Short Track Lovin' ✅

Chapter 51: Brickyard 400

Sunday, July 23 – Indianapolis

Chase lets out a yawn as he makes his way through the infield, knowing he had a pre-race meeting with the guys.

He admittedly hadn't slept well last night, tossing and turning and worrying about everything. He even began to wonder if maybe there was nothing in what she injected – and it was just done to scare him more than anything.

Though beginning to feel a little sick in the morning, he knew that was a lie. It wasn't terrible – sort of reminded him of how you feel with the 24 hour stomach flu. He felt a little nauseous, but other than that he was fine. Saying his own prayers in his mind, the day would be over soon and they could get to the bottom of it.

He makes his way into the trailer, taking his usual position amongst the guys, paying attention as Alan goes over the notes for the day. He then chimed in with his own 'pick me up comments,' and the team felt more than confident in the day ahead.

With the meeting done, he headed out of the trailer, knowing he had to go see some sponsor VIPs, and then he would have a couple hours for himself. Maybe he could get some sleep, or perhaps stomach at least some soup.

"Hey, are you feeling okay?" His dad asks as they head to the last appearance. With how it'd been set-up, the pair was supposed to attend together and do a quick Q&A with the guests.

"Yeah, I'm fine," Chase answers quickly, hoping to finish up this string of events quicker than ever so he didn't have to deal with questions like this. He wasn't good at lying and the fact more people were catching on was making this a lot harder. Bill, meanwhile, had his eyes locked on Chase, knowing his comment was an immediate lie. If there was one thing, he could never tell a lie, ever.

"Chase...." Chase then lets out a sigh, debating which way to go with his excuse. It wasn't like he could come out and say the truth, considering the garage was full with people right now. Did he really need that riding on his conscious?

"Alright, I'm feeling a little sick. I think I picked up the bug that was going around – one of the other crew guys had it. I'm fine." Bill then looked at him with raised eyebrows, but figured he could trust him. Besides, Cindy could handle strangling him later.

"Just be careful and make sure to tell Alan incase, okay?" Chase nods his head.

While he hadn't planned to say anything to Alan and didn't really want to have a back-up driver – someone else involved in this chaos, it did give him another idea though. Maybe there was a way out of this quicker, after all.

Once he was done the series appearances, he made his way back to the team trailer. He knew Alan and Josh would be there going over some final notes of the day with the car having gone through pre-race tech inspection already. He just needed to find the courage to tell them.

"You're back here?" Josh questions as he sees the door to the lounge open up. The question did not surprise him as it wasn't like he had returned for a second appearance any other weekend.

"Yeah," Chase answers as he closes it behind him. "I needed to talk to you both before the race. It's important..." Josh and Alan glance at each other a little confused, before setting their eyes back on their driver.

"I'm all ears," Alan says as he sets his notes aside. He knew if Chase was interrupting them, it was important.

Taking a shaky breath, Chase went into detail of the series of events over the past week involving Allison. He told them about what happened at the beauty pageant. He told them about the photo getting sent to Sarina and how that broke down. He then told them what happened yesterday in the garage area, which caused both of their jaws to drop.