Page 37 of Green Flag (StormSprint #2)

Everly

Christmas Eve used to be spent with my Mum, Dad and Twinkle, our little bichon frise. I’d spend the morning with Mum down at the stables, then we’d come home to cook a dinner of fish and vegetables for Dad. He rarely made it home before Christmas Eve, with the last races keeping him in America.

Mum didn’t mind that so much when I was little, but when it came to my teenage years, she started fighting for family time.

The two years between him leaving us for my nanny and her relapse were the worst. I never knew what to do with myself. When I had no choice but to spend Christmas with my dad and his new family, I started to resent the holiday.

Last year, I spent it in Thailand.

The year before, New York.

Always with people I was friendly with, but not truly friends.

StormSprint made me realise: I didn’t really have friends before Arabella and Luca.

Other than my sister.

But, being eight years younger than me, we couldn’t exactly talk about everything . She was pouting on my bed, scrolling through her phone as I got ready for my night, a dinner with the grid girls and then my not-boyfriend’s charity fight.

In sexy lingerie.

I would be whatever the equivalent of a ‘grid girl’ was in the ring. If it meant I had to go out in my lacy, black bra and leather-look shorts then that was fine.

The flare-up on my back was mild, nothing like my stomach—but the shorts covered that. Still, I paused at the mirror, ignoring the burning need to itch.

I might also want to seduce Luca Mendes.

And I wasn’t going to let my psoriasis stop that.

He’d left late last night and I’d had to bite my tongue so hard it hurt because I nearly asked him to stay.

We had shared a room for four days, and I missed him. I missed the smell as he came out of the shower, the way we found each other in the dark, the pillow wall forgotten.

Fia could tell I was antsy.

“I should be able to come,” she grumbled and scrolled through her phone. “I want to see Luca win.”

“It’ll be on TV,” I told her and blotted my lipstick. It would be on an obscure channel I was sure Dad would pay to watch it on repeat.

“You’re excited, aren’t you?” she asked, sitting up, her phone dismissed on the side.

“Why wouldn’t I be?”

Her lips twitched in the reflection of my mirror. “You’re in love with him.”

“I am not!” I cried and threw my lipstick at her.

She caught it with her damn netball skills and turned it over. “Nice colour. Thanks.” She pocketed it and said, “You are allowed to love your boyfriend.”

My body locked up. That would be logical , but this wasn’t logical. Or real. Or allowed.

“He’s also hot as shit,” she said with a nod, “and bloody adorable.”

“Mind your language,” I scolded but was ultimately ignored.

“I wish Jordan was as thoughtful.”

“You’ve got to kiss a few frogs first,” I said before spinning on my chair to raise my brows in warning. “And only kiss them.”

Her eyes rolled so badly that I worried she would strain them. “You only kissed one frog. A mutant, disgusting, narcissistic frog.”

“And I kissed him for four years straight, thinking he was Prince Charming,” I said, shaking my head and closing my eyes to spray my makeup in place. “Men are good con artists.”

Eyes closed, I felt the atmosphere shift.

Something was different — like Fia had stopped breathing.

In the mirror, she was frowning, looking down at the floor, deep in thought.

“Four?” she asked so quietly I wasn’t sure if she was asking me or herself.

“What?” I asked, spinning to face her again.

When her eyes met mine, they were wide in panic. “Four years? You only saw him in prison once.”

My mouth opened, tongue on the roof of my mouth, ready to speak, but all I could do was nod in confirmation.

“And that was when you were twenty—” She blinked, lips parted in shock as she tucked her legs underneath her, face confusion and disgust. “You were sixteen. You were my age now. You—you—”

I was up and on the bed with her, trying to take her hands to comfort her, but she swatted me away. “You told me you were nineteen when it started.”

Words betrayed me as I saw how horrified she was, face crumbling.

I had lied to everyone.

“You were a child.”

“Nice to know you accept you are, in fact, a child.”

“Don’t make this about me,” she snapped, scooting back on the bed. “He groomed you. Oh my god.”

“I’m okay,” I said. “It wasn’t because of my age— I was mature for my age—”

“Don’t,” she rasped, avoiding my eyes as her thoughts seemed to race. “Are you actually making excuses for him?”

“No, no,” I said, unsure as to why I had said that. So she wouldn’t make the same mistakes as me? So she knew it was different?

“Your mum was in the hospital!” she cried. “You spent…you spent the summers at his. I wasn’t allowed to go because… oh my god. ”

She held me then, throwing herself across the bed to wrap her arms around me and squeezing me tight. “I’m so… I’m so sorry, Ever.”

What did she have to be sorry for? She couldn’t have known. She was eight at the time.

No one would have known.

Because I’d been mature for my age. Because I’d thought he loved me.

I didn’t love Luca Mendes, but I could picture it — what it would feel like to be consumed with adoration for someone and receive it too.

And I hadn’t thought about it until then, but it was a different feeling with Luca. A feeling that made my smile secretive, a feeling that crept in at moments that didn’t have any business being about him.

