chapter summary: That feel when you go to the grocery store with your mom in another state and she recognizes someone and ends up chatting with them for over an hour in the pasta aisle.

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 "My dad hasn't been using the Corvette—he was having issues with it before we took it out. He's waiting to get it checked out again," Bryan said when Maze inquired about it. "He's taking the Chevelle down to Indy this weekend for some show, though. Why? You wanna race it again?"

Maze had already decided how she'd go about this. She shook her head and said, "I was just wondering. So he doesn't know Kass fixed it?"

Bryan shook his head, and Maze hummed, intrigued. So Vincent never did end up finding out that she and Bryan took the Corvette for a spin. Maze leant back on the stoop steps outside of Aunt Rae's house. She sighed wistfully, feeling a helluva lot like Declan when she said, "It'd be fun to take it with the gang up north, though..."

Bryan slurped up the last of his icy pop and said, "I don't see why we couldn't."

Thus was how they snuck Sub Zero under the Corvette's canvas sheet and drove off with Scorpion on the heels of the Corvette's exhaust. They were strategic about it—Maze couldn't very well drive up and down the county with Vincent's Corvette without calling attention—so Maze parked in the empty lot of a river park on the edge of town while Bryan delivered Scorpion to his mother's place and hitched a ride with Felix.

Their group met on the border of Michigan—Maze, Bryan, and Felix were the first of the group to arrive and were followed in kind by Declan and the girls in Brielle's Rolls-Royce convertible with its rich red interior and crisp white exterior. And, as expected, Amelia was sitting on the back ledge with her feet on the cushion, holding her snapback to her windswept hair.

She waved to them when Maze jokingly catcalled them. "Woohoo, boys!" Amelia teased. 

"Holy shit, Brielle," Felix said, letting out a stunned laugh as Brielle tipped her sunglasses forward to catch his eye and wink.

Bryan whistled low. "That your daddy's car? And I'm not talking about Mr. Chandler," he said.

"Christ," Declan laughed, shaking his head. 

Brielle rolled her eyes. "Wouldn't you like to know?" she said, and Bryan threw his head back and laughed.

"Who else are we waiting on?" Maze asked, and after a second, followed up with, "Well, aside from Willa."

Secretly, she had held out hope that Kass would join them. Not only that, but she had founded a significant amount of her personal enjoyment for the trip on whether or not Kass showed up. She had thought to ask Bryan before, but any time she considered it, a foreboding sensation reminded her of the future when she would ultimately regret bringing Kass up in conversation. She always did, as if people didn't give her enough of their pity about her father, now they pitied her for fucking up her friendship with Kass.

She caught the light glance Amelia cast in Declan's direction.

"Well... Grace's definitely coming..." Shelby started, and was promptly finished by Declan saying, "Yeah, and I invited a buddy from Chicago, but he'll probably be a no-show."

Maze folded her arms over the roof of the Corvette and nodded, lips pursed. The girls changed the topic, and judging the look Bryan gave her from where he was standing with his hip against the hood of the Corvette, it was for Maze's sake.

Am I really that easy to read? she wondered. It didn't take a college graduate to figure out what she was really asking, and luckily for her, that meant she could put two-and-two together.

Kass wasn't coming.

Maze sighed, resting her chin on her folded arms. She looked off into the distance, where she could watch the cars approaching.

And one was a pickup truck.

No way, Maze thought, straightening immediately from where she was sitting on the open window ledge, eyes wide. Her lungs ceased all activity in her chest until she could hear the moment her heart stopped thudding against her ribcage when Kass' blonde hair appeared behind the reflection on the windshield.

Bryan wandered around the hood of the Corvette to stand next to Maze to say, "Keep it in your pants, girl."

Maze elbowed him in the shoulder. "Fuck off. I'm horny for friendship, not—Whatever, man."

Bryan laughed, shaking his head. He hooked his hands on the waistband of his shorts that made him look like he played croquette on the weekends for fun. Together, they watched Willa lean a hand out the window to drum it against the door and say, "What're you losers waitin' for?! Let's fucking go!"

Behind Kass' truck was Grace's bright yellow Tesla Roadster, which had the top down, both hands in the air, steering the car with her kneecaps as she shouted, "Hoo, baby! Look at that Dawn!"

