“No, he wanted to go down to breakfast the morning after the wedding and tell them we were together.”
“The morning after…?” Her mouth dropped open. “Right. Right. So you slept with him that night.”
I winced a smile.
“Bloody hell, girl, you’ve got it bad.”
“But we can’t—”
“Bitch, you can. Do whatever you want. Fuck everyone else. In fact, maybe don’t. Zolt doesn’t strike me as one likely to share. He’ll go into big brother mode.”
I may have gagged.
She meant it as a joke, but suddenly there were tears again. As soon as I cried once, they would free-flow for the rest of the day.
“Come here, you silly goose,” she said and hugged me again. Six inches taller than her, I lowered my head onto her shoulder.
“Dad hated me when I got with Luca,” she laughed. “He tried to break us up at least once. Now, they’re best friends. They’re spending a lot of time together at the moment. And sometimes they dare not invite me.”
I laughed through my tears, holding her back. Dad hadnever hated her. He didn’t have it in him.
“But give it a while and people soon realise what is most important to them. And you, Fia, are most important. Zoltán is lucky you care about him.”
I squeezed her and sniffed again. “I don’t know if I can do it.”
“Do what?” she asked, holding me at arm’s length.
“Be out in public with him right now,” I admitted. “I don’t know if I can deal with the emotional backlash.”
She was silent for a second, looking me over. “You don’t have to make any decisions right now.”
“But we keep missing opportunities to be honest,” I told her, rubbing at my eyes. “We should have come out the day after the wedding. We should have done it before this article.”
Ever shrugged, letting go of me. “You don’t have to do anything. Know for sure if the two of you are in it for the long haul.”
I was.How could I not be?
“Look, sit down. No, don’t pack away anything. I’m doing that. You sit there and gather yourself. If Zolt gets to the podium, I’ll come and get you. If not, I’ll send him here.”
“I don’t—I don’t want to see anyone but him.”
“Here,” she said and gestured behind me. “Go to my hidey hole. When the girls stress me out, I pretend I have really important admin and stay back here.”
She walked me through some of the screens to a small office set-up where she sat me down. “No one will come back here. The race started five minutes ago. Give it twenty minutes, and I’ll ask him to come here.”
“Thank you,” I said, trying to give her a smile. “Could I—could I have themagazine?”
She hesitated. “Promise not to get in your head about it?”
I shrugged.
“Best we were going to get,” she said and handed it to me. “Beat Zoltán with it for me.”
I nodded, and when she left, I practised the breathing techniques Livie had taught me. I probably had twenty minutes of silence before the press came back, ready to interview the winning teams after the race.
Maybe we could run away. But we’d worked so hard to get where we were and… I couldn’t lose my placement. He couldn’t lose this championship. This was his fresh start.
We should talk to his publicist.
