Oxterionn: Of Love and Fast Cars

Kat looked out the window most of their trip home from the golf course, and responded to Red’s few questions about her golf game. She tried to say something to him before he dropped her off, like ‘your secret’s safe with me,’ but she could not work herself up to it. Instead she thanked him for being her golf cart driver and said she had a fantastic day.

That night Kat could not fall asleep, but she was not kept up by thoughts of Callum and the way his biceps looked in that tight shirt he wore today, like she thought she would be. Instead, it was what he had told her that kept her awake. Curiosity gnawed at her conscience and in the end it won after an hour of tossing and turning and trying to clear her head. She typed Red’s name into the search bar on her phone and waited a minute before hitting ‘search.’ She did not want to know the details, but at the same time, she had to know what happened.

After an hour of reading articles, his Wikipedia page and watching countless interviews, she was shocked at what she had learned about her driver. The friendly and genial Red had a background she did not expect, and he was so much more than just a race car driver. Kat was not sure she could face Red McLaughlin again now that she had been enlightened about his past.

The next morning, she canceled her plans, claiming she had a headache, but really she just was not ready to be around her chauffeur yet. She was supposed to see Cal, whom she had completely forgotten about when she learned Red’s true identity. She suddenly saw everything: the subtle worry lines in his forehead, the tiredness hidden behind the glint in his grey eyes, the sad, forlorn look he sometimes got when he thought no one was looking. These were his battle scars, the remnants of a past life he wished he could forget about and hide from. They were the reminders of everything he lost: everything he’d worked so hard for, lost in a single weekend.

The one thing Kat could not get over was what happened to the other driver involved. Red walked away from the crash, but the other driver – his best friend and mentor – was left clinging to his life. It had been several months and it still was not known if he would survive or not, or even how severe his injuries were. What little Kat had learned about car racing and F1, she knew that it had been a really bad crash.

The next day she again tried to stay home, but her dad insisted she not miss this appointment. He almost called it a date, but he did not want to push the fact that he would be more than happy if Kat and Callum had some kind of relationship.

“Can’t I just drive myself?” Kat complained over breakfast.

“Nonsense, Redington will be here in thirty minutes. Besides, since when do you know how to drive?” Albert eyed his daughter curiously.

“Red’s been teaching me; I’m actually getting good enough to maybe pass my driver’s test,” Kat smiled up at her dad, though she knew he was unhappy. This was the last thing he wanted to hear: his daughter was getting diving lessons from a disgraced racecar driver.

“No, Mr. McLaughlin will drive you … and please don’t call him ‘Red.’ It makes it sound like you two are friends or something,” her father replied, giving her one last concerned look, before leaving her alone, a look that said ‘don’t you dare think of becoming friends (or something more than friends) with this guy.’

Completely unready to face Red (Kat was not going to call him Mr. McLaughlin), she took her time eating breakfast, and rushed to get dressed and brush her teeth before he arrived. When she finally skipped down the front steps, she found him waiting in the Oxterionn. She carefully slipped into the passenger seat next to Red and tried not to look at him. For once, she wished they were back in the old Lincoln just so she could put up the partition between them and sit in the backseat alone.

He seemed tense. They were quiet for a few minutes and she contemplated stating something irrelevant, like the weather or the outcome of a sports game neither of them had likely watched. “So, you’re going on a date.” Red stated, more than asked.

“Is that what my dad called it?” Kat tried to laugh it off, but she could not hide the uneasiness in her tone. “It’s just coffee with Cal, nothing special.”

“That blond guy you played golf with the other day?” Red sounded slightly judgmental, but tried to come across as conversationally curious.

“Yes, he’s in the British Royal Navy; I’m not sure how long he’s on leave, but I think he said he had a few months off. He was much better at golf than I expected, but I guess I assumed that he didn’t get many opportunities to play golf if he was always on a boat, or out on the ocean,” Kat realized she was gushing and stopped. Red seemed even less amused than he had been before.

“Yes, well, guys like that tend to have those kinds of skills: golfing, tennis… I bet he rides horse and goes shooting on the weekend, too,” he remarked.

“What do you mean ‘Guys like that?’ You mean because he’s in the Navy?” Kat turned to face him, noticing his annoyed expression for the first time, and immediately regretted asking him that. He looked like he might snap at her.

“No, but those are the kinds of things you might find people with money doing, and he seems like the kind of guy who likes to hang out with people who have money,” Red explained and felt a little apologetic. Perhaps it was not his place to be saying this to Kat, but he was concerned. He had known a lot of people like this, and tried to avoid them. It was funny how people he had not really considered a close friend suddenly wanted to see him all the time once he started making money when he drove for Tallon-Fyste.

Kat was quiet for a minute as she thought this over, and Red worried he had offended her. “He called me an heiress the night we first met,” Kat said quietly as she replayed that conversation in her head. “But he was so…charming, I guess that’s the word. He was so charming that I forgot about it."

“I’m not saying he’s after your money, but look closely and you’ll see signs of it. He doesn’t come from money, but he pretends and hides it very well. I used to know people like that,” he added with a quick glance at her. Kat didn’t know what to say to that. She'd been fortunate enough to grow up with friends and classmates who were of equal economic status that no one had really tried to take advantage of her income.

