‘Is it your injury? Did you come back too soon?’
‘Is your recent marriage the reason for your poor form?
Cassian stopped in his tracks. He turned to the press pack who all saw his face and took a step back. ‘Who said that?’
A nervous-looking young man put up a hand. He was holding a microphone with his other one. Cassian went up to the barrier separating the press from the drivers in the paddock area.
He glared at the young man. ‘My recent marriage has nothing to do with anything.’Liar.
He turned and stalked off, ignoring the pack calling out more questions. Cassian knew it would be very easy to blame Lili for his near crash yesterday. And it would feel satisfying to lay it all at her door. Along with everything else. The fact that the marriage had veered so wildly off course. The fact that he couldn’t seem to slot back into the life he’d taken for granted forever.
And yet, he knew better than anyone that his life had become tedious. The past few weeks he’d felt more alive and energised than he could recall feeling since he was a young man, hurling himself at the world and hoping that somehow the pain would go away. The pain of grief and loneliness.
That insane busyness had worked for a while. But then it hadn’t. And then…there’d been her. Stepping out of that pool in a white swimsuit. Fusing his brain. Rewiring it. Setting him on a different path.
Dio.
Cassian got to the pit garage and pulled out his phone and made a quick call. When he heard the answer his mouth firmed. She was still here. In Monte Carlo. She hadn’t left. She hadn’t gone back to the villa where she’d originally promised she’d stay.I want peace and security.Now he knew why. He hadn’t even really allowed himself to think of the kidnapping and what it must have been like for her. He couldn’t think of it. It was too much.
‘Cass?’
He looked at Ricardo, his good friend.Family. Something inside him seemed to break apart. A wall he’d been desperately holding together. His old friend—the closest thing he’d had to a father figure—just nodded at him as if he understood everything in Cassian’s head before he did himself.
And suddenly, he knew. He knew that even though he was about to get into a car made mostly out of carbon fibre and go at impossible speeds on an insanely dangerous circuit, that there was nothing brave about what he was doing. He’d been a coward for a long time while hiding behind the smokescreen of being fearless. Reckless.
Lili was brave. She was braver than he could ever be. He could let that defeat him before he even started, or he could take her bravery and hope that it might give him the strength he needed right now to do what had to be done.
* * *
Lili was pacing back and forth in the apartment. The race was at lap twenty—one of seventy-eight. She’d always thought races lasted just a few minutes. This would last for over an hour.
Cassian had somehow, completely improbably started to pass cars on one of the tightest circuits of the world, and get to a position at about halfway down the pack in the race. Which, according to the commentators was next to impossible after starting at the very back.
Lili looked at Marcel. ‘I can’t stay here, I have to go down there.’
‘Of course.’
Lili started to hunt for shoes and Marcel pointed out, ‘Maybe you should change?’
Lili looked at herself and realised she was still in the same sweatpants and top as the day before. ‘Oh, right, yes, maybe.’
‘I’ll have a car waiting for you.’
Lili washed herself in record time and changed into jeans, a T-shirt and a light leather jacket. Sneakers.
Marcel brought her to the entrance for the teams and when they weren’t going to let her in because she didn’t have the security passes, he said something sharp in French and suddenly they were letting her in. She tried to ignore her trepidation at the prospect of Cassian seeing her but she couldn’t ignore the impulse to come.
Ricardo caught sight of her from the pit garage and waved her over. She took a seat and watched with the rest of the team as Cassian slowly but surely overtook more and more cars on each lap to get ever closer to the front.
It was tense. He came in for a pit stop but wouldn’t have noticed Lili which she was grateful for. Then he was gone again.
The crew roared when Cassian overtook the number two driver. Now there was only one car between him and the front. She could hear one of the team say out loud, ‘This isnuts. Hardly anyone has ever come from the back to win a race.’
And then Cassian was doing it. He was overtaking the top driver. At that moment he roared past the pit garage on the track outside and everyone rushed out of the garage to go close to the track behind a barrier.
There was one more lap. Cassian stayed in front. And he won the race. Ricardo came over, beaming and pulled Lili into a bear hug and kissed her on the cheek. She barely even noticed. ‘This is good?’
‘It is amazing, Signora Corti. Amazing. Come.’ He took her by the hand and led her out to where the crew were all behind a barrier. Cassian was coming in. Jumping out of the car, helmet still on, he threw himself at the team, hugging them and they slapped at his helmet.
