‘Can he?’ I echo incredulously.
‘Nope.’
I shake my head with a laugh. ‘That was a rhetorical question.’
‘I know.’ He grins goofily at me, finally freed from the hordes of guests. ‘I just like finding excuses to keep talking to you.’
Maybe it’s also the champagne lowering my usual defensive fortress, but I can’t help but sneak a smile at that.Excuses to talk to you. The sparkly haze of the drinks slowly lifts as I realize that this is not, in fact, just champagne. This is much more real.
When Darien found me in the courtyard after he returned to the Ring complex, I hadn’t been able to tell him exactly what I felt. It wasn’t that I lacked an answer. I had that answer all along. I was just too scared to admit it.
Now, in the slight chill of the Imola night, as we amble towards the couches on the empty patio outside the hotel, the words slip easily off my tongue. ‘Me, too.’
We find a corner couch and sit side by side. Darien’s smile is soft as he removes his jacket and drapes it across my shoulders, carefully adjusting a falling pleat of my saree so it sits back on my shoulder. I didn’t even realize I was cold till I felt the jacket, cosy as it is. ‘You too, huh?’ he says quietly.
He lets his hand hover near my neck for just a moment, before civilly backing away. And god, do I hate myself for that. I need to be honest with him because I don’t know if I can play keep-away any longer.
For a moment, I fear he can see that stupid look on my face, the stupid look of longing. I look away, but Darien, as if he can read me, gently tips my chin back up so I’m level with him.
His eyes lock onto mine. ‘I’m not as dumb an American as I seem,’ he whispers with a smirk, and I stifle a laugh. ‘I should probably focus more on, like, the Championship, but then I see you, Shantal, and I can’t look away. Because I know we’re both finding excuses, but …’
‘GUYS!’
‘Oh, my …’ Darien turns around with his hands raised. ‘Dude! Henri!’
‘Whoa.’ Our youngest driver’s eyes are comically wide. ‘Sorry, sorry, this is clearly a moment. Kind of. But anyway, we need you guys in there. Cristo’s absolutely plastered, and he’s about to make a toast to you, Darien.’
Darien’s ensuing groan is nothing short of hysterical. He gives me an apologetic smile, holding out a hand that I take as he helps me up. ‘Time to watch drunk Cristo try to make one of his dad speeches,’ he remarks, although his voice has an adorable sort of guilt to it.
We do, in fact, get to witness a drunk-dad speech from Revello’s team principal, but even with that entire debacle occurring right before our eyes, mine can’t focus on anyone but Darien.
Chapter Thirty-Three
Darien
Ishift in my seat next to Peter, who’s grinning and waving to audience members and journalists already. I doubt Peter Albrecht has ever had anything negative published about him. The dude lost his seat in Heidelberg in what I firmly believe was the most unfair, wicked twist of fate in 2022, but not before immediately getting an offer from Revello to join Diana on their team for 2023 and onward. Like I said, it’s impossible to discount the guy. Not to mention he’s already got a Championship under his belt, because of which racing with him as my teammate was like having a caring troublemaker of a big brother. I give Peter brownie points because he could have made this injury an enormous deal, but so far he’s been more down-to-earth about it all than I have myself.
‘Hey, man!’ Peter beams, his brown curls bouncing as he reaches out and daps me up. ‘It’shotthis weekend, huh?’
‘Funny. It’s roasting,’ I correct him with a smirk. ‘Guess we gotta be ready to shred rubber.’
The abnormal heatwave sweeping though Imola is the first matter addressed in the conference, the proverbial ‘small talk’ about the weather that comes before the real stuff. It ends up being me, Peter, Andrea (ex-Revello driver, currently at Jolt Archambeau), and Formula 1 new kid Atticus Demopoulos. Atticus is a baby, only nineteen years old, racing under the Greek flag for Flashpoint, an entry-level team. He’s already nabbed points, though. He was P9 in the last race, driving what is essentially comparable to a well-furnished tractor. Naturally, the interviewer, a familiar torturer of souls named Brian Crowberry, picks on Atticus about this first.
I fight the urge to roll my eyes at Crowberry’s dumb questions and instead search for Shantal in the crowd. She’s still been parsing away at simulation programming, as she is during most of the off-time on the weekends, so I’m not sure she’ll have made it, but it only takes me a minute to find her among the reporters.
Immediately, I’m reminded of last night (and of how deeply I wanted nothing more than to give Henri a good shake). Man, I’d thought I was tripping the entire event, completely off my game, left totally speechless by Shantal, wondering if maybe, just maybe, she felt something, too. I’d have gotten an answer if it weren’t for Cristo Montalto drinkingwaytoo much.
‘And Darien. We wanted to reach out to you for a bit of a progress check, pop in and see how the arm is looking,’ Crowberry finally prods me. Ah, there it is.
‘It’s well enough that I can drive a two-hundred-mile-an-hour car without crashing into a wall,’ I quip with a subtle raise of my eyebrows. I’m not very well media trained. Even when they gave me advisers, I wasn’t much good at listening to their directions. It was a slip of the tongue, I’ll say, when I’m put on the spot.
Crowberry plays it off well with an excessive laugh. ‘We’re sure! We do have to ask, though, Darien. What’s the secret? How did you recover so quickly? Are you concerned with reinjury?’
I want so badly to yell ‘NO COMMENT’ and end the conversation right now.Reinjury?Who asks a person that? Instead, I decide I’m going to be a good kid and answer him (mostly) civilly. ‘Secret’s surrounding yourself with people who promote recovery. Choosing a circle that will encourage you when you’re in pain and you just wanna stop. Maybe keeping away from the kind of folks who try to pull you back when you want to be taking steps forward. Folks who, I don’t know,areconcerned with reinjury.’
I finish off my thought with the world’s fakest smile plastered to my face.
That one gets the barest gulp out of Crowberry, and he moves on as quickly as he’d turned my way. We wrap the conference with another brief discussion on weather and tyre deg, and with that, my hour of misery is over. Mostly.
