Chapter 6 Bahrain
BAHRAIN
SAGE
Holy balls, this day is kicking my ass.
Dagna and the rest of my team “worked me like a rented mule,” as my father charmingly puts it.
Intense cardio, strength training (neck day…
I hate neck day), reaction drills, tests with Doc Bartosz, mental-conditioning activities (I have a trainer who’s specifically for playing speed rounds of the board game Go), two depressingly healthy meals (I hate sprouted mung bean burgers almost as much as I hate neck day), and four video events where—no pressure—I inspire the youth by representing All of Women in Motorsport (and try not to drop F-bombs).
I’m in my driver room in the paddock now, drinking a nasty kale smoothie in a foil pouch while I study the Go board, analyzing where I went wrong on the last round. My phone rings, and it’s Dion from security.
I tap it open to speaker. “What’s up, my dude?”
“Guy here named Alexander. A redheaded Brit. No pass, but he wants to see you.”
I hear Alexander’s voice, peevish in the background. “I’m not a sodding ginger, for fuck’s sake. My hair is dark auburn.”
Dion chuckles. “Forgive me, Your Majesty. You catch that, Ms. Sikora? His hair is dark auburn.”
I roll my eyes. “Give him a guest lanyard. I’m in my driver room.”
The last thing I hear before Dion hangs up is Alexander protesting, “A temporary pass? Do you know who I—”
A self-conscious impulse spurs me to turn in a slow circle, taking in my room, wondering what it’ll look like through Alexander’s eyes. It’s messy, but that’s how I like it. I’m messy. My driving style is about risk and possibility. It’s hot and full of hunger, not cool and calculated.
My “relationships” are messy too, but awesomely so.
Undisciplined, wild, brief. I don’t stick with anyone long enough for emotionally ugly stuff to happen.
I like fun, uninhibited people with larger-than-life style.
Sexually adventurous sloppy loudmouths who throw themselves full throttle into a weekend of dancing and debauchery, satisfied to make memories rather than promises.
I pluck up a few articles of clothing draped like sweaty Spanish moss on a chair, hunting for an alternate place to toss them before deciding fuck it and setting them back down.
I finish the smoothie and jump-shot it into the corner trash can as my door flies open—no knock.
I spin around with a bark of protest on my lips, which evaporates when I see the homicidal glare on Alexander’s face.
He’s gripping the doorway with one hand, and from the other dangles a very large and heavy-looking shopping bag.
He advances into the room—his once-pristine suit wrinkled, hair mussed—then calmly shuts the door.
Near silence descends, aside from distant noises from the garage.
Alexander drops the bulging plastic bag at my feet.
“It doesn’t exist,” he bites out. He takes another step, so close now that I can examine the freckles on his sculpture-perfect nose and cheekbones.
I can smell his sweat, but weirdly in a good way.
It’s like a combination of ocean saltiness and slightly overdone buttered toast.
After Phaedra and I got off that call with Alexander and Nefeli last week, Phae said, It’s really a shame a guy that hot is such a garbage-monster. Hell of a face on him. I pretended I couldn’t see the appeal, but from six inches away, there’s really no way to miss it.
“It. Doesn’t. Fucking. Exist,” he repeats. “Your ‘lady needs.’ Complete bollocks, dreamt up to make me look like an arsehole in asking for it at the shops.”
Oh God… I’d almost forgotten adding that to the list. Priceless. My lips quirk in a smile I cover with one hand. A bubble of laughter escapes. “Um, April Fool’s?”
“It’s March,” he snaps. “I asked half a dozen fucking chemists for your fictional remedy. Finally I concluded, ‘Well, it must not be sold in this city,’ and looked it up on my mobile, only to discover your little hoax.”
“Oops,” I whisper, biting my lip to keep from laughing.
He jabs an arm downward, pointing at the bag between our feet. “And I’m sure you can imagine the result of my asking shopkeepers where I might purchase a ‘plastic retracting-blade knife with which to pretend to stab someone.’ That went over marvelously.”
I fiddle with the guest pass hanging at the center of his chest. “Did you find the ‘I Heart Bahrain’ keychain? It was important—”
“None of it’s ‘important’!” he cuts in.
The pupils of his gray eyes are beads of fury. He slowly moves a fingertip to poke the center of my chest. I could stop him, but I don’t; it’s exhilarating to see him lose his cool. Like when another driver is trying to overtake me and gets so frustrated that he makes a mistake.
Victory.
I wrap my hand around his prodding digit. “Watch who you’re fingering, honeybee. It’s not that kind of party.”
As I hold him—his hands are warm, fuck—he presses into my sternum with surprising gentleness. I lower into the chair behind me, captured by the fixed beam of his glittering eyes.
