Page 186 of Green Flag
“But I know that’s not true. Just because I understand that now, it doesn’t take away from what could have been. What he can still do.”
“I’m going to fucking kill him,” Nix bit out, his jaw tight with anger, stepping towards the door.
“No, you’re not,” I sighed, shaking my head. “Because that won’t help anything. That will, somehow, make him the victim. And he is not the victim.”
Luca squeezed my shoulder.
“We carry on as usual. We get him out of MotoBike whatever way we can.”
Livie looked down at her hands. “That we can do.”
My eyes narrowed on her, ready to question exactly what she meant by that — when it came to insider knowledge, I had been baffled that Livie didn’t know Pedro was working on Nix’s team. In the short two days she had known he was at MotoBike, I didn’t doubt she’d gathered enough information to tank the man.
Before I could ask what devilish plan she had, a knock on the door sounded again, and Nix and Luca immediately went for the door, their movements rigid, the perfect bodyguards.
I would take one look at them and go running.
They were met with my smiling father, lifting a glass of fizzing champagne. “Why the long faces?” he laughed. “You four will miss food if you don’t hurry up.”
Looking at his beaming expression, tears burned. My dad hadn’t deserved any of the hate I’d been harbouring.
I checked my lip gloss one more time and, taking Luca’s hand, we followed my dad down to the banquet hall. There was a sea of white cloth tables, twinkling with candles in an array of hurricane vases and flowers reflecting the team’s colours. Ours being for Stratos, Nix’s temporary team for the year, the table was decorated with purples and oranges; the overpowering smell of lavender wrinkled my nose.
I placed my bag down on the table and as people from the other table came to congratulate Nix on his podium position and get to know Luca, Livie and I dismissed ourselves to go to the bar.
As soon as we were in a corner somewhere, I intended to get the answers I needed. Her face remained serious and when she nodded at me, I knew she intended the same.
The bar was rammed.
But she gestured to one of the smaller, more intimate rooms with a small bar in the corner. There were a few leather sofas and an unused dance floor that I’d force Luca onto later.
At the bar, sitting with her legs crossed, sat my sister.
Looking so damn grown up.
Her dark hair was curled, her lips a dusty pink, smiling with a twinkle in her eye… and was that my red dress? Oh, she was so going to get it.
And Dad had let her come with Jordan? My mouth comically dropped open when I saw the suited man beside her. No way would Dad let her have come across the world with a boy.
But as we got closer, my heeled feet hurrying, I realised it wasn’t a seventeen-year-old boy.
It was a fucking grown man.
But not just any.
And his hand was so close to hers, resting on the varnished wood of the bar.
And he’d bought her a cocktail.
Like he used to buy me.
And she was… she wassmiling.
The room around me tilted, stopped and faded. The only sound was the clicking of my heels as I stormed over, my heart in my throat.
It couldn’t be. She wouldn’t — he couldn’t —no.
“Everly,” I thought I heard Livie warn, then there was the slip of a hand on my forearm, failing to tug me back.
