38

Will had thought the sprained thumb was the worst fate that could possibly have befallen him.

He was so wrong.

It turned out that losing Mira hurt a whole lot more than sitting out Monza.

This morning, Paul had called at an ungodly hour. Not that the hour mattered. Will hadn’t slept all night, unable to get his conversation with Mira out of his head. Being ordered to attend an emergency team meeting—a real one—at the crack of dawn didn’t even faze him after that.

Everyone was here—Paul, Simone, Violet, Mitchell, Matteo, both reserve drivers, Connor Meade, who was the head of Lennox communications, and half a dozen suits from Lennox’s legal department. Mira was conspicuously absent. Paul didn’t comment on it and Will didn’t dare ask about her. Currently, Paul wasn’t making eye contact with him. That was a problem he’d have to face later.

“You’re sure the sprain will put Will out of Monza?” Connor asked Mitchell. “What about beyond that?”

Mitchell nodded. “Monza definitely. Beyond that, I can’t say. You never can predict how fast these things will heal.”

Paul cursed under his breath, but Connor raised a steadying hand. “This might actually be for the best.”

“We’re missing a bloody race. How can that possibly be for the best?”

Connor, in his fifties, tall and good-looking in an expensive, corporate way, leaned forward on his elbows, looking over the tops of his titanium-framed reading glasses at everyone around the table before focusing back on Will. “Deloux is kicking up a fuss about this with the FIA, calling for you to be banned for the rest of the season.”

“What? That’s bullshit!”

Connor motioned for his silence. “They’re just grandstanding. They know the FIA won’t take that kind of action about the fight, which seems to be a personal matter.”

“What about the crash?” he pressed. “Can we go after him for that?” Brody was so far down in the rankings that a penalty wouldn’t even matter, but it would sure as fuck make Will feel better.

“We can’t prove he did that on purpose,” Paul said.

“But we all know he did,” Matteo said quietly. Will looked to him. Matteo shrugged. “I saw it. He jerked his wheel, and then he accelerated into you. Every driver out there would agree.”

While he was grateful for Matteo’s backup, it wouldn’t matter in the end. Paul was right. It would be extremely difficult to prove without a doubt that Brody caused his crash.

“Your injury will shut down any speculation that you’re missing the race because they’ve barred you from driving,” Mitchell said. “At the moment, that’s good news.”

Will rolled his eyes. That definition of good news was a stretch.

Now Simone spoke up. “Now, the bad news is that Deloux isn’t just talking to the FIA. They’re talking to the media—anybody who will listen. And unfortunately this thing has gotten away from us a bit. Violet? What’s the story on social media?”

“The big F1 media sources were all over it fifteen minutes after it happened,” Violet said, casting articles from her iPad to the flat-screen in the corner. “It’s all framed to favor Brody, not Will, and Will threw the first punch, which doesn’t help.”

Of course Deloux was pumping the story out to the press. That wanker Brody probably did it himself. He had loads of experience with that game. “Violet,” Will protested. “You were there. You saw—”

“Will, what I saw and what I know doesn’t matter. There’s only how the story is being perceived. And right now, everyone seems to think this is you showing your true colors.”

Will scoffed. “I have never gotten into a fight with another driver in my life.” Before yesterday he hadn’t even thrown a punch since he was thirteen. And just like Brody, that little asshole had deserved it, too.

“The good news, if there is any, is that in the comments, where the fans debate, reaction seems to be pretty split. Plenty of Lennox and Hawley fans have come to your defense, but as these things go, no one’s changing their minds. If they weren’t a fan of yours before, they certainly aren’t now.”

“What about the sponsors?” Paul looked to Simone.

Simone pressed her palms to the conference table. “I think I’ve put out the fires with Rally Fuel and Archer Autoparts. They’re not too spooked. I’ve got conference calls with Compendium Banking, Marchand Timepieces, and Helix this afternoon. I’ll see what I can do to smooth this over.” Her eyes flicked up to Will’s and then away again. “Velocity is another matter.”

