Page 41

Story: Overdrive

Chapter Forty

Shantal

T he mass of fans behind us are roaring along with the entire Heidelberg team. ‘OHHH, DARIEN CARDOSO,’ they sing-shout to the tune of ‘Seven Nation Army’. But I know something is wrong. With his helmet still on, Darien clambers out of the cockpit and steps outside, raising his arms in acknowledgement to the fans in the stands. He gives them a quick wave before hurrying towards us, and without so much as a nod at the chaos all around him, the entire team rejoicing, stops in front of me.

‘Shantal,’ he says, voice strained. ‘Can you take off my helmet?’

My eyes travel to his bad arm. He tugs at the sleeve covering it, clutching the wrist, but he stops as soon as he realizes I’ve noticed.

‘Darien—’

‘Please,’ he pleads.

Though my hands shake, I undo all the clasps and raise the neck brace. I remove his helmet. He pulls off his balaclava with his left hand, and now the pain in his eyes is clear as day.

He doesn’t let me so much as glance at him after that. He disappears into the crowd of team members to say his thank-yous, and the bunch of us begin to make our way to the podium. We watch as he accepts his trophy and raises it high with one hand.

Darien is herded down from the podium to celebrate with the team once more, and from where I stand against the paddock gates, I hear cheers go up from the centre of the clump of Heidelberg staff when Demir lavishes high praise on Darien.

I stay behind after the raucous mob has filtered out of the garages and made its way into the Paddock Club for a bit of an impromptu dinner. There’s too much on my mind to want to go there. I’m supposed to know how to fix my players, my drivers, and I don’t even know where to begin here. If Darien doesn’t tell me what’s going on, I can’t help him, and for me, that’s the hardest part. I want to fix everything. Accepting that I cannot has never come easily to me.

Something is wrong. But all I can do is wait.

I end up sitting at my laptop in the hotel scrolling through data.

Darien’s data are stunning, as they’ve always been. You couldn’t tell from looking at the charts that he’d ever got into any kind of accident and just now returned. There is a single trough where he had to leave the track mid-race when, I assume, he found himself in some sort of pain. But other than that, it doesn’t matter. I wonder what it will take for him to see that, too.

As if on cue, my phone dings with a notification – a text message. And it’s from Darien.

I open it desperately. Is he ready to talk? If this is reinjury, we have a week till the next race. Celina will need to move fast and try to fix this.

I need you Shantal

Damn it.

A cacophony of hypotheticals escorts me to Darien’s hotel room just a few doors down from mine. The thoughts flood my brain until the stress they cause manifests as a cold sweat breaking out all over my body.

‘Darien,’ I call through the half-open door, ‘it’s Shantal. I’m here.’

I slip inside and close the door behind me. He’s not in the kitchen or the living room. I check the bedroom – still nothing.

And then the bathroom, and there he is, breaking my heart into a million pieces.

He’s sitting in the tub fully clothed, with the shower running on full blast. He leans against the back wall with his eyes squeezed shut, a look of defeat etched across his face, as the water comes down forcefully, drenching his hair, his T-shirt, his jeans. The freezing shower: desensitizing, distracting.

‘Oh, Darien.’ I crouch down beside him and rest my arms and chin on the edge of the tub. I try not to let my emotions show plainly on my face; it will only make him feel worse, I know. But they slip through. I feel my brow crease and my lips purse. His eyes flutter open, and they’re strained, torn.

‘Why is this happening?’ he whispers, his voice strained, like the plea of a small child still trying to learn how the world works. He grimaces, holding his bad hand back and cradling it the way I’ve seen so many footballers do. Injuries are awful the first time around, but reinjury is arguably much, much worse for both the body and mind. ‘Fuck this, Shantal …’

‘It’s okay. It’s okay,’ I repeat, as if saying it over and over will make it true.

‘What if I can’t race, Shantal? What if I lose my dad?’

‘I’m here. Don’t worry.’

I reach across and squeeze his hand, and then I step into the tub, too. Cold water begins to lap at my feet. The shower immediately soaks through my thin tee and sweatshorts, but I don’t care. I lean down and push Darien’s wet waves of hair back before pressing a kiss to his forehead.

My eyes are closed; all I feel is his left hand at my cheek. I sit down beside him, and he leans into me, his head to my shoulder as I hold him close. I’ve never felt this way about anyone; never this defensive, never this protective. A touch is a touch, until it holds so much more than what is skin deep.

