My entire body shivered, and I slipped out from under his arm.“I’ll find Julian alone. I don’t think looking at you is a good idea.”
The smile was clear in his voice. “Not until we’realone?”
I flattened the paper against my chest, trying to iron out the wrinkles, conscious that I was stalling but unable to get my feet to move forward.
“When you’ve seen him, can I have a copy? I haven’t actually read it.”
“I need to translate it, but I can—I can send you pictures of it.”
“I’ll send you my number, Zsófia.”
I nodded and walked away before I did something stupid. Like kiss him.Again.
Because I wasn’t calm, I was no longer caffeinated. And I definitely wasn’t in control anymore.
6
Chapter 6
Zoltán
Coming back to Hungary used to feel like a break.
There’d be nights of meeting school friends and going wild in the bars. Then the weekends of us going to neighbouring countries and making a mess of ourselves.
Now, I spent the days sneaking around and the evenings beside my mother, letting her think I was back to my old self.
Which I wasn’t.
My mother had moved in after the crash. I’d bought and extended the house with the intention of never having to leave. One of the gyms had been turned into a rehab centre for my physio. The guest room on the ground floor had been modernised with an en-suite when I couldn’t get up the stairs.
There were no excuses of going to the gym or the spa, because when I bought the place, I never had any intentions of leaving.
It was a piece of art, carved into the South Hungarian green forest, blending in with the scene, with the plants growingon the roofs of the log-style mansion with grey, heavy brick.
The biggest selling point had been that it was close to my grandfather’s house.
That my brother had now inherited.
The IV bag swayed in the light wind, hooked to the iron railing above my recliner. The air was thick with droplets hanging in the air, but I hated sitting still. The only thing that cleared my mind was my beautiful home country and getting to look out at it from my bedroom’s balcony, overseeing all the glorious, emerald land I had the privilege to own, which made the ninety minutes more bearable, before I ripped the cannula out from the inside of my elbow and went back to pretending.
StormSprint meant more travelling than MotoBike, and the more I was away, the less this felt like home.
It reminded me of those months when I clawed back to sanity.
I heard the soft creak of the balcony door before I saw her.
My mother walked out like she always did — quietly and deliberately. She belonged in every room. She became the focus of it.
Everything about her was gentle — from her voice to the laughter lines around her eyes. Her warm, deep bronze skin was soft and nearly wrinkle-free, other than when she smiled.
In the last year, I’d started to see her gentle nature as something I had to protect.
Since my crash, when my life had hung in the balance, and then with the death of my grandfather, I was too aware that life was fleeting.
And my accident had hurt her so deeply. I couldn’t risk scaring her again.
She sat down in the chair next to me, pulling her linen cardigan tightly around her chest. “I didn’t think you liked these,” she said. She’d only caught me doing this once. “You couldn’t even watch a TV screen if someone was getting injected.”
