body, thought he meant rideshare.

You are going to die at this table.

Your phone buzzes against your thigh halfway through the mains.

You ignore it.

It buzzes again.

You slide it out of your clutch, just enough to see the screen under the edge of the tablecloth. An unknown number.

Unknown: nice to meet you btw

You look up. Jace is listening to his mother with perfect, angelic attention, nodding along about the florist. One of his hands is around his water glass. The other is under the table.

You: how do you have this number

Unknown: your sister made a group chat this afternoon. "Penderley-Maddox Wedding Party." you're in it. so am i. it has a lot of ring emojis

Unknown: i've been staring at your number for six hours doc

You: don't call me doc

Unknown: you told me you were a "body mechanic"

Unknown: i thought you fixed cars. i was going to ask you about my gearbox

You press your lips together so hard it hurts. Across the table, the corner of his mouth moves. Barely.

You: you told me you drove for a living

Unknown: i do

Unknown: at 230 miles an hour. technically still driving

You save the number. You don't know what to save it as. Your thumb hovers, and then you type a single letter, the one from the note in your wallet.

J.

J: you're doing the thing with your lip

J: the thing you did in vegas right before you said my name

You put the phone face down on your knee so fast your fork rattles against your plate. Maren turns. "Ava? You okay?"

"Great," you say. "Hot risotto."

"It's room temperature," says Bex.

You make it to dessert. You make it through Fenton's three-sentence toast, which makes Maren cry, and through Jace not looking at you at all, which is somehow worse than staring.

Then you excuse yourself, walk down the narrow hallway toward the restrooms, and stop in front of a framed photograph of a copper still, breathing like you just ran a mile.

You don't hear him come up behind you. You smell him. Cedar and something clean, like rain on hot pavement. The same as in the Bellamar elevator, when he pressed you against the mirrored wall and asked, Is this okay? and you said yes into his mouth.

"Hey, Vegas," he says quietly.

You turn around.

He's leaning against the wall across from you, hands in his pockets, at a careful distance. Up close, under the warm hallway lights, he's even worse. His hazel eyes are greener than you remembered, and they're moving over your face like he's memorizing it again.

"You knew," you say. "When you walked in. You didn't even blink."

"I had about four seconds' warning. You were the only person at the table not looking at me." Something flickers in his face, gone before you can name it. "I've done a lot of press. I'm good at not blinking."

"This isn't funny."

"I'm not laughing." He says it seriously, and it stops you. "Are you okay?"

"No! I am not okay! I slept with my sister's fiancé's brother."

"Technically you slept with a guy named J. Who you made very clear you never wanted to see again." He tilts his head. "Which hurt my feelings, by the way."

"You left!"

"You said no numbers. I was respecting the rules."

"You left a note that said rematch."

"And look." He spreads his hands at the hallway, the copper still, the whole absurd universe. "Here we are."

You put both hands over your face. Through your fingers you say, "Jace. Listen to me. Three weeks ago we were two strangers. We're still not anything to each other. We're not family, we're not related, we met in a bar like normal adults, and your brother marrying my sister doesn't change that. Fine. But Maren has been planning this wedding since she was six. She had a hard year. Her last fiancé lied to her about everything. If she finds out the groom's brother and her baby sister had a one-night stand three weeks before her engagement dinner, she will never be able to look at a single wedding photo without thinking about it."

He's quiet. When you lower your hands he's watching you with an expression you didn't see once in Vegas. Something careful.

"So it doesn't happen again," you say. "It never happened. You're Holden's brother. I'm Maren's sister. We're polite at Thanksgiving. That's it."

"Okay," he says.

You blink. "Okay?"

"Your call. It's always your call." He pushes off the wall. As he passes you, close but not touching, he lowers his voice. "But for the record, I'm a terrible liar at Thanksgiving."

He's three steps toward the dining room when he glances back over his shoulder.

"See you Monday, Ava."

"What's Monday?"

But he's already gone.

Monday is a gray morning with sleet in it. You get to Kinetic Arc at seven with a coffee in each hand, and your clinic director is waiting for you at the front desk with an expression like Christmas.

"You know Strahl Vanguard Racing? Out in Brownsburg?" She doesn't wait for an answer. "Their team physio quit on Friday, two weeks before the season opener. Their head of performance wants someone who can travel. Six-month contract, all race weekends, and they asked for the best we've got." She beams. "That's you. You start today."

Strahl Vanguard's headquarters in Brownsburg is a long low building of black glass with two blue-and-silver race cars in the lobby: a 12 and a 44.

You stop in front of the 44.

Dr. Nils Hallgren, tall and Swedish and silver-bearded, shakes your hand and walks you down a corridor of framed trophies to the treatment room. "Our drivers are difficult," he says, without apology. "Fast men usually are. You'll start with our number one. He's already waiting."

He opens the door, and his phone rings. He glances at it and sighs. "Dagny. Five minutes. Introduce yourself."

The door clicks shut behind you.

Jace Maddox is lying on the treatment table with his shirt off and his hands folded behind his head. Long and lean and golden under the clinical lights, the tattoo sleeve dark against the white paper, a faint bruise on his left shoulder. He turns his head on the pillow and looks at you.

"Morning, Doc," he says. "Looks like you'll be putting your hands on me again."