How could Adam do this? It made a mockery of everything she’d tried to do, of everything she’d tried to be … in her career, and for him.
God, she’d really had enough of this shit.
She texted his phone.
Meet you outside men’s toilets after interview. Ask where they are.
She reckoned it was the only place she could talk to him in private without his press agent, Catherine’s minions or anyone else hovering around. The only men allowed used those toilets were the guests.
Adam’s regular footsteps soon sounded on the tiled corridor. She peeped out from the doorway. He was alone.
“There you are,” he said, reaching out to her. “Thank God that’s over.”
She stepped aside, avoiding him. “No. Not here.” She scanned the corridor both ways. “Let’s go in.”
“Here?”
“Yeah.”
Adam slid in without a fuss.
She leaned her back against a washbasin for strength. “Adam, I can’t do this.” The words echoed in the tiled room, sounding weird, forced, rehearsed. But it was out there now.
“What’s wrong?”
“It’s everything.”
“Everything?” His dark gaze bore into her. “Explain.”
“I need to know where we stand now. Where I stand. I can’t just wait for the next race and the next championship.”
“There won’t be a next championship.”
“Why not?”
“Because I’m going to win this one.”
She clutched the sides of her head. “And if you don’t? Are you still getting out then?”
His mouth flattened into a grim line.
“See? You can’t answer. That’s exactly what I’m talking about.”
“Vivienne, how can I answer? I’ve six races left. Six. This is my chance—don’t you see? It’ll never come again. If I admit—even to myself—any doubt in my ability to win this, then I’ve already lost.”
“So what? So what if you do lose?”
“No.” He paced around the washroom. “If you can’t bear to be around me until the end of season, that’s fine. But let me do my thing for the next six races—here, Sepang, Shanghai, Sochi, Sao Paolo, Monte Carlo Nine weeks. Then it’s over.”
“It’s not just nine weeks, Adam. You’ve defined your life around winning a race. You’re addicted to it. You’ll only get worse.”
“Worse?” he echoed.
“Worse than you are now. You’re addicted to the idea of beating Reece. So much so that you ignore everything else that’s going on in your life.”
“That’s not true.”
“I hear Saskia’s getting married. Married!”
“Vivienne, I—”
“When were you planning on telling me? Or is December too far ahead on your calendar to plan me in?”
“What has Saskia’s wedding got to do with anything?”
“Everything. Do I really have to spell this out?”
Adam rubbed his forehead. “But it’s … after the championship.” He looked and sounded so genuine that she believed it wasn’t a conscious choice after all. Just the F1 blinkers. But that was just as bad.
“Don’t look at me like that,” he muttered. “I don’t even know if I’m going myself.”
“How could you not go to your own sister’s wedding?”
“It’s complicated.”
“Try me.”
His expression hardened. “Vivienne—no. Let’s not go there. Another time, okay? Please.”
Her indignation soared. “Winning a motor race won’t change a thing, you know.”
He looked down.
“And your family will still be as broken as it was before.”
“Leave my family out of this discussion.” When he looked up again, his eyes were as cold as his tone.
“Fine.” She held fingers to the sides of her head, turned, and strode toward the door. “This discussion is over anyway. And as far as I’m concerned, this relationship, too.”
And because it was spring-loaded, she couldn’t even slam the door.
Chapter 25
Malaysia
Adam had a sleepless flight, and when the plane began its descent into the Kuala Lumpur airport, he felt his spirits sink even lower. Should he have let Vivienne storm off? If he’d grabbed her and begged her to stay, he’d have to explain from the beginning. From Eddie. This wasn’t something he could do on the spur of the moment—in a men’s toilet. And not because some talk show bimbo had somehow forced the words out of him either.
Dragging Vivienne into the mess that was his family would take time, patience, and a lot of explaining, and he wanted to do it in his time, properly. She’d think differently about him, not in a good way, and he needed to mitigate that damage.