He grips both arms of the chair, corralling me, and leans closer. “Hope you’ve enjoyed your prank, Salvia officinalis. Consider us even. I’ll be on the next flight back to London.”
A jet of adrenaline blooms in my chest, right under the spot where his finger was. “You can’t leave yet. We have an agreement.”
“I most assuredly can, and am.” His hands tighten on the chair arms. “I won’t be abused like this, not by you or anyone.”
Through the fog of unwilling attraction, I remember why I can’t stand this guy. The goal was to humiliate him, and he deserves far worse than my fairly innocent practical joke. How dare he act like the injured party?
“Abused? You?” I growl. “Jesus Christ, you wrote that I fucked someone to get the Emerald seat! And even before that, you came at me like I personally pissed in your cornflakes. Insulting me with your ‘her talent is all in her pants’ bullshit—”
“Oh, don’t kick off. I said your assets. It was a pun.”
“Flinging your old-timey insults,” I go on, my voice rising, “like ‘hoyden’ and ‘poppet,’ as if your disrespect is excusable as long as you drag me in Shakespearean terms. You threw sand for months, and I finally threw back a handful. Consequences, babes.” I lift a bare foot and lay it against his thigh, pushing him back so he lets go of the chair.
“So if you want to avoid a defamation lawsuit, you’ll pick up that bag and take it to my hotel room and quit crying.
All I did was make you embarrassed in front of some store clerks.
But you? You basically called me a no-talent slut on a world stage.
It fucking hurt me, in case you’re too dumb to realize that. ”
There’s a flash of grief in his eyes, as if it’s just occurred to him that my feelings could be hurt and regret is kicking in.
His eyebrows draw together and his lips part as if to say something.
Goddamn those lips—they’re the kind I like, with that sort of tenderly angled upper lip like a Pre-Raphaelite painting.
I lean into my fury, unwilling to let this remain unsaid now that I’ve started.
“My God, men are fucking ridiculous. You can’t stand to be mocked by women—it’s like the worst crime to emasculate you pack of insecure fuckwads.
Meanwhile, you all can say any heinous shit you want, and if we get hurt, it’s ‘Don’t be a humorless cunt.
Can’t you take a joke?’ Well, I won’t tolerate it.
Fuck your double standard and fuck you, Laskaris.
” I point at the center of my chest. “You taunt this bull, expect a fuckin’ horn in the kidney. ”
I’m practically panting by the time I fall silent. He studies me for a long time, and I stare right back.
“For what it’s worth,” he says evenly, “‘poppet’ isn’t an insult. It’s an affectionate term.”
“I know how to use a dictionary, asswipe. It’s like a child, or a doll. Something small. Not a compliment.”
Our staredown lingers another half minute.
He looks away first. “I suppose an apology is in order.”
“You suppose right.”
He reaches out as if for a handshake, and I pointedly ignore the gesture.
“I am sorry,” he says quietly, hand dropping. “With your reputation—the mischief, the toughness, the saucy comebacks—I got carried away. My treatment of you was inexcusable.”
“You’re not forgiven. But… I’m glad you said it at least.”
Another long silence stretches between us.
Finally, he picks up the shopping bag. “I did get the keychain, as it happens.”
“You found one?”
He sinks an arm into the bag and fishes something out, then hands it over. “Not exactly. I had it made in a tourist trinket shop.”
I flip it over it on my palm. Yep, blue glitter, with I HEART BAHRAIN in pink lettering. “Okay, points. That was resourceful.”
The guy’s a dick, but it’s amusing to have him around.
“Are you really going back to London?” I fold my arms and give him a bored look, like I’m just curious but don’t actually care.
“I might. But… if I didn’t, what would you ask of me tomorrow?”
I spin the keychain around a fingertip, avoiding his eyes. Spin, catch. Spin, catch. “On your way over in the morning, I need you to pick me up a bag of pickle-flavored sunflower seeds. The kind in the shell. I’m craving them pretty bad, and Dagna won’t let me have ’em.”
His lips tilt in a skeptical way. “Pickle?”
“It exists! Feel free to look it up on your phone.”
He takes a bracing breath and follows it with a grumpy exhale as if reluctant to say something.
“What?” I prod.
“My mobile was stolen today. I stopped for a bite in the old market district and was sitting at an outside table with a coffee and two tahina–chocolate chip biscuits. An unattended child loitering nearby was eyeing my plate with longing, so I offered him the second biscuit, and when he came over to collect it, he plucked my mobile off the table and sprinted into the crowd.”
My jaw drops open. “Whoa. Mind… blown.”
“You’re shocked that I was pickpocketed?”