Brielle pushed her sunglasses back up and put the convertible in drive. And then, she shouted over everyone's engines, "Grace, I swear to God if you so much as look in its direction..."

After that, Grace made sure to make direct eye contact with her Rolls-Royce's headlights as her Tesla crawled past.

Brielle growled under her breath, "She's always pushing my buttons."

Josie waved a dismissive hand in the air. "Say the word and I'll assassinate her this weekend."

Meanwhile, Maze attempted (without success, might she add) to catch Kass' eye through Willa's open passenger window. Kass, however, kept her eyes forward, leaning on her window ledge with her knuckles pressed to her cheek. She glanced at Willa, but never past Willa's ginger curls.

What Maze wouldn't give to have five minutes in that truck with Kass. That brief moment they had in the cornfield was barely two minutes—how could they possibly fix their friendship in that time? Five minutes had to be enough. She had spent the entire previous night calculating the chances of Kass showing up to the weekend trip and, ultimately, formulating her case to present to Kass if the chance presented itself.

She'd make Kass listen to her.

She swung back down into the passenger's seat of the Corvette as Bryan dropped into the driver's side. Felix sped off after the group, leaving Maze and Bryan to bring up the back of their mini parade up the coast.

"No offense, dude," Bryan said as he coasted out of the parking lot and met Maze's eye, "but everyone can read you like a fucking book when you give us your dumb kicked puppy eyes."

"My puppy eyes aren't dumb," Maze muttered, scowling out the open passenger window. She shifted awkwardly in her seat. "Is it really that obvious?"

"Yes. Oh my God, dude, your expressions have

no filter," he laughed, and it just intensified Maze's frown. "It's not a bad thing, but Kassandra's not gonna talk to you if you're being a little bitch about the whole thing. What even happened with you guys in the cornfield anyway?"

Maze sighed. She propped her elbow on the ledge so she could hold her head up against her knuckles. All she wanted was to slump and melt into the leather seats. "I'm starting to wonder whether we were friends at all," she confessed. "In elementary school we were definitely friends. But I don't know when that changed for her."

"Bit disingenuous of her."

"I don't know. I mean, I thought we were friends?" she said. She couldn't look at all the time they spent together as dumb teenagers and say that it wasn't genuine. She was comfortable with how things were, and Kass had seemed happy at the time. If she knew anyone that was incapable of hiding their displeasure, it was Kass.

If Kass was seriously bothered by Maze's romantic indifference, she would have said something sooner.

Right?

"But maybe I'm just reaching for straws," she sighed.

"From what I remember, Kassandra was a helluva lot more tolerant in grade school," Bryan said. "Doesn't it disturb you, though? That Kassandra only stayed friends with you because she was attracted to you."

"No—I mean, that wasn't it. I-I mean, what is attraction, really..." Maze laughed nervously, pinching her lip between her teeth. She dragged her eyes back over to Bryan, who wore the driest expression Maze had ever seen. "I just—I find plenty of people attractive but I can't stand to hold a conversation with them. You know? A-And we held a lot of conversations. We have a lot in common... Like friends do..."

"Sometimes I can't even hold a conversation with you. This is painful to listen to, Christ, Maze," Bryan said. "Do you even like women?"

"Of course I like women," Maze said, and when Bryan's eyes snapped over to her's, alarmed, Maze amended herself with ease. "O-Oh! You mean, romantically—I haven't really thought about it much."

"Are you fucking kidding me right now—"

"What? It just hasn't—"

"Your ex-best friend literally kissed you and you haven't even considered if you might be receptive to that?"

Maze looked down at her lap and muttered, "Don't call her that. I get to say 'ex-best friend' in my head, but you can't say it out loud."

"You're avoiding all of my questions by acting intentionally dense. If she kissed you again, would you kiss her back? It's not that deep, dude."

The fact that she already knew what her reaction would be made answering all the more painful. But he's not asking about the kiss we already had in the cornfield, Maze rationalized, which meant that she had to consider a future where Kass allowed Maze to be in her presence for more than two minutes.

She considered it, brow furrowed, lips pursed. Two minutes had wound up in a kiss the first time, but that was just because they never finished talking. Logic swept in, steady and as inconsiderate as ever, to remind her that "kissing" and "making out" were two entirely different scenarios and one could surely overpower the other if they "talked" for more than two minutes. Were they really so terrible at talking that every scenario wound up with their lips colliding?