Will stifled a groan. He already knew the bad news from Velocity. They were having an emergency meeting in New York this afternoon to discuss shutting down the new line and possibly dropping their sponsorship altogether. Personally, he didn’t give a shit if his name was never slapped on a single pair of trainers. But now that his initial fury had subsided, he had to acknowledge that the loss would be a serious financial blow to Lennox. Mira wasn’t wrong about that part.

“Are they pulling the plug?” Connor asked.

“That remains to be seen. It’s a major deal, lucrative for everyone involved, so they won’t want to jettison it unless they determine Will to be too much of a liability.”

“Up until yesterday, they couldn’t get enough of me.”

“And then you pummeled a fellow driver and crashed your car into a wall,” Simone said. “You came into this season with a reputation”—Will started to protest but Simone spoke over him—“earned or not. And I know you’ve walked the straight and narrow all season, but it doesn’t take much to stir up old talk. On many fronts.”

A moment of tense silence stretched out as Simone’s meaning sank in. Mira. They were talking about Mira and what that bastard Brody had done to her years ago. Except that’s not how it was playing out in the press. Violet had shown him some of the articles right before the meeting and they made him sick. She was being portrayed as some sort of racing groupie, a siren luring unsuspecting drivers to their doom. They implied that she’d flirted with Brody, her ex-lover, until Will, her current lover, was out of control with jealousy. Not one of them brought up the fact that Brody had been thirty to her sixteen when they’d been involved, or that he’d been engaged and lied to her about it. However, as he’d learned personally, facts didn’t matter much when the media had its own story to tell.

She’d been dragged through the mud once before, and she clearly had no intention of being dragged through it again, not even for him. Seeing what was being said about her already, he wasn’t even sure he blamed her. Who was he to force her to stay and face it all over again? Maybe she was right. She needed to get away from this mess and stay away. Not for his own good, but for hers .

“Okay,” he said, slapping his good hand on the table. “I get it. I fucked up. Tell me what to do to fix it. Whatever it is, I’ll do it.”

“It’s not that easy, Will,” Simone said. “We don’t want to get involved in a mudslinging press war with Deloux.”

“So we let them just say what they want about me with no pushback?”

“No, we counter, carefully, strategically. I’ll be looking for an outlet for a sit-down interview, someone who’ll be favorable to you. We’ll be cautious and discreet about what you say and how you say it. Too many details could come across as unpleasant or lurid.”

He could read between the lines. There was a way to play this and come out clean. He could throw Mira under the bus, just like Brody had, let the press think he’d been lured into trouble by an untrustworthy woman. But despite the easy out it presented, no one in the room wanted that, especially him. He’d never turn on her, even though she’d just dumped him. Brody might have hung her out to dry, but he’d never do that to her. Never .

“Okay, find me an interview, tell me what to say, and I’ll do it. I’ll be perfect.”

“Good.” The word was positive but Simone’s expression was still grim. “Until we come up with a strategy, your instructions are to lie low. Don’t give anyone any reason to talk about you. No one even catches sight of you buying a coffee. Understood?”

The warning wasn’t necessary. Maybe in the past he’d have coped with a setback by going on the mother of all benders, but those days were done. Now all he wanted to do was fix this. “Done.”

“We might even send you back to London until you’re cleared to race again, just to avoid the scrutiny of the track press.” Simone eyed Will across the table. “Is that a problem?”

Running back to London like he had something to hide felt all wrong. Leaving Mira behind to weather everything without him also felt wrong. But she’d already walked away from him, hadn’t she? All he’d ever wanted to do was protect her. But when he’d tried to do that his way, he’d set off the chain reaction of disasters that had led them all here. So maybe he needed to try it her way. Maybe the right thing to do was to let her go. For her sake. For everyone’s. He felt sick just imagining it, but he was just going to have to get used to that, because she was already gone, wasn’t she?

Simone stared him down, waiting for an answer.

He didn’t have much choice. He’d started this. Now he had a responsibility to every person in the room—hell, to the hundreds of Lennox employees there and back in England—to do whatever he could to fix it. So he was leaving.