Griffin’s lips curved. “Trusting. Niran knows what he’s doing.”
The food was incredible. Proper Thai cooking, the kind that made you understand why people raved about authentic cuisine.
As we ate, we talked about everything and nothing. His training regimen, my studies, books we’d read, places we’d traveled. It felt normal. Easy. Like we were just two people enjoying each other’s company, not a racing driver and his team principal’s daughter hiding from the world.
“How’d you get that?” I nodded toward the scar above his left eyebrow. I’d noticed it before but never asked.
Griffin touched it absently, as if he’d forgotten it was there. “Go-karting accident when I was eight. Broke my arm in three places too.”
I don’t know what I’d expected him to say, but it wasn’t that.
“What happened?”
He grimaced sheepishly. “I was showing off for my mum. She’d finally come to watch me race.”
“So you crashed to impress her?”
“Spectacular flip. Kart went airborne, I went flying.” His voice dropped. “Woke up in hospital a few hours later.”
I stared at him, utterly horrified. “That’s horrible.”
“I mean it’s not the worst thing that could ever happen to me.” He shrugged. “There are drivers who have been through a lot worse.”
Way to dump a bucket of ice water on me, Griffin! As if I needed to be reminded that drivers risked their lives every time they got in a car.
“She blamed herself,” he said, staring at my probably pale face. “Said if she hadn’t come, I wouldn’t have been showing off.” He chuckled, the sound hollow, before he sighed. “She was probably right. Never came to another race after that.”
“Do you still see her much?”
Griffin’s fingers tapped against the stem of his glass. “Christmas. Her birthday. She asks about racing, but I can tell it makes her nervous. Twenty years later and she still flinches when I mention a close call.”
“I envy that,” I said quietly.
“You don’t get to see your mother at all?” he asked, surprise slacking his expression. “How could Julian still?—”
“She died.”
Griffin’s eyes widened. “What?”
“Car accident when I was seventeen. Six months before I could legally choose to see her again.”
My mother had been trying to rebuild things with me after the divorce. Sending cards, texts when she could manage it without my father finding out. Six months. If she’d lived just six months longer, I could have chosen to see her. Could have walked away from Julian’s control and back to her.
I fidgeted with the cutlery, already regretting asking about his scar. How was I supposed to know it would lead us here? We’d been having such a perfect evening, and now I’d gone and made it all heavy and depressing.
“Christ, Vi.” He stilled my hand, squeezing it. “I’m so sorry.”
I glanced up at Griffin, feeling awful. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to turn this into such a downer. You planned this lovely evening and here I am bringing up dead mothers.”
“Don’t apologize for that,” Griffin said. His thumb stroked over my knuckles reassuringly. “Don’t ever apologize for that.”
I forced a smile, but my mood had well and truly plummeted.
“Right,” I said, needing to change the subject before I completely fell apart. “Tell me something embarrassing. Something that’ll make me feel better about sharing family trauma over Thai food.”
Griffin’s eyes crinkled, clearly relieved at the change of direction. “Embarrassing, eh?”
“Mortifying, preferably.”
