The Marriage Mistake_A Billionaire Hangover Romance

by Natalie Knight

  The pan is warm. I begin to move, cracking eggs into a bowl.

  “What do you think about an omelette for breakfast?” I ask.

  “That sounds perfect,” she says, taking a sip of coffee.

  “Bread? I have a fresh baguette delivered every morning I know I’ll be here,” I say.

  “Of course you do,” she says with a laugh.

  I can feel her eyes on me as I whisk the eggs and then tear apart the fresh parsley, basil, and thyme. I shred the gruyere and put it aside. I pour the mixture in the pan.

  “He cooks,” she says. I can hear her smiling. It loosens something inside me. I don’t know what it is, but it makes me laugh.

  “I cook,” I say, nodding. “I like the kitchen. I like being alone in here and focusing on my cravings as I try to create something simple to satisfy it. It’s like any other kind of inventing process. Just with cooking it’s finding the right combination of flavors to satisfy me.”

  “Is that what you feel when you’re tweaking the engine or playing with the design of the car?”

  I open my mouth to respond, and then consider my options. This could be, I realize, an opportunity to figure her out. Another exchange of information. I know now how she takes her coffee, she knows now that I cook. I know that she stole from me, but now will she find the words—or will I find the question—that will help me understand if she’s a tool for the Feds or her team. And if she’s not, how and why did she get caught up in this?

  She asked a simple question. Do I answer it honestly, in the way of two people learning the contours of each other? In the way couples do at the beginning of an affair?

  I lower the heat on the burner and leave the omelette to cook a bit. Then I turn to her, leaning against the counter and we look at each other for a moment. Her green eyes are locked on mine.

  “Yeah,” I say. “I’ve never really thought about it before, but I suppose there are parallels between cooking and the way I approach racing. I’m not sure if I can explain it—”

  “Try,” she says.

  I nod.

  “It’s never about driving, not really. When I race it’s about becoming enveloped in the machine or going so fast you feel one with the wind.” I shrug. “I don’t know how to explain it better than that. It’s not just about speed, but it’s about cutting through the world, whipping between objects so quickly it’s like you’re invisible.

  “It’s not like flying—I’ve never been interested in being in the air, I like the feeling of being connected to Earth, but so loosely, it feels otherworldly. A perfect drive is combining the grit of the earth—smell of gasoline, the black tar, sweat pouring down your back—all with the elegance of a dance.”

  “That’s what you’re doing with your ‘adjustments.’ You’re trying to streamline the dance?”

  “That’s a good way of putting it, yeah. But it’s also more than that.”

  I turn back to the pan and sprinkle the cheese over the bed of eggs, a pinch of salt and grind of fresh pepper. I fold the omelette perfectly.

  “Or, that’s the racing part, that’s what I’m craving. The other part to it is trying to mix things up to satisfy that craving.” I slide the omelette on to a plate, tear off the heel of the baguette, and place the plate in front of her.

  “Eat.”

  She breaks into the eggs, bringing a morsel to mouth. I watch her eyes close for a second. She’s smiling.

  “This is really good.”

  “I know,” I say. We’re both smiling. Then I say, more seriously this time, “I’m glad you like it.”

  I clear my throat and I start on my own omelette.

  “Don’t stop,” she says. “Keep telling me.”

  “Okay,” I start, “what I’m trying to say is the innovation part is the puzzle. It’s not about breaking laws or hurting people, it’s about pushing the industry forward—safely, but also for the sake of it. Inventors don’t always have a grand plan in mind, they are simply trying to improve on the past.”

  “I get that,” she says. “I really do. I fell in love with racing because it feels miraculous—how can a lug of a machine cut through air and be maneuvered so beautifully? Watching a race feels the same as watching a beautiful hunt—a pride of lions trying to make it to the prey.” She pauses. “I’ve never articulated that before.”

  She opens her mouth to say something. I feel like she’s going to tell me what’s happening. I feel like she’s about to come clean. But she smiles instead.