But she was still considering it, because logically, she knew that this would be the progression of any relationship* with Kass.

*Friendship.

Kass made it clear that Maze couldn't talk to her unless she was receptive to some form of romantic—or otherwise—tension between them. 

"You're taking an awful long time to answer," Bryan commented.

"I'm thinking," Maze said.

"Look, dude, if you haven't figured out your sexuality by now after four years, I doubt a car ride is gonna change anything," he said.

Maze rolled her eyes and said, "Well I haven't very well explored that shit ever. Unless you count dancing with girls at house parties, then that's the extent of it. And even if I liked girls, I'd feel bad... experimenting with Kass. As if our relationship wasn't already fucked up enough."

"Then I raise you this:" Bryan started, gesturing with his hand, "is there any future in which you don't want to be around Kassandra, all circumstances however romantic or sexual are to be considered."

"I—" Maze put her hands in her hair. God, the thought of sex hadn't even crossed her mind. She dragged her hands down her face, groaning, and said, "I don't—No, I don't think so."

"Then you aren't experimenting if the experiment never ends."

Maze threw her head back against the seat and slumped, hands in her face. She couldn't believe Bryan would endorse this kind of behavior. Use Kass? She could never—that went against her flimsy moral code on so many levels. So many.

So many aspects of what Bryan was asking of her were terrifying. Everything about Kass was an unknown now. After Kass' confession, and after the kiss in the cornfield, Maze had come to the conclusion that the Kass she knew in grade school existed in parallel to a person with intentions Kass never subjected her to. Those two paths collided, though, and now she couldn't be certain what that conglomeration was.

She didn't have many friends who wound up dating, so she had nothing to go off of in terms of how they might change.

Literally anything is an improvement from how we are now, Maze reminded himself, and this fact shined a brighter light on what she had stopped from progressing in the cornfield.

God, she was such an idiot.

"Okay," Maze decided, hands up. She clenched her fists and yanked them down, determined. "I know what I need to do."

"What did I just say about sexuality not being decided on over a car ride?"

"Don't worry about it," Maze said, waving a dismissive hand, because she had all weekend to set this in motion.

Well, almost all weekend.

She and Declan had plans that night to race the Corvette. Sunday would have been ideal for classic street racing—less traffic late at night—but Saturday worked for other races.

Like the one he signed them up for. "There's gonna be a lot of outta staters here, and we've only got an hour time slot," Declan explained to her on the street outside of their Airbnb in an old college town suburb. They were standing around Brielle's convertible while the others fiddled around in the backyard looking for wood to burn in the mini bonfire.

"Time slot?" Maze repeated, raising an eyebrow.

Declan simply grinned, and as much as it unnerved her to leave the details up to him, she gathered that a surprise was on the horizon. She could work with that.

Now, it was just a matter of sneaking the Corvette out without Bryan knowing. It didn't help that Bryan had the keys on him at all times. Maze considered challenging Bryan to a drinking contest and pretending to guzzle beer-after-beer while Bryan absolutely sloshed himself—

—but then the man of the hour circled around the side of the house, hands in his pockets, entirely sober.

Bryan wandered down the driveway to the lineup of cars out on the street. He glanced at the Corvette, and then at Maze and Declan, who were standing not too far away.

"What's... goin' on over here?" Bryan inquired, raising an eyebrow.

Maze swallowed hard, heart racing as Declan came to her rescue. "We were just admiring it! I was telling Maze how cool it'd be if we could take it for a spin—"

Bryan sighed. Declan clamped his mouth shut. "Listen, as soon as Willa told me that you were the one to recommend this whole thing to her," Bryan started, extracting the keys to the Corvette out of his pocket, he gave them a shake, taunting them, and said, "I figured you were planning on racing one of our cars."

Maze's throat burned from the acidic nature of her guilt. And here she had persuaded Bryan to sneak the Corvette out for this exact purpose.

She glanced up at Declan, who's jaw ticked, eyes narrowed. Just as he opened his mouth to bitch Bryan out, Bryan tossed the keys in his direction. "Just make sure to get it cleaned tomorrow."

Declan caught the keys, startled. Maze was almost too shocked to blink when Bryan spared her a quick, dismissive glance on his way back around the house.