Her flight was due here in KL at five—an hour ago, or at least the flight she’d told him about last week, and she hadn’t texted or called since then. Now there was no sign of her around. This was his last hope. If he wanted to see her, he’d have to loiter around the BBC studio. Catch her off-guard somehow.
At least good old Bruce was there to meet him in the arrivals hall. He’d been on the same flight.
“You checked the forecast?” Bruce asked. “Any word on thunderstorms?”
“Not yet. But it won’t be accurate until Saturday.”
“You’re looking worse for wear. They give you some dodgy food up in first class?”
“No. I don’t know.” Adam hadn’t been able to eat at all. Two beers hadn’t helped him sleep.
Bruce gave him a sympathetic glance. “You’re thinking about that accident, aren’t you? Look, mate, it’s normal when you come back to a crash site for the first time. Best thing is to do a round of the circuit first thing. You worried about that hairpin?”
“No,” he said, truthfully, but now that Bruce mentioned it, his leg ached with psychosomatic pain up from his right ankle to the knee, in memory of the crash two years ago.
“Well, if there’s one place you need to qualify ahead of Reece, it’s here. Look, forget about Silverstone—home territory—he was bound to win, okay? You got Spa after all.”
Reece had pipped him at the post in Silverstone, and the crowd had gone mad with joy and schadenfreude for Adam It would be easy to blame the argument with Vivienne for his inability to shake Reece off on lap fifty-eight, but that way of moping would cost him the championship.
He checked into the hotel with Bruce, but declined to meet up with the crew for dinner. He went to his room instead and ordered room service, hoping he’d be able to fall asleep afterward. He sat in bed with his laptop, browsing his mail for something to do that didn’t involve thinking about Vivienne. But of course he was looking for an email from her, just in case. There wasn’t one.
He was about to close the email window when a subject title caught his eye. “My brother.” He scrolled to that message halfway down the list. Reading it, his breath caught. It was from a forty-year-old man who had heard his interview with Catherine and identified with his situation. He’d lost his own brother in a car accident twenty years ago. An accident in which he’d been driving. He lived with the guilt every day …
Adam clicked the mail shut and shifted uncomfortably on the bed. No, he didn’t want to get involved in other people’s grief. Wasn’t his own enough? Why lump their feelings on him? Who did they think he was? Gandhi? Ann Landers? A shrink? He just drove cars.
The skin crawled on his neck when the subject headers started to leap out at him: I miss my brother, too. Sharing your pain. Alone now. He forced himself to read those, from not just siblings, but also people who’d lost partners, children, parents.
The messages about lost brothers and sisters were the ones that affected him the most, and he couldn’t resist peeking at more. These surviving siblings often were overlooked in the face of child-loss and parent-loss, which were deemed more profound by outside sympathizers in general. And most of these mourning brothers and sisters felt g
uilt. Whether they were even present at the time of death didn’t matter. They felt the guilt for being alive. Yes, he knew that one.
“Christ,” he said aloud when he’d read about thirty of them. He’d never thought about others out there who might be suffering the same way. Some of these stories were worse than his own. His eyes were burning, and it wasn’t just from the glare of the screen.
Then he read the message from a local Malaysian boy of sixteen whose fourteen-year-old brother had just died in a road accident. The older boy, Aqil, had been driving a motorbike, and the brother, Ahmed, had sat on the back. They had been on their way to play soccer. He had swerved to avoid an oncoming truck and Ahmed had fallen off. He’d watched his brother die, bouncing and rolling in the road. Had held his hand.
Exactly like he and Eddie.
The accident had happened just three months ago. The boy was in agony—the letter made that apparent, and the decisions he made now would affect him forever. Adam wanted to reach out through the electronic ether and tell this boy, “No. Stop it now. Let go of it—the blaming, the guilt and the self-hate.” Once it took hold of Aqil’s psyche, he’d carry it around, like an illness he would never shake. And it would get worse with time, not better.
