Chapter 11
Zoltán
Three weeks later
She didn’t look at me once throughout the interview.
She translated questions from English to Hungarian for me in that clinical, clear way of hers.
The same way as she did for the other Veltar racer, Henrik.
But she smiled at him. She’d had a drink with him at the bar after last week’s press conference.
I fucking hated him.
With Henrik, her voice was light, her laugh was easy.
Today, with just me, a camera crew, and the interviewer, she was all business. Her voice cut like glass — sharp, smooth, polished.
No emotion.
I might hate Henrik, but I abhorred myself.
It was all making my head pulse more than usual — a constant, grinding, swirling pain stabbing at my temples.
And seeing her at that bar… the agony had sliced my chest too.
During the interview, I tried to find ways to get her to speak to me. I used niche words from my region of Hungary, daring her to ask me for clarification. I got tongue-tied and contradicted myself.
It was like water off a duck’s back.
She translated like a computer, glossing over my mistakes and making me sound eloquent.
Maybe she did care.
Or she cared about her sister’s best friend, Livie, and the reputation of StormSprint.
The second it was wrapped up, she was gone, notepad pressed to her chest like armour as she strutted out of the dark room and into the tunnels of the Japanese track.
I was hot on her heels. But she was gone. I stalked the corridor, opening every door, glancing inside for any sign of her before moving on to the next.
She was at a printer, pressing buttons with one hand, snacking on an apple with the other.
When I opened the door, she froze, looking up at me with wide eyes, before turning her attention back to her photocopying.
I’d already accepted that she’d gone back on our retreat when she’d vanished from my house after breakfast.
When she refused to talk to me at the race the week after, I thought she just needed some space.
I accepted it, but I didn’t like it.
And I also knew it wouldn’t last long.
“How much have you raised?” I asked, leaning back on the printer and crossing my arms.
She picked up each warm sheet of paper as it came out of the printer, analysing it.
“What?” she asked in English, refusing to look up at me.
“How much have you raised?”
She dragged her eyes up to mine. “What?” she repeated curtly.
“How much have you raised for your sponsored silence?”
Her mouth twitched, her eyes softened. Then she sucked her lips into her mouth, closed her eyes, and exhaled deeply through her nose.
She’d been so close to laughing.
I’d get there.
The frustrated wrinkle of her nose was all a mask.
“I just thought you should get some more practice in,” she said and gestured at me, her hand from the top of her head down to her hips at our height difference. “Seeing as I’ll be leaving at the end of the championship.”
I felt my face drop before I could stop it. “Livie would get you a job here. I need someone who speaks Hungarian. You.” I need you.
The memory of her gasping the same thing to me, lying back on that picnic blanket, head on my arm, flashed through my mind.
She shrugged and collected the paper from the far side of the printer. “Or someone who speaks Kriolu.”
My brows nearly flew off my head. “Is that why you’re annoyed? Why you left? Because I speak a language and didn’t tell you?”
Shit.
“No,” she said and shook her head, clutching the warm paper to her chest. “I left because it was the right thing to do.”
All the air expelled from my chest in a scoff. She was lying to herself.
She wouldn’t look at me.
“So you’re leaving me at the end of the season?”
“I’m leaving the team,” she argued. “I’ve already left you.”
I stepped back like she stabbed me, the room blurring. Through my blinks, I swore I saw remorse flicker in her bright eyes.
She looked to the door, spoke, but I couldn’t hear her over the ear-piercing buzz.
And I needed to.
I wanted to latch on to every word, every breadcrumb she would leave that meant she cared. There was something here.
Her voice was underwater as my back pressed against the wall.
“Just printing the first half of translations,” she was saying to the door, a blush creeping onto her pale cheeks.
Someone replied, and her colour deepened.
Like when she’d come from my fingers.
But my body was locked down, and I couldn’t look away from her. I couldn’t move my head to face the door.
She didn’t want me. Not my broken pieces. I was made of sharp, shattered edges and cracks that ran so deep, the crevices were forever unfilled. She’d either cut herself or fall off the cliff into somewhere too dark to crawl out from.
