Page 11

ELEVEN

LUCAS

As the Barcelona sun sets over the beach, casting a warm, golden glow across the sand, the breeze carries the salty scent of the Mediterranean Sea onto the deck. The city lights twinkle in the distance, blending with the stars now appearing in the darkening sky. I love the beach. Always have and always will. When I was a kid, my family would spend summer weekends at Martha’s Vineyard, and I’d spend every spare moment in the water. The ebb and flow of the waves have a unique way of relaxing my brain. And with a cutthroat, high-pressure job like mine, I’ll take all the relaxation I can get.

“What do you think?” Mitchell asks, reminding me that I’m here to socialize. “Would you do it?”

“Definitely,” I reply, although I have no clue what the hell I’m agreeing to.

Mitchell purses his lips and nods. “So you’d fuck a goat in public for a million dollars?”

There’s no point denying I wasn’t paying a lick of attention, so I shoot him a guilty smile.

My manager, decked out in a black tux, simply chuckles and shakes his head. “I know it’s been a long day, but you only have to schmooze for an hour or two more before you can hit the hay.”

I grin at those phrases. The first time Theo and Blake heard me say “schmooze” and “hit the hay,” they stared at me like they were concerned I was having a stroke. Blake asked if “schmooze” was the way we say “booze” in Boston, and Theo assumed that working with hay was typical for Americans, since the country has so much farmland. In all fairness, I had no idea what the hell Blake meant when he said “it’s brass monkeys out,” (it’s cold) or when Theo told me “you’ll be apples” (you’ll be okay). That’s the fun of having friends from other countries.

I salute Mitchell with one hand while taking a sip of my drink with the other. Today started with a five-a.m. workout and ended with a practice that was delayed by two hours, thanks to debris on the track. If this party wasn’t taking place at our hotel, there’s no way in hell I would’ve attended.

“Adam from Nike is headed this way,” Mitchell says, swirling the liquid in his glass. “You met him briefly at the Bahrain Grand Prix and bonded over football.”

I hum. “American or European football?”

He hits me with a look that would have anyone else hiding under the nearest surface. “European. Obviously.”

“Just checking,” I say, plastering on a smile. “He’s the global head of partnerships, right?”

“Good to know you listen sometimes.” Beside me, he lifts his hand in greeting and calls out, “Adam, my man. How the hell are you?”

“You sound like Ari Gold from Entourage .” I straighten my shoulders and dig deep for that smile again.

Forty-five minutes later, I’m burned out and in desperate need of a new drink. Spotting Ella and Blake at a table by the bar, I excuse myself from the conversation and make my way over .

“Hey, Lucas.” Ella hits me with a warm smile. “Do you want my seat? I’m headed back to our hotel.”

“To hit the hay?” I ask her, although my grin is at Blake’s expense.

“I have a FaceTime date with my friends at home, plus we can’t leave Champ unsupervised for too long,” she explains. “But then I’m definitely hitting the hay.”

Blake mutters something along the lines of “bloody Americans and their stupid sayings,” which has Ella and I exchanging an amused look. It’s nice having another American around to say “trash” instead of “rubbish” and “sneakers” instead of “trainers.” Though Ella actually says “gym shoes,” but that’s because she’s from the Midwest. I don’t hold it against her.

Blake kisses Ella goodbye, making her promise to text the moment she’s in her Uber and then back in their room.

I slip into the seat beside him, and I’m ordering an old-fashioned from a passing waiter when Cooper approaches us. I sneak a glance at Blake to gauge his mood, noting that he seems relatively calm. Ella interviewed Cooper last Saturday when we had an off weekend, so with any luck, he and Blake called a truce. Getting Blake to give someone new a chance is hit or miss, but if they get Ella’s approval, he tends to warm up a little more easily.

“Hey, Coop,” I greet the Scot.

He’s dressed like a coastal Abercrombie model in a linen suit.

“Coop?” Blake mouths, rolling his eyes. Ah. They aren’t besties yet. Noted. At least he hasn’t told him to fuck off.

Eyeing Blake and apparently deciding it’s safe to join, Cooper slides into the one stool left at the table. “Hullo, fellas. How’s your night going?”

Cooper’s easy to get along with. He’s in his mid-twenties, but his maturity far surpasses his age, and he’s ambitious in a way that doesn’t make me internally cringe. We quickly fall into conversation about this afternoon’s practice and the recent FC Barcelona win, the dynamic comfortable. That is until he asks about Charlotte.

I lift my beer to my lips and take a long swig. “What about her?”

“I see her around the paddock sometimes but wasn’t sure what her deal was,” he says while peeling the label off his beer bottle. “It’s kind of hard to meet someone when you’re traveling a lot, so…”

Hell fucking no . In a panic and not wanting Blake to speak up before I can, I blurt out the first thought that comes to mind. “She’s in a relationship.”

