Page 124 of Red Flag
The person he’d been texting over the weekend.
“Andrew?” I snapped. “Who the hell is Andrew?”
“He’s… just checking you’re okay. I promise you that you are safe. No one will be running you off the road with him around.”
“You got someone to tail me?” I cried. “To follow me home?”
“For your safety,” he emphasised. “I should have told you but I didn’t want to worry you or—”
I pulled up onto the curb, the car behind me beeping as Islammed my foot on the brake.
Sure enough, the car I had been so worried about, pulled up behind me.
“You okay?” Nix’s voice rose with worry.
“No, I’m bloody not!” I cried, voice raising as I slammed my hand on the wheel. “What do you mean, for mysafety?”
What happened to Clara was an accident. Not orchestrated as he believed.
“I just… I get paranoid.” Too right.
“NixonArmas, you tell me right this second or god help me—”
“When I see you. I’ll get a flight out tonight. I’ll —”
“No,” I sighed. “Stay with your mum. I need to get to the airport, but the second you land in Austria, you are answering some fucking questions,Armas.”
For the next three days, I wasantsy, excited and nervous to see him. Then, whenCris’ daughter Everly had asked about his relationship status, I’d tried not to become territorial. It wasn’t her fault, as the woman replacing Clara on the grid, she was just trying to find her footing. What it did, though, was make me more desperate to see him. He didn’t manage to fly in until the morning of qualifying. We only exchanged pleasantries in front of the others and I refused to be alone with him until I could speak to him properly. That night, I waited outside the hotel for the car he’d sent me. He opened the door of hisAirbnbas I went to knock and he swallowed as he saw me. “Livie.”
“Nixon.” I pushed past him into the house, where the smell of garlic and food cooking hit me.
I was such a sucker for garlic bread.
No. No, I would not cave.
So I watched him salt the pasta in the pot and pull out the vegetables as I got my nerve together.
“You had me followed.”
“And Clara,” he said, chopping up the vegetables with more force.
That made even less sense. My brows lowered. “Why?”
He breathed in deeply and closed his eyes, placing the knife beside the chopping board. “After she was run off the road… that wouldn’t have happened if she wasn’t with me, would it?”
“It was arandomer, Nix,” I told him, walking to his side and placing my hand on his shoulder. “It wasn’t on purpose. It wasn’t because of you.”
“It is,” he pressed, eyes wide and begging. “It is. I’ve done some really stupid shit and—”
“Are you telling me people areafter you?” The laugh that came from my throat was a harsh sound. “Come on, you haven’t done anything that bad.”
“I just…” He shook his head. “If anything happened to you,Livie…”
I took his face in my hands. “I really value how much you care and worry about me. But one dickhead on the road isn’t enough for you to hire me abodyguard.”
“It’s just for while we’re in England,” he said. “Because of what happened to Clara. Normally, Andrew is in France with my mum, but he was checking the security of the flat.”
“You need to communicate these things with me, Nix,” I said, warning in my words. “You know that I can go into a panic and… god, I was so close to an attack in that car.”