“Thanks, I’ll be sure to keep an eye out for that,” she said as they pulled up to the café to meet Cal. With one last smile at Red, she hopped out of the car and walked a few feet before she heard him take off into the busy New York traffic. She looked after him for a few seconds, rethinking his warning her, when she felt a tap on her shoulder.

“Hey, how are you?” Cal said with his perfect accent that Kat loved a little too much. Her frown twitched into a smile as she turned to face him.

“I’m....fantastic, thanks,” she laughed, suddenly at a loss for words as he smiled that gorgeous smile that showed off his beautiful teeth. It was like that thing from Men in Black that erased someone’s memory.

“You said you had a headache yesterday, are you feeling better now?” He asked, brows furrowing just enough to show he was concerned. (Kat was too distracted by his smile to question whether that concern was genuine or not.)

“Yes, I’m much better now,” she blushed and almost started giggling. “Why don’t we get some coffee?” She nodded toward the coffee shop they had been standing in front of, taking up space on the busy sidewalk. Callum held the door for her, and even offered to pay, but realized he ‘did not have enough American money with him at the time.’ Kat immediately thought of Red’s warning, but dismissed those thoughts. ‘It’s just coffee,’ she thought, ‘He isn’t trying to steal my trust fund…’ Kat soon forgot about this when Callum smiled again – memory erased.

~ ~ ~

Andy McLaughlin could not remember the last time he had been on a plane, but it was long enough ago that smoking in coach class was customary, and flirting with the flight attendant was still considered okay. While his time spent on a plane had been limited, none of his trips had been trans-Atlantic, so his six-hour flight from Logan to Heathrow was unprecedented. Not one for reading, this gave him plenty of time to formulate his plan. From what he had already gathered, Andy needed to speak to a Mrs. Knight first.

He sighed resentfully at the thought of Kat’s father Albert. Even former gangster Andy McLaughlin did not think very highly of Albert Brice. He had never met Kat, but she seemed like a good girl, quiet and bookish. Since he had nothing else to do, and honestly he loved a good mystery, he decided to look into the issue for Red and Kat to see what he could come up with. When he discovered this mystery somehow involved an old ‘family friend’ in England, Andy used some of his saved up frequent flyer miles and took an unannounced trip across the pond.

The Saxons were still a big name in London despite their supposed ‘retirement’ from crime, so, being a former criminal himself, it was not hard for Andy to gather information on their whereabouts. First, however, he needed to pay a visit to this Millie Knight to ensure he had the story straight before trying to strike a deal with the Saxons.

* * *

After coffee, Kat and Callum walked a few blocks to the park. They were the only people in the small, secluded park since it had started to drizzle. Cal pulled Kat under a tree where they were shielded from the rain. He wrapped his arm around her shoulders and they sat on a park bench, watching the light rain.

“This is actually kind of nice,” he remarked, casually pulling her a little closer. Kat agreed, and was about to comment on the weather they had been experiencing that summer when her phone buzzed. Instinctively, she pulled out her phone to see who had texted her, and frowned when she saw it.

“Who is it?” Cal asked, sounding slightly protective.

“It’s my driver; he just wants to know when I’ll need to be picked up,” Kat explained and texted him that she did not know when she would be leaving.

“I guess McLaughlin’s still getting used to being a chauffeur,” Callum commented with a slightly malicious grin.

“No, he’s doing really well. He’s even teaching me how to drive,” Kat added proudly.

“I just think it’s odd….” Callum started, and thought for a moment. “After what he did…and now your dad wants him to drive you around?”

“From what I read, it wasn’t really his fault. And he’s certainly a different driver off the track; I have never once felt unsafe with him. But my dad likes to show off his money, so I’m not surprised he asked a two-time World Champion driver to be my chauffeur,” Kat glanced at Cal and saw a slight twitch in his perfect, charming façade.

“No, the crash was definitely his fault, and he clearly could have prevented it,” he responded with a surprising amount of emotion. “I’m sorry, that was out of place. It's just that the guy he hit was my favorite driver. A lot of people liked him."

“I’m so sorry; I guess you must really hate Red,” Kat noticed that Cal almost flinched when she called him ‘Red,’ but he did not say anything.

“No, I don’t hate him, but that is one of the reasons I’m not overly fond of him,” Cal did not elaborate what he meant by this, or what other reasons he could possibly have for not liking him.

“I've searched, but I can't find anything confirming the other driver’s condition. Have you heard anything about him?” Kat asked.

“About Charlie? No, he has completely disappeared; I guess he’s in a rehabilitation center in Switzerland, but no one really knows exactly what’s wrong with him. It was speculated that he might not walk again, but not much is really known about his injuries,” Cal said mournfully and shook his head. He was quiet for a minute, and Kat tried to think of something consoling to say. She tried to put her hand on his leg comfortingly, but it ended up being an uncoordinated knee pat/awkward caressing.

“Looks like it has stopped raining,” he observed, putting his hand lightly on her hand to stop her from any further embarrassment and Kat nodded.