Blake chokes on his drink, and when he collects himself, he stares at the side of my head with wide-eyed censure. His disapproval barrels into me as I angle my body toward Cooper.

“I can definitely put out some feelers for you, though. With other women. Not Charlotte, since she’s, you know, taken and all.”

“That’d be great,” he says, wearing a genuine grin that makes me feel like an absolute asshole for lying, but whatever. He may be a good guy, but he’s not good enough for Charlotte.

Blake waits until Cooper’s gone back to the party before fixing me with an accusatory look. He doesn’t say a damn word, just stares at me until I’m squirming in my seat.

“Stop looking at me like that.”

“Like what?” he challenges, his jaw tight.

My chest constricts. “I’m too tired to play this game. Say what you want to say and be done with it.”

With a slow sip of his drink, he considers me, and even after he sets the glass down, he’s silent. Uncomfortable, I fist my hands on the table, listening to the waves gently lap at the shore in hopes that it will soothe me.

Finally, Blake breaks the silence, his tone more serious. “Be careful, mate,” he says. “That’s all. ”

I dip my chin, the gesture noncommittal. The conversation ends there, diverting to lighter topics. I’m finishing up my drink when a pineapple cocktail appears in front of us and is thrust into Blake’s hand. And I don’t mean a cocktail that is simply pineapple flavored. No, this drink comes in a hollowed-out pineapple with a pink umbrella sticking out of it.

“Hold my drink, mate?” Theo phrases it as a question, but without waiting for Blake to answer, he dashes off.

Everyone else at the party is drinking beer, whiskey, sangria, or chilled wine, so I have no idea where Theo got a drink that looks like it belongs at an all-inclusive resort in Mexico. But I learned a long time ago not to question the things he does.

Blake glares at the drink like it’s personally offended him.

“You too scared to try it?” I tease, nodding at the festive drink.

He takes the jest as a challenge—of course he does—and sips from the straw. Instantly, his face blanches, and he takes a dramatic sip of water. “Christ, I don’t know how Walker enjoys this crap. It’s pure sugar.”

I chuckle. “I think that’s the idea.”

We stick to balanced diets for the most part, but we all have our weaknesses. Blake discovered Girl Scout cookies and goes through a box or two of Thin Mints every week, and I’m a straight-up slut for chicken wings. Theo? He loves fruity, sugary drinks.

After another twenty minutes or so, Blake calls it a night. He stayed this long because, according to him, he wanted to give her some time to catch up with her friends. In reality, Ella’s friends overwhelm the hell out of him.

Not wanting to sit at a table alone, I head to the beach. I pick up Theo’s lonesome pineapple cocktail, set to find a passing server to hand it to, because knowing him, he forgot he handed it off to us. But first, I take a small sip. I’m expecting a flavor similar to a Sour Patch Kid, so when the sweetness of the coconut rum and tartness of the pineapple hit my tongue, it startles me. The flavors balance one another out well and make for one hell of a good drink. Maybe Theo’s on to something with these things.

Outside, with the cocktail in hand, I slip off my shoes and roll up the hem of my pants, then wander to the water’s edge. My bare feet sink into the cool, damp sand with each step I take, and the occasional splash of water laps at my feet, cooling me down. I’ve been wandering for a few minutes when a familiar unabashed laugh tinkles in the night air.

It only takes a moment to spot the lone silhouette sitting in the sand, talking animatedly into a phone screen. Like a Pavlov-trained dog, I can’t help but smile. Then my feet are moving in her direction.

At my approach, she squints against the glare from her phone, and almost instantly, her features soften.

“Hey, you,” she calls out.

“You?” a familiar voice asks. “Who’s you?”

Charlotte turns back to her phone. “Lucas.”

“Lucas is there?”

She lifts a brow, smiling at me. “Mm-hmm. If I had to guess, he’s stalking me again.”

“How romantic,” Willow says, a note of wistfulness in her voice.

With her lips pressed together, she shoots me an “I told you so” look. Apparently, she wasn’t kidding about Willow’s feelings on stalking. But hey, to each their own.

I squat, knees cracking, and settle in next to her, then twist my pineapple drink back and forth in the sand so it stays upright. Tilting close so that my face appears in the small square in the corner of her screen, I greet Charlotte’s best friend. “What’s up, Willow?”

“Just taking a lunch break and hiding out from the twenty gremlins who constantly make me question why I became a primary school teacher,” Willow answers, stabbing her fork into her salad. She’s sitting behind a desk, the wall behind her decorated with colorful posters. Australia’s thirteen hours behind Brazil, making it late morning in Melbourne. “Do you know how hard it is to pull an eraser out of a child’s nose? That’s rhetorical, by the way. It’s very bloody difficult.”

