Chapter 15
Fia
I woke parched. I guzzled the water I didn’t remember bringing up and then lay flat, staring at the ceiling.
He’d given me his room again and taken the guest room across the corridor.
Bodri was nowhere to be seen, but he’d been a wigglebutt throughout the night. It felt like I’d got some sleep, so maybe he’d left a few hours ago.
Without getting up, I opened the drawer full of the snacks Zolt had left on the bed and munched on the nuts as I sulked.
Yesterday had been a rough day. I’d expected to remain strictly professional for as long as I could. I was here to complete the report and gain as much understanding as I could about Zolt’s medical clearance.
I was not here to bond with my nagyi and hug my step-brother, before bringing up that I’d left the door unlocked last time — like it meant something.
But one memory kept brutally penetrating my mind. I chomped angrily on a handful of nuts and let it replay one final time — Nagyi sat on the patio after Zolt cleared our table, and she sipped her tea. She watched him go and then placed her small hand on top of mine. “Zsófia,” she whispered.
“Yes?”
She’d apologised for her absence as I grew up, unsure of how to communicate with me when I no longer spoke to my dad. I understood it, even if it hurt. But the way she said my name this time… this was a secret. I leaned in.
“Are you and he… are you two more than friends?”
I was glad I wasn’t drinking because I might have choked. In fact, I wanted to do just that so that I could distract her from her own words.
“Sorry?” I asked, looking over my shoulder through the tall windows, seeing him making another scone on the kitchen counter.
“Zoltán and you,” she said again, and my ears rang because it was preposterous for her to have gauged that.
“No, Nagyi,” I said and shook my head. “Of course not.”
She shrugged and sipped more of her tea, but my stomach was slowly knotting as the patio disappeared beneath my feet, and I felt incredibly weightless. And heavy.
Like I did in bed, gorging myself with nuts. Which would get me nowhere.
But it wasn’t until I smelt baked goods that I stood and wrapped the fluffy dressing gown around me.
He couldn’t top yesterday’s afternoon tea or the pasta he brought us out for dinner. I’d seen him scoffing the rest of the scones alone and tried not to laugh to myself.
Which was the problem.
I found the whole thing lonely. I was the happiest I’d been in years when I was around him, and I had no one to share all my joy with. I was trying to act nonchalant with Zolt, but I wished I had a girlfriend to squeal over all of this.
Because that’s how I felt, my happiness was overwhelming — I had to hold still to stop myself jumping up and down, grinning like an idiot at the thought of him making me pastries for breakfast.
When I didn’t think about all of our problems, when I was in his presence or thinking about him, I was a woo-girl. I was ready to woo up and down the streets.
And then I crash-landed into reality.
A reality where he always, somehow, managed to make jam sexy.
It really wasn’t fair to my sanity.
He stood, topless, making pancakes. More jam. I was screwed.
And then, on the side, worst of all, were túrós batyu. I’d completely forgotten about them — sweet, folded pastries filled with curd cheese. Nagyi used to make them on the weekends.
“Good morning,” he said with a ravishing, bright grin and threw the last of his túrós batyu in his mouth, before licking some of the escaped cheese from his thumb. “I was going to bring this up to you.”
“You’re not allowed past the door, remember?” I could not take my eyes off the pastries.
He nodded. “I was going to shimmy up the drainpipe onto the balcony and call for you.”
I had to stop myself from smiling. I honestly wouldn’t put it past him.
“With a flower in my mouth.” He lifted a red rose and placed it between his teeth.
“Rule four. No flirting.”
Frowning, he pulled out the flower and said, “Good host. Not flirting.”
“Good. Because we have a report to finish.”
He groaned, his knees bending as his head fell back. He plated the pastries, and I eagerly bit into the túrós batyu while I gathered my neglected files from one of the sofas. Oh my god. The pillow of pastry crumbled in my mouth, the soft tang as tasty as I could remember.
I ate two before managing to speak, slightly embarrassed by how quickly I’d wolfed them down. “There are mentions of ‘unspecified vestibular symptoms.’”
He was smiling at me. “Yeah, my balance was off for a while.”
He said it like it was nothing.
“How long? It doesn’t say.”
“Six months?” He dusted his stack of pancakes with flour.
“Sometimes, I’d just hit the ground. It became a bit of a family game.
Mum scolded Benedek for it, but he and Imre made bets on how long I’d last after I stood up.
The dogs stopped taking me seriously when I fell.
