Chapter 19 Then… #2
Frederick’s throat bobbed. He muttered something in German before stalking down the corridor. Dominic exhaled. He made quick work of the cleanup and then scooped up Juliette, who was either still dozing or dead. Hopefully the former.
She yawned. “Hastings?”
Oh, good. Not dead. “Yeah?”
“Stop looking at me like that,” Juliette said, and her voice was surprisingly firm.
Dominic surprised himself by smiling. “You can’t even see my face.”
Juliette sighed. “I can just tell.” She cracked open one eye. “What did you say to Frederick?”
Dominic slowed. He hadn’t realized she’d been conscious enough to appreciate that either of them was there. Better to change the subject. “What happened tonight?”
“Nate challenged me to a drinking game. I won.”
She looked smug, which would have been amusing if Dominic wasn’t battling the sudden, surprising urge to hunt down Nathaniel Jenkins and break both his arms. A terrible thought occurred to him.
“Did he touch you?”
Juliette’s brows furrowed. “What?”
“Nate,” Dominic said. “Before I got there. Did he?”
Juliette looked at Dominic as if he’d suggested they race with marshmallows instead of tires. “No. It’s not like that anymore.”
Anymore. So the rumors were true. Dominic’s jaw tightened, and he might have said more if they weren’t approaching her bedroom door. “We’re here.”
Juliette fumbled with a key. Dominic scanned the room. A half-eaten sleeve of biscuits rested on the desk, and cowboy boots peeked out from under the bed. Posters plastered the walls: cocktails, a sketch of Brighton pier, former female drivers…
Dominic nodded at the wall. “Nice poster.”
She set down the key. “It’s—”
“Maria Teresa de Filippis. I know who she is.”
He knew the photograph: Maria leaned against a vintage car, staring boldly out at the camera.
It was no surprise that Juliette liked her; Maria had gone into racing because her older brother had bet that she couldn’t outdrive him.
Something warm curled in his chest. A lot like someone else he knew, actually.
Dominic’s eyes flicked to the other posters: Lella Lombardi, an Italian woman who had driven the delivery van for her family’s butcher shop before getting into racing; Ranya Silva, the Sri Lankan driver who ran Toro Significa.
And that was it, he realized, because that was all the women in the sport’s history.
How depressing. He’d had a dozen posters of famous male racers on his walls growing up.
Mostly white, admittedly, but at least he’d been able to see glimpses of himself in them.
We’re outsiders, he’d told her. How true that was.
He sat down on the bed.
“I need a shower,” Juliette said.
She was looking at him expectantly, and Dominic raised an eyebrow. “And?”
“You can leave.”
Dominic set down his gym bag. “Funnily enough, leaving inebriated students alone to drown in their own vomit wasn’t in the instructor’s handbook.
” Plus, Cap would kill him. They weren’t exactly friends, but he suspected that letting his sister asphyxiate in her dorm room would still be seen as an act of betrayal.
She pursed her lips. “I won’t be sick again.”
Dominic surveyed her. She seemed remarkably sober, but he wasn’t taking any chances.
For Cap, he reminded himself, although he couldn’t say that he entirely believed it.
He couldn’t deny that he felt…protective, of her, somehow.
But perhaps that came with the territory of being her instructor? Yes. That must be it.
“Tell you what,” he said. “I’ll wait five minutes, and then I’ll knock on your door to see if you’re dead.”
“What if I am?”
“Then the paperwork will be a real ball ache.”
Juliette cast her eyes skyward. “God, you’re even grouchier than I thought you’d be,” she muttered, but there wasn’t any heat in her words, and Dominic hid another smile.
She disappeared into the bathroom, and the sound of running water followed.
Dominic leaned closer to the corkboard. Pictures swallowed the space: Juliette eating a cupcake and cuddling two small dogs; Juliette standing in front of a theater with her parents; a photo of a young Juliette, Cap, and Baz at the beach, holding out vanilla ice cream cones to the camera…
She’d had braces, Dominic realized, although she clearly hadn’t been shy about it.
Her teeth were a rainbow array of metal, as if she’d glued Skittles to her teeth, and he bit back a smile.
