“You don’t have to worry about him. I paid him off, put him on a flight, and told him if he ever came near Nico again, the next time he got on an airplane it would be in the cargo hold in a body bag.”
“You did that for Nico?” Celeste asked.
Rocco blinked. “What’s that?”
“Getting rid of Mickey. You did that for Nico?”
“What? No! I didn’t do it for her. I did it for my family and myself.”
“But you said Nico.”
Did he?
“Well, yeah,” he stammered, “her too. If he’s hanging around her, that means he’s hanging around me and my family. She is my teammate.”
At least until the end of this season, Rocco thought, recalling what Carolyn had said to him about returning to Blue Jet Lightning.
Nodding, Celeste peered at him. “I see.”
“What?”
“What what?” Celeste said. “I just meant, I see your point.”
“Then why are you looking at me like that?” he demanded.
“Like what?”
“Like you know something I don’t.”
Celeste shrugged. “Am I?”
When Rocco turned his back, she mumbled, “Maybe because I do.”
“I heard that!” Rocco roared as he stomped into his bedroom and slammed the door behind him.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
NICO
Am I really going to do this?
Nico’s heart was pounding so heavy and with so much force, she felt as though at any moment it would suddenly explode from her chest and land splat on the floor.
Yes, you’re going to do this. You have to. You have to at least try.
They’d done dismally since coming back. In some of the races, neither one of them had even finished because they’d both crashed.
She would say that they were back to where they were when they first began the season. But that wasn’t true. They didn’t glare at each other and fight. They didn’t even look at each other. And they didn’t talk at all. The atmosphere felt heavy as though an ominous dark cloud hovered over the entire team, threatening a storm that never came. Nico had decided that the only way to rid themselves of it was for the storm to break, even if she was the one who had to make it break.
Nico was worried they might not earn a single point in all the remaining races combined, not to mention Rocco blowing his shot at winning the trophy.
If they kept going the way they were, the outcome might be even worse for her. She might be let go. If that happened, she feared no one on the circuit would be willing to take a chance on her again. Her dream of being an F1 driver would be over.
She could not let that happen. Would not let that happen. She had to do everything and anything within her power to stop it from happening.
She glanced at the clock as she paced the length of the room and back, trying to walk off her nerves. It was Barcelona all over again. Only this time, there would be no Casey.
None of this should surprise you. You knew that kind of happiness couldn’t last. He was going to find out eventually. You can’t be with a person—really be with a person—and keep your entire past from them.
