All This Time

Chapter 8

Ow." I winced, as I touched the back of my head and felt the small knot forming. How had this week, which I had such high hopes for, turn into such a disaster?

I had tried to keep my distance from everyone, today, but then I saw the huge crash. I saw Erik deliberately wreck Ryan. I heard Ryan and his spotter over the radio. I had a very bad feeling that shit was about to go down, and boy was I right.

By the time I had gotten to the infield care center, they were already fighting. I tried to break it up, but had gotten knocked down in the brawl. I knew Erik's gasman Brent, and knew it wasn't intentional. I had put myself in the middle of a brawl, and Brent probably didn't even realize it was me. He was just trying to get to his driver. Brent actually apologized to me later.

I was afraid to move after I hit the pillar, I was frozen in place and knew I needed to stay out of the way before I really got hurt, but then Alyssa had swooped in like some kind of superhero and got me out of there.

"You're flying back with Alex and me. Let's get to the plane before the media catches up with us."

"But Alex is still racing." I said.

"No he's not. He was in the big crash too. He's out. Don't worry about your bags, we can get them later." She practically pulled me to the waiting golf cart.

"What about Ryan?" I asked, stopping dead in my tracks.

"Ryan is in the NASCAR hauler with Erik and their crew chiefs. You can talk to him later, but we have to go. The media found out your name and they are now trying to find the girl who caused Ryan Blaney and Erik Jones to start a brawl, so we are leaving now. " she said adamantly, and I knew better than to argue with her when she used that tone.

This was insane. I couldn't believe I had the media on my tail. I had always thought I was a nobody in the NASCAR scene, but because of my father, I was an honorary member of the NASCAR family. I had always tried to keep a low public profile. My parents had done their best to shield Alyssa and me from the public eye. Sometimes things could get ugly in the NASCAR world, so it was important for us to fly under the radar. We also knew how important it was to maintain a clean image. My dad, even though retired now, was still a highly respected member of the NASCAR community. Alyssa had even gone as far as making all of her social media accounts private after she had begun dating Alex. I wish I had done the same. Talk about hindsight 20/20.

I am now back at my apartment. Before leaving Daytona, I had sent Ryan a text letting him know I was flying home with Alyssa and Alex. I had no idea if he tried calling me or not because I turned off my phone. It would not stop ringing and I was being slammed with notifications from social media. It was so bad I now had all of my accounts set to private. I had seen some of the messages anyway. People had put the pieces of the puzzle together: I was dating Erik, but was cheating on him with Ryan, and that's what the whole fight was about in their eyes. No one even cared that Erik had wrecked Ryan, or that Erik threw the first punch. I was being trashed. Ryan was being trashed and Erik was looking like the victim.

I was livid with Erik. I get that he was pissed at Ryan, but to take him out of the race was going entirely too far. His vendetta affected both his and Ryan's teams, and that was just unforgivable. Thinking about all the hours and money the teams had put into preparing the cars only to have it all go up in smoke and rubble in fourteen laps just made me angrier. As the daughter of a former crew chief, I had some idea of the amount of work that went into the cars and and knew Erik's little quest for revenge had cost both teams several hundreds of thousands of dollars. I was giving him time to get home then I was going to give him a piece of my mind.

A knock on my door startled me, and my heart started racing. Please don't let it be any press. I breathed a sigh of relief when I looked through the peephole and saw Ryan standing there. I didn't expect him to arrive back in North Carolina until much later.