Page 46 of Faster

Chapter Thirty-Three

The Temple of Speed was set in a graceful, wooded area that the Hapsburg and Savoy kings once used for hunting.

The circuit at Monza was still a hunting ground.

However, this weekend, Micaela’s quarry was a win.

She could still win the driver’s championship with her second-place finish between Harrow and Bendetto in the Dutch Grand Prix.

She’d been truly impressed that they’d gotten it together to win and podium, respectively, given all the rumors swirling around them.

The weekend had been so busy she didn’t realize she hadn’t seen Cece after the stories dropped until after the race when she wasn’t with the team to congratulate her husband.

It had been a weird awards ceremony. Her own team was ecstatic she was still in the hunt. She would be the first-ever rookie driver to win the championship in the modern era.

The attention around her success was overwhelming, and she felt as though she was drowning.

Actually, it was worse than drowning. She felt as though she could see all the excited fans and happy sponsor representatives.

She could smile and answer the questions asked by interviewers and commentators—giving all the correct, media-trained answers that showed the proper amount of humility.

The proper amount of self-effacement for a girl driver was not-surprisingly much higher than it would have been for a female rookie sensation.

But everything was dimmer because Liam barely talked to her when he didn’t have to. He didn’t hug her after her podium in the Netherlands. He’d patted her shoulder and smiled for the cameras, and no one who hadn’t lived inside the heat of their relationship could feel the new chill there.

But the loneliness she’d experienced almost her entire life was somehow more acute and cutting in this moment than it had ever been.

She was a few minutes late for the final engineering briefing before practice. From where she sat, she could see Liam. As per the new usual, he wasn’t looking at her. His gaze was intent on the screen in front of him.

He’d always been stern and quiet during these meetings, but she knew he could have a million thoughts running through his head and indicate none of them with a change of expression.

At least not one that anyone but her—and maybe Brent—would notice.

She could tell when someone wasn’t meeting his high expectations when a muscle near his temple twitched.

Brent was paying attention. He was the model driver these days.

Ever since summer break, he seemed to have a renewed love for racing cars.

When they were together, she’d always suspected he only raced because his father expected him to, and at the beginning of the season, he’d seemed intent on destroying his career.

Now, he was like a whole other person. He was out of the running to win the driver’s championship, but he could still place in the top five. It was better than most people expected from a nepo baby driver.

She tried to stay focused on the run plans for the first practice.

Monza was a fast and tricky track, with long straights and fast curves, and she was still just a rookie.

Even though she’d raced here during her junior career, everything changed with the power of her current car.

She needed to absorb all the information flying at her, but she was still behind this wall of water that kept everything but pain out.

Her father would be so angry at her that she was even thinking about a broken relationship at all instead of focusing on the fact that she was teetering on the precipice of greatness.

She should be feeling fresh and excited instead of wistful and depressed.

But telling herself to focus was practically useless. Her racing engineer stood up and asked, “Are you coming?” and she was still sitting there, pretending to think about the run plan and hoping that Liam would look at her, just once.

Liam was looking at her, but not the way she wanted.

He had his brows raised in an expression that could either be worry or mild irritation.

They hadn’t been together long enough for her to discern the difference between those two brow raises.

If she and Brent didn’t have the history they did, she’d ask him if he could tell the difference.

She smiled a little at that, and Liam took that as a sign that all was well. Nothing was well, though, when his gaze turned heated for just a split second. It wasn’t fair of him to give her even a granule of hope that he still wanted her. Not when he’d broken her heart.

Unfortunately, her body didn’t get that memo, and she went liquid between her legs.

Her face heated when she realized one look was enough for her to have hard nipples as she walked out of the briefing.

And there was Paola with a camera, poised outside the briefing room to get pictures for social media.

Micaela’s success seemed to be getting to Paola almost as much as it was affecting Micaela. Paola had four assistants, one of whom was entirely dedicated to capturing social media content for the team, but she was taking these pictures herself right now.

“Can we not?” Micaela crossed her eyes and gave her friend a look she hoped elicited pity.

Paola’s smile faded, and she lowered the camera. She turned and walked next to Micaela as she walked into the garage. “That bad?”

“Excruciating.” Micaela hadn’t been able to hide her sadness from anyone on the boat. Paola had seen it right away, and they’d gone to a café on an island the next afternoon, where Micaela sobbed and poured her heart out.

Even Brent had noticed something was off, but Paola had told him Micaela had her period. He’d scoffed and likely resumed thinking about himself.

Paola put her arm around her shoulders and squeezed. “You’ll get through this. I promise. Just keep winning.”

But winning didn’t feel like victory anymore. It felt like every point ticking up in the standings took her further and further away from the happiness she experienced with Liam.

“We have a little time before practice. Let’s go grab one of those awful green drinks from that sports nutrition sponsor to keep up your energy.”

