Page 11 of Faster
Chapter Six
Cameras clicked and flashes went off as Ethan sat on the couch at the front of the media room.
Looking over at Brent Sullivan sitting on the other end, he sighed.
The guy looked about as rough as he felt.
He’d barely slept since seeing Luca Bendetto at the car launch.
Hell, he’d barely slept since cheating on his wife on New Year’s Eve.
The constant threat of Cece slitting his throat in the middle of the night competed with thoughts about how he’d fucked up the only real friendship—the only real intimate relationship—he’d ever had before Cece in keeping him up at night.
That he’d felt great about. Micaela Cartwright was a racing driver, through and through.
He wasn’t foolish enough to believe that she would be easier to beat, even with all of his experience.
Her father had been a world champion, and he’d trained her from birth to be an assassin on the track.
She was going to give every driver on the grid a run for their money.
He was glad to see that her team had put her in the pen for the first media day.
Of course, everything she said today would end up broadcast all over the world.
But she could answer questions to individuals, instead of sitting under blinding lights and being interrogated like she was a suspect or something.
Interrogation made him think of his wife, and a pit formed in the middle of his chest where his warm feelings for her used to be.
She’d barely spoken to him since the New Year.
He’d woken up alone and naked that morning, feeling like he’d been hit by a train.
There’d been nothing but a huge blank spot from the night before.
And then—after she walked in and hated him—pieces started coming back.
He remembered kissing her before people had shown up for the party. The way she’d trailed her fingers across his cheek and told him that he’d missed a spot shaving. That was the last time he’d gotten close enough to smell her.
Then, a bunch of friends he hadn’t seen since secondary school brought some DJ from Ibiza to the party.
There was champagne, and then he thought he did a line of coke—one line wouldn’t hurt.
And all the memories turned into flashes of him destroying his life as though he wasn’t even the one in control of his body.
His wife was no longer in love with him. She could barely look at him as she passed the spare bedroom where she’d moved all of his things. She’d flown commercial to Bahrain last week for the gala he’d begged her to attend, and she wasn’t showing back up at the track until tomorrow.
Their marriage hadn’t been perfect before New Year’s Eve.
He’d been able to feel her pulling away from him as she got more involved in charity and influencing.
It wasn’t fair for him to expect her to sit around and wait for him whenever he could give her a few tidbits of time, but that’s what he’d wanted.
He didn’t want her to be in London while he was at the car launch. He wanted her at the track with him.
His assistant had informed him that she’d booked two rooms for them. Cece had told him he needed his sleep, and she was too restless these days.
Ethan knew what was going to happen. She would stay with him until summer break to secure her future—maybe that’s all she’d ever cared about—but she would leave him.
He knew she would never be able to forgive him for cheating.
But he didn’t want to accept it. He loved his wife.
He’d given up his best friend—and sometimes more—because he couldn’t stand the idea of someone else touching her.
And he knew that she loved him too. Although he might have been the one to pursue her, she’d shown him how much she loved him every day since they’d met. Sometimes, he felt like she was the only person in his life who truly understood him. Who saw him.
The only other person who’d given him that feeling of—almost safety, but way more than that—wasn’t in his life anymore because of Cece. Ethan was so greedy when it came to her. He could remember the night he’d spotted her in that club like it happened last night.
She’d woven her way through the crowd to the VIP area where he had a table with Luca. But she hadn’t approached their table. They weren’t in her section.
He still wasn’t sure why he’d decided to approach her. Sure, she had the best ass he’d ever seen, and he’d wanted to run his fingers through her long, curly hair. But he’d seen a lot of fine asses in his lifetime.
It was probably the way she’d looked at him and rolled her eyes. She wasn’t impressed with him, and that just made him want to impress her. It made him want her.
He’d never had to put too much energy into pursuing a woman before. He was good-looking, quick, and his family had loads of money. He was pretty sure that socialites were given his dossier every time he was scheduled to show up at a party.
Years later, he realized that this level of success and privilege had turned him into an asshole—truly, almost insufferable.
But Cece had suffered the displeasure of his company for a drink.
Probably because she’d enjoyed giving him a hard time.
And getting teased and cajoled wasn’t something he’d ever experienced before.
Not even at boarding school—the aggression there was always more serious and violent.
Cece was a breath of fresh air. She was someone that he hadn’t known he’d needed until she was in his life.
And he fought to keep her there. He immediately noticed how Bendetto looked at her, and something made him territorial over this particular woman.
He couldn’t share her, like he had shared with his best friend before.
He didn’t even tell her he and his best friend had shared women and sometimes hooked up when they were alone. He wasn’t sure if he was ashamed of his sexuality or afraid that he’d lose her if Bendetto got anywhere near her.
It had been fine when they’d all been friends. It had even been okay when he’d had Cece all to himself. But he’d lost her, and he wasn’t fine anymore.
“Ethan, you’ve been asked this question a million times—”
The commentators always started the same way. Then why are you asking me again?
“Can you give us any insight into how you and Luca Bendetto are working together now that you’re reunited on the same team?”
Why did they always have to make it sound like they were getting the band back together, and that was a good thing? It was a terrible decision that he was half certain the team had made out of a desire for ratings that would come from the drama.
“Although, as you know, a driver’s teammate is their biggest competitor, Luca and I have worked together before.
We know how to behave like professionals.
” That was the answer his years of media training taught him to give.
He sat back on the couch and held the microphone loosely in one hand, feigning a casual vibe that he didn’t feel.
He wanted to break the microphone in half and scream.
He was so glad that he could get in the car tomorrow.
The team had given some of his test time to the new reserve driver, but he craved the focus he felt as soon as he strapped on the helmet.
It was only a practice session, but it would be an hour without having to talk to the press or avoid the daggered glares from his wife.
Soon, someone was going to notice that something was off between the two of them.
Since they’d started dating, and he’d convinced her to travel with him, they’d always held hands when entering the paddock every day.
Today, he walked into the paddock alone, and he suspected that Cece wouldn’t be touching him anytime soon. Not even to keep up appearances.
He got through the rest of the press conference without growling at any of the reporters, and he put on a good face to sign autographs and take pictures with fans in the paddock—until someone asked him where Cece was.
He wasn’t upset that she got almost as much attention as he did.
She had the kind of beauty that radiated from the inside out.
It made people wonder—including him—if she could possibly be as kind and funny as she seemed on TV.
When they’d met, she’d been living an ordinary life.
She had a job that was never going to make her rich and famous, but everyone she worked with loved her.
The short time he’d spent in her world had been a lesson in humility.
He hadn’t been the world-famous race car driver.
He’d been the guy who was going to take everyone’s favorite person away.
The idea that he was going to do that again, in public this time, made his chest ache. Sweat poured down the back of his neck, and he suspected his team kit would have sweat marks all over it by the time he got back to his room in the team motor home—the room right next to Luca.
Thinking about having to be in close proximity to his former best friend and occasional lover—while everything in his marriage was falling apart—was almost too much. He couldn’t afford to lose focus, couldn’t afford to let the mask slip. And yet, he wasn’t sure how to stop it.
Once he got to the private team area, someplace air-conditioned, without press and fans taking a hundred pictures of him a second, he took a deep breath. He’d approach it like he did a race—sector by sector.
The first thing he’d try to solve would be the hardest—his marriage.
Cece stared at the door that joined her hotel suite to her husband’s. She hadn’t locked it, even though she’d promised herself she would. Her eyes were always irritated and raw from all the crying she’d done over the past two months.