I stop in the middle of the narrow white hallway betweenmeeting rooms. “What’s going on? Is Jules all right? My mom?” I swallow hard, my mouth suddenly dry. “Grandma Lena?”
“It’s nothing like that,” she tells me. “But you need to come talk to me. There’s something I have to show you.”
I prod myself into motion again, headed for the glass exit doors with the Emerald logo. “Oh, fuckin’ hell,” I say, realizing as the words leave me that I sound a little like Alexander. “It can’t wait? Tomorrow’s the GP and I don’t wanna get upset over trivial bullshit.”
“Sage.” Her tone is bleak. “I’ve been fretting for an hour for exactly that reason. I wouldn’t bother you, but I don’t want you to hear about this first when some reporter asks.” My stomach plunges straight to the basement at her next words. “And you probably won’t want to stay with Alexander tonight once you’ve heard it.”
When I climb through the doorway of the motor home minutes later, she’s sitting at the banquette with her laptop open on the table and rotates it to face me.
The door shuts behind me with a pneumatic hiss. I slap down a hand beside the laptop and lean to take in the page of CJ Ardley’sSports and Torteson the screen. Down the right-hand side are publicity photos of me and of Julian, and below that, a candid one of Jules with Alexander in what must be the dining room of our Melbourne hotel. The headline reads, “Shocking Secret of Formula 1’s Leading Lady! Junkie Brother She Hides in Luxury Loony Bin.”
My heart is pounding hard and my back is suddenly such a tangle of pain that I can barely get a breath. I click rapidly through a slideshow: unflattering paparazzi pics of Jules andme, the front of his treatment facility in Switzerland, old photos of us as kids that CJ must’ve had to dig deep to find online.
I slide into the seat across from Priya, who’s quietly crying. Pulling the laptop around, I start reading the article. It launches with mocking references to celebrities with family skeletons in the closet, sarcastically congratulating me for joining their ranks.
“This is fucking evil,” I growl, shooting a glance at Pri over the laptop screen. “Did you tell Reece and Phaedra yet?”
“Sent them links right after I called you. But, Sage…”
I’m already reading again, now the part about Jules being in rehab and how much the place costs and whether I’ll go bankrupt taking care of him.
“What’s the bit you mentioned about Sandy though?” I ask her distractedly as my eyes track down the page. “There’s this pic from Melbourne, yeah, but that doesn’t mean he wasresponsiblefor it. There are a lot of ways she could’ve found this stuff out, right?”
“Sage,” she repeats, “um, keep reading. Then I need to show you something else.”
Finally I get to the part she must be talking about:
After a decade-long rift originating when Sage nearly died of a ruptured appendix during a family trip to Thailand—an incident that apparently owed to Julian’s negligence (Was he already on drugs then, in his teens? One can’t help but speculate… )—the siblings have buried the hatchet enough for Sage to pay a king’s ransom to dry out her ne’er-do-well brother.
But one couldn’t be called a cynic for suspecting that the most likely reason isdiscretion, not love. Such bad timing to have a self-destructive sibling circling the drain during Sage’s debut year at Emerald! If anything, Julian Sikora’s posh private rehab is an investment in maintaining his famous sister’s carefree image.
My hands are shaking so hard that I lay them flat on the table. My eyes meet Priya’s teary ones. “How would she know this?” I manage in a near whisper. “No one does. I didn’t even tellyou, Pri. I mean, you knew about my appendix obviously, but not Jules’s role in what happened. We didn’t talk about that until Miami, when my mom brought it up.”
She reaches for the laptop and spins it toward herself, clicking something. “So, I googled their names together, just in case, and I found this. But please believe me:I didn’t want to be right.Despite all the things I said, and how suspicious I was of Alexander at the start.”
She turns the computer back toward me. There’s a new tab open, pics on theHELLO!magazine website—a publishing gala in London about a week before the Australian GP. CJ Ardley sits at a table with Alexander, his hand covering hers, eyes full of flirty mischief.
“You didn’t tell me the details of what happened in Thailand, no,” Priya says solemnly. “But did you tellhim?”
I have a strict system I follow the night before a race, and this sure as shit ain’t it. And no matter my training, conditioning,and pro level of control… no mental exercises will help me break up with a guy I’m in love with and then go back to my pre-race routine.
On my way up the steps to the apartment, I coach myself to concentrate on the anger so I can avoid crying. Have you ever noticed that F1 drivers don’t blink a lot? That gets surprisingly fucked up if your eyes are irritated because you’ve had a crying jag. And in a sport where thousandths of a second make the difference, I can’t afford to start at any disadvantage.
When I open the door, I can smell Alexander. I didn’t expect immediate pain, but knowing that breathing in his scent won’t be followed by kisses, arms entangled, his lips on my neck, his voice an inch from my ear… it’s killing me.
He straightens from where he’s leaning into the refrigerator, then swings it shut and makes his way toward me with a smile that fades by a half-dozen steps. He freezes, feet bare on the honey-blond hardwood.
“Salvi, what is it? Has something happened?” When I don’t reply, he continues. “I saw you qualified fourth. Well done, pet.”
Normally this would be when he’d pull me into a hug, but he’s eyeing me cautiously. I’m not silent for the sake of drama. I just can’t get any words out. I thought I had it sussed, what I’d say, but it collapses into scraps of sentences that dash around in my head like unruly children.
He tries again. “Is it your back?”
“No.”
For shit’s sake, one word and already my voice cracks.How will I do this?Not trusting myself with more, I unsling my bagand fish my phone out, then search the article. I set the phone on the kitchen island. Alexander peers at it. I watch his face for the reaction.
He takes in the headline, then murmurs, “What have I done?” before resting one hand over his mouth.
