‘Wrong floor, man,’ Harper offers from the bed. ‘She’s on four, I think, not eight.’
‘Of course, sorry, only just finished for the night. Clearly my brain isn’t working.’ It’s a believable lie, because why else would he be wandering the hotel at 2 a.m.? ‘Sorry to interrupt your night.’
‘You didn’t, don’t worry,’ Elijah replies, holding out a hand to Harper to pull him up off the bed. ‘We were about to call it a night anyway.’
I’m almost hopeful that that means Jackson might stick around, but I’m clearly delusional. ‘No worries. I’ll walk back with you. Maybe I’ll actually end up on the right floor this time.’
All three of them laugh, but I can’t move, let alone speak. Harper and Elijah have to contort their bodies to get around me to join Jackson in the hallway. I’m not sure I’ve even spoken since he arrived. Or breathed.
He refuses to meet my eye, instead smiling at his drivers as they tell him he needs to take a break more often or he’ll end up like his dad.
Joke’s on him, because little do they know that’s exactly how this will end.
‘We’ll see you in the morning, okay?’ Harper’s looking at me curiously, perhaps confused by my awkward silence and complete lack of social skills right now.
‘In the morning?’ It’s a stupid question, he’s just trying to say goodnight, but my brain is completely lagging in this moment, trying to catch up on what the hell is happening.
‘We’re crashing your breakfast with Nils. We all want to hear about his new woman. Maybe she’s the one.’
Three years ago, I couldn’t imagine Harper James understanding what ‘the one’ even meant, never mind making it his life’s mission to help his friends find their own. Falling for Kian Walker really did a number on him.
It doesn’t help that every time we go for dinner or a drink, he points out every guy he thinks could be a possible match for me. Like I don’t have a long-term boyfriend. If only he knew. It’s so fucking stupid. I can’t believe I’m still keeping this ridiculous secret from him. It’s past the point of making me feel like I’m fourteen again and sneaking around with my first boyfriend behind my parents’ back. Now the secret is eating me up inside, making me feel ashamed of who and what I am. Making me hate myself. And I hate Jackson for that. Almost more than I miss him.
ARGH! This is some seriously toxic shit.
‘Oh, okay, yeah, see you in the morning.’ And then, just when I thought this couldn’t get any more fucked up, I wave at him.
Harper’s not an idiot. The media used to make him out to be a fool, but I’ve known him a long time and he’s anything but.
‘Night, Jo,’ Elijah calls over his shoulder as he trails behind Harper towards the lifts.
It hurts to watch them all walk away, leaving me completely alone. But then I catch Jackson looking back. That’s what completely guts me. I hope, desperately, to see remorse, regret, or an apology in those eyes that once upon a time made me feel warm and safe.
But they hold nothing but relief.
Relief that, yet again, we’ve got away with this. He’s made it through another close shave without this stinking, festering, toxic secret getting out.
It’s only when I shut the door that I realise he all but pretended I wasn’t even there. He talked directly to Elijah and Harper and didn’t even acknowledge my presence.
What the fuck?
I don’t even know whether he remembered my birthday.
As I reflect bitterly on how this night turned out, I begin to think that perhaps he came knocking on my door to get his own needs met and not because he wanted to meet mine. And yet all I feel is pitifully grateful that he remembered my existence at all.
That’s fucking tragic.
Happy fucking birthday to me.
As I get back into bed, it’s hard to see how twenty-nine is going to be any better than twenty-eight.
ChapterTwo
Caleb
Becoming Johannes Müller’s race engineer was meant to be one of the most exciting moments of my life. And, for maybe nine or ten races, it lived up to all my expectations. He was on that podium every week and I was being heaped with praise for basically not changing anything after his last guy retired and I was brought in.
Yes, he was performing, but he wasn’t the fearless spitfire I’d watched from the garage in my previous role. His risks seemed unusually calculated and there was less freedom and ease as he sped around the track. He wasn’t focused. He was too in his own head.
