Driven by Passion, page 1
Driven By Passion
Table of Contents
Title Page
Driven By Passion (Gamble Racing, #2)
About the author
Foreword
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Epilogue
Acknowledgements
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Driven By Passion
Renée Dahlia
Engine fires, sabotage, and two friends falling in love....
Engineer Victor Tsui needs to figure out why his race cars keep failing. Being Gamble Racing’s Chief Engineer is his dream job and he’s built a fast car. But there is something wrong with his design and he needs to understand how to fix it before next season.
Hot headed driver Lucien Grenville has nowhere to go over the winter break, so when his friend Victor expresses frustration at the recent run of engine failures, he decides to hang out and offer support.
Things get awkward when Lucien gets an intense urge to kiss Victor, and they need to decide if this is going to remain a friendship or become something more.
About the author
An avid reader, Renée Dahlia writes contemporary and historical queer romance. Renée is a bisexual cis woman who is fascinated by people and loves to explore human relationships, with a side of humour, through her writing. Renée has a degree in physics and mathematics, using this to write data-based magazine articles for the horse racing industry. Her love of horses often shines through in her fiction, and she loves a good intrigue and to escape the real world in the pages of a book. When she isn’t reading or writing, Renée spends her time with her four children, usually watching them play cricket.
Foreword
Welcome to DRIVEN BY PASSION, the second book in the Gamble Racing series.
If you love gay sports romance with a friends to lovers theme, family, workplace tension, and a little mystery thrown in, Driven by Passion is the book for you. This series contains a few mystery plots that continue between each book; however, I have tried to make each book a standalone read.
Please note this book contains toxic parenting, suicide ideation, car crashes, and assault.
This book is written in Australian English and some spelling and phrases may be unfamiliar to American readers.
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I hope you enjoy reading this book!
Renée
Chapter 1
Gamble Racing’s Series E driver Lucien Grenville had never seen his friend so frustrated. For the past few hours, Victor Tsui had paced back and forth across the engineering workshop floor, muttering, and occasionally stopping to stare at the two deconstructed S1 cars carefully arranged on the floor. Lucien wasn’t sure how their friendship worked, unless it was a case of opposites attract. Victor was a data focused mechanical engineer—diligent and careful—while Lucien was a risk taker, a hot-headed driver, or at least he had been back when they’d met. Now he drove with more control, thanks to the efforts of the Gamble Racing sports psychologist, and he was getting results, finishing third on the Series E driver’s championship this season. Two seasons in Series One—the pinnacle of motorsport—at the back of the grid had almost killed his love of being a racing driver, and being sent to the electric cars had helped him find the thrill of competition again. His teammate, Lord Alexander Islington, had finished in fifth. It was always satisfying to beat his teammate.
“Maybe you should take a break?” Lucien had known Victor for several years. Back when he’d been a Series Three driver for a different team, Victor had been the assistant engineer there, and they’d become unlikely friends. When Lucien had gained a Series One drive with Gamble Racing, moving away from Victor’s team, they’d stayed in touch, even though they’d been working for different teams. Now Victor has been promoted to Gamble Racing’s Chief S1 Engineer—responsible for the design of the team’s S1 cars—their friendship had grown in a comfortable place, as they spent time together in the workshop, or during the summer break. The Series E season was much shorter than the S1 season, so Lucien had been hanging around Victor since September because he’d been the third driver, the backup, for the second half of the S1 season. Being the backup driver meant all the work and none of the racing.
“It makes no sense. It’s almost like the three engine fires all started near the exhaust systems.” Victor tugged at his thick black hair and scowled at the engine pieces.
“Take a break. Come for a walk with me.” Lucien knew better than to say anything about the engine problems. Victor was the expert.
“What good will that do?”
Lucien shrugged. “Sometimes it helps to get away from the puzzle for a while.” He spent a lot of time walking and he found it helpful for sorting out his myriad of problems.
“Fuck. Okay. At this point, I’ll take any suggestion. If you want me to hang upside and cluck like a chicken, I’d do it if it would get me a clue to solving this fucking mess.”
“Come.” Lucien had a couple of hours before his meeting with Socrates and the rest of the SE team to discuss the upcoming season. Series E was different to S1 in that the batteries were all the same between teams, although teams were able to design their own power train and other parts. A lot of the racing came down to driver skill and race strategy only, making it much better for him as a driver to prove his talent, than when he’d been in S1 in the world’s slowest car designed by Victor’s predecessor, Reginald Whitehall. Lucien grabbed two Gamble Racing branded jackets off the hook near the back of the engineering workshop and passed one to Victor. December in England was bloody freezing.
“Where are we going?”
