Page 38 of Kiss & Collide (Racing Hearts #2)

Harry Reid International Airport, Las Vegas, Nevada

V iolet sat down in the business-class lounge at the airport and checked her phone for what felt like the thirtieth time in as many minutes.

It was blowing up, as it always was these days.

Texts and emails from the media, from sponsor reps, from upcoming race venues …

all wanting a piece of Chase Navarro, Pinnacle’s unexpected secret weapon.

But still nothing from Chase himself.

Telling herself she was checking in on him for purely professional reasons, she typed out a text.

When do you arrive in Mexico? I’ve got scheduling stuff to discuss with you.

It wasn’t untrue. Her inbox was overflowing with requests for face time with him.

It was ten minutes before he replied.

Not until Thursday. I’m in LA.

LA? That’s where he was heading off to early this morning? She didn’t know every facet of his schedule, but since he hadn’t yet hired his own personal PR person, she knew quite a lot of it. And she knew he didn’t have any business reasons to be in LA right now.

That same uneasy wrongness from last night was still simmering in her gut. Out of habit, she opened Instagram and tapped through to his account. The first picture on his grid made that feeling in her gut harden into a knot as heavy as a stone.

It was a selfie Chase had taken with Madison, posted just a few minutes ago.

They were both turned out, Chase in that amazing perfectly tailored tux the stylist had bought for him, and Madison in a sparkling green floor-length sheath dress.

She could tell they were in LA from the bright afternoon sunlight and the top of a palm tree off in the upper-left corner.

Behind them was a step-and-repeat splashed with the branding for some movie Madison had shot earlier this year.

Their faces were pressed close together and they were both mugging for the camera, Madison doing exaggerated duck lips while Chase had one dark eyebrow hiked to cartoonish heights. The caption was We clean up pretty good , along with the requisite hashtags for the movie.

Chase was with Madison at her premiere in LA.

They were together . And she and Cam hadn’t set this up.

What the fuck? He’d come to her room and dragged that whole sorry story about her childhood out of her against her will. He’d stood in front of her, hands on her face, eyes overflowing with sincerity, telling her that he liked her.

Well, he might like her, but that clearly meant fuck all.

She’d thought something had changed.

This … finding out on his fucking socials …

felt like a slap in the face. And worse, it hurt .

Yeah, she was mad, but she also felt stupid.

Like she’d fallen for a con once again. At the end of the day, men were just men ; they were all the same, no matter how nice they seemed, or how well they treated you.

All the caressing and earnest eyes and gentle kisses didn’t mean shit.

The second something more interesting tempted them, they were off like a shot.

She’d learned that lesson with Ian, and now Chase had just served her a stone-cold reminder.

“You’re heading to Mexico today, too?” Rabia’s voice startled her and she nearly dropped her phone.

“Um, yeah.” She hastily swiped Insta closed, banishing that taunting picture. “Want to sit down?”

Rabia dropped into the chair and parked her roll-aboard beside the table. “It’s early for you to fly into a venue, isn’t it?”

She lifted her coffee cup to her mouth and was dismayed to see her hand was shaking slightly. Fuck him for this. She felt like she’d been sucker punched in the middle of the goddamned airport.

“I have a lot of sponsor events to set up in Mexico City.”

Right. Work. Hadn’t she decided long ago that she was done pouring herself into relationships? You gave yourself completely and in the end, you got nothing back. Her career, on the other hand, didn’t fuck off with some movie star to LA.

“Did Reece’s party cause you too many headaches?” Rabia asked.

What? It took a moment to register the question.

“Oh! Um, no. Not a one. All sorted.”

She’d been checking all the usual places and there hadn’t been a single whisper about it, thank god.

She forced herself to ask a question, so she didn’t sound as shaken as she felt.

“How’s next season’s design coming?”

“Good,” Rabia said, nodding thoughtfully. “The wind tunnel tests are looking good. And Chase is laying down some impressive times in his simulator sessions. I hope we get to keep him next season. He’d be magic in this car.”

Violet laughed softly. “Chase won’t have any problems with funding for next season. We’ll be able to sign him.”

Rabia arched one eyebrow over her glasses. “That’s not what I meant. I mean we’re very likely to get outbid by another team. A better team.”

“Has he got offers?” She was surprised—wouldn’t he have told her?

Then again, it seemed like there were lots of things he wasn’t telling her these days.

