Chapter Twenty-One
Katherine needed to find a quiet place to breathe. To be alone. Somewhere she could hurt without being seen.
‘Kat?’
She startled at the voice, thinking she had found solitude between the team trucks.
‘Dominic.’ He looked at her with sympathy, which made her feel worse. ‘I’m not the best company right now.’
‘Me neither, but I don’t think the best is what either of us needs.’
It was only then that Katherine realised Dominic must be facing a very different dynamic with Lukas too. Lukas didn’t need a manager anymore, and Dominic had been with him for almost twenty years.
‘How are you holding up?’
‘Could be better.’ He shrugged. ‘Don’t get me wrong, I’m happy for Lukas. I didn’t want him to end his career at the back of the field. But when your friend and client keeps something that big from you, it makes you question a few things. Like the wisdom of making him pretend to date a journalist.’
‘You were trying to do your best for him.’ Katherine leaned against the grey-and-gold truck. ‘But you’re right, maybe it was a mistake. How is he?’ Dominic was the only means she had to get any news on how Lukas was really doing.
‘Angry,’ Dominic replied.
‘At me?’ It was nearly a whisper.
‘You, himself, me. But here’s the thing about Lukas, he can be quite fair even when he’s upset. I mean, he didn’t kick me out when I visited him on Christmas Day. Though he did put me to work.’
‘What do you mean?’
Dominic chuckled sadly. ‘He made me pack away Christmas decorations in the lounge. He didn’t help at all. Didn’t even look at them. He only joined me after I’d put everything into storage.’
He wouldn’t even look at them. That’s how much he hated Katherine now.
Lounge.
‘Only the lounge? What about the tree in his bedroom?’ Katherine’s heart beat frantically waiting for the answer as if her life depended on it. Well, maybe not her life, but certainly her happiness.
‘I don’t know. I didn’t go up there and he said nothing.’
Could he have kept that one reminder of her? The same man who walked away from her twice that day. Unlikely. It probably went into the trash. Her vision became blurry but she couldn’t cry. Not at the track. Not in front of Dominic.
She swallowed hard, but her throat was closing. ‘I need to…’ She looked around. Eyes darting from one point to the next. Searching for an answer. ‘I need to make this right.’
But how? Lukas didn’t want to be with her. He didn’t want to see her. By the sounds of it he was pushing Dominic away in his anger. Who was Lukas confiding in? She had gone straight to her father for comfort, but Lukas couldn’t do the same.
Whether a future with him was lost or not, Katherine needed Lukas to be okay. She needed him to have someone he could lean on, so he wasn’t so alone.
She was hit with a wave of inspiration and knew exactly what she had to do.
‘I have to go!’