  I’m about to say something to urge her to talk more, challenge her to speak to me, but she speaks first.

  “Yours ready, yet? I’m almost done here.”

  “Yep,” I say, sliding onto the stool beside her. And then she passes me the butter, and we casually eat together in my kitchen. She can’t know what this is doing to me. I don’t even have the words for it. But I’m suddenly terrified that now that I’ve had this, I won’t be able to let it go. And that could be my undoing.

   Jenna

  I walk out of Braden’s apartment and decide to walk the long way home. For once, my thoughts aren’t racing. I’m moving without a clear purpose, but I’m sure eventually I’ll get home.

  I’m waiting for the crosswalk sign to flicker from the orange hand to the blinking white figure when I catch my reflection in the darkened window of a passing black car. I’m smiling to myself, like Mona Lisa or like a girl with a secret. It makes me looking alluring.

  The white figure starts blinking and I force myself to move forward. My movement feels lighter than it has in months. I’m not quite floating, but I am relieved.

  After all this time worrying about what to do about Braden and myself, I’m starting to feel some clarity. The chorus of questions—“Should I hand over the blueprints?” “Should I perjure myself to the Feds?” “It this feeling between Braden and I real? Or is it lust run wild?”—that rush of voices has quieted down.

  I feel sure of him; I feel certain we’re building towards something. Braden and me.

  I clap my hand over my mouth and can barely stop myself from laughing and doing a small, quick little skip. Braden made me breakfast. We talked about those things that drive us forward—we both love racing and pushing ourselves and the cars. We both crave that sense of freedom that comes with moving faster than has ever been possible.

  The blueprints aren’t mine to handover, I know that now. I want a future with Braden—a real one based on honesty and respect. I want us to challenge each other, yes, but I don’t want to betray him before we’ve even started.

  I have to tell him what I did. I have to tell him about taking the prints and about the agent who’s chasing him down. He might never forgive me—but I can’t think about that now.

  He might be able to explain himself, though. He might be able to explain why he’s putting himself and our whole sport in jeopardy. He might be able to explain how this isn’t cheating; how he’s not undercutting my team and my job. He might.

  He might not, but suddenly I’m not sure how much I care anymore. I want to be with him and sit at the kitchen island and talk with him until we’re both blue in the face and have used every word known to man. I want to understand him completely. I want him to understand me.

  I need to get home. I’ll grab the blueprints and race back to his house. I’ll give them to him and ask him to make the right choice for all of us—himself, me, and the racing world. We’ll figure out what that is together.

  Raising my hand to my lips, I step to the curb and whistle so loudly other people on the street cover their ears and wince. A small child is holding his mother’s hand and looks at me in awe, his small mouth agape. I wink at him and smile, stepping into the street and opening the door of the yellow cab that screeches to a standstill in front of me.

  “Step on it,” I tell the cab driver. He takes off, both of us enjoying our turn as characters in the Sunday afternoon movie.

  The cabbie pulls on my street and there are cars backed up down the street f
or miles.

  “I can get out here,” I say, taking a wad of bills out of my wallet and pushing them into his hand. I overpaid, but I don’t want to wait. I wanted to be home, blueprints in hand to try to catch Braden before another moment passes.

  Suddenly, time feels like it’s moving too fast and I start to run towards home, making a right into the driveway and running headlong into the arms of Agent Harrison.

  “Jesus,” he says. “Is there someone chasing you?”

  I pull myself backwards, confused for a second. How is this guy here? Why is he here?

  Agent Sanchez is standing in front of my door and I watch him walk towards me slowly. He has a toothpick in his mouth. I wonder vaguely if they had lunch in my neighborhood or if they grabbed to sandwiches in the city and ate them on the road.

  “You scared me,” I say, taking care to keep my voice steady and light. I pull my wrist from Harrison’s hand. He was gripping my wrist harder than he needed to keep me still. I rub it lightly.

