Page 57 of Green Flag (StormSprint #2)

Everly

I couldn’t find him. I didn’t have the heart to tell Luca as we readied ourselves for our night out — already mapping out where the nearest karaoke bar was.

Even if it was just the two of us, I’d have the best time.

But my mind kept going back to Pedro. And I hated it.

He’d had enough of my life.

But Fia was here.

“I don’t think these things are dressy,” he said, sitting on the bed in our hotel room. “Am I okay in just jeans?”

“Not just jeans,” I snapped, silently requesting that he zip up my dress. “If anyone else brushes up against your naked chest, they are in trouble, Mendes.”

“What would you do?” he asked in mock shock, kissing just above where the zip came to rest.

“I know how to punch now,” I reminded him. “I have an expert teacher.”

“In that dress?”

“It’s practically strapless, so no issue with arm movement.”

He laughed and pulled me close again, probably wrinkling the chiffon of my black dress.

I wanted my 68 nails again. But with my hand-eye coordination, that would have to wait until I could get back to my nail tech.

“I expect nothing less,” he said before getting changed.

Pulling his socks on while I reapplied my lip gloss, he said, “I feel like I want to announce our love to the whole room. To let them know it’s real.”

“It’s always felt real,” I laughed. “I think we fooled most people.”

“You nearly fooled me that you didn’t feel a thing.”

I shrugged and brushed back my hair that got stuck in the lip gloss, only for it to smear across my cheek. “I’m just an amazing actress.”

“Are we… are we going to be in the music video together?”

I span around. “You said you wouldn’t.”

“I didn’t technically—”

“No, you did.”

He pressed me up against the wall, his lips so close to mine I could feel them as he talked. “If it gives me an excuse to show off that you’re mine in public, I’m all over it. All over you.”

I swallowed, letting those words settle in the very limited space between us.

“Your family—”

“I don’t care what they think,” he said and rested his forehead against mine. “The only opinion I care for is yours. Not the public, not my Nonna, not your dad’s. Just you. If you want me in your video, I’m in it.”

I nodded, nose brushing his.

When he kissed me, his touch grazed up my thigh like that first night when he’d guided my hand.

“I mean, seeing as you’ll be there anyway…” I breathed.

His frown was all I could see as his hand froze.

“Because you’ll be coming with me to film it. Because you’re going where I go, and I’m going where you go.”

“Yes,” he said and kissed me, uncaring of my copious amounts of lip gloss. “Yes.”

With his grip on my ass, he pulled me flush against him until I was wet with need for him to fuck me senseless like that morning. He’d folded me up like a garden chair, driving into me so I was screaming, tears of need blurring my vision, begging until he finally gave me everything.

There was never going to be enough of me and him.

We parted breathless, our gazes darting to the bed, but if I had my way we wouldn’t even get there before he was balls deep—

A knock at the door didn’t stop his touch; it only made his lips fall to my collarbone.

“Yeah?” I called half-heartedly, rubbing at the bulge in Luca’s trousers. We could be a little late. It wouldn’t hurt.

“We need to talk,” came Nix’s gruff voice. “The four of us.”

His serious tone straightened my back.

Luca didn’t get the memo, fingers brushing the seam of my panties.

When neither of us responded, Nix said, “Look, we need to be on the same page. We’re going to have to play nice.”

Luca chuckled into the crease of my neck.

“Just putting our shoes on!” I called back and Luca’s noise became a disappointed grunt. I chucked a wet wipe at him, neatened up the lining of my lip gloss and we were good as new when we opened the door.

Livie stood before Nix in a warm pink, off-the-shoulder dress, smiling sweetly. “Sorry to intrude.”

Nix’s face was as stiff as his voice. And his body.

Livie sat on the edge of the bed and clasped her hands over her crossed knee. “What we’re about to tell you does not leave this room.”

Luca raised his brows, stifling a laugh.

“It’s not a joke,” Nix snapped, French accent thickening as he stepped in front of his love.

Luca’s frown suggested he wasn’t fully on board.

“We’re listening,” I said, sitting next to her.

“We’re only telling you this because we trust you,” Nix said, resting his hand on Livie’s shoulder. “We value your friendship and there’s no way to explain why Pedro is here without telling you the truth.”

Luca’s amusement had vanished, concern etched on his features as he looked at me, stepping closer to my side.

“To help me, Nix made a deal with some… unhinged people,” Livie said, glancing at Nix, silently asking if that was a fair description.

He tilted his head from side to side, then nodded.

“The repayment was a favour,” she continued. “That favour was for Pedro to join MotoBike in any capacity. He’s no longer a sports analyst, but he gets transport access.” Her eye contact was intense. “The planes.”

“The planes?” Luca asked, but I didn’t look away from Livie, sure I must have misunderstood.

“To ship drugs,” Nix sighed.

I jumped up, pressing my back into Luca. “Why would you do that?”

“That’s not…” Livie closed her eyes, her voice trembling. “Because Nix—”

“Because I would do anything for Livie,” he said. “Anything. Easy decision.” He sighed and Luca and I shared a glance. “I know you’ve been looking into your dad. And I couldn’t… I can’t let you go on thinking he had any involvement.”