He’d lived to race because normal living after the accident had been too painful. They’d all reacted in their own ways—Saskia as the martyr who’d tried to save the family. Mother, who’d run away seeking a new, more intellectual life. Father, who’d lumped the blame on him and become fanatical about obscure wines. And as for himself … only F1 driving—the thing Eddie had loved and aspired to—had made any sense. He funneled everything into his driving, his cars. And fixing things. Because the one thing he needed to fix, he couldn’t.
It may not change anything, and it may just be a random drop in the ocean, but Adam had to write back.
• • •
Viv entered Mack’s office in the London BBC HQ at noon, bracing herself for his reaction to seeing her still here and not in Kuala Lumpur where she was due to land—right about now. She couldn’t work in the F1 arena anymore. This was screwing with her mind. It was totally unprofessional of her to let it get to her, but it would be even more unprofessional to do a shoddy job. Her performance in the Japan studio was testament to that.
“Mack, do you have a minute? I’d like to talk.”
Her boss waved her in, all smiles. “Sit down, Viv.”
“I … wanted to talk to you about my job direction. As you’ve probably noticed, I’m not on the plane to Kuala Lumpur, and, well, that’s because I feel I’d like to steer away from F1 commentary the way—”
He stood. “And I suggest we play this the smart way.”
She stared at him. Of all the reactions she’d expected, this wasn’t it. “What do you mean?”
“Okay, so this—affair—”
“What?” She sprang forward in her chair.
“Changes things somewhat, I’ll grant you that. But,” he paused and flicked fingers upward in the air as if conjuring up suitable words, “let’s handle this the smart way.”
He knew?
Mack sank down again. “You do an exclusive, of course. How I fell in love with a Formula One driver. That sort of thing. This is the ultimate humanization. From robot to man. Romancing the Spock.”
“But how do you know?”
“Viv, don’t be naïve; you can’t hide something like that.” He smirked. “Everybody knows. Hotels have staff; the walls have eyes—come on, who are we kidding?”
He rubbed his hands in glee, ignoring her open-mouthed horror. “We’ll have fun with this one. The public will love it. There’s a dearth of scandal about the royal family this autumn, and this’ll plug the gap nicely. But we have to keep it exclusive to us, so you and Fontaine will have to sign agreements not to spill to anyone else, all right?”
She pushed back her chair with a noisy screech. “Plug the gap? Exclusive? What are you talking about? Are you even listening to me? We’re not together. We’ve split up. And where am I supposed to go from here?”
“Look, be pragmatic. The world will have forgotten everything by next season, and you’ll be able to report on the races same as this year. I can get a replacement for you for the next five races if I must. But you have to play it my way now that this has happened.”
“What if I don’t agree to this exclusive—this invasion of the public into my—into our—private lives?”
Mack’s eyes narrowed. “Oh, you’ll agree.”
“I won’t. I don’t.”
“Don’t forget that this little romantic interlude happened on BBC expenses.”
“I did my job,” she retorted. “You paid me a salary.”
“We can pay you extra for this exclusive, too. A lot extra.”
“Stuff it.”
Mack’s expression grew cold. “Then don’t come here looking for work. And by here I mean the entire corporation.”
“If my career here depends on selling my private life off like this, why would I? I thought you hired me for my journalistic capabilities.”
“In a certain context, yes. I thought that your … way with the men would help add a bit of sparkle to a subject that is—let’s face it—dry. And you did that. You should be happy. Now that your personal situation’s changed—and may I stress because of your own choices and your own actions—and you feel you can’t do unbiased commentary, let’s deal with it in a way that is mutually beneficial. The offer, as I understand it, stands at 30,000 pounds. Tax exclusive.”
Laughable. If her heart weren’t breaking, she probably would be laughing at this. She might even find it genuinely funny. But he’d picked the wrong time to come with this kiss-and-tell bullshit and the wrong woman.
“You can sod your job and your exclusive. I won’t do it. I quit. I quit the entire corporation.”
