The silence demanded an answer.
I could have hidden behind jargon about balance and ethics. Instead I met his gaze.
“I love your son,” I said. “And when I’m working, I tell the truth anyway. Even when it hurts him. Even when it hurts me. That’s the job.”
Jonathan’s hand brushed mine under the table.
“Good journalists tell the truth,” I said quietly. “Especially when the people they love would prefer they didn’t.”
Michael studied me for a long moment. The sharpness in his expression shifted, not softening exactly, but recalibrating.
“And the appearance of impropriety?” he asked. “Here you are, dining with his family.”
“Because I asked him to come,” Jonathan said. “Because you wanted to meet the journalist covering my season. And because he matters to me.”
Michael’s gaze returned to me. “Matters enough to risk both your careers?”
“Yes,” Jonathan said.
“Wally?”
I thought about the scrutiny ahead, the articles that would be read twice as closely, the margin for error shrinking to nothing.
“Yes.”
Michael leaned back, assessment complete. “Well then,” he said, signaling for another bottle, “we should discuss how to handle this properly.”
20
PARC FERMÉ
Jonathan was stayingat the Whittlebury Hall Hotel & Spa, the kind of polished luxury reserved for drivers and senior team staff, its lights glowing just beyond the dark edge of the circuit.
I’d been booked into the Travelodge in Towcester, five miles north along the A43. After dinner he drove me back there, the highway mostly empty at this hour, and we ended up wandering the quiet parking lot instead of saying goodnight.
Jonathan had been silent since we left the restaurant, processing his father’s unexpected intervention.
“So,” I said finally. “That wasn’t what I expected.”
“That’s my father,” he said quietly. “Everything comes with conditions.”
“How about when you came out to your parents? Were there conditions then?”
He breathed out slowly, like he’d been expecting the question.
“Though Millfield was co-ed, because of the emphasis on sports it felt like a boys’ school most days. Because I was so busy racing I had plenty of excuses not to date girls.” He smiled ruefully. “Then I came back to the States, and though I kept racing when I could, I ran out of excuses not to go on dates. Itried. I went on a date with a girl from my economics class just to prove I could.”
“And?”
“And I felt nothing. I went back to my dorm and threw up from the stress of pretending so hard.”
I didn’t say anything. He kept going.
“I called my mum,” he said quietly. “Told her, ‘I think I’m gay.’ There was this long pause, and then she said, ‘Oh, thank God. I thought you were phoning to tell me you had cancer or you’d crashed the car.’”
I let out a laugh before I could stop myself. He didn’t.
“She meant it,” he added. “She wasn’t being funny. That was honestly her first reaction. Relief that it wasn’t something worse.”