‘Let’s take a shower, love,’ I whisper. His breathing is even and yet laden with hurt. I can feel it against my body.

Darien pulls his shirt over his head with my help. I kneel before him, grab the soap bottle off the shelf in the corner of the shower, and pump more than enough into my hands.

When I had taken the Rio job, I had never imagined I would allow myself to become so close to someone. Yet I am here now, drenched in this bathtub as I vow that I would do anything for this man, this man who has done so much for me.

Gently, I begin to cover his skin with the soap. My hands are shaky against his body at first, but they steady when I realize that he is familiar. His strong arms, the solid planes of his chest, scars and tattoos I have unwittingly memorized. A name here, the flag of Brazil there, a pair of dice, a cross entangled with a rosary. That stick-and-poke happy face on the side of his right wrist. If there was a detail that I hadn’t noticed yet, I take it in now.

His eyes slowly rise from the floor of the tub to meet mine, slightly red-rimmed, as beautiful a deep brown as they’ve always been. It is a symphony of pain and intimacy and stinging. The shower water pounds down around us and drips down our faces as I reach behind Darien, my chest flush with his, my T-shirt clinging to his skin as I spread the soap across the terrain of his muscles. My breath quickens and catches like a broken record.

I know I should stop. But from here, from this place where my body fits against his like pieces of a puzzle, I don’t know if I can so much as move.

‘Stay,’ Darien murmurs into my wet hair. ‘Please stay, Shantal.’

His voice is rough, heavy with desperation. It paralyzes me. It forces me to grow roots that anchor me here.

My legs seem to act of their own volition, positioning me so I can sit with my back to his chest as his thighs press against my hips. I lean back, his mouth finds mine, and what his hands cannot convey to me, his lips do. He kisses me the way someone begs for a miracle. His kiss is a string of words that I don’t need to hear to believe.

Thank you.

You’re what I’ve needed.

Every single inch of you.

Even through a layer of wet clothing, the heat of him is palpable on my skin, separated only by the water. I slowly bring his left hand up under my top. I need him closer, and the way he touches me, he needs the same.

‘Turn around,’ Darien barely whispers, his breath hot on my ear. I do, bracing myself by his shoulders, my shorts and shirt heavy with water. Darien’s touch is still stiff, but even as I wrap my legs around him, even with his limitation of movement, his good hand grips my thigh. He lays kisses down my collarbone, making me shiver despite the growing cloud of steam in the shower. His hand moves up, fingers teasing at the waistband of my shorts. I don’t think I can take it.

I press my lips to his as if I am starving and will not live another day. My hips jolt forward against him and he groans into my mouth. I stay with him, the only place I can conceive of in this moment.

‘I’m sorry.’ Darien’s voice is husky yet broken as I hold him to me. ‘For the way this … this injury messed me up …’

‘I don’t care,’ I gasp, my voice cracking, ‘if you can’t … can’t take off your helmet. I don’t even care if you can’t race, Darien.’

‘No?’ The word is almost a whimper.

‘No.’ I tangle my fingers in his hair, brush water from his cheeks. ‘I care that I can still feel you.’

Darien buries his head in my shoulder. His hair tickles my jaw. ‘I do, too,’ he murmurs. ‘I do, too, Shanni.’

Shanni .

I cannot tell where water-flow ends and where tears begin. He can’t have known, but that name has not felt right coming from anyone else for so long. That name was Sonia’s first, until everyone else picked it up, and then, a year ago, it began to sound foreign. Estranged. Yet every syllable fits perfectly on his lips.

He murmurs it into my hair, into my neck, like an incantation, a plea.

Darien peels off my wet shirt and throws it aside, helping me to my feet as I shimmy out of my soaked shorts. Nothing is enough, no amount of proximity sufficient. My back presses against the wall of the shower, and the soap bottle falls to the floor with a loud crash that we both ignore. The softness and the passion of Darien’s touch melt me completely. He tears my bra off as I work furiously at the button of his jeans; we are desperate for absolutely nothing to come between us. He moves a hand to my hip while he kisses me, a hand that slowly travels down the inside of my thigh till his fingers brush the edge of my panties, neither giving me what I want nor denying it completely. I hate him all the more for it as his touch creeps beneath the lacy fabric.

I manage a breathy laugh that turns into a moan when he uses just the right amount of pressure in just the right place. He covers my lips with his and catches the next plea that escapes me. My eyes nearly roll back in my head when his fingers shift slightly lower.