His eyes widened. She turned on her heel and marched out the door.
“Trust me, this is your best option,” Mack called after her.
All eyes followed her as she walked red-faced back to her desk. Her fingers trembled as she turned on her laptop, preparing to erase any personal files before they blocked it.
This was the right decision—every bone in her body vibrated with the conviction of that—but now she was careerless and back at square one. Square minus one if you considered that she was a laughingstock for the whole industry now. Square minus a million without Adam.
She forced back tears of frustration by sheer willpower. She’d been prepared to put up with so much that wasn’t right about this world only to discover it was all wrong, all rotten at its core. She’d been a fool to think Mack could help her get on the career ladder. She was fodder to him. Fodder for the news machine. For his little empire he had going. When it came to deception, the story was every bit as fake behind the camera as it was in the world they were reporting on.
Was nothing real anymore?
The blinds on Mack’s office were pulled down. Sarah came out of nowhere to appear at her elbow, timid and pale. “What’s wrong?”
“I’m quitting.”
“Oh my God, no. Why? No, you can’t do that. Viv, think about it, please—”
Viv grasped her arm to stem the outburst, sensing the terror in Sarah’s eyes. “It’s time. I can’t take this anymore. It’s all fake. It goes against everything I believe in.”
“But what will you do?”
“I’ll find something. Anything. I’ll go back to the pharmaceutical industry and report on drugs trials. I don’t care—”
“But Mack’s your only way up the ranks here. You won’t make it anywhere in the BBC if you don’t go via him.”
She snorted. “Mack is precisely the person I need to get away from. It’s okay Sarah, we’ll stay in touch.”
She trailed back to Liam’s apartment in misery. The worst thing was, Adam was already en route to Malaysia, and she missed him horribly. But she wasn’t going to follow him. She was going to stay in London with Liam, with f
amily.
Adam had been right on one thing, though. Her job and “humanizing” him was not as important as his right to privacy. He was already human before he met her, albeit a reticent, suffering one who only wanted privacy, and she’d been so arrogant as to decide that he needed more exposure. It was no wonder he’d blocked her off.
Chapter 26
London
“Come on, sis. You know you want to.” Liam took Viv’s bishop and rolled the ivory piece between his fingers with a smug grin.
“Damn you.” She pushed a reluctant pawn forward, not really concentrating. “No, Liam, I don’t want to. I’m serious.” Three days it had been now, three days with her little brother as her only company. She appreciated being able to stay in his London apartment, which boasted a spare box room of a bedroom where she’d been holed up mulling over everything that had passed, but she did not appreciate his attempts to cheer her up.
“Come on, when was the last time you missed one?”
“An actual race, not qualifiers? Well … three years ago, I suppose.”
“Then you don’t want to start missing one now, do you?” Liam caught her eye, and then his gaze flickered down to where he was about to checkmate her king.
“That’s why I want to miss it. It’s taken up too much of my life already. Besides, it’s on at 8:00 a.m. our time. I’m going to have a lie-in this Sunday.”
“You don’t do lie-ins.”
“I do now. You can bring me breakfast in bed and tell me the final ranking.”
Liam drummed his fingers on the side of the chessboard. In a horribly piquant way, it reminded her of someone. “Please don’t do that.”
“Holy mackerel, someone’s touchy.”
“When was the last time you broke up with someone?” she asked. “Touchy doesn’t even begin to cover it. I shouldn’t even be here with you. I should be in a bedsit getting drunk with my girlfriends, except they’re all off being successful across the globe.” She slumped back into the sofa. Liam had won anyway. Just like the last two games.
“Giving up?”
“Yeah.”
Liam gathered pieces off the board and put them into a velvet bag. “Count yourself lucky you got in deep enough to mourn him. Mine never last more than two or three dates. Story of my life. Maybe I should look for a sportswoman. What do you think? A Russian tennis player? A triathlete? Or one of those synchronized swimmers? They’re seriously kinky.”
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