Page 51 of Green Flag (StormSprint #2)

Everly

Four months later

Luca had been on a high. He’d won Best Newcomer at the MCAs, the biggest annual motor sport awards, and thanked Alv during his speech. He’d unveiled the name of the new France track at the first race of the championship in honour of his cousin, and he’d made the front cover of SportsMag.

In the break of the championship, he’d bought a house in Italy, not far from his Nonna.

His family had been in the media frequently, with the lawsuit against Ciclati due to Alv’s death. Luca had become their spokesperson, and somehow, he didn’t once speak negatively about Ciclati. Something in the way Livie pursed her lips when I mentioned it suggested she may have helped him out.

And he was glowing. He seemed happy.

All without me.

We hadn’t spoken since that night in Florida.

I stayed with my mum as planned for the first two months of the break. When he didn’t contact me to ask how I was, I didn’t contact him.

Radio silence.

And the loneliness was starting to creep back in. Back home in London, even Fia was weird. She’d become secretive and glued to her phone.

I’d spent days pacing. During the four-month break, I avoided Arabella because she reminded me of him. She bombarded my socials until I finally broke and explained to her that I needed a mental break from the world.

When worse came to worst, I spammed logging in and out of the PlayStation he’d set up for me while he was online. He didn’t message me. He didn’t make us join to play a game together like before.

He was done with me. He’d got what he wanted.

When Marco and I trained and he subtly tried to bring him up in conversation, I’d abruptly change the topic. It was that or cry into my boxing gloves.

I made excuses and booked my own room, just to avoid the expectation of staying in Luca’s trailer.

When he came to the hotel to work for the girls’ racing charity with Nix and Livie, I’d breathed through my panic and gone to speak to him.

He’d hugged me and kissed my forehead, but it was public.

And it left a bad taste in my mouth.

There was distance. And I couldn’t tell if he or I had put it there. Luca was screaming in my mind. I was barely a whisper in his.

My investigation came to a grinding halt. What was there to search for anymore? My dad had protected me from the investigation and persecution. The new season had started. Luca was still in Ciclati.

Pedro remained blocked.

By the second race, I was so sick of the fake smile that I managed to escape the whole weekend and record more music in LA.

For the third week, in Indonesia, I stayed at a friend’s Airbnb.

But it looked like next week, in Australia, there was no escaping the one-bed trope—the forced proximity of our job.

It wasn’t part of StormSprint, but Luca and Nix’s bromance had gone viral last year, and when Nix’s new teammate at MotoBike needed surgery, Luca was asked to be a temporary replacement.

Livie had requested I join as his grid girl.

At the time, it sounded like the perfect opportunity for Luca to get his name and reputation into a different championship if we were successful and got him out of Ciclati.

But now… not so much.

I really missed Livie working for Ciclati. Now that the only person who knew we were fake was on a different team, there wasn’t really anyone to go to.

Not that she wasn’t around. And even though Nix no longer worked for Ciclati, he was often hanging around the Ciclati box, eyeing up his replacement with a frown.

In his mind, no one would ever be good enough to replace him.

The new guy, Emre Koz, was not necessarily doing as well as everyone had hoped. But he was new to this.

He was Luca’s old friend from his Sprint3 days. Even Ces made a sour comment about their friendship.

Once the StormSprint race was happening, my duties were done. I could go and enjoy myself in VIP, but when Nix walked into the pit box to watch the race with his friends, I stopped.

His commentary made me cackle.

He hated that I found it funny, but he even presented last week in Malaysia. It was highly requested that he return in a full-time role, but with races potentially clashing with his new championship, his commentary remained only for Ciclati.

I got comfy on one of the seats, ready to listen to his grumbles and disgust over the manoeuvres of his past competitors.

The race started without incident. There were smooth corners, and Luca and the other racers ate the ground, following the twists and turns as if in a choreographed dance. Clean moves meant no one was particularly forceful.

But when the focus turned to Luca, I was standing, my attention on nothing else.

Luca was all over number 42, inches behind, and when the screen switched to his front-wheel camera, I couldn’t help but cringe and stumble back into Abbé as I imagined the crash.

After the comments the press had made, I knew this was just a warm-up for him. He’d be out for spinning wheels, crashed bikes in his rearview and a bottle of champagne in his hands as he got onto the podium.

But then it didn’t come. Lap after lap, he didn’t overtake. He needed some more aggression in his turns.