  Then I force myself to smile widely. “Did we have an appointment?”

  “No,” Sanchez says, coming up to stand next to his partner. They’re a blocking my path to the front door, so I move to the right.

  They move with me.

  Sanchez smiles down at me. “Sorry to barge in on you, but we understand you have what we need. You have the evidence on Braden, don’t you? We can’t wait anymore for you to, uh,” here he takes the toothpick out of his mouth, “to do the right thing.” His mouth stretches in an approximation of a smile.

  A flash of panic courses through me. Have these men been watching me? Were they able to uncover the specifics of Bredan’s schema for race day?

  The spied on me once, but is it ongoing? Did they watch me and Braden last night? Were they somehow about to see into the kitchen this morning—that warm intimate private scene of two people falling in love?

  Or are they bluffing? I felt the acid in my stomach begin to turn.

  As if on cue, the two agents move towards me. They’re larger than I remember—one of them smells like fried onions, one like gym socks and Listerine. I briefly reflect on the randomness of my thoughts at a time like this, but the mind is a strange thing.

  “Do you have his plans, Jenna?” Harrison asks her. His voice is low. His eyes are cold.

  I shake my head hard, twice.

  “That’s funny,” Sanchez says, “her nostrils just flared. It’s like she’s lying to us. You don’t think she’s lying to us, do you?”

  “No way,” Harrison says, his mouth twisting. “She’s too smart for that. You’re too smart to lie to the FBI, right?”

  “Okay,” I say, “fine, I have them. But—” I think quickly. “They’re not here.”

  They don’t say anything, but look at me doubtfully.

  “I swear,” I say. I can hear the desperation in my own voice. I look down, trying to buy some time to come up with a plausible lie.

  “Oh yeah?” one of the agents says. Harrison, perhaps? I don’t lift my head to see.

  “Yeah,” I say. “Yes. I have it in the safe in my team’s office. I didn’t want Braden to find them or anything to happen to them.”

  I lift my head to see how my words have landed. Sanchez and Harrison exchange a look. Sanchez glances over his shoulder at my front door. All at once it’s clear to me—they don’t have a warrant to search my home. They don’t have anything on me—or Braden, for that matter.

  Suddenly I wonder if there’s anything they can actually do if I don’t comply. Have they been playing me this whole time?

  I square my shoulders and lift my chin. “Now, if you’ll excuse me. I’d like to go into my home, and unless you can conjure a warrant from thin air, I’m going to ask you as politely as I can to leave my driveway and my property.”

  “Jenna.” Harrison grabs my wrist again. “We have a lot of information; we have a pretty solid case against him and against you. We’ve offered you immunity but it’s contingent on you being able to deliver useful information.”

  I pull my wrist back. “Honestly? I don’t think you have much, Agent Harrison. If you did, I’m positive you wouldn’t be stuck outside of my home—you’d be here with a team turning this whole place over. You either have nothing or close to nothing.” I can feel my hands shaking, whether with anger or fear I can’t say.

  “We’re coming to the race tonight,” he says, moving so close to my face our noses are nearly touching. “You will bring us Braden’s plans or we’re going to consider you an accomplice to whatever it is he has planned. Immunity will be off the table and you won’t be given an opportunity for a plea deal. I will personally make sure of that.”

  Neither of us say anything for a moment more.

  I take a breath and say: “I asked you, sirs, to leave my property.” I push through them, put my key in the lock and walk through the door.

  I slam it shut and lean my back against it for a second until my breathing settles down. Then I turn the dead bolt and secure the chain. My hands, I realize, are still shaking.

  “What am I going to?” I whisper, letting myself slide to the floor, hugging my knees to my chest. The peaceful calm of the morning is gone, replaced by fear for my team, my career, and for Braden.

  What the hell is he doing to us?

  Then, like a bolt, it comes to me: a clear plan.

  I know what to do, and if I can pull this off I might be able to save Braden, myself, and the future of both our teams.

