Page 37 of Start Your Engines

“Are you still there?”

“Sorry, yeah. You’re doing well this season, Con.”

“Have you spoken to Senna?” I ask, biting the inside of my mouth. I can’t reveal my mess of emotions to her brother. The image of her sitting at her desk from earlier this week, with her long sexy legs and my pizza in her mouth, sneaks up on me. Ipace the room, counting to ten, as my stomach flips and drops. “Or have you spoken to someone else from the team?”

“I just got off the phone with her. She’s stressed, man, and I’m worried about her.”

Shit. Did I do something wrong? She’s been pleasant to me since the truce. I thought we’d had a breakthrough. I fumble through excuses I can give him, but he cuts off my thoughts.

“Antoine is fucking with her head. I spoke to my old engineer, Macca, who is also impressed by you, and he says Antoine bad-mouthed her in the garage and said he’s going to get with her.”

“That bastard,” I seethe. “I thought I’d got through to him, but Senna has kept us apart since we crashed in Australia. What do you want me to do?”

“Keep protecting her. And it might help if you spoke to Antoine again, nothing threatening, because you know that Dad loves him more than you.” Niki clears his throat. “But so he’s aware we know he’s saying things behind her back.”

I place the soft Coults toy in my bag, struggling not to sniff it or linger on what a gift potentially from Senna means. “Why does your dad love him more than me? He’s a jerk, and as much as all of us drivers are arrogant bastards, there’s a line. And I’m outperforming him every week.”

“You’re also the guy who put Senna in the hospital and destroyed her racing career.”

“It was a career he never believed in anyway,” I snap. “And you know what happened that day.”

“Hey, I’m not blaming you. You protected her and saved her from what those lads had planned. You did everything you could, like we did every race. If I’d not been ill, it wouldn’t have happened. I blame myself more than you. And you know I tried to speak to her after it happened, but she wouldn’t even let me say your name in front of her.”

There’s a knock at the door. I wrap a towel around my waist and answer it as he rambles. I tip the porter and flick through the paper as I close the door.

“You took care of her. She was like a little sister to you, too.”

I glimpse a photo of Senna under racing news. She’s wearing one of those pencil skirts and heels outfits that make my skin prickle with heat.

I grind my teeth. Senna was never like a little sister to me. She was a best friend who became the person I loved in my own way. And now, she’s the woman I fantasise and fall asleep thinking about. My dreams are filled with running shorts and legs that go on for miles. I want those legs on either side of my face.

Niki’s still speaking, and I try to erase the image of Senna’s hands on my headboard as she rides my mouth. Not the time. Never the time.

“As things seem to be better between you?—”

“Is that what she said?” I ask before holding my head in my hands. Fuck. Talk about eager.

“Kind of. She said she hates you less. That’s a win, right?”

I smile because I can imagine her saying it as her eyebrows waggle and her mouth tips up to the side. I want to kiss the attitude out of her.

“At least I know you won’t break the pact,” he adds.

I drop the paper on my bed. “I wouldn’t dare.”

“It’s time you told her what really happened that day. Maybe she’ll finally listen.”

I busy myself organising my bag again, laying out the lucky boxers I wear for every race. It’s one part of my pre-race ritual, though they’re more like obsessions. Since Niki’s crash, and then mine in Australia, things have escalated. I can’t stop them. I must keep doing them, or something terrible will happen.

“What difference will it make now after all these years? And if she does listen, who’s to say it won’t make her detest me more? I can’t make things worse now that she ‘hates me less.’ It’s one of those secrets we die with.”

I don’t want to lose my and Senna’s hard-fought truce.

Niki huffs. “I hate that Antoine was one of the racers we dealt with in those days. He bullied her, not that she knew, because we shielded her, and he’s doing it now but in a different way. Please protect her, okay?”

“Sure, I’ll watch over her.”

“Like the old days,” he states, and I can’t repeat it like he wants me to, because in the old days, I was secretly in love with her.

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