“What involvement did you have?” Luca asked, frowning down at him.

Nix’s lips formed a tight line. “I was as involved as Pedro, if not more so. I was being blackmailed, but… Pedro was using your logins, Ever. He bragged about framing you.”

He paused, waiting for a reaction. I shrugged. None of that surprised me anymore.

“Oh,” he said, frowning at the anti-climax. “So I, er, told your dad—”

“That’s when he decided to get the police involved,” I said as Luca stroked my shoulder.

He cocked his head to the side. “Possibly. But he buried the evidence as best he could and… then Arabella told me you were messaging him and I saw the two of you at the fight and… I couldn’t let you go back there.

So when I was told to get him a job, it didn’t seem like the worst thing for a while.

I could keep an eye on him. Well, add another eye onto him. ”

“Another?”

“I’ve had someone following him since he was released.”

“And next year? When you come back to StormSprint?” I asked, stepping out of Luca’s touch to threaten Nix. “What about then? It’s not just drugs you should be looking out for.”

Livie’s head cricked because she turned it so fast to look at me.

Nix’s eyes narrowed.

“Do you even understand what he did to me?” My voice shattered.

Nix shook his head, mouth open, as he tried to ask but couldn’t.

“I’ve spent the last eight years defending everything he did,” I laughed, shaking my head because I still couldn’t quite believe just how far he’d gone to blame me.

“When he really was a piece of shit. I was fourteen when he first found an excuse for me to stay at his. He wheedled his way in — he’d text me, give me presents, he was…

fuck, he made my idea of a relationship so screwed in my head.

He made me think there was no one out there who could love me. ”

Luca reached around to hold me and keep me together, hugging me from behind.

I leaned into his chest, looking over my shoulder to smile softly at him.

“But I know that’s not true. Just because I understand that now, it doesn’t take away from what could have been. What he can still do.”

“I’m going to fucking kill him,” Nix bit out, his jaw tight with anger, stepping towards the door.

“No, you’re not,” I sighed, shaking my head. “Because that won’t help anything. That will, somehow, make him the victim. And he is not the victim.”

Luca squeezed my shoulder.

“We carry on as usual. We get him out of MotoBike whatever way we can.”

Livie looked down at her hands. “That we can do.”

My eyes narrowed on her, ready to question exactly what she meant by that — when it came to insider knowledge, I had been baffled that Livie didn’t know Pedro was working on Nix’s team.

In the short two days she had known he was at MotoBike, I didn’t doubt she’d gathered enough information to tank the man.

Before I could ask what devilish plan she had, a knock on the door sounded again, and Nix and Luca immediately went for the door, their movements rigid, the perfect bodyguards.

I would take one look at them and go running.

They were met with my smiling father, lifting a glass of fizzing champagne. “Why the long faces?” he laughed. “You four will miss food if you don’t hurry up.”

Looking at his beaming expression, tears burned. My dad hadn’t deserved any of the hate I’d been harbouring.

I checked my lip gloss one more time and, taking Luca’s hand, we followed my dad down to the banquet hall.

There was a sea of white cloth tables, twinkling with candles in an array of hurricane vases and flowers reflecting the team’s colours.

Ours being for Stratos, Nix’s temporary team for the year, the table was decorated with purples and oranges; the overpowering smell of lavender wrinkled my nose.

I placed my bag down on the table and as people from the other table came to congratulate Nix on his podium position and get to know Luca, Livie and I dismissed ourselves to go to the bar.

As soon as we were in a corner somewhere, I intended to get the answers I needed. Her face remained serious and when she nodded at me, I knew she intended the same.

The bar was rammed.

But she gestured to one of the smaller, more intimate rooms with a small bar in the corner. There were a few leather sofas and an unused dance floor that I’d force Luca onto later.

At the bar, sitting with her legs crossed, sat my sister.

Looking so damn grown up.

Her dark hair was curled, her lips a dusty pink, smiling with a twinkle in her eye… and was that my red dress? Oh, she was so going to get it.

And Dad had let her come with Jordan? My mouth comically dropped open when I saw the suited man beside her. No way would Dad let her have come across the world with a boy.

But as we got closer, my heeled feet hurrying, I realised it wasn’t a seventeen-year-old boy.

It was a fucking grown man.

But not just any.

And his hand was so close to hers, resting on the varnished wood of the bar.

And he’d bought her a cocktail.

Like he used to buy me.

And she was… she was smiling .

The room around me tilted, stopped and faded. The only sound was the clicking of my heels as I stormed over, my heart in my throat.

It couldn’t be. She wouldn’t — he couldn’t — no .

“Everly,” I thought I heard Livie warn, then there was the slip of a hand on my forearm, failing to tug me back.

If she was telling me to stay back, it was true. It was him .

The man who had taken my career. Who had tried to ruin my life. Who had taken all of my innocence. Who had manipulated and burned a skewed idea of romance and love into my all-too-giving heart. Who was inches from my sister.

I wrenched his shoulder back, and with all the power I’d gained in the last few months that was rightfully mine and had always been there, I threw my fist into his face.

Just as Luca had taught me.