Page 21 of Green Flag (StormSprint #2)

Everly

My last interaction with Pedro hadn’t gone well. Though he’d settled down in England because his sister had married, he’d been imprisoned in Spain, where he’d grown up — because that’s where Dad had framed him.

My stomach twisted at the memory.

He’d looked so ill in prison. His mahogany skin was speckled with sweat, his eyes darting across the room, rinsing his hands as if he were drugged up.

The six months he’d been in prison had changed him.

The man I still loved was in there, somewhere underneath the taut muscles — underneath the new, darker edge to him.

When the warm, brown eyes I’d fallen in love with met mine, they had a sharpness that nearly ran a shiver down my spine. His cocky smile was the same, but it felt out of place. I hated every change within him; I hated what this place had done to him. And how long his sentence would be.

Four years. I’d be twenty-four when he came out. He’d be thirty-seven.

“You look good,” he said, scanning me up and down with appreciative eyes.

They looked hungry, like he was trying to undress me.

It was silly, but I’d worn the red underwear set he’d bought me years ago.

The panties had a big red bow on them, which made them impractical for a lot of outfits, but he said I was like a god-given present. His favourite.

“So do you,” I said, but it was a lie.

He looked downtrodden.

Emotionally scarred.

Sat down, there was a silence between us as he smiled softly at me. “Have you been a good girl?”

“Always,” I told him. “I’ve applied for university. To keep me out of trouble.” To keep me from wasting away with worry for him.

His eyes weren’t just cold. They narrowed as anger flashed through them. “Where?”

“London.”

“London?” he snarled. “So you’ll go and fuck all the lads on your course? Spend your weekends out of your mind and—”

“Excuse me?” I snapped, pushing back my chair an inch. It scraped against the wooden floor. His insecurity when it came to men my own age always made him fidgety, but he’d never spoken to me with such disdain. “I haven’t so much as spoken to a man in the time you’ve been in prison.”

I’d promised him loyalty. I’d promised him daily letters. Nude Polaroids. And I’d fucking delivered.

“I didn’t do it,” he pleaded, and his head fell into his hands. “You know it wasn’t me. You know it was him.”

His words were a punch to the gut. I knew it — I’d known it from the moment dad smiled with relief on the tarmac. But it still felt wrong to say aloud.

My dad did it to get Pedro away from me, after our relationship started when I was too young.

It didn’t matter if it was love.

Dad always thought he knew best.

“He wanted me away from you,” he snapped, shaking his head, his elbows almost buckling under the vast movement. “If I’d realised how much… to what extent—”

If the words before had been a punch to the gut, this was a stab. A stab and twist.

“What would have changed?” My voice was on a single, strained breath. Tears were pricking my eyes but I blinked and forced them back down, staring into this man’s desperate and haggard soul.

“I wouldn’t have stayed,” he sighed and ran his hands over his face.

As they stopped at his chin, he finally looked at me again and his eyes widened.

He reached for me across the table. “Oh, Everly, I would have stayed with you. Don’t ever believe I would have left you. I would have left StormSprint.”

“I don’t know if I believe you,” I whispered, my lips hardly moving.

He slammed his fist so hard on the table that I jerked back, my fingers slipping from his other hand and hovering before my chest. Not necessarily in defence.

Instead, waiting for any inclination that I could reach back out.

I wasn’t scared of him; I could never be scared of him.

I glanced at the guard in the meeting room, who had been eyeing all the love-sick couples and the nasty retorts, but my boyfriend’s reaction was the only one loud enough to draw everyone’s attention.

For silence to encompass the visitation room.

The guard stepped forward, but I shook my head.

Pedro was oblivious to all of this happening around him, glaring at the table between us. “I’m here for you. I’m in this shithole for you. Because I love you. Because I wanted to be with you. You don’t know how much I gave up to be with you. And you’re still living with him.”

My swallow was full of acid. His lip curled in disgust as he leaned back in his chair, pulling away from me again. I knew exactly what he’d given up. Our age difference bulged eyes out of turned heads, was the topic of hushed whispers, and made my father, his former friend and boss, despise him.

But he wasn’t the only one to sacrifice things in the name of our love.

I hadn’t gone to university. I had followed the StormSprint races whenever he’d let me, crossing the world and losing multiple opportunities.

And I did it all with support. I had a smile on my face, while slowly realising I was losing every ambition I had for his.

“You’ve got to prove I’m innocent. There’s proof out there — it’s not like he would have stopped because I went down for it, would he? Find proof.”

“But I… I can’t.” I was still banned from the sport. It went so far as to other motorsport championships.

I could hardly look at my father, let alone interrogate him. That was partly why I was going to university.

I listened to Pedro’s rambled words — every aside he made, mutter under his breath, how he refused to say my father’s name — and I could feel my posture straightening, my anger growing and, mostly, the tight feeling in my chest melting into sympathy.

He spoke so quickly, desperately, like he needed to will me into helping.

He said there was proof, but never said where. He didn’t offer names. Just kept repeating, ‘It’s your dad. It’s your dad’s fault.’

My father was not a good man.

But I thought he wanted me to be happy. When I was younger with Pedro, I understood why he hated him, but when I was an adult, and I still loved him—albeit, in secret—I thought he’d warm to the idea of him coming round for Christmas, not ship him to a jail cell instead.

The other visitors started to leave when the guards told us time was up, but Pedro reached across the table, eyes wide. “Please trust me.”

“I do,” I said and I meant it. Because if I couldn’t trust him, who could I trust?

I stood and sniffed as the tears threatened to fall.

“I love you, Everly.”

But I couldn’t say it back. I nodded.

“Yo, Pedz, she the one?” one of the other prisoners called over to us.

I started to leave, approaching those trying to filter out through the door. I’d been petrified of coming to the prison; I didn’t need to interact with any actual criminals.

“You got that little red number on?” he shouted. “With the bow?” He wolf-whistled. “Or the cute little cotton ones from when you were younger?”

Pedro snarled at him in Spanish. Over my shoulder, he’d become a different man. Angry and aggressive, trying to throw himself over the table at the guy whom I didn’t even look at.

But his words weren’t shocked. Weren’t questioning.

“Why would you fucking say that to her? You’ll never get another look—”

He’d shown him.

The tears fell and Pedro could do nothing but stare at the floor in shame, restrained by the guard.

And I didn’t know if what I had for him had been love or if my love wasn’t as strong as I’d once believed. But it wasn’t strong enough to withstand a truth like that.