Amusement winds through me. “Your day sounds more eventful than mine.”

Charlotte huffs a sardonic laugh. “So says the guy with the second-fastest lap time at today’s practice.”

I hold back a grin and tamp down on the pleasure building in my chest. She wasn’t at practice today, so she must have been keeping tabs. Willow opens her mouth, but before she speaks again, she holds up a finger and mutes herself. She briefly talks with someone offscreen, then she’s back, telling us she has to go separate two kids who are fighting over something one of their imaginary friends did. Then, with a wave, she’s gone.

“So why were you taking a long, romantic walk on the beach by yourself?” Charlotte asks as she locks her phone screen.

“I could ask you the same thing.” I plant my hands in the sand behind me and stretch my legs out. “But since you asked, I wanted to get some fresh air before heading in for the night.”

Resting her chin on her shoulder, she gives me a sweet smile. “Party wasn’t fun?”

I let out a noncommittal grunt. “It was fine. What’d you end up doing today?”

In one long sentence, she tells me about researching the top things to do in Barcelona, then about her trips to the Sagrada Familia and the Picasso Museum. From there, she shopped and ate her way through Las Ramblas. In usual Charlotte style, she took a few detours. While I was in a team meeting about tire strategy, she was at Granja La Pallaresa, indulging in churros dipped in a thick, dark, hot chocolate with freshly whipped cream. When I was in my third media interview of the day, being asked the same questions worded in twenty different ways, she was wandering through a maze designed to mimic the Greek myth of Theseus destroying the Minotaur to get to Ariadne in the Parc del Laberint d’Horta. And when I was schmoozing my way through a team dinner before this party? She was clapping and cheering at one of Barcelona’s famous flamenco shows.

She’s appalled when I admit I’ve never seen a flamenco show. “That’s blasphemy. You can’t come to Barcelona and not experience the beauty of one of their time-honored traditions. It’s so much more than just dancing and singing. It’s… honestly, it’s art.”

“I’m not against going to a show,” I say, feeling a little defensive. “I just don’t appreciate dancing like you do.”

Charlotte scoffs. “That’s a bald-faced lie if I’ve ever heard one.”

I raise my hands as if that’ll fend off her accusation, biting back a grin. “No, it’s not.”

“If you’ve been to a strip club, you’re a fan of dancing,” she says, her expression and tone far too serious to accompany those words.

There’s no holding back now. I bark out a laugh that doesn’t stop until I’m grabbing at my sides. She’s got me there. I’ve been to my share fair of strip clubs around the world, so yeah, I guess one could say I appreciate a good dance.

Playfully, she smacks me in the arm as I’m wiping a tear from my eye. “It’s not funny. Do you know how much work and practice go into those pole routines? A lot.”

I waggle my eyebrows. “You speaking from experience?”

She nods, surprising the hell out of me and making my stomach plummet straight into the sand. I don’t judge anyone for how they make their livelihood, but if I don’t like the idea of Charlotte flirting with Cooper, I sure as fuck don’t like the idea of her taking off her clothes for strangers.

“What do you mean?”

“Calm down, you drongo.” She rolls her eyes. I’m certain drongo is an Australian insult of some sort, but I’m too impatient for her explanation to care.

“Willow and I took a pole dancing class last year at this place called Stiletto Siren. It was for beginners, so we only learned basic spins, a bit of choreography and some floor moves. I was horrid, considering I have the core strength of a noodle, but we had a blast. After the first few times I used the pole, I had more bruises than the Toybreaker did the other night. I kept falling flat on my arse.”

“Oh.”

Great job articulating, Lucas. A-fucking-plus . My mind’s too busy imagining Charlotte swinging around a pole in sky-high red-bottom heels and nothing else that I can’t form a single coherent sentence.

Her eyes dance with humor at my single-syllable response. “Stripping isn’t in my future. Not when I bruise like a peach. But I do have a hell of a lot of respect for women who do it. Willow and I went to the strip club a lot last year to support our instructor. If you’re looking for a recommendation, I highly suggest the Leggy Lady. Great dancers and even better sweet potato fries.”

“I don’t even know what to make of that.” I drop my head forward and give it a shake. “Thought I knew everything about you, Roo, but you’re full of surprises.”

She cocks a brow. “There are plenty of details you don’t know about me.”

“Name one,” I challenge, pulling my knees up and resting my forearms on them. “And keep in mind that I know your favorite non-domesticated animal is a Pallas cat and that you’re wildly good at untangling necklaces. Oh, and you can recite every word of Elf and The Devil Wears Prada .”

There must be more rum than pineapple juice in this cocktail. Why the hell else would I admit to knowing all that?

