Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Six
I make it to the ground floor—down the Paddock Club’s stairs and through the crowd outside and there are too many people—before Arthur catches me, a hand around the elbow, gentle yet firm. Everyone around us is wearing red T-shirts and baseball caps, an ocean of Cavalli red and Leone yellow, and when I see the little golden lion logos, I cough out a humorless laugh that sounds as broken as my heart. The fan event has us surrounded.
“Lilah, stop,” Arthur says. “Talk to me.”
Someone looks over and notices Arthur. Then another person. The flow of the crowd is disrupted, one fan after the other stopping to see what everyone else is stopping to see.
Me.
They’re looking at me . Wondering who I am. The strange, small woman doing her best not to melt down in front of Arthur Bianco, who should be grinning in front of a camera right now but isn’t. My skin feels unbearably tight as I grab Arthur’s arm and drag him to a shaded doorway, swipe my Ignition badge, and push him through. It’s dark, cold. We’re in a supply closet, surrounded by Formula 1 advertising gear: posters, flyers, plastic cups.
Once the door’s shut, Arthur starts talking. “I’m sorry about how he is. This is why I wanted you to stay behind. But what he said about you isn’t true. You’re wonderful, Lilah. You’re perfect.”
He thinks I’m upset about Holmes’s insults? Speechless, I press my palms into my eyes and shake my head.
“Please don’t let him get to you. I’m going to go meet with Leone—I’ll get this sorted.”
By picking pain, by not walking away when his uncle admitted to harming him, by only focusing on which car he’s going to drive next year. “We need to go to the FIA.” My voice shakes, and I force a breath down to ease the ache. “Or-or the police. I don’t know.”
“Why?”
“Because you can’t keep living like this!” As soon as the words are out of my mouth, I’m startled by just how much I’ve wanted to say this to him for weeks. Since we met, I’ve known something was wrong with Arthur, felt the dark outside the glow of the bright, happy circus. Suspected the lies whispered behind doors, on radio channels, in closed meetings. “Arthur, you aren’t okay. You can’t go meet with Leone right now. Your uncle almost ended your life, and he just admitted that in the Paddock Club.”
He drops his voice. “Lilah, I… I know. But that isn’t something I can do. No one would believe me over him, and drivers—all of us deal with abusive assholes in our families. This isn’t any worse than what others have dealt with to drive.”
I lower my hands, staring at his wide eyes and broken pain. “Why do you need to drive with Leone ?”
His tongue darts over his lips, breathing uneven. “It doesn’t matter that Holmes hit me on purpose. It was my fault. I lost control of the car. I didn’t drive well enough. Unless I drive for them again, Lilah, it’s going—I’ll never get over it.” He pauses, inhaling, like he didn’t know that he felt that way until he said it out loud. “I’m—I’m sorry to be this stubborn, I am, but you don’t understand what it’s like to fail in front of everyone.”
“Don’t I?” I flash him a sad smile. “Look online. Everyone knows the truth about me and nobody knows the truth about you.”
“ You do,” he says, like that’s enough, like that’s ever been enough for anyone. “You’re the only one I want to see me. Changing the world’s mind about Holmes is a lost cause. And—and I can sign a yearlong contract with Leone. One year. Prove that I’m not a failure, then go to another team.”
Here’s the great big secret that anyone who’s been thrown away by their family can tell you: It’s humiliating. Yes, the throwing. But also, how much paranoia is stored in your body afterward, breaking down your ability to accept promises that life will turn out okay. Because maybe, if I was anyone else, I would accept what Arthur’s saying. I’d see his vision of the future, him at Leone, happy and healthy, me on the sidelines, cheering and clapping.
But I’m me, Lilah Graywood, professional realist, a camera with a body, and I can see the pinhole shot at our happy ending getting smaller and smaller, a tunnel closing in the distance until the speck of light is swallowed up. I can see Arthur locking himself into another contract with another team that doesn’t give a shit if he lives or dies. I can see him hiding his pain from me in locked bathrooms and dark corners.
He’s setting himself up for the same pain he’s always known. Family patriarch, to abusive team, to almost dying, rinse, repeat.