“Let’s walk the test track.” Gamble Racing’s headquarters were part of Socrates’ large estate—Pewett Downs—once owned by a Duke who’d gone bankrupt. Socrates had built his own racing track that threaded through the woods behind the engineering workshop, and he gave all his team drivers the freedom to take any of his car collection for a spin whenever they wanted. Today, Lucien would walk the track beside Victor to see if walking helped shake out any new ideas. They walked through the practice pit garage and out onto the track.
“Bloody hell, it’s cold today.” Victor frowned. “This better work.”
Lucien nodded. He didn’t have any answers. “Walk, then talk me through the problem from the beginning.”
“Are you sure?”
“I asked you.”
“Okay.” Victor strode down the track towards the starting line and Lucien deliberately positioned himself on pole position. They walked in silence for a while.
“This is pointless.” Victor stopped in the middle of the track just under the start/finish line and glared at Lucien. Between the way Victor’s dark brown eyes crinkled at the edges and the way he stood with his hands on his hips, drawing Lucien’s attention to the way his puffy jacket pulled tight across his shoulders, Lucien’s chest filled with an odd flutter. He dismissed it. It must just be the cold air, messing with his mind a little.
“It’s not. We’ve barely started.” The test track was 3,802m long.
“I have too much to do. Why am I walking?”
Lucien winked. “Technically you aren’t walking. Now start walking and tell me the whole problem.”
Victor’s glare deepened but he started walking again.
“I mean it. From the very beginning.”
“From pre-season testing?” Victor’s frown disappeared for a second.
“Yes.” Lucien wasn’t that keen to rehash the whole season, but if it might help Victor, he’d listen.
“Remember when we were in S3 together?”
Lucien nodded. “Must we go over this? When I said start at the beginning, I didn’t mean when we met.”
“People told me that drivers were intense.” Victor chuckled, shaking his head. “Intense! They had no idea. You were the walking version of toxic masculinity. A twenty-year-old ball of rage.”
“Yes.” Lucien sighed; that’s why he didn’t want to talk about his time in S3. He’d been awful, just horrible. An abused, traumatised, angry man-child who couldn’t cope with the pressure of the job.
“It’s always puzzled me.” Thankfully Victor stared ahead, not at Lucien, allowing him space to squeeze his eyes shut for a second to fight back the rush of heat behind them. “How could you be the life of the party away from the track, but put that helmet on, and you’d push that car so hard, it was like you didn’t care if you died.”< br />
Lucien shrugged. “I’m a driver. I still don’t care if I die. Winning matters more.” He’d spent his life training to be first, training to be fast, and pushing to the absolute limit. Sometimes beyond. Back then, always beyond, because he was often so upset, so angry, that he did want to die. A bad crash could be the chance to take away all the pain from all the things his father said. His therapist had a term for it, suicide ideation, which made it sound super bad, and he’d fought against the idea for a while before learning to deal with it.
“Something happened. I’ve always wondered about it.” Victor had a knack of getting right to the heart of things. Damned perspective of him.
“I thought we were going to chat about your puzzle, not mine.” Lucien shoved Victor lightly on the shoulder. This was his friend, someone who’d stood by him when no one else had, who’d been there when Lucien hadn’t known he’d needed a friend.
“You told me to start at the beginning. What happened?” Victor referred to the middle of Lucien’s third S3 season when his focus had shifted. When he’d gotten his first real tattoo, the one he loved, not the silly one on his thigh that listed all his podiums since he’d won his first karting championship as a teenager. Lucien felt that rush of blood to his head and breathed out. He wasn’t that guy anymore, so he grinned instead.
“Are you asking me why I stopped being a complete fuckwit?”
“Yes. It was so obvious. Suddenly, you stopped having a death wish and you started driving like a proper driver. You went from being reckless to being deliberate, strategic, and you started winning.”
All those things were true. “My father died. I’m not sad and I don’t want your pity.” His father had crashed his car, driving far too fast on an ordinary road in the rain. Thankfully hadn’t hit anyone else in his ridiculous quest to prove that he was a better driver than he really was. A cliched end for a mid-field IndyCar driver who history had forgotten years before he died.
“Pity?”
“Never mind.” Lucien bent over and brushed his fingers across the tarmac as they walked into the second turn. “The team made me go to grief counselling.” He held his breath. Victor was his friend, he wouldn’t judge him, and besides this reluctance to mention it was part of his own issues around what being a tough guy was all about. He stood up. “I kept going to therapy even when I moved to Gamble Racing. Personal therapy, I mean, not just the team’s sport psychologist. It’s been helpful.”
“Good for you. If more people went to therapy, the world would be a kinder place.”
“Would it, though?”
“I’d like to think so.” Victor sounded sincere. “But then, my mother is a therapist, so I’m probably biased.” It made sense; Victor had the innate confidence and peace that belonged to someone who’d grown up in a loving home without any bullshit.
“Mostly likely.” Lucien’s head spun with a bunch of questions, none of which were relevant to helping Victor solve the engine failure puzzle. “Now you’ve solved the puzzle of me. I was an asshole, my father died, the team helped me become a better driver, and hopefully a better person. Let’s return to your problem.”
