36

“Why is it taking so long?” Mira gripped the sides of her chair to keep herself from exploding into hysteria.

She and Violet were sitting side by side on hard plastic chairs in the medical center waiting room. Will was in the back, still being examined.

She might never recover from the horror of that moment, watching Will’s car spin into the track wall, the sparks, the flying debris, the smoke and flame, and then the awful stillness after. It had felt like an hour, but it was just seconds before she’d seen him moving inside. Still alive. In that moment, that was the only thing that mattered.

He’d climbed out of the car by himself, which was a good sign, but his in-ear accelerometer had gone off, which meant he’d sustained a serious impact and required a mandatory medical workup.

Now he was off in back and her father was in there with him, and there was no way any of this was going to end well.

“I’m sure he’s fine,” Violet said. “You know they have to check him out if the accelerometer goes off.”

“I know,” she muttered numbly.

In her initial panic about Will, she’d forgotten all about the fight with Brody and what it would look like to her dad. To everyone else. Now it was all coming back and panic of a new kind threatened to overwhelm her. But she didn’t have time for that now, not until she knew that Will was okay.

“I’m sure they’re just being really cautious,” Violet said again. “X-rays and CAT scans and all that. You know that stuff takes forever.”

“Yeah, I know.”

They sat in silence for several more minutes, Violet scrolling through her iPad, Mira staring at a scuff on the opposite wall and trying not to cry.

“Shit,” Violet muttered.

“What?”

“Shit shit shit.”

“Violet, what is it?”

Wordlessly, Violet handed her the iPad. The article was from a British gossip website. The British ones were always the worst. Right at the top, there was a slightly blurry photo of Will and Brody, Brody pinned to the side of Will’s motor home and Will’s hand gripping his race suit.

Underneath it screamed the headline “Formula One’s Bad Boy Champ Takes Out Rivals on and off the Track!”

Part of her had known the second she’d come face-to-face with Brody that her hiding was done. Her past from seven years ago was about to come screaming back into her present. And now Will was right in the middle of it, too. It had nearly killed him. She felt sick … cold and shaky with dread. She didn’t want to read the story, but her eyes moved over the text against her will, every word hitting her like a physical blow.

This season’s Formula One sensation, Will Hawley, seems to be just as aggressive off the track as he is on it. Just moments before taking to the track for qualifying, Hawley took a swing at fellow driver Brody McKnight when he caught his lady friend chatting up Brody in the paddock. Team members for both drivers broke up the fight, but not before Hawley unleashed his rage and landed several blows on McKnight.

The woman in question, Miranda Wentworth, is not only the daughter of Lennox Motorsport’s principal, Paul Wentworth; she’s also got a bit of a past with Brody McKnight. Several years ago, she lured McKnight into a torrid affair just weeks before his marriage to actress Lulu Heatherington.

Wentworth returned to America after that scandal broke, but it seems, on her return to the sport, she’s wasted no time snagging herself another driver. Or maybe two?

She fought back a swell of nausea and thrust the iPad at Violet, but the damning article still glowed on its surface. There was no escaping it now. Apparently, there never had been.

Violet surged to her feet, pacing back and forth across the tiny waiting room. “They’re going to go crazy over this. It feeds right into Will’s bad-boy narrative, and you know how much they love flogging that.”

“It’s bullshit, Violet! I told Brody to leave me alone and he wouldn’t. He was harassing me and Will just—”

“Will threw the first punch,” Violet said quietly.

“He was provoked.”

“Doesn’t matter in stories like these. It hits all the right selling points. Two hot superstar athletes fighting on the track and now fighting over a woman.”

“I was not flirting with Brody. God, he disgusts me.”

Violet stopped her pacing and came back to sit beside her. “Mira, you know I’m on your side. You were involved with him once, though.”

Mira swallowed hard and dropped her eyes to the floor. “Yeah, I was.”

“That’s all these bloodsuckers are going to care about. They’re going to have a field day with this. With you . They always try to paint the woman as the bad guy in these things. It’s not fair, I’m sorry. But it’s probably going to get a lot worse.”

Right now, it was hard to imagine how things could possibly get worse. The last seven years of her life—her perfect grades at UCLA, her nonexistent personal life, all her hard work this season with Lennox—it was all washed away, deemed irrelevant because she’d once been stupid enough to sleep with Brody McKnight and was now audacious enough to get involved with Will Hawley. None of this was her fault and yet she couldn’t help feeling frozen with shame.

Violet’s phone rang, startling her out of her shock. Violet looked at the face and her expression grew impossibly grimmer.

“It’s Ryan from Velocity. This can’t be good.”

Her heart sank. Will’s major endorsement deal with Velocity, the new label they were supposed to roll out … Things had just gotten much, much worse. He might lose his endorsement. He’d been in a crash that could have killed him, one that might still end his entire season. Her father might get hauled in front of the FIA to answer for another scandal, and once again, here she sat at the center of everything.

As Violet turned away and accepted the Velocity call, Mira closed her eyes and folded in on herself, pressing her forehead to her knees. It was all too awful. There had to be something she could do to fix this, to keep it from getting any worse.

