But then, when Avia asked if she could‘pet’the flowers Everly had bought Livie for her birthday… she wasn’t so sure.
The look on her face said she was back to‘absolutely not.’
“Are you sure? How can you tell the difference?”
“Because he’s not coming today!”
Ever rolled her eyes. “He’s Nix’s son, he’ll probably do whatever he wants.”
She groaned because that was true; there was no comeback to that.
The roar of bikes reminded me of the second reason I was panicking.
Zolt was racing on the track that had nearly killed him.
For every second I thought about it, I was less and less sure that he had been trembling because he had fired his brother. It was probably the adrenaline from the crash, or the track, or the memories.
Or, dare I sayit, nerves.
He claimed he used to get nervous around me, but I hadn’t seen him nervous about anything.
Never racing.
I pulled my headphones out of my over-the-shoulder bag and put on the commentary. I couldn’t bring myself to watch Zolt race. Nix’s voice would protect him and me from any bad fate.
“Does Nix know?”
I whipped around, but Everly wasn’t talking to me.
“No,” Livie said through her teeth, vertical again, packing away the merchandise with my sister.
“If he knew, you know he’d be running here. Literally,” Ever scolded, brows low with concern. “You are allowed to have a baby on a workday.”
“It’s not that,” she said, and her eyes swept the PR tent all the way to me.
“Hey!” I cried, hand on hip. “I don’t know why I’m taking the blame.”
“Because I want to be there when Cris finds out who your loverboy is.”
Everly pressed her lips together to try and stop laughing, but my mouth fell open.
“Olivia Armas!” I cried, taking my headphones out. Nix and his co-commentator had been chatting away about the first lap, but I hadn’t heard Zolt’s name, so I wasn’t paying attention. “You’re avoiding childbirth for drama?”
She beamed. “You don’t work in PR if you don’t love a bit of gossip. And I wanted to be there to support you, not get my popcorn out.”
I levelled her with a look.
“And Nix loves your Nana’s Sunday dinners,” Livie admitted. “His mum isn’t technically French, so… But don’t ever tell her I said that.”
We laughed and, for a second, when we were together, things were good. I was good. But that neck-prickling sensation was back again, as if someone was watching me.
I breathed in, stuck the headphones back in, and wrapped an elastic band around a pile of Sharpies.
“— to be honest, in third place after what he sustained last time?” Nix whistled. “He crashed yesterday. I mean, I wouldn’t even call it that; he took the corner too wide and slid right off.”
“We’ve seen three sides to Zoltán this tournament so far,” the other commentator said. “He’s either amazing, a true champion, or he’s crashing, or he seems like he is some other place. Far away.”
“It’s a shame,” Nix sighed. “Watching him those last two years at MotoBike, I was worried for my records. Hey, he’s still recovering, isn’t he? Who knows? We may still have a new Nixon Armas.”