"Wait," Declan said, jogging up to him. He caught Bryan by the arm and said, "If... y'all want to watch, I'll text you the address?"

Bryan studied him for a moment. Declan widened his doe eyes so they shined in the motion censored driveway light. After a moment, Bryan met Maze's eyes and sighed like he carried the entire weight of the world on his shoulders. "Fine. I'll see if they're interested," he said.

As Bryan walked off, Declan turned to Maze with a bright, devious grin, keys in hand. He flashed her a peace sign on his way around to the driver's side, saying, "It all works out in the end."

Maze couldn't help but laugh. "You just have incredible luck," she said, because she half-expected Bryan to bitch them out for plotting to (temporarily) steal the Corvette.

Declan tossed Maze his phone to text Bryan the address, which directed them to the outskirts of the county where the town's fairgrounds were. The fence was left unlocked, so Maze pushed them open for the Corvette and let them swing shut after Declan eased it through.

It took a second for Maze to realize that this wasn't just the meeting place at all—it was the race track.

Holy shit, she thought, suddenly and inexplicably vibrating with excitement. We're racing Vincent McBryan's Corvette on a dirt track.

Their plan would go as follows: Maze would pretend to be an innocent bystander. She walked from the entry gate while Declan joined the cars merging onto the track and, once there, Maze lingered behind to chat with regulars at the race and a fair share of the ten drivers.

The regulars had already spent enough time with the cars to have talked to the drivers themselves —and, if she was lucky, she'd stumble upon a friend who knew this-or-that about a recent modification that Maze could pit against everything she knew about Vincent's Corvette.

Up in the stands, Maze could see two drivers clustered near the wall in front of the front seat walkway. Maze had been chatting with someone near the wall so it took very little effort for her eyes to hone in on an Aston Martin being herded onto the track.

Maze's jaw dropped, and her newest friend took note of her shift with a smile.

"Ah, that's a friend of mine," the man said, and brought his fingers to his lips to whistle across the track. He leant against the fence and waved one heavily tattooed arm up to grab the driver's attention. 

It was a 1978 V8 Vantage, with the squarish, raised bonnet and bright red coloring. With the stadium lights on, the driver shut off the headlights as they approached. The winged Aston Martin badge between the brights stopped just below them, so Maze could see her reflection on the windshield before the driver's door opened.

A man in a leather aviator jacket that rivaled Kass' stepped out. His hair was swept back by a pair of sunglasses as he stuck a piece of gum in his mouth and looked up at them. His dimples were nearly hidden beneath his overgrown beard.

"Well if it isn't Malak," the man said, resting a hand against the roof of his car. He glanced at Maze and back again. "Who's this now?"

Malak? Maze realized she hadn't even asked for the guy's name, or if she had, she had already forgotten it.

The guy clasped an arm around Maze's shoulders and gave her a squeeze. "This is Maisy Mori," he said, and the way he said Maze's full name sent a suspicious chill up her spine that straightened her back, her eyes locking with Malak's. "My baby brother's best friend. And she's brought my old man's precious Corvette."

It hadn't occurred to Maze that she would ever meet someone who'd recognize her or Vincent's Corvette in Michigan, of all places, let alone Bryan's brother: Malachi McBryan.

Maze stepped back from him as Malachi dropped his arm. Malachi beamed at her, light eyes all the more brighter.

Maze had distantly known that Bryan had other siblings—ones that had flown the coop long ago. They were scattered to the wind—his sister was in Denver now, last she heard, and his other brother was in Texas. She had seen pictures of that brother, though, and he looked nothing like the man standing in front of her with tattoos up his neck and across his collarbone in such a dense patchwork, it looked like a scarf.

The better question, however, was this: "How the fuck do you know who I am?" because Bryan doesn't talk to this man, even if he was who he said he was.

"That's quite simple, you see," Malachi said, leaning an elbow against the railing. He waved a dismissive hand before leaning his cheek on it, saying, "It's called... keeping tabs. Dear old mom loves to have a chat now and again."

"Ah, family reunion tonight?" Malachi's friend said.

"That depends," Malachi drawled, his eyes locked on Maze.

Maze glanced down at the driver. "It's just me," Maze said.

"Then tell me who's driving the Corvette—or should I call the old man myself," he said, and every logical piece of Maze's illogical brain told her that it was a bluff. Maze would have heard about this man by now if he ever kept in contact with Vincent.

