Page 63 of Green Flag
“I didn’t do it,” he pleaded, and his head fell into his hands. “You know it wasn’t me. You know it was him.”
His words were a punch to the gut. I knew it — I’d known it from the moment dad smiled with relief on the tarmac. But it still felt wrong to say aloud.
My dad did it to get Pedro away from me, after our relationship started when I was too young.
It didn’t matter if it was love.
Dad always thought he knew best.
“He wanted me away from you,” he snapped, shaking his head, his elbows almost buckling under the vast movement. “If I’d realised how much… to what extent—”
If the words before had been a punch to the gut, this was a stab. A stab and twist.
“What would have changed?” My voice was on a single, strained breath. Tears were pricking my eyes but I blinked and forced them back down, staring into this man’s desperate and haggard soul.
“I wouldn’t have stayed,” he sighed and ran his hands over his face. As they stopped at his chin, he finally looked at me again and his eyes widened. He reached for me across the table. “Oh, Everly, I would have stayed with you. Don’t ever believe I would have left you. I would have left StormSprint.”
“I don’t know if I believe you,” I whispered, my lips hardly moving.
He slammed his fist so hard on the table that I jerked back, my fingers slipping from his other hand and hovering before my chest. Not necessarily in defence. Instead, waiting for any inclination that I could reach back out. I wasn’t scared of him; I could never be scared of him. I glanced at the guard in the meeting room, who had been eyeing all the love-sick couples and the nasty retorts, but my boyfriend’s reaction was the only one loud enough to draw everyone’s attention. For silence to encompass the visitation room. The guard stepped forward, but I shook my head.
Pedro was oblivious to all of this happening around him, glaring at the table between us. “I’m here for you. I’m in this shithole for you. Because I love you. Because I wanted to be with you. You don’t know how much I gave up to be with you. And you’re still living with him.”
My swallow was full of acid. His lip curled in disgust as he leaned back in his chair, pulling away from me again. I knew exactly what he’d given up. Our age difference bulged eyes out of turned heads, was the topic of hushed whispers, and made my father, his former friend and boss, despise him.
But he wasn’t the only one to sacrifice things in the name of our love.
I hadn’t gone to university. I had followed the StormSprint races whenever he’d let me, crossing the world and losing multiple opportunities.
And I did it all with support. I had a smile on my face, while slowly realising I was losing every ambition I had for his.
“You’ve got to prove I’m innocent. There’s proof out there — it’s not like he would have stopped because I went down for it, would he? Find proof.”
“But I… I can’t.” I was still banned from the sport. It went so far as to other motorsport championships.
I could hardly look at my father, let alone interrogate him. That was partly why I was going to university.
I listened to Pedro’s rambled words — every aside he made, mutter under his breath, how he refused to say my father’s name — and I could feel my posture straightening, my anger growing and, mostly, the tight feeling in my chest melting into sympathy.
He spoke so quickly, desperately, like he needed to will me into helping.
He said there was proof, but never said where. He didn’t offer names. Just kept repeating, ‘It’s your dad. It’s your dad’s fault.’
My father was not a good man.
But I thought he wanted me to be happy. When I was younger with Pedro, I understood why he hated him, but when I was an adult, and I still loved him—albeit, in secret—I thought he’d warm to the idea of him coming round for Christmas, not ship him to a jail cell instead.
The other visitors started to leave when the guards told us time was up, but Pedro reached across the table, eyes wide. “Please trust me.”
“I do,” I said and I meant it. Because if I couldn’t trust him, who could I trust?
I stood and sniffed as the tears threatened to fall.
“I love you, Everly.”
But I couldn’t say it back. I nodded.
“Yo, Pedz, she the one?” one of the other prisoners called over to us.
