“I’ve moved on,” I snapped. “I’m with someone else.”
He shrugged. “I’m not saying—”
“Tell me what you mean aboutArmas, Adam.”
“It’s about Alv Mendes.”
I glanced at him, my heart in my throat. I couldn’t be hearing about his passing fromAdam. Even if that was what he meant, the accident wasn’t Nix’s fault.
“One of these newspapers wants to release it, but… right now, the journalist is thinking it’s simply unethical.”
Pride was out the window, thrown out by the adrenaline pumping in my veins. “Tell me.”
He breathed in deeply. “They have pictures ofAlv’swife having an affair.”
“Fuck,” I rasped and started to bite my tongue. She seemed head over heels for him when she was commentating the race those months ago. Anaffair?
“That’s not the worst of it.”
“Go on,” I begged, trying to swallow my heart back down. Because I already knew. I already knew.
“They don’t have photos of the guy’s face, but… it’s a certain number 18.”
Nix.
NixonArmas. The first time I met him, he told me he was having an affair with a married woman. He’d left out thepart that it wasAlv’swife.
“When?” My voice was hard. It didn’t belong to me.
“Before the crash,” he said softly and went to comfort me by reaching out his hand. I stepped back into the pinboard, cornered like a timid animal, with no option but to hear the worst. “Got a couple of occasions on film. He’s taller thanAlv, isn’t he?”
“Yes.” I stopped. “But it isn’t him. It wouldn’t be.”
Nix wouldn’t do that.
Adam analysed me, eyes slightly pinched.
“The journalist is a personal friend of mine and I’ve seen pictures,” he continued, tapping on his phone. “See?”
He swiped through a number of photos. A green sports car pulling up to a house, her outside of it and running her arms over the dark figure that got out the driver’s side.
A figure I knew.
“The car’s been linked to one Nix was renting at the time,” he said. “My friend hasn’t told her boss who the affair is with because he’ll push to publish. But she… she doesn’t feel right doing that with what’s going on.”
“But it will come out at some point,” I whispered, my voice not strong enough for anything else.
He nodded. “Probably when Alv dies.”
IfAlv died.
“I know I wasn’t the best to you,” he carried on, stepping forward. “I know I should have handled things differently, but… this doesn’t make what I did okay, but I needed to do something for you.”
“This is something forme?” I asked with a sour laugh. “This is for your own conscience.”
Damn, I really did have a type. Men out there for themselves,that clearly only thought with their dicks.
I didn’t know Nix at all.