Micaela hadn’t been eating or drinking enough since summer break, and it probably showed. She’d needed ballasts in the car for the last race to make weight. Liam’s mouth had flattened out when he’d heard that, as though it had displeased him.

Good. He should know how much he hurt her. Her pain right now was entirely his fault.

Still, it was a long, hot hour of practice before lunch, and she needed nutrition.

The hospitality wasn’t far from the garage, but there would be reporters everywhere.

All they were asking about this week was the supposed love triangle or throuple between Bendetto, Harrow, and Cece.

They’d all denied the reports—together and separately—but the motorsports gossip mill had to be fed, otherwise the sport would perish entirely.

At least one could think that, given the rapacious nature of the pseudo-reporters who spread spicy tidbits about drivers and their personal lives.

The reporters actually left her and Paola alone, such was the power of the team’s press officer.

She’d told the entire team that no one, under any circumstances, was to comment on the salacious stories going around about anyone on the grid.

The look in her eyes when she’d said it could have started a fire in a dry environment.

Maybe she’d done the same thing with the press.

It was impressive, regardless.

The only wrinkle in their search for food was Jocelyn Godwinson eating lunch in Panther’s cafeteria.

Generally, members of one team did not go into another team’s facilities.

The rules were a bit laxer with wives and girlfriends, but this woman had no reason to be here.

Besides, Micaela had always found her kind of odious.

By the way Paola’s lip curled, she agreed.

“What are you doing here, Jocelyn?” Paola got right to the point. “Heka drove for Panther a decade ago, when it was named a whole other thing. Your team’s space is way down the paddock.”

It probably wasn’t necessary to point out that Jocelyn’s husband was going to retire from the sport in a few races’ time, but if anyone deserved to be put in their place, it was this woman.

Micaela had known Jocelyn for almost half her life.

Before she’d gotten with Heka, she’d been with the former president of the sport’s governing body—at least until he was disgraced in a cheating scandal involving his favorite team.

He’d received a generous severance package, but that wasn’t enough for Jocelyn.

And she’d dumped him and snagged Heka within weeks.

Micaela had always suspected Jocelyn liked the status and spectacle of being attached to the sport much more than she cared about the actual racing.

Heka leaving the sport had to be tough on her.

Especially given the fact that they had four kids, and it would be harder to just dump him and find a new model this time.

“I just wanted to check in on all of you, to see how you’re doing with all of the rumors. And, you know, to say goodbye.”

Paola narrowed her gaze, and Micaela’s stomach dropped to the floor.

All of the sudden, the smells of the food in the air made her nauseous.

She wanted to walk right out, but she couldn’t do that, because it would be incredibly suspicious.

She made her feet stay on the floor and put everything she had into keeping her game face on.

Even if Jocelyn somehow knew all about Micaela and Liam’s affair, she wouldn’t balk.

She wasn’t the one who was embarrassed about them.

People would assume that Liam had initiated anything inappropriate.

The two of them would know the truth, and she would defend him if it came to that.

She just really hoped it wouldn’t come to that.

“Rumors? We don’t trade in those here.” At least Paola was standing firm. She was looking around the room to see if there were any security personnel to escort her out.

“I’m also a guest of the team. Liam invited me. Personally.” Micaela couldn’t be more shocked if Jocelyn had told them she was carrying the pope’s offspring.

“Well, that’s highly irregular,” Paola said, looking down at a note on her phone. “I didn’t see you on my list of VIPs.”

It was probably a bad idea for Paola to be treating a guest of the team poorly, but Jocelyn was probably fibbing. If anything, Liam had probably waved her into the cafeteria as a polite way of ending a passing conversation. He would do something like that.

Unless she was telling the truth, and she was a guest of the team because Liam was thinking of replacing Micaela with Heka in the car next year.

That would have been the kind of passing statement that a commentator would throw out during a really boring season.

And Micaela didn’t have any reason to believe it other than the fact that Liam refused to look at her.

Maybe it didn’t matter that she was in the running to win the championship.

Liam always cared more about the team game.

If anything, Micaela had sown discord in the team because of her past relationship with Brent.

It had been great for sponsors, though, because they kind of loved when drama in a team kept them in the news.

Every time their logo flashed on a screen—either in the car or on one of the team racing suits—it was more publicity than they’d paid for.

But maybe he’d changed his mind and wanted to go in a more traditional direction.

It didn’t get more traditional than Heka.

The pictures Jocelyn posted on social media of him being adorable with their kids were worth their weight in gold.

As all of these thoughts raced through Micaela’s head, Paola made a few more sort of polite comments to Jocelyn and pulled Micaela toward the food.

“Are you okay?”

Micaela would sound crazy and paranoid if she told Paola what she was really thinking—that Liam was going to replace her. And she didn’t want Jocelyn to overhear her sounding paranoid and crazy and perhaps take some sort of inspiration from her crazy and paranoid ideas.

So, she took a deep breath and said, “Fine. I’m just thinking about today’s run plan.”