‘You ready, Shanni?’ he whispers, lips skimming the spot beneath my jaw.

I don’t know if I can let him tease me a minute more. I hang on to him as if he’s a tree in the middle of a storm. I can manage little but his name and my assent. He’s left me completely speechless. I’ve had little to say in the last year, but now, when I could tell him so much, I can only hope he knows.

Even with the hot water from the shower, my skin goes cold when he reaches over to the cabinet below the sink and comes back with a condom that he quickly rolls on before turning his attention back to me. ‘How you want me, mina ?’ He presses his forehead to mine and meets my eyes in that way he has, making certain I’m good. ‘Just tell me. I’m here.’

‘I don’t know.’ I kiss him, and I kiss him again, and I feel him smiling as I pull myself closer to him. He is here, and for me; nothing else matters about this. ‘I don’t know how. I just want you.’

‘Yeah. Yeah.’ He exhales hard, a rush of air I can feel on the bridge of my nose. I swear, he shivers a little, and that’s all the reassurance I need. He hooks a finger around the side of my panties and slides them off. My entire body quivers with anticipation. His erection presses against my thigh as he holds me to him.

‘I just want you,’ I murmur again. My thumb traces circles on his back, and I feel his muscles relax slightly. I use my legs to bring myself right up against him, and he moves his hand to hold my waist with the barest squeeze of assurance: I’ve got you .

It’s a moment before Darien finally slips inside me, and I lift my hips, gripping his back with so much force that I’m surprised he doesn’t flinch. His lips find mine, and mine find his name. ‘Dar.’

The first thrust is slow. The pressure it builds in me tears away at any filter I may have had at some point. I gasp, and he groans, moves back slightly before another thrust, this one with much more purpose. Something about us is perfect. It’s not like everything else before this; it’s effortless. Stars dance before my closed eyelids like Darien’s shimmering diamond earrings. Every time he pulls away and comes back to me is a new wave of thrill that fills my abdomen and releases a loud moan from my body.

He replies with a grunted ‘Shit, Shanni,’ and the rhythm of every beat of my pulse matches our movement. My muscles are shaking with anticipation; I hang on to Darien for dear life. His breathing is heavy and fast against my neck, his arm wrapped around me to leave as little a gap between our bodies as possible. It is absolutely surreal that I thought I could keep suppressing how badly I needed him. He does everything right, from the way it feels like we were made for one another, to the way my name is tangled in his gasps, to the way he balances a little bit of passion with a little bit of wild. His hand finds the back of my head, shielding it from the wall, taking the brunt of the impact with his forearm. I kiss him sloppily, my ability to stand on my own two feet waning and the pressure mounting.

‘I’m so close, Dar,’ I whimper, kissing him again. ‘I’m …’

‘Hang on, mina .’ He shifts slightly, and then holy crap.

People use the term ‘toe-curling’, but that is what this feeling is. My soul nearly leaves my body as I cry out his name, over and over, squeezing my eyes shut to relish every moment of this.

I have barely enough in me to keep going, but I anchor myself to Darien and give him the extra push over the edge that it takes for that beautiful sound of bliss to leave him. I feel him quiver with the same ecstasy that still fills me as he gasps for breath. My fingers trace the tattoos that cover his arms. It’s a good few moments before we pull apart, making me feel as if I am missing a part of myself when I lean against Darien with a contented sigh.

We clean up, return the fallen soap bottle to its spot in the shower. Darien wraps me in a fluffy white robe, nothing but a towel around his waist so I can still take in his strong form and inhale his fresh scent of sandalwood. Then, both of us completely spent, we curl up in bed, me wearing his pajamas, him enveloping me with his warm arms, his head against my chest. I run my hands through his slightly damp waves of hair, follow the light streaks of blond.

‘Shanni, I’ve never …’

His sleepy voice catches me off-guard, halfway between waking and out cold. He pulls away, levelling his eyes with mine. There’s a dopey smile on his face and in his half-lidded irises. Maybe he’s not fully aware of what he says next, but I will never forget it.

‘Never met a woman who … gives me goosebumps the way you do. You give me the damn chills, lady.’

‘I’d better, the way I’m going to make sure you do your exercises this week,’ I mumble with a giggle.

Darien laughs, a low rumble that I can feel in my own chest, as he burrows his head in the crook of my neck. ‘I’ll take it.’

I think for a brief moment about sleeping in and missing our flight out to the next race, but that’s second to the gravity of where we are right now. We forget about leaving. We simply feel one another.