“Yup, looks like it has,” she pulled her hand away and blushed. Every time she tried to show she liked him, she ended up embarrassing herself and proving that she had no idea what she was doing. And every time, she was reminded that Callum knew exactly what he was doing, and that made her a little uneasy. They stood up and slowly began strolling along the path back toward the street. Kat texted Red where to pick her up, and hoped he would be a few minutes late. She wanted an excuse to spend a couple more minutes with Cal, even though all she seemed to be doing was humiliating herself. He was almost like a drug – or more like candy, really; Kat knew it was probably bad for her, but she could not stay away.

. . .

Several years ago, Emmeline Saxon realized she needed to get her reputation out of the gutter. Being the daughter of a well-known mafia boss did not bode well for her career. The family’s money had gotten her into racing, and eventually F1, but it had also gotten her into drugs, fights, and sometimes jail. As Emme spent her 29th birthday in a small jail cell in Moscow, she realized something needed to change if she was actually going to make it as a race car driver in Formula 1. What started as an attempt at friendly conversation with one of her cell mates turned into a deep introspective evaluation of her own life thus far.

Upon release, when one of her brothers came to bail her out, she hired a new publicist – someone who did not live in the pocket of her family. The first thing her publicist told Emme to do was to distance herself from the infamous Saxons, publicly, at least, since he could not ask her to cut off her own family.

Secondly, he suggested she get married.

* * *

Kat and Callum walked quietly, and at a slower pace; neither one was in a hurry to leave. Slowly, Cal inched closer and took her hand in his. Kat smiled up at him and blushed, so she looked away. They stopped in the middle of a bridge and looked over the railing at the slow water below. There were a few lily pads with flowers scattered across the stagnant pond. As they looked down at the water and flowers Kat had a slight feeling of deja vu.

"How far up do you think we are?" She asked with a smile. She could tell she had surprised him because yet again that facade broke, but this time with genuine amusement. He laughed, and it was so real Kat felt herself smile without blushing at him.

"Well," he leaned forward and surveyed the distance. "I'd say no more than two meters." He smiled back at her at their odd inside joke. It was too perfect, he thought, and set him up seamlessly for what he needed to say, and this made him feel a little conflicted. He liked what they had going and did not want to ruin it, yet he could hear his mother’s words echoing in his mind: he had to act now.

Callum reached over and brushed a stray hair away from her face. The sun glinted off her eyes and finally showed off their slight hazel tint. "You look beautiful in this light." Cal loved the way she blushed every time he complimented her, or said anything else, really. It was such a positive reaction – instant results – and he liked that. He smiled, and for the first time it was not because he wanted to dazzle her. Taking the side of her face gently into his hands, he slowly lowered his head to her waiting mouth and kissed her. Callum lingered a moment before withdrawing, and smiled again at the crimson shade her cheeks had turned. He laughed and took her hand. "We'd better get going before it starts to rain again."

Kat nodded, still too overwhelmed from the kiss to respond, and let him lead her back toward the street. She did not want this to be over and tried to slow their pace and even considered 'tripping' so he would catch her and hold her in those strong arms of his.

As if Callum sensed her hesitation, he stopped suddenly and she whipped around to face him, almost crashing into him. Kat tilted her head back far enough so she could look up at him properly. He was biting his lip and his eyes were deep in thought, but he quickly smoothed it out with a smile.

"Kat," he started, and looked into her eyes. "Will you be my girlfriend?"

Kat's heart fluttered and for a moment she did not think she would be able to respond. The word 'yes' fought against her paralyzed mouth and she screamed it in her mind until she finely nodded and laughed. "Yes," she said quietly and smiled. He pulled her closer and they continued walking the short distance out to the road where, of course, Red was waiting for them.

Kat gave Cal a brief hug goodbye and he pecked her on the cheek quickly while Red opened the door for her. She lingered and wanted this moment to last longer, but did not know what to say.

“And thanks for the coffee!” Callum called after her as she got in the car.

“No problem, any time!” She replied before shutting the door. Red pulled away quickly and they rode out of the city in silence.

“So, you bought him coffee?” Red asked accusingly, raising one eyebrow as if to say ‘I told you so.’

“It was just coffee!” She gently hit his arm playfully and could not help a smile from creeping up around the corner of her lips. She wanted to tell him all about her date, and how she and Cal were now dating! But it did not seem right saying all of that to Red – two-time F1 World Champion Redington McLaughlin.

“I’m sorry,” he smiled back at her. “I was being stupid, just ignore me. But I still think I’m right about him. Or, maybe he doesn’t care about your money, maybe he loves your outgoing, laid back personality,” Red teased, and earned another light smack from Kat.

“Shut up,” she laughed, but he teased her all the way home.

Callum watched the car pull away into the busy New York night. He was more nervous this time, but only because this girl had found a place in his heart he did not know existed. Kat was normal and plain; what exactly was it that drew him into her like a moth to a bug light? It was exactly that: she was straightforward and real, an open book with every emotion splayed clearly on her face. For the first time Cal found himself wondering if he had gone too far, gotten himself in too deep.

But at the same time, he felt something he had never felt before.