Maze cleared her throat. Now wasn't exactly the time to start a fight, physical or otherwise. Whatever the case, she needed to ensure Bryan didn't get involved—

"Maze!"

Shit.

Maze stared at Malachi, though she could recognize Bryan's beanie from all the way down the stadium. Bryan waved to her, but she kept her eyes locked on Malachi's.

Malachi straightened, his back to Bryan, and laid a firm hand on Maze's shoulder. "Better hope whoever's driving that Corvette doesn't wreck it," he said, and gave her a pat before passing her, away from Bryan's direction. He waved to the driver.

Maze's heart was still throbbing against her neck by the time Bryan caught up with her with the others loitering behind. "Hey—is that a V8 Vantage?" Bryan said, pointing to the driver.

"Fuck yeah it is," the guy said, and Maze wondered if she had just imagined that exchange with Bryan's brother.

Maze glanced behind her, where Malachi had walked off. The man took to the end of the bench, up a few rows, and sat down. Definitely close enough for Bryan to see—

—Unless Bryan wouldn't recognize him? Maze wondered, eyes wandering back to Bryan as her friend reached down to shake the driver's hand.

"Call me Alfie," the guy said.

"Alfie, nice to meet you," Bryan said.

"I'm a huge fucking fan of McBryan's, so I'm honored to race against one of his cars," Alfie said, and Maze thought she might die.

An unintentional squeak of horror slipped past her lips when Bryan looked sharply to her, pissed as hell. An unspoken yet fully known condition of Bryan's was that no one was supposed to know that the Corvette was Vincent McBryan's. It was the entire reason why they avoided driving it around their county.

"I, um," Maze started, only to pause, because she was abundantly aware that Kass was listening in and staring at her from where Amelia had claimed the front row seats on that section of the stadium bleachers.

And, likewise, Malachi was watching her, like he knew Maze would have to lie if she wanted to avoid admitting that there was someone else in the stands who knew what pro racer McBryan's—Vincent McBryan's—personal car looked like.

"I may have let it slip," Maze said, voice cracking.

Bryan rose an eyebrow at her.

"Ah, no worries. I won't tell a soul," Alfie promised with a wink, raising a finger to his lips before he blew a bubble with his gum and popped it. He saluted them as he rounded the hood of his Vantage and clasped a hand onto the open driver's door. "Adios," he said and ducked down out of view. 

Maze swallowed the lump in her throat. She looked to Bryan, who was gripping the railing like he was wringing Maze's neck.

"I'm sorry," Maze said, wincing. "I didn't—" 

"We need to beat him," Bryan seethed.

Maze blinked. She glanced over at Kass, who had been watching the entire exchange and looked like she was in dire need of a bag of popcorn. Kass looked in the opposite direction to avoid meeting Maze's eye.

"Excuse me?" Maze said, and was immediately seized by the shoulders by Bryan.

"Where's Declan? Never mind, I'll find him. Don't wait up," he said, and took off, breezing down the walkway and directly past Malachi, who was too busy looking down at his phone to accidentally look Bryan in the eye. Malachi passed a hand over his finely trimmed beard after Bryan passed him and raised his eyes up. They were unnervingly cold and directed in Maze's direction.

Maze stood there, flabbergasted, but ultimately relieved.

"What just happened," Felix said, startling Maze. The guy had been standing right next to her the entire time.

Maze put a hand to her heart and cussed

under her breath. "I don't really know," she confessed, but she would know, soon enough, what would happen.

And it went a little something like this:

First, Bryan, in a fit of rage, usurped Declan and seized control of the vessel (the Corvette). Second, Maze and the rest of her friends watched in horror from the sidelines as it happened, and Maze remembered that she was the only one with all of the information Bryan would need to leverage against the other racers aside from what minimal knowledge she gained from Hawk's Vantage. Third, Maze was forced to leap into action, chasing Bryan down before he could take the Corvette for a test-run around the track. And, coming in dead last, was number four: Maze and Declan arguing with Bryan's rare but unpleasant stubborn side over listening to the facts of Maze's acquired knowledge.

"I've got five hundred in the pot, so don't fuck this up," Declan warned.

"Don't tell me what to do," Bryan said.

As Bryan drove off, Maze put her hands in her hair, turned to Declan, and declared, "I think I just aged ten years."