“No,” I whisper, and the word feels wrong coming out of my mouth. I’ve so rarely said it. “I’m not doing this with you, Arthur. I can’t pretend that I’m okay with this decision. I’m sorry. I’m not trying to—to force you to expose your secrets, I promise. This isn’t about the film, or my career, or any of that. I care about you, so much, and I want you to get everything you want and more—but not if it’s hurting you. Not if you can’t breathe when you think about it. You can’t keep going through life on autopilot, hiding how badly you’re hurting. For a job. For work.” My lungs burn, but I keep going. “And you’re right. I do see you. I’m not going to stop seeing you, even if you pretend that the last five years of your life never happened.”
“I don’t want that, I shouldn’t have said that.” He goes to touch me then stops, balling his fingers into his palms. “But I’ve seen you, too. You love being on the road with us, you love this sport, and everyone loves you, too. Trust me. Trust me that it’s going to be good. You, and me, in Italy, at Leone. What’s one year and then I’ve fixed my mistake?”
I want to trust him. God, I want to. But I feel like I’m holding a film strip of Arthur and me up to the light, searching for the one clue I’ve missed in washed-out amber negatives, the puzzle piece that means he can go back to Leone and the future he wants without submerging himself in his past, so deep he suffocates. And isn’t this how love is supposed to be? Helping each other heal—stopping the person we love from breaking more bones—showing them that they deserve better?
“You need to listen to other offers,” I say. “This isn’t your only option.”
“It’s the only one I want.”
“But what about what I want?”
“I was serious, what I said to you. I want it all with you and I see it, I see how to get there,” he whispers. And I look at him, leaning and intense and endlessly hazel, his lips pressed together, hopeful. “I’d marry you today. Just let me do this, Lilah. Let me make our happy ending.”
The film negative rips down the center.
That’s the piece of the story I’ve always been missing.
Arthur believes in happily ever after. He thinks if he wants me, if he picks me, everything will work itself out, because he’s a hero. He’s golden. And more than anything, I know that he’s an unstoppable force, and he knows that I’m an immovable object, and one of us will always have to give in, and that’s why he’s asking me to move out of his way. So he can do what he wants to do.
Delaney’s words dance through my memory.
Liking a driver is pointless if you end up standing between them and a car.
You’ll only get hurt when they pick racing over you.
Tears blur him into three figures, all of them reaching for me. I step back and cover my eyes. “No. No—I can’t. If you’re going to go to Leone, then do it. Go. But don’t say you’re picking this because you think it’ll make me happy. Don’t lie to me. And don’t expect me to be here when you get back.”
My skin goes cold as Arthur takes my hands, covers them, pushes my hair back from my face. I don’t know if he believes me. He doesn’t say. But he’s warm, so warm, and I wonder if this is why we love the golden hour. Because it’s a trick of the light. Because it’s always about to end.
“Don’t say that,” he says roughly. “I know you’ve been hurt, but please, please trust me. You can rely on me. Just… stay in Italy until I’m done. Go to our hotel room and wait for me.”
The rest of me breaks. “You’re leaving right now?”
“They want to meet today. I have to.”
He doesn’t. That’s the truth; he could choose to stay. He could believe me over the ending he’s told himself that we have, the one where somehow, he has me and I’m okay with him working for people who punished his pain and ingrained his anxiety into his bones, a team that blamed him for getting hurt, fired him for needing help, turned him into this perpetual actor who only cares about cars because that’s why the world cares about him. A pigeon, bred to race. And I’m not okay with it. I can’t be. How could I be?
Sniffling, I try a different approach. “Have you seen Roman Holiday ?”
“No.” He sounds confused, maybe irritated. Maybe. “But, Lilah—I’m sorry, I don’t have time for this. I have to go.”
I nod. After that, I watch him leave. I don’t move, hardly blink. And I wonder if he sees what I’m seeing; we’d teamed up to break us both free, and he’d managed to break us apart in the process. I watch as he opens the closet door. I watch as he steps outside. I don’t yell, fight, or beg. I just see him pick his ending for us and silently take it in.
Quietly watching, like I used to.
Then, when I’m alone in the dark, my eyes stinging and my nose running and my throat full of tears, I call Delaney and start to cry.