She lifted her head and blinked. Of course there was. There was one thing she could do. The thought of doing it made her feel like she was cutting out her own heart, but really, she had no choice, did she? Maybe she never had.

WILL HAD BEEN TRYING, unsuccessfully, to convince the Italian medical staff that he was fine, but no one seemed to be listening to him. Whether it was due to their rigorous commitment to his well-being or to his terrible Italian, he couldn’t be sure.

The doctor and nurse were still prodding at him, shining a light in his eyes, taking notes in his chart, when the exam room curtain was ripped open to reveal Paul, Tae, and Mitchell, the team physician. Paul’s expression was impossible to read, somewhere between panic and rage.

“Hi, Paul.” He glanced over Paul’s shoulder but couldn’t see any sign of Mira.

Paul’s eyes raked down Will and then cut to the doctor. “How is he?” he asked in perfect Italian. Will didn’t understand the words, but he didn’t miss Paul’s gesture in his direction.

“Doing okay?” Tae asked him as the doctor, Paul, and Mitchell proceeded to have a discussion in Italian. Was he the only one who failed languages in school?

“I’m fine. They’re just being cautious,” he told Tae. “Is Mira out there?”

Tae cast an apprehensive glance at Paul. “She is.”

“Can you go get her? I need to tell her—”

“How’s the head?” Paul said to him.

“Head’s fine. That’s what I keep telling them. The stupid sensor triggered, but I’m fine.” Mira must be so upset. He needed to see her.

“They said you don’t have a concussion,” Mitchell said. “Which is good news.”

“I know I don’t have a concussion. Honestly, I’m fine. Can you just get them to sign my release and—”

“And the hand?” Mitchell’s eyes had fixed on his right hand, hidden under an ice pack. “The doctor said you’ve got some damage.”

Will fought the urge to hide his hand behind his back. He’d managed to crash into a wall at three hundred kilometers an hour and walk away unscathed, but apparently smashing his fist into Brody’s fucking face did some damage. He’d felt fine when he climbed into the car, but he’d still been buzzing with adrenaline. And then there was the shock of the crash. It was hard to feel anything in the midst of that. But the longer he sat here, the worse it felt.

“It’s nothing.” He held it out, and Mitchell and Paul leaned over, examining his red knuckles. “Just a little sore. It’ll be fine by tomorrow.”

Mitchell frowned forbiddingly. “This swelling’s not good.”

“It’s fine.” As proof, he flexed his thumb for Mitchell, but had to stop when a sudden flash of pain shot up his arm. He hissed through his teeth. Paul and Mitchell glanced up at him.

“Not so fine,” Paul muttered.

Mitchell ran his fingers along his thumb, prodding at the obvious inflammation. “It hurts?”

“A little,” Will conceded.

“A little?” When Mitchell rotated his thumb, Will winced again.

“A lot.”

“Hmm.” Mitchell was still scowling. “You’ve got a sprain.”

“No. I’m sure it’s just a little swollen. Give me a shot to bring down the inflammation and a little something for pain and I’ll be fine.” Mitchell flexed his thumb again, and Will’s face crumpled. Besides hurting like a beast, his range of motion was diminished. Like, nonexistent. “Fuck. Mitchell, you have to fix it.”

Mitchell straightened, rubbing a hand over his short-cropped salt-and-pepper beard. “It’s soft tissue damage, Will. There’s nothing I can do for that.”

Paul let out a tired exhale, his eyes falling closed. “Ah, bloody hell. That’s that, then.”

“What are you saying?”

Mitchell stared at him. “Will, you know what this means.”

Yes, he did know. It took a million constant adjustments to operate a Formula One car and almost all of the controls were on the steering wheel—and they all required his thumbs. A sprained thumb. What a stupid fucking injury. But it was about the worst injury a driver could have. He had walked away from that crash unscathed, but this—his bloody fucking thumb —was going to put him out of the race.

“So he can’t race?” Paul asked, sounding as if he already knew the answer.

Even hearing the words made Will feel sick.

Mitchell shook his head. “Not in Monza, for sure.”

“And Spielberg?” Paul pressed. “That’s in a week.”

Mitchell heaved a sigh. “Ice and heat to bring down swelling, anti-inflammatories … we’ll keep a close eye on it. And we’ll just see. That’s all we can do.”

“Paul,” Will pleaded, “come on. Mitchell can give me a cortisone shot. I’ll ice up all night. I’m sure it’ll be fine by tomorrow.”

Paul shook his head, arms crossed over his chest, looking as cold and forbidding as a glacier. “I can’t take that chance, Will. You know I can’t. You’re out for Monza.”

At Harrow, when he was fourteen, he’d been playing a pickup game of football with some friends. He’d taken a wrong step into a divot in the grass and sprained his ankle. He’d ended up on crutches for six weeks. Mitchell was right—there was no predicting these things. Best-case scenario, he’d be back behind the wheel in Austria. Worst? His season was over and so was his fight for the world championship.