“About what?About how he published my private life for clicks?”My voice cracked, and I hated it.I hated that I couldn’t even be angry without sounding like I was about to cry.“About how he took things I told him in confidence and turned them into a headline?”
My mother set down her glass with a delicate clink.“Lily, I think you’re overreacting.The article wasn’t ideal, I’ll grant you that, but all PR is good PR.Your name is everywhere right now.This is exactly the kind of visibility we’ve been—”
“We?”I stared at her.“There is nowe.And my name is everywhere because ofHenri.Not him.”
Something flickered across my mother’s face—hurt, maybe, or the performance of it.It was always hard to tell with her.
“I’m trying to help you, Lily.That’s all I’ve ever done.”
“Then stop.”The word came out raw.“Just stop.”
Ollie cleared his throat, and I finally forced myself to look at him.He looked smaller than I remembered.Less polished.The confident media personality who’d sat across from me in restaurants and smiled like we shared secrets—he looked like a man who’d been caught.
“Lily, I know you’re upset—”
“Upset doesn’t even begin to cover it.”
“I understand that.And I want to explain—”
A knock at the door cut him off.I almost ignored it, but something—instinct, maybe—made me cross the room and open it.
Henri stood in the hallway, still in his team gear.He looked like he’d come straight from the circuit.His expression was tense, guarded, but when his eyes found mine, something in them softened.
“Lily, I—” He stopped.Looked past me into the room.Saw Ollie.Saw my mother.He reflexively stepped back.
“Oh,” he said, his voice cooling by several degrees.
“They were just leaving,” I said, stepping aside to let him in.
Henri walked into the suite with the kind of quiet authority that I’d recognized from last season.He didn’t acknowledge Ollie, and he barely glanced at my mother.Instead, Henri just stood near the window with his arms crossed, radiating a calm that I knew—from years of knowing him—was barely held together.
“Lily,” Ollie said again, standing now, his hands raised slightly like he was approaching a spooked animal.“Just let me explain.Please.Five minutes.”
“You don’t deserve five minutes,” I said.
“You’re right.I don’t.”He avoided my gaze.“But I want you to hear it from me before you hear it from someone else.”
I folded my arms.Said nothing.Let the silence do the work.
Ollie scratched the back of his neck.“The podcast was killing me.You have no idea what it’s like.The producers wanted gossip, they wanted drama, they wanted me to turn every conversation into content.I hated it.I hated what I was becoming.”He paused, and for a half-second, something genuine passed over his face.“I want to be a real journalist.An actual writer, not just some guy with a microphone making hot takes for downloads.And when your mum started pushing us together—”
“Excuse me?”My mother’s voice was sharp.
“—I saw an opportunity,” Ollie finished, ignoring her.“You were the story of the season, Lily.A female driver in Formula 1, fighting for points, dealing with threats.It was everything I needed to prove I could write something that mattered.”
The room was very still.
“So, I was your audition piece,” I said flatly.
Ollie’s mouth opened and then closed.He looked at the floor.“That’s not—I didn’t plan it like that.Not at first.”His voice dripped with apology, but I didn’t believe him.Not this time.
“In the article, you mentioned things I knew I hadn’t told you, Ollie.”
He didn’t respond to my unspoken accusation.The thoughts that I’d spent the last several hours piecing together.The article contained details that went beyond what he could have gleaned from my desk.References to notes I hadn’t laid out that morning.Descriptions of deliveries he shouldn’t have known about, unless—
Unless he’d known about them before he ever walked into my room.
“You used me for a story!And even worse, a story that you created!”