Charlotte narrows her eyes at me, looking more annoyed than impressed by my wealth of knowledge. “Those are entry-level facts,” she says. “The same as me knowing that you hate tomatoes, but love pizza and spaghetti sauce. That you enjoy putting together Ikea furniture and get emotional during every single Olympic ceremony.”

A bolt of pleasure courses through me. Damn. While she tilts her head and hums like she’s running through a mental Rolodex of facts about me, or maybe about herself, I revel in the knowledge that she knows so many of my quirks.

Digging her toes into the sand, she says, “There’s one detail about me that no one knows, so you can’t tell anyone. Not even Theo.”

Heart rate picking up, I nod. Maybe I should feel guilty for so easily agreeing to keep a secret from Theo, but everyone’s entitled to their own shit. Unless it’s something that puts her in harm’s way, I can respect that.

Charlotte takes a deep breath, her shoulders and chest rising, then slowly exhales. “I got into FIT.”

Like I’ve been smacked in the face, I jerk back, eyes wide. “The Fashion Institute of Technology?”

What the hell else would it stand for? Fun Imagination Trust? Fuck, I’m Tropical?

“The one and only,” she confirms, wearing a small, amused smile. “I was planning on living my best Carrie Bradshaw life.”

“I didn’t even know you applied there.”

“Exactly,” she says, nudging me with her elbow. “You asked me to tell you something no one else knew.”

“Touché. Why’d you decide not to go?”

“It’s complicated,” she answers with a defeated sigh .

“More or less complicated than explaining all the rules and regulations to someone who thinks F1 is the same as NASCAR?”

“More,” she admits, although my question does ease the tension in her shoulders a bit. “Long story short, I found out I was accepted the week after my dad passed.”

“Shit.” I drop my head between my arms, heart aching for her.

“That about sums it up,” she says with a laugh. “My mum was really struggling, and I know it wasn’t my burden to take on—and she would kill me if she knew why I stayed—but leaving Melbourne wasn’t an option after that.”

Focus averted, she scoops up a pile of sand and lets the grains slip through her fingers. “I was okay with it. I always thought the details would work themselves out eventually. Probably depended on that mindset a little more than I should’ve, considering I still haven’t figured fuck all out.”

I angle closer and nudge my shoulder against hers. “My brother Finn majored in psychology and now works in finance. And Jesse? He majored in music theory and now works for a tech start-up. You can work in fashion without having the degree.”

Pulling her knees to her chest, she wraps her arms around them. “I wouldn’t even know where to start.” She swallows audibly and clears her throat. “Enough about me. You should tell me something about you that no one else knows. Like… do you have any secret tattoos?”

I scratch at my cheek as I consider the question. Sure, I have tattoos that even my friends probably haven’t seen, but that’s only because I don’t announce every new piece of ink. For a moment, I mentally shuffle through my choices. I mean to tell her that I failed my drivers’ test the first time around because I couldn’t parallel park, which is absolutely mortifying, but what comes out instead is “My brother started dating my ex after we broke up.”

My heart lurches as the admission registers. What the fuck? Yeah, there is absolutely too much rum in this damn drink. There’s no way I’d admit that willingly otherwise.

Charlotte’s hair brushes against my shoulder as she whips her head in my direction, her features etched with pure horror. “You’re lying.”

I huff out a breath, ignoring the slice of pain that hits me. “I wish I was.”

“Holy shit,” she says, shaking her head. “That’s so unbelievably fucked up. If I were you, I don’t think I could ever forgive him, but I also hold grudges like it’s an Olympic sport. Ingrid Nevins? She pressed the close doors button on the elevator, even though I was only a few feet away, and I ended up being late for class because I had to sprint up seven flights of stairs instead. The professor wouldn’t let me take the final exam because of my tardiness, and I failed the course. Do I still curse her name? Absolutely. And Jamie Dieter claims he got the high score on Pac-Man , but I know he had his older brother rig the game so he could manually enter his name above mine. Wanker.”

I snort, thankful for the way her babbling eases the tension gripping me. “Yeah, I can’t see myself forgiving and forgetting any time soon.”

“Nor should you,” she says with a resolute nod. “Don’t worry, though. Your secrets are safe with me.”

I freeze, confused. Secrets ? Plural ?

She nods at the pineapple drink I’ve mindlessly picked up again. “It’s okay to admit that you like drinks other than beer and whiskey. Enjoying fruity cocktails is nothing to be ashamed of. Really.”

Standing, I wipe the sand off my pants, yank the straw and umbrella from the drink, and throw the now-empty pineapple like I’m Travis Kelce. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Mm-hmm,” she says, her eyes crinkling as she laughs. The sound brings me more peace than the waves lapping at the beach ever have. Maybe it’s the drink talking, but it’s taking the last strands of my sobriety to not kiss the fuck out of her. Forget pineapple drinks; I’m ready for a taste of something much sweeter. And that would be a secret just between us.