Page 43 of Fast & Reckless
He waved a hand beside his head. “My inner ear canals. They’re sensitive to everything.”
“Seriously? Your inner ears?”
“See? That’s why I didn’t want to tell you. I’m a Formula One driver, nerves of steel and all that shit. I’m not supposed to have fragile ear canals.”
“I promise, I’m not laughing at your ears.” She was totally laughing at him; she was just fighting to hold it back. “So what happens with your ears?”
“They react to everything, especially my diet. Salt, alcohol. It makes me prone to dizziness the next day. That’s why I was such a mess my first season with Hansbach. The drinking was bad enough on its own, but the next day, my ears were a disaster. Every time I went into a tight turn, I’d get dizzy.”
“Delicate inner ears,” Mira mused, fishing a prawn out of her soup with chopsticks and pointing it at him. “See, I knew there was more to you than meets the eye.”
“If you tell anyone, I’ll have to kill you.”
She looked up and met his eyes, a smile playing at the corner of her mouth. “I won’t breathe a word. After all, you know one of my secrets, too.”
He stared back at her until the air between them grew thick with tension. “Tell me another one,” he murmured, nearly a whisper in the midst of a hundred conversations surrounding them.
Her throat moved as she swallowed and dropped her eyes. “Maybe we should just eat.”
21
“Do you know where you’re going?” Mira asked. They’d been talking while walking, not really paying attention to where they were, and now nothing around them looked familiar. She couldn’t even see the Singapore Flyer anymore and that thing was huge.
Will held up his phone in front of them. “No, but Google does. The hotel is over that way.”
Mira scowled, glancing up and down the sidewalk. “Are you sure? Because this is a temple, Will. Like, an actual temple. I don’t remember a temple near our hotel.”
While Will looked at the map on his phone she marveled at the long, low, ornate building. It was dark, but through the gate, she could make out a courtyard surrounded with painted columns and bushes full of pink flowers. The rest of the street was lined with two- and three-story buildings, with restaurants and shops on the ground floors and brightly colored shuttered windows above. It buzzed with energy as people had dinner or enjoyed the balmy night, and here in the middle of it all was this beautiful temple.
“I had no idea Singapore was so great. Even if we’re lost in it.”
“We’re not lost. Just trust me,” he said. “I mean, trust my phone. This way.”
“That’s not a street, that’s an alley.”
“Where’s your sense of adventure, Mira?”
The alley spilled into another street, which was really just a slightly wider alley. On one side were the backsides of all the restaurants behind them. On the other was just … a wall. If she was sensible, she’d head back out to the main street, order an Uber, and go straight back to the hotel. But for reasons she couldn’t explain to herself, she kept following him. A stairway appeared on the right, cut into the wall.
He stepped back and waved her in front of him. “This way.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes. Sort of.”
She shot him a dubious look as she started up the wood steps. The staircase turned once and then abruptly opened out into a small park a story above the street below.
Her breath left her in a rush when she saw it. “Oh.”
The park was tiny, just a space carved out of a hillside, shaped by the irregular intersection of a few streets, but it was lushly landscaped, with winding paths disappearing around explosions of greenery, and wooden benches every few feet. She could hear the city traffic nearby, but filtered through the low canopy of tree branches, it felt very far away. Little bulbs were strung through the trees, providing the only light, and it wasmagical.
“It’s beautiful.”
Mira was suddenly aware that for all the traveling she’d done with her father in years past, she hadn’t actually seen much ofthe world. Airports, hotels, and racetracks. That had been her experience of most countries.
“This is fun,” she said abruptly.
Will turned to look at her. “What is?”