  Braden

  I really enjoy the anticipation of things. That’s why I’m usually as happy as you’ll ever find me when I’m getting close to the track, knowing that the unbeatable fucking feeling of sitting on top of an earthbound rocket, propelling myself past anyone who would even think about considering themselves my competition with ridiculous ease, is finally within my grasp.

  The only thing that comes close is knowing that I’m going to see Jenna soon.

  That’s a new one for me.

  That’s what makes this call even more maddening than I expected it to be. The track is getting closer, but I’m feeling none of the usual fire.

  I’m glad to have my sources inside the bureau, but this time the news is veering too damn far from what I wanted to hear.

  “When you say the word tonight, it sounds like a mistake,” I bark into the phone, “because then it would be pretty much underway already. How is that even possible?”

  “It’s the way things work sometimes…often.” The words coming through the other end sound smug and assured. “Everyone’s giving him shit. The agent, I mean. And that means he’s planning to make it all happen tonight—and I mean tonight, with nothing fucking figurative about it. I recognize the mode he’s in. It’s something every agent goes into sometimes. He’s hell bent on doing everything in his power to make this happen, including gathering what he needs. I’m as confident about that as anything.”

  “Right.” I hang up with that word.

  If I had to guess what things were really like inside an agency operating at the highest hierarchal levels, I sure as fuck wouldn’t guess in a million years that it was the same gossipy office politics and petty one-upmanship that’s rampant everywhere else.

  I don’t know why, though, because it makes perfect fucking sense.

  A few more minutes to the racetrack, and I’m hitting speeds that are usually transcendent for me. This isn’t feeling like the highlight of my day, or much else.

  The racing’s been going great for a while, but with Jenna in my life now, things that were once great are suddenly going amazing. I’m compelled to share everything with her.

  Now it looks like that’s going to cost me everything.

  This can’t be it, after what we’ve done, what we’ve been through, and all those things I’ve begun to feel. There’s never been anything like this, not for me.

  She can’t possibly be working to bring everything apart. I don’t want to fucking believe it.

  I keep thinking about how clos
e I’m getting to the track, but it seems to be getting further. It’s like every block is getting longer, and it gets worse the more I accelerate.

  How could Jenna do this? How could she fucking do this?

  Charging like mad down the final stretch, I see the track, and it’s a relief that it’s finally getting closer. I go through that whiney-bitch sounding question one more time.

  How could Jenna do this?

  This is all psychological combat. I don’t know who’s sending out the signal, whether it’s originating with just the agent or there’s a larger scheme coming from the bureau, but these bastards figured out how to get to me.

  I don’t gently shift gears, I barely even steer, I just unthinkingly press down the brake and skid over to the curb.

  Now that I’ve probably figured it out, I need to give myself just a minute.

  I should absolutely be furious, and I am. I’m not somebody to play mind games with. However, I feel a massive relief, and I realize that I’m breathing easily for the first time in a few minutes.

  It’s not Jenna, after all. She’s not trying to steal my plans for herself. I knew it couldn’t be, was fucking sure of it, and that’s a sign of something. I’m not sure what that something is yet, but it feels great.

  What if it is, though?

  Fuck. There are those goddamn mind games again. I hate the invasiveness of it, and all over a fucking mod—a mod that no one has a good reason to concern themselves with.

  This whole thing is such a waste, and it’s becoming so needlessly destructive, but my impulses take over again as I shift back into gear and start flying to the track. I feel the fire, the rapture of high speed, and the anticipation of things soon to come on all levels.

  The streets look abandoned, and everything is rushing by like magic.

  I was just thinking about how the worst part of all this is not knowing what’s going to happen next, but as I transition into a higher gear, barely even processing the blur in front of me, I realize the best part of all this is not knowing what comes next.

  The faster the race car goes, the more control you give it. Your reaction times and manoeuvres begin to lose meaning, but when you get as good as I am, you can learn to harness the wild speed—to channel the untamed power and make it yours.