Chapter 19
Fia
Zolt made me nocturnal. For the next three days, our schedule was: fuck all night, sleep until mid-afternoon, race each other, eat at the pub with his friends, fuck again.
And when it came to going back to England, I was so hooked on him that I invited him along.
Somehow, amidst all our chaos, I still finalised his medical report and sent it to Livie and the StormSprint medical team.
But I didn’t read my emails. I couldn’t bring myself to read what Yvette said in response, worried that what I’d put would make him unable to race next week. I’d copied it word for word from Hungarian, full of his pain and long-term ramifications.
The visual of his bike crashing and exploding replayed in my mind like a gif, back and forth, back and forth.
In bed, I traced the scar below his collarbone and pressed kisses down his chest.
He’d been so close to death.
Maybe that was why I invited him to my dad’s 60th birthday.I wasn’t ready to let him out of my sight, let alone leave the country. And it was maybe why I didn’t leave on Monday as I should have.
My mum had hired out the Davidson Hall in London with its 16th-century charm and sparkling chandeliers. And anyone who was anyone in the motor racing world would be there. So it felt only fitting that my plus one was a MotoBike Racing Champion.
Even if my stomach flip-flopped with anticipation.
My mum was busy prepping the venue when I finally got home after saying goodbye to Zolt at his hotel, with a little more than a kiss.
Whenever he’d been to England, it was either at the Silverstone track, his hotel room, or his publicist taking him from one event to the other. He said that in the two days we had here, he wanted to explore. And I offered to be his tour guide.
That was innocent enough, right?We could keep our hands off each other while walking in Richmond Park and looking at art in the Tate. I hoped.
But there was this little excited buzz in my chest that he didn’t want to keep me naked in his hotel room. He wanted to do things with me, like a boyfriend.
Even if that’s what he could never actually be.
We just needed to get each other out of our systems. Then we’d be fine.
So I told myself the touring was a practice of being step-siblings.
Dad was in the dark on all matters. He thought that we were going to a fancy restaurant, and he grumbled to Everly and me when Mum had laid out a tux. “Where the fuck are we going?” he grumbled in French. “Tea with the queen?”
I laughed, and Ever rolled her eyes, looking down in her clutch. She looked stunning in her red floor-length dress. He hadn’t twigged anything was up when she’d announced herself in the living room, ready for the limo that would make him die of shame. Everly strongly believed in being overdressed rather than under.
But when I changed into my black, sparkly number with the lattice trim, he did a double-take. “Dinner, yeah?” he’d grunted in disbelief.
Ever pulled him off the sofa and told him to get changed.
He was grumpier than usual, and I tried to act as if it had nothing to do with me, and where he believed I had been for the last week. He hated his birthday.
And Mum was making a huge show of him for his 60th as he deserved.
My sister’s body language was rigid around me, but she often forgot her grudge, catching herself laughing with me over just how melodramatic our Dad was.
But she was furious.
When Dad grunted at the sight of the limo — with Luca popping up the hood of it with a huge grin — I shuffled to sit beside her while Dad berated the driver, asking over and over where we were going.
“We’ll talk later,”she said in French to me. It was her party trick whenever she didn’t want Luca to know what we were saying. “Now is not the time.”
I was willing to make that‘later’into a never. But Everly was my best friend in the whole world, and the thought of her being angry at me made my hands numb.