It wasn’t full of concern or doubt. It wasn’t a dependent need.

It was excitement and joy and… I really liked Luca Mendes.

Fia’s tears hit my shoulder, and it was only then that I realised she was shaking in my hold.

I’d been thinking of her as young and emotionally out of her depth. Reckless and completely unready for any kind of responsibility but here she was showing me all the emotional maturity I hadn’t expected.

“Fee, I’m okay.”

“Dad doesn’t know, does he? How old you were?” She shook her head into my chest. “Of course he doesn’t. Pedro wouldn’t be alive.”

He certainly wouldn’t be walking onto the StormSprint tracks if Dad knew. He wouldn’t be walking anywhere.

“He shouldn’t be alive.”

“Don’t you go getting prison time, now,” I said and brushed back her hair through my blurry vision.

“I wouldn’t get caught,” she said as if I were stupid, wiping her tears as anger took over. There, the maturity slipped.

She might play netball and have five languages under her belt, but I doubted either of those skills would help her, firstly, commit murder or, secondly, get away with it.

“What does Luca think? He could easily kill him.” When I didn’t respond, she frowned, deep in thought. “Does he know you’ve been messaging him?”

My body locked up. I glanced up and she had the dullest look on her face, daring me to deny it.

“It’s not like that,” I whispered.

She breathed in deeply, her voice sharp with betrayal. “He messaged you last night. I saw it on your phone.”

She closed her eyes when I didn’t reply and a single tear slipped out.

“He came to StormSprint…” Her eyes jumped up to mine, watery and alarmed. “Was that to see you?”

“It was—”

“Did he see you?”

“Leave it, Fia,” I told her. “I’m okay. I’ve moved on.”

But something in her eyes told me she wouldn’t.

She told me she was there if I ever needed her and dismissed herself, leaving me sniffling, breath hitching and fighting the need to burst into tears.

I fanned my face before grabbing my phone, ready to delete all of his messages and every memory of him.

But I failed.

One of my favourite things about staying at Pedro’s in the summers was the freedom that came with it.

I had a whole different life. His niece’s riding stables that held the camp each year were so close to Pedro’s house that I didn’t have to travel far each day, and the friends I made there became closer year after year.

That year, being fifteen, I’d been invited to house parties nearly every weekend. With Pedro at the races, it was just me and the few staff who worked at his house.

And I got away with everything.

I drank. Smoked. Partied.

I rolled out of bed whenever the fuck I wanted to.

Even when he was around.

He said his house was ‘judgment-free’ and he wanted to give me the room to flourish and be who I wanted to be.

When he had a week off the races, he drove me to a house party.

A boy who was attending had messaged me, and he seemed cute, so I went for the most revealing outfit I could.

My psoriasis started a year later, so my stomach was out.

I was in low-rise jeans and the tiniest top imaginable—more of a bralette.

It was the ‘00s. I looked cool as shit.

And I’d look even cooler than shit rocking up with the most handsome man in the world and his sports car. He was busy tonight, dropping something off for next week’s race, but I secretly hoped he would step out of the car for the others to ogle him.

“You look beautiful,” he said as we rode down the country lanes. “Is it a special occasion?”

I shook my head, busy applying a third coat of gloss in the overhead mirror.

He sped up and my body pressed against my will into the chair, whiplash almost taking me out.

“Pedz!” I cried to his laughter.

He slowed as we rounded a bend and he turned down the music. “This is a different get-up for you. Will there be boys there?”

A dark edge infiltrated that last sentence and my shoulders stiffened. It was the same tone as my father’s.

“Of course there will be,” I said with a roll of my eyes.

“Will a certain boy be there?”

I didn’t answer him; I just added more lip gloss.

He held the side of the passenger seat tightly, avoiding my skin. “Everly.”

“Maybe.”

When he didn’t respond, I put the lip gloss in my clutch and turned the music up. He always let me play whatever songs I liked in the car.

But his fist slammed the off button and we sat in silence.

My heart was racing faster than we were driving.

“What about us?” he asked and his voice was thick with emotion.

Like we had crashed, my heart stopped.

I had flirted with Pedro on occasion. Mostly when I was drunk and he’d picked me up from a party, but never had he said anything—

“Fuck, I shouldn’t have—” He shook his head and went to turn the music back on, but I stopped him, our hands touching, mine on top of his.

“I’ll still be staying with you and we can still hang out and—”

His nod and swallow harshened my breaths.

“You didn’t mean that, did you?”

He refused to look at me, instead staring out the windshield, the car far slower than before.

It was instinct that took his hand and placed it on my thigh. I didn’t force his hand to stay, mine only the slightest touch on his, but it remained there as he breathed in deeply and said, “Forget I said anything. You’re too young. It’s just you’re so mature for your age— sometimes I forget—”

“I am mature for my age,” I said. He’d told me so many times. He was the only one who believed in me. The only one who trusted me.

Mum wallowed in her self-pity, sending me to boarding school because she could no longer deal with me.

Dad spent all his time with his new family.

And I had no one.

Until I had him.

Or he had me.