Page 80 of Kiss & Collide
Their faces were pressed close together and they were both mugging for the camera, Madison doing exaggerated duck lips while Chase had one dark eyebrow hiked to cartoonish heights. The caption wasWe clean up pretty good, along with the requisite hashtags for the movie.
Chase was with Madison at her premiere in LA.
They weretogether. And she and Cam hadn’t set this up.
What the fuck? He’d come to her room and dragged that whole sorry story about her childhood out of her against her will. He’d stood in front of her, hands on her face, eyes overflowing with sincerity, telling her that helikedher.
Well, he mightlikeher, but that clearly meant fuck all.
She’d thought something had changed.
This … finding out on his fucking socials … felt like a slap in the face. And worse, ithurt. Yeah, she was mad, but she also feltstupid. Like she’d fallen for a con once again. At the end of the day, men were justmen; they were all the same, no matter how nice they seemed, or how well they treated you. All the caressing and earnest eyes and gentle kisses didn’t mean shit. The second something more interesting tempted them, they were off like a shot. She’d learned that lesson with Ian, and now Chase had just served her a stone-cold reminder.
“You’re heading to Mexico today, too?” Rabia’s voice startled her and she nearly dropped her phone.
“Um, yeah.” She hastily swiped Insta closed, banishing that taunting picture. “Want to sit down?”
Rabia dropped into the chair and parked her roll-aboard beside the table. “It’s early for you to fly into a venue, isn’t it?”
She lifted her coffee cup to her mouth and was dismayed to see her hand was shaking slightly. Fuck him for this. She felt like she’d been sucker punched in the middle of the goddamned airport.
“I have a lot of sponsor events to set up in Mexico City.”
Right. Work. Hadn’t she decided long ago that she was done pouring herself into relationships? You gave yourself completely and in the end, you got nothing back. Her career, on the other hand, didn’t fuck off with some movie star to LA.
“Did Reece’s party cause you too many headaches?” Rabia asked.
What? It took a moment to register the question.
“Oh! Um, no. Not a one. All sorted.”
She’d been checking all the usual places and there hadn’t been a single whisper about it, thank god.
She forced herself to ask a question, so she didn’t sound as shaken as she felt.
“How’s next season’s design coming?”
“Good,” Rabia said, nodding thoughtfully. “The wind tunnel tests are looking good. And Chase is laying down some impressive times in his simulator sessions. I hope we get to keep him next season. He’d be magic in this car.”
Violet laughed softly. “Chase won’t have any problems with funding for next season. We’ll be able to sign him.”
Rabia arched one eyebrow over her glasses. “That’s not what I meant. I mean we’re very likely to get outbid by another team. A better team.”
“Has he got offers?” She was surprised—wouldn’t he have told her?
Then again, it seemed like there were lots of things he wasn’t telling her these days.
Rabia shrugged. “Nothing firm that I know of. But there’s talk.”
“What kind of talk?” Her voice was sharper than intended.
“Rumor has it that Eric Lenore was chatting him up at the Jet Energy party last night. Went there specifically to see him.”
“Eric Lenore? Fuck.”
“Yep,” Rabia said, shifting in her seat. “Fuck. No way we could compete with Allegri, if they make him a serious offer. Hell, I’d sign that contract for him myself. He’d be a fool to turn it down.”
Violet paused for a minute, digesting that piece of information. “Yes, he would be a fool to turn that down.” To go from nearly being dropped from F2 to an offer from the second-best team on the F1 grid in a single season? It was a fucking fairy tale. One that seemed to be coming to life for Chase Navarro.