Rabia shrugged. “Nothing firm that I know of. But there’s talk.”

“What kind of talk?” Her voice was sharper than intended.

“Rumor has it that Eric Lenore was chatting him up at the Jet Energy party last night. Went there specifically to see him.”

“Eric Lenore? Fuck.”

“Yep,” Rabia said, shifting in her seat. “Fuck. No way we could compete with Allegri, if they make him a serious offer. Hell, I’d sign that contract for him myself. He’d be a fool to turn it down.”

Violet paused for a minute, digesting that piece of information.

“Yes, he would be a fool to turn that down.” To go from nearly being dropped from F2 to an offer from the second-best team on the F1 grid in a single season?

It was a fucking fairy tale. One that seemed to be coming to life for Chase Navarro.

And she’d helped make it happen. So why was she so angry ? At the end of the day, if he wanted to wrangle a better deal for himself, he was free to do it.

She’d already succeeded, regardless of what happened next.

She set her coffee down on the table, hard.

Let him fuck off to LA with Madison and to Allegri with Eric Lenore. Both she and Pinnacle could survive his departure.

“Where is he?”

Violet looked up in surprise. Rabia tilted her chin at Violet’s phone. “Chase. Where is he right now?”

Violet glanced down. Without realizing it, she’d opened her phone again and started scrolling the hashtag for Madison’s movie, looking for more photos of the two of them.

With a snort of disgust, she swiped it closed again. Pull it together, Violet. He’s just some fucking guy.

“Um, LA. He’s at the premiere for Madison Mitchell’s new movie. That actor he’s dating.”

Rabia let out a snort of disbelief.

“What? He is.”

“I’m sure he’s in LA. But he’s not dating that girl. He’s dating you . Everybody knows that, Violet.”

“He’s not … I’m … we’re not …” God, she never had a problem speaking off the cuff. She could bullshit an answer with the best of them.

Rabia shrugged. “I don’t know what you young people call it these days, but whatever it is, you two are doing it.”

She took a deep breath and cleared her head, so she could pick her way carefully through this. “We’ve been very casually involved in the past. But we’re not dating.”

“So you’re sleeping with him.” A statement, not a question.

“Yes, but—”

“But he’s in LA with that girl?”

“It’s fine. He’s free to do whatever—”

Rabia shook her head. “It seems complicated. When I met Rajan, he just asked me to get a coffee after class. Then it was dinner. And a few months later we got married. Simple.”

“You’re married ?” She’d known Rabia for months now and talked to her almost daily, and she’d had no idea there was a husband in the mix.

“Twenty-three years,” she replied, turning her phone to show Violet.

Her lock screen showed her and some man—the husband—sitting in the sun, at a wooden table outside a pub, both smiling and lifting pints to whoever had taken the picture.

He looked friendly and unassuming—roughly Rabia’s age, salt-and-pepper hair, also Southeast Asian. “Rajan Dar. He’s a podiatrist.”

“A podiatrist? And you work in racing? How does that work?”

She shrugged again. “We have our own interests. I respect his, he respects mine. It works because we want it to.”

“And he doesn’t mind you spending half the year on the road?”

“Nope. He gets the Netflix all to himself and I don’t have to watch those Korean gangster dramas he loves so much.” She chuckled softly. “He trusts me, if that’s what you’re asking. And I trust him.”

“Wow. I can’t imagine that.” She hadn’t been able to turn her back on Ian for a millisecond without some other girl moving in. And Chase had just run off to LA with a movie star, so she was sticking to type, apparently.

“When it’s right … when you’re ready for it to be right … it’s easy. What you’re doing?” Rabia’s eyebrows hiked behind her glasses. “That sounds hard. Exhausting, really. Can I ask you something?”

“Sure.”

“Do you like him?”

Violet opened her mouth to reply, but nothing came out. Such a simple question. Why couldn’t she answer it?

Rabia leaned in and lowered her voice. “I’ve seen you with him. I think you do.”

“But that doesn’t mean … there are things … it’s just complicated.”

“Is it, or are you making it complicated?” Rabia waggled her phone in the air, that picture of her and Rajan still glowing on the screen.

“I’m hitting the loo once more before boarding.

” She stood up, shouldered her bag, and gestured to Violet’s phone.

“If you want the advice of someone older and wiser, quit making it so hard. Not when it’s the simplest thing in the world. See you at the track, Violet.”