Page 18 of Faster

Chapter Eleven

Something was off with Cece. She might think Ethan didn’t pay attention to her moods, but she would be wrong.

Growing up how he had, he’d been required to take care with everyone in his house.

He had to know when his mother had gotten into the fifty-year-old scotch, when his grandmother’s doctor had dropped off a new batch of pills, and when his father had a new girl in the office.

The memory of the way the rooms of the dusty, old manor where generations of his family had pickled their livers and ruined their souls changed when his father had been home and on one of his tirades still tightened his gut to this day.

The fact that he’d taken after his philandering father after years of trying not to made him a bit sick.

Even though the fresh lake air around the Albert Park Circuit was eons away from the English countryside, he felt a similar sensation when Cece kissed his cheek for the cameras before qualifying.

The feeling that she was pulling even further away from him had been growing all day, but he’d confirmed it when she looked at Luca.

Maybe it wasn’t just the promise of a healthy divorce settlement that kept her with Ethan. Maybe she was staying with him out of a desire for revenge? If that was the case, there would be no better revenge than to sleep with his best friend.

The idea of Cece with Luca had crossed his mind under much more pleasant circumstances before. There was only so much debauchery you could engage in with one other person. With two, there were more options.

It had always remained clear that they wouldn’t have a threesome with Cece. But Ethan had thought about it. Sometimes when he’d been with his wife, he’d craved it. And it wasn’t as though there hadn’t been looks between the two of them at the very beginning—hell, the very first night.

When Cece left him, it wouldn’t be a huge surprise if she went with Luca. The shocking part to him was that he wouldn’t be that pissed off about them being together. He’d be more hurt that he couldn’t be with them both.

But he was the one who’d cheated on her, and he still didn’t think there was a way to fix that. Had he even really tried?

Before he left her in the back of the garage, he leaned close. “When this session is over, let’s have dinner.”

For a second, he thought she would say no. He couldn’t read her for a split second, and he wasn’t sure if he’d played his hand right. He hated having to be this careful with what he said and how he operated around his wife. “Sure.”

He smiled at her, and that made her even more nervous. She pulled away and made a show of putting on her headphones. The smile she returned was wary.

He wasn’t sure if it was jealousy that made him need to earn his wife back, and he didn’t think it really mattered. But, if the competition was Luca, he was going to win.

Nothing good could come from Ethan wanting to talk.

He’d seen her looking at Luca. She knew she had to stay away from her husband’s teammate, but she couldn’t train her gaze to not find his long, lean body as he pulled his race suit over his fireproofs.

His profile caught her eye every time. He had a strong face.

As she’d kissed her husband’s cheek, she’d wanted to be back in that hotel room with Luca.

And Ethan had noticed. He may have thought he had the whole careless aristocrat thing down, but that just meant he’d grown up in a nest of vipers and learned to be attuned to predators for his own survival.

And now he wanted to talk. How much did he know? Had someone seen her and Luca together that day? Did someone catch them leaving his room a few minutes apart? Was someone watching the hotel security tapes?

She didn’t know, but she was sure they couldn’t do that again. Not during a race weekend with everyone associated with the sport—journalists included—crawling all over the same few miles of Melbourne.

Cece sniffed and leaned on the barrier between the back of the garage where family watched the sessions and the area where mechanics and engineers worked on the cars.

She adjusted the headset she wore to dampen the ambient noise.

Maybe she’d still smelled like Luca. Ethan would know that smell, maybe?

She should have showered after returning to her hotel room, but there hadn’t been time.

And she felt cleaner with Luca all over her, for some reason. With Luca, she wasn’t a money-grubbing soon-to-be-ex-wife. She was wanted and desired. And she hadn’t felt really desired by Ethan for a long time before she’d caught him cheating.

Both Lupo drivers were expected to do well in this qualifying session. It was way too early to pick winners for the season yet; teams were still developing their cars. Panther Motors was bringing a new package to the next race in Japan, which would allegedly blow everyone else out of the water.

But Ethan and Luca were currently the first and third on points, and the team wanted them to be first and second. The mood between the two sides of the garage was frosty, which was acceptable as long as the drivers didn’t crash into one another.

As soon as the green light went on at the end of the pit lane, Ethan pulled out, followed a few seconds later by Luca. They wanted to bank a lap before the other cars, even though they would have a better chance for a faster time once the track rubbered in.

Each took a slow lap to warm their tires, and then Ethan tarted his fast lap. She usually tuned into his radio, but not today. She didn’t want to listen to her husband’s calculated, almost cold tone when he talked to his race engineer.

At Bahrain, she’d noticed he’d spoken to her that way. That’s the way it had been for months. Maybe that was why she’d agreed to have dinner with him after qualifying? There’d been a hint of warmth in the way he’d asked.

He used to be so gentle with her. He’d checked in with her all the time. But somewhere along the line, his care for her had disappeared. She’d become nothing more than an accessory he carried around the world with him.

Ethan’s fast lap wasn’t anything to write home about. He’d had some understeer into the last turn and lost a few hundredths of a second. He would have to come in and get fresh boots to do another lap.

Luca, on the other hand, was in first by a whole second and a half after all of the drivers finished their bank laps. He’d probably keep the same tires for his second lap in Q1, which would give him extra later in the session.

For the first time this season, Cece didn’t know who she wanted to win. She’d had to cheer for her husband for years, but she’d actively wanted him to lose this season. Except for the part where his winning might make her wealthy.

Ethan finished that session P5, and Luca kept his P1 until the end. In the second qualifying session, Luca hit traffic during his fast lap, and their places were reversed going into the final ten minutes of qualifying.

In the end, Ethan finished first and Luca second. And Cece had longer to wait before the sword dropped at dinner.