They’d lie there like ‘there goes dad up to his old tricks again.’”
“Your balance was so off that you fell over? Like on the floor?”
“Jam?” he asked and sucked the flour off one of his fingers.
My core heated. I wasn’t sure if it was the fact that he was half-naked, or the glimmer of tongue, or the domesticity. Or simply him. I closed my eyes and nodded. If this continued, I’d have to interview him through his very locked door.
“You fell over because of your balance?” I repeated.
“Yeah,” he said and gestured for me to sit at the kitchen island. He’d already put out cutlery.
“And how is your balance now?”
“Fine,” he said. “I go to therapy every week. I meet with my rehabilitation officer every three months for him to check in on me. I wouldn’t be cleared to race without it.”
“And when you race… You don’t trigger any kind of PTSD?”
His breath caught in his throat like his words choked him. He set my plate down with more of a clatter than I expected. “Sorry,” he said and sat opposite me. “I don’t talk about… I don’t…”
He wasn’t angry. For the first time, he looked panicked, eyes darting around the room at anything other than me.
He always looked at me, except now.
“No, I should be sorry.” I reached to rest my hand on top of his.
“Is it okay for me to ask these questions? Maybe we should be more professional. Maybe I should just talk the report through with you.” But I like hearing it from your perspective.
I like hearing you talk. “I don’t want to add any trauma or—”
“No,” he said and angled his hand for mine to fall into his. He squeezed my fingers. “Who else would I have to talk to about it?”
“Your therapist.”
He shrugged and took a mouthful of his pancakes. “I don’t mind talking about it with you. I mean, we are family now.”
The cocky smile on his face stalled when I snatched my hand back.
“Oh my god,” I groaned and wanted to flatten my stack of pancakes with my forehead. “Please stop with the stepbrother remarks.”
He pulled my hand back onto the table and held it prisoner. “I meant because you’re the mother of my son. Bodri.”
I managed to keep my woo-girl daydreams to myself — despite my longing to share them with the world — but Zolt did not have that self-control.
He didn’t have a filter for his feelings. I hated how much I liked it.
And hated how I didn’t trust his acting skills to hide his feelings in public if we were to ever become more.
“Our parents are married,” he said. “But that doesn’t change how I feel about you at all. It doesn’t have to be the end of the road.”
Yesterday, I should have prompted Nagyi to see how she’d react if Zolt and I were together. If she would forgive me, then that was fine. Imre could think what he liked — he wasn’t entitled to my life or relationships when he hadn’t had one with me for so long.
My biggest hurdle was Zolt’s mum. She was so lovely, I wanted her to like me. Jordan’s mum and I used to go for a coffee every Sunday. I needed to be liked, even if it meant always wondering what could be.
Or if it meant navigating this in the most cautious way possible — thinking of every different option, every possible reaction.
Everything may not have changed for him, but it had for me.
He’d lied. He should have told me we’d be related by law.
Liking him had softened me. I hadn’t stomped my foot the way I should’ve — or the way my sister would’ve.
“We’re adults, Fia,” he continued. “And this isn’t some one-night stand. I know it’s only been a couple of months, but I’ve never been more certain of anything. They want the best for us. And you’re the best for me and…” He couldn’t bring himself to say he was the best for me.
And I was glad he hesitated.
“Why do you still race?” I asked, sliding my hand back to my fork and cutting into my pancakes.
He blinked, his brows pulling together. He opened his mouth and closed it before eating another mouthful, then washed it down with a gulp of orange juice and sighed. “Because sometimes, without racing, I don’t feel alive.”
My chest caved in, my shoulders jerked forward. I’d wanted to steer the conversation into less emotional waters.
Not send it into a storm. My eyes stung, and I cleared my throat, looking down at what was Imre’s palacsinta. This man, with all of his arrogance and stubborn ways, had cooked me my favourite meal. He’d arranged for my favourite snacks and clothes to be here.
And he didn’t feel alive?
He didn’t feel like life was meaningful?
The lump grew in my throat.
And I knew then I was fighting a losing battle.
We finished our pancakes, then we went through the report.
I asked him to back up some of the medical terms he knew with examples, and now and then, he would floor me with a really eloquent bit of knowledge about how certain conditions still impacted him.
He said he could feel the bolts in his collarbone and spine, and that he could feel stiff for days.
But when it came to the mental side — PTSD, depression — he wasn’t willing to give details, and I wasn’t willing to push.