And I already knew his confidence would have dwindled in the alone time on the bike.

Mentally, he’d given up.

It wasn’t the only thing that had gone.

The white skies of earlier had passed, darkening to a deep grey.

Rain wasn’t forecast—but it came anyway.

It started to spit down, just a drop here or there. When I looked out of the garage door to the pit lane, there were tiny dark dots on the tarmac—slow drop after slow drop.

“It’s raining,” I said but no one was listening to me, intent on the screens.

With nine laps left, the rain picked up. Luca was in position ten, having slipped down three. I rarely worried about him — he played a clean game, but with the weather taking so brutal a turn…

The white flag was flown and Nix frowned, looking from left to right.

Emre was close to the slip road into the pit lane and grabbed his bike with the wet tyres within seconds.

“Is everyone coming in?” Nix asked, eyes flickering across the screens and then to the mechanics as they threw off the wheel warmers of Luca’s other bike, pulling it off its stand and getting it ready for Luca to grab and go.

“The white flag went,” I said. Surely, in the new championship, they had the same flag rules? He wouldn’t have forgotten so quickly?

“That doesn’t mean you have to change your bike,” Nix said. “It just means you can . Is Luca going to?”

“He’s far off the slip lane, but he will,” my dad said, not looking away from the race.

“He shouldn’t,” Nix said as I looked out the garage to the dark clouds. The rain blurred the pit lane, but it wasn’t the worst storm we’d seen.

“He needs to be safe,” I snapped. “So, yes, he will.”

Nix laid a flat hand in front of Abbé, requesting his headset.

Abbé grunted, then removed it with a roll of his eyes.

“Luca, listen,” Nix said into it. “How does the bike feel?”

There was silence as everyone strained their ears to listen. “Exactly. Bike feels fine? Like in Aus—remember? You said the traction held. You didn’t need the switch.”

I could feel my blood heating.

“You want to win? Don’t change your bike.”

I ripped the headset off my father’s head and glared at him when he went to shout at me.

I shoved them on, silently daring my dad to question me, pressing them tightly against my ears as I cut Luca off.

“Don’t listen to him. You’ll win another time.

You need to be safe. That’s not a bit of rain out there, Luca. That is rain .”

“It’s settling down,” he said, his voice deeper through the mike.

“Doesn’t look like it from here,” I barked. “You crash because you don’t change, then you’ll get no points. You’re faster than the others, you just need—”

“Racing isn’t just about speed,” Nix said, voice tight, his words in the room but also through the headset. “It’s about strategy. This is the strategy. If you want to win today, Luca, you won’t change your bike. You can change later, but if you’re comfortable with how it is right now…”

On the screen, he whizzed past the slip lane everyone else had gone down and my hands tightened around the headset. “Luca, you’ve got to be safe.”

But it was snatched from my head and thrown back onto my dad’s ears, who was suddenly talking fast in Italian.

“Don’t hold him back, Ever,” Nix grumbled, shaking his head as he gave his headset back to Abbé. “You keep on pushing him to be better. So let him.”

“He’s already the best!”

Nix frowned, shaking his head in disbelief. “He hasn’t won any races.”

That hurt more than it had the sense to.

“He needs a confidence boost. This is it.”

I hated that he might be right.

“What if something happens to him?” My voice broke.

If I was worried that our relationship wasn’t looking particularly good, I didn’t need to worry anymore.

Abbé and Dad turned to give me sympathetic smiles.

“It won’t,” Nix said softly, wrapping an arm around my shoulders. “He’s got you to come back to. He wouldn’t risk anything. Like I said, if he’s unsure, he’ll come and change the bike.”

But would he? He was driven. He’d had a wobble over the tail end of the last championship, but if there was a possibility of winning…

If Luca got hurt over this decision, I would never forgive Nix.

But I did trust him.

“If anything happens to him,” I warned, eyes stinging just at the thought of it.

“Then I will be at your mercy.”

I exhaled deeply. He was going to be okay. He didn’t have any choice.

Every other racer pulled into the pit lane to change their bikes for the wet tyres, putting Luca in first place.

My stomach churned for the final seven laps. With the different tyres and the fluctuating weather, the racers were less likely to risk pushing their speeds and overtaking each other.

As Luca neared the final finish line, my heart was beating erratically, and tears were now blurring my vision. I was desperate for him to be okay.

Desperate for him to win.