“Hold on a second. There’s one thing I don’t understand.”
Lucien mock-glared at Victor. “I’m not a data point.” They walked across the apex of turn two, past the tyre barrier that protected the track from the natural siltstone cliff that lined the edge of the track. Socrates’ husband Mike had a collection of fossils he’d found in the cliff-face, but Lucien only thought of it as a place he needed to avoid while driving the track.
“Ha.” Victor didn’t smile at Lucien’s poor attempt at a joke. The track followed alongside the cliff, curving into two high speed turns; three and four, before they would reach Socrates’ indulgence. “If the toxic anger stopped when your father died, and therefore it came from him, there’s one thing I don’t get.”
“Okay, fine. I’ll ask. What?” Lucien knew what Victor was going to ask; it was the thing everyone was curious about.
“You were always out, and some might say you were aggressively gay.”
Aggressive. Yes. Lucien laughed so hard that he couldn’t breathe. “I was ... am ... absolutely ... aggressively gay. Fuck. Only you could articulate it so well.”
“How does that work?” Victor and his puzzles! It must be the influence of his mother, always wanting to know how things—and people—worked and understand why.
“This one bugged my therapist too. She couldn’t understand how my father could instil so many toxic angry behaviours in me, often encouraging me to be an asshole in the goal of beating every other driver, yet accept my sexuality without issue.” Lucien hadn’t cared to think about it. It was a relief to be able to be himself—loud and free—and have all the sex with all the people in nightclubs around the world. The ideal rich fuckboy lifestyle. In reality, it was simply more toxic behaviour from him as he selfishly used people for pleasure. Oh, for sure, they got pleasure in return and the chance to say they’d been with someone famous. No one, not even him, got any emotional joy from the encounters. It was unlikely that he’d ever get that—love—given all his issues. He didn’t know the first thing about love.
“It’s more common to wrap all those angry man issues up with a good dose of homophobia.”
“How did this walk become all about me?”
“Well. I’m curious.”
Lucien shook his head. “Apparently so.”
All of a sudden, Victor clapped him on the back. “Drivers! You can’t help it. You just cut me off even when we are walking.”
“I’m walking the racing line. You are meandering in my way. Five second penalty for you.” Lucien glanced over his shoulder at Victor, who was frowning. He jogged to the apex of the fourth turn and turned around to face Victor.
“You want to know how I could be openly gay and also a toxic asshole?” As if those things could be unpacked so easily...
“Yes.”
“Growing up it was just me and my father. Kurt Grenville. He’d been a mid-field Indycar driver, obsessed with winning and not quite managing it. My mother, Suzy Smith, was a champion badminton player, so yes, with the addition of her fast reflexes, I was purpose bred to be a race car driver.” His mother had won a bronze at the Olympics for England; and his father had moved to England with the excuse to be closer to her family when he really only wanted Lucien to be closer to the S1 training programs. His mother had soon seen through Kurt’s bullshit and had run off with another man, abandoning her toddler son to the whims of her shitty ex. Lucien had never seen her again, and when he heard she’d died, when he was just ten years old, he hadn’t known what to feel. How dare she?
“That explains the aggression on the track, but not—”
“My father said he didn’t care who I fucked as long it helped me win. It was always about winning. He pushed me to always go faster, drive the car beyond its limits, take the space, the racing line, get the win at any price.”
Victor nodded with a solemn expression. “That explains a lot.”
“He always said it was better to DNF trying to win than to lose.”
“That literally makes no sense. It’s always better to get points than to get none.”
Lucien purposefully rolled his eyes. “I know that now. When he died, I didn’t have his constant stream of pushy words anymore. I didn’t have to balance what the team was telling me and wanted from me with the things he said. Suddenly all I had to do was listen to the team. They sent me to therapy, and they coached me. I stopped crashing and I became a better, more strategic driver.”
“It worked. Your improvement in that second half of the S3 season was staggering. No driver had ever improved to that extent. It was no surprise to anyone that you got an offer from Gamble Racing and an S1 drive.”
“The irony, right?” It’d taken Lucien a while to find this amusing, but now, looking back, Lucien would always find this hilarious.
“What?”
“The only thing my father ever wanted was for me to drive S1. For him, it was the ultimate proof that he had bred a competitive driver. He moved from America to England to pursue that for me. If I could make S1, then it meant his mediocre talent in an Indycar didn’t matter, because he’d achieved his own dream through my success. The irony is that it took him dying and a lot of therapy for me to be capable of achieving S1. His training, his bullshit, held me back from his goal.” And it had allowed Lucien to figure out his own goals, away from the need to be an S1 driver. It allowed him to walk away from S1 because it wasn’t his dream and find success on the Series E circuit.
