Page 11 of Green Flag
I couldn’t think straight. I should hate Cris. Try and get back at him. But he was hurting too.
No one was winning in this.
Cris stood and I clapped him on the back. This wasn’t his fault. It should be Don I was talking to.
“I’m so sorry, Luca,” he said, his voice breaking.
I wondered what camp he was in. He was rarely emotional and managed us with quick quips, his focus nearly always thebikes. He was a practical man. So when it came to Alv… did he know, like I did?
My family still clung to hope, but I knew we were either at the end of Alv’s life or the beginning of an arduous journey.
And with Cris’s logical brain, knowledge of the sport and injuries… he knew Alv’s life was forever changed just like I did. Ciclati’s reputation too.
Livie stood to give me a hug and I held her tight. Sometimes, I wished we hadn’t met at work. Maybe school, or through a relative, so that the work drama wouldn’t hinder our friendship.
Cris squeezed my shoulder and then picked up the report I’d scribbled on, and we started to walk back through the tunnel to the Ciclati pit box. Before arriving, Cris asked Livie, “Can you bring Everly down to the pit box? Any other team members too. Especially Nix.”
She nodded, already tapping on her iPad as she left. That thing was glued to her. I wouldn’t be surprised if she was scrolling through it while she and Nix were at it.
Before I could ask whyCris’ daughterwas here, he clutched the report I’d given him to his chest. “I will read through this,” he promised with sombre eyes. As those eyes looked me up and down, he added, “But go get your leathers on before you hold us all up.”
“Aye, aye, captain,” I said, saluted him and grabbed my bag before dashing to the changing rooms.
I might have been eager to get back before Livie came down with Everly.
I’d seen her briefly last year, when she was just another team’s director’s daughter and had nothing to do with me. She’d partied harder than Nix, swaying her hips, necking shots.
Beautiful, troubled, trust-fund kid, through and through.
But the most stunning, troubled, trust-fund kid I’d ever met. Or not met.
How she was related to Cris was beyond me. She must have inherited 95% of her mother’s looks with her long, dark hair and hazel eyes.
The smooth complexion of her olive skin that I wanted to bite.
Those long legs I’d often seen on her stories at the gym.
Out of season, I’d found it hard not to fly to England in the hopes of bumping into her, but I didn’t want to come off as creepy.
I wasn’t obsessed. Just heavily intrigued.
As to what the daughter of Cris Bacque could be like, of course.
In the pit box, she sat in her father’s chair — no one else I knew had the nerve — and tapped away on her phone. She was even more startling in person.
Dark hair flowed past her shoulders in loose waves as she smirked with glossed lips at her screen. From her Instagram, I knew she had thick, pouty lips, not wide across her face until she was smiling and her whole face lit up. There were very few pictures of her grinning like that.
Her clothes were tight-fitting and casual. While many women dressed up for the races, a day at the track used to be normal for her.
Since her career had taken off in the last few months, she’d hardly been around.
I’d waited for the excuse to meet her. For her to be in the pit box.
And spent far too long stalking her profile and listening to her album, so if we did meet, I had to be careful what I let slip.
We were in the same room for five minutes. When someone spoke to me, I nodded, trying to tear my eyes away from her.
I should go over there and offer my hand, introduce myself and just slip into conversation that I knew her music, or discuss a gym-related topic I’d noticed her post the other day.