He doubted it had ever occurred to Juliette to be embarrassed by something like braces.
She would have been baffled by the very idea of it.
Dominic knelt by his gym bag to fish out some pain meds. He was setting a few tablets on the nightstand with the bottle of water when there was a thud from the shower, and he stilled.
“Marchmont?” Dominic called.
Silence.
His heart sped up. He glanced at his watch; it had only been two minutes, but that had been one hell of a thud. And she had vomited. Twice.
“Juliette?” he repeated.
More silence.
For fuck’s sake.
Dominic burst into the bathroom. He glimpsed messy shelves, a bamboo bathmat, but his attention went to the shower. Juliette was slumped against the tile wall, holding her wrist; red streamed down her arm. Some part of Dominic registered that she was naked, but his eyes were locked on the blood.
“Marchmont?” Dominic seized her wrist, panic gripping him in its fist. “What happened?”
She waved him off. “I’m fine. I slipped, and I grabbed the shower caddy—”
“You’re bleeding.”
“It’s just a scratch.”
“Hold still.”
He couldn’t keep the alarm out of his voice.
God, that was a lot of blood. He’d seen dozens of racing injuries, but that was mostly internal.
Broken ribs, torqued knees, slipped discs…
head wounds bled a lot, didn’t they? But this?
A wrist injury? Surely it shouldn’t be this bad.
He didn’t realize how hard he was gripping her arm until Juliette closed her fingers lightly around his wrist.
“The water makes it worse,” she murmured. “See?”
She held up her wrist for inspection. It was true, Dominic realized; he could see a shallow cut just under her palm. He looked down at the broken shower caddy, the bottles littering the floor. His heart wouldn’t slow.
“I called your name. You didn’t answer.”
“I couldn’t hear you over the shower,” Juliette said.
Dominic braced a hand against the tile. He was still on edge, although he couldn’t understand why. She’s okay. He forced himself to think the words, again and again. She’s not hurt. She’s okay.
“Hastings,” Juliette said softly. “I’m fine.”
Water ran in rivulets over her collarbones. Dominic inhaled sharply. His first thought was that he’d never noticed her eyes before; they were a very precise shade of blue, something that reminded him of the vivid tiles inside the Moroccan mosques that his father used to visit.
His second thought was that he needed to get out of this shower. Now.
Dominic jerked his gaze away. “I should…” Juliette raised a hand to his face, and he flinched. “Don’t.”
Her fingers hovered. “Why not?”
Dominic almost laughed. How could she not see?
It wasn’t so much that he was older, or that she was Cap’s sister, or even that he was her instructor for the summer.
The academy had no rules against this sort of thing, so long as the relationship was between two consenting adults.
He could happily march up to HR tomorrow and say that they were in a relationship, and that would be the end of it.
No.
The issue lay in the fact that she was drunk and naked and that he wanted her. And the thought scared the hell out of him.
“Not tonight,” he said.
“Why not?” Juliette moved closer, and he could see water droplets clinging to her dark lashes. Smell the odd mixture of blood and strawberry bodywash. “You’re my instructor. So teach me.”
Dominic closed his eyes. The tile wall was cool against his back.
Something burned in his chest, and it felt like absinthe going down, the sort of searing heat that you choked on.
He’d only drunk the stuff once, at a classmate’s fifteenth birthday party, but he’d never forgotten the taste of it. Some things altered you that way.
“Teach me,” Juliette repeated softly.
She raised a hand, and Dominic tensed.
“You’re drunk.”
She smiled. “Not that drunk.”
Heat radiated from her damp skin. She traced the shape of his jaw, her fingers featherlight, and Dominic flinched.
“No.” He caught her wrist firmly. “Not like this.”
He fumbled for the shower door, pushing half-blindly into the bedroom.
A pulse hammered in his throat. Desire, yes, but also disgust. Disgust with himself for how tempted he’d been, for how badly he’d wanted her.
Did that make him better than Nate? Than any of those other boys who had taken advantage of her?
Dominic didn’t stop until he hit the corridor, flushed and panting.
Then he closed his eyes, knocking his head lightly against the wall.
Fuck.
He was so screwed, wasn’t he?