I wasn’t worth her pain.
I wasn’t worthy of her.
Yet.
And it felt like my heart was collapsing, sprinting and trying to stay whole when it was being trampled so ruthlessly, so coldly, I was surprised it hadn’t frozen in place. Because I was allowed to hate myself, it wasn’t new. But her? Hating me?
No.
The room was spinning, my mouth tasted bitter, and I eyed the plastic chair beside me. If I fell into it, I would no doubt get her attention. But it would be pity, when I wanted love.
She was talking again, and I tried to ground myself, feeling the cold wall with my fingers, the tightness of my leathers around my biceps, the still air.
The fog in my ears started to clear, then jolted back like they’d popped on a plane when my brother patted my shoulder. “You alright?”
“Yes,” I snapped, but I could feel how unstable my feet were beneath me, and stayed leaning on the wall. “What do you want?”
He cocked his brow, but he didn’t hold my attention. Fia was straightening the paper she’d printed, using the desk as a leveller.
“Did you not hear me?” He shook his head. “I’ve changed your tyres for the race from medium to hard. It’s a bit hotter than we’d thought it would be.”
Yet this room was icy.
Fia made for the door, but before I could call out to her, Benedek said, “What are you doing tonight, Zsófia?”
Her name was Fia to people she didn’t know —and what the fuck was that question?
She turned on her heel with narrowed, suspicious eyes. “Why?”
“Every week before the race, we go out as a family for dinner,” he said. “Seeing as you’re family now, I feel like you should join the tradition.”
Family now.
“You’re one of the mighty Farkas family now. Best racers in the world. Best employees of the racing world.”
Fia looked at me, mouth open, trying to speak in one of her hundred languages.
How did she do it? I wasn’t smart, I hadn’t done too well at school, and every time I spoke to Mum in Kriolu, my head hurt. She often corrected me when we were alone. I only tried because it made her happy.
English had become a necessity. It wasn’t natural.
But Fia must have hundreds of thousands of words roaming in her head, crashing into each other, and she had the brains to flit through them so quickly, so elegantly, I was down bad the second she answered the phone to her sister in French.
That wasn’t true.
I was down bad the second I saw her.
“You don’t have to,” I said.
“I…” she started, and I knew the problem wasn’t finding the words. The problem was me. “My dad’s in town for this race, and we’re already going out for dinner. Luca set a new lap record today, so… we’re celebrating that.”
Benedek nodded, and when she went to leave again, he said, “You call him Dad?”
She didn’t turn this time. Her voice was clipped. “Clearly.”
And she walked out without another word, the door slamming behind her.
“I always wanted a sister,” he mused. “I knew she’d be snarky.”
I rolled my eyes and collapsed onto the plastic chair with a relieved grunt.
“I was gutted when you were born with a cock.”
He was talking shit as per usual, so I let the words gloss over me.
“She said she’d get those translations done, and she still hasn’t. Does that have anything to do with how weird the two of you are behaving?”
I frowned. She’d sent me the file when things had been good between us, but with how depressed I’d become, I hadn’t wanted to add reliving those days back into my schedule. “Have you thought of asking her?”
“I guess she’s still learning,” he said and shrugged. “She’s only in university. Maybe she’s a lot better at spoken translations than written.”
“She’s excellent at it all.”
“And just like that, he’s a natural, protective big brother,” he laughed, but he watched me and didn’t flinch at my stern expression. “Because that’s what you are, remember? Nothing more.”
My jaw stiffened, and I slouched further down, the leathers creaking beneath me.
“And she’ll discover your little secret soon enough, Zolt,” he warned. “And when she does? Good luck crawling out of that one.”
I didn’t honour him with a response.
“You need to get laid,” he continued. “With someone who isn’t a new relation.”
I closed my eyes, trying to calm the storm behind my brows.
He knew exactly how to push my buttons.
“Beat Luca’s new time,” he ordered. “Remember: hard tyres. And sisters are out of bounds.”