Page 86 of Green Flag
My family hadn’t reached out yet. Maybe Alv’s wife hadn’t told them; I couldn’t break the news to them. I knew I should, but I wanted to live in the in-between for a bit longer.
Because the Mendes’ were about to let all of their grief become anger and lawyers.
And I would be in the middle of it all.
“I’ve got to get out,” I told her, the humour and care depleting from the conversation dramatically. “I can’t do it. I can’t stay next year.”
Even as I said it, I hated the words. Everly was here permanently now. If I left… There would be no us. No fake relationship, no real friendship.
That reality made me want to reach out and force her to leave with me.
She breathed in deeply. “I know. I understand. We need to up our game.”
“I’d fuck you on this bar if it meant I could leave,” I told her.
She blinked, head rolling back. “Only to get out of your contract? Not out of lust and your painful need to get in my panties, Mendes?”
“Those things too,” I laughed and crashed my pinky into hers. “Of course.”
She hooked her pinky over mine and asked the bartender for another drink.
“You want to know a secret?” she asked.
“Always.”
“My dad could free you from your contract,” she said with a slow nod. “We both know it. We wouldn’t be in this pretend relationship if not. And I have something that you could threaten him with that would mean he had no choice but to let you go.”
“Do go on, Miss Bacque,” I begged.
She sipped on her drink, glancing around the bar before finally turning back to me. “Pedro wasn’t the one dealing drugs. It was my dad.”
18
Chapter 18
Everly
Luca’s shoulders drooped an inch lower than usual as he walked away from a conversation in the pit box. His jaw tightened after he cracked a joke, as if he cringed at himself. His smile had a tightness that was foreign to his face. It was an out-and-out lie. Even his gaze seemed to stare past us into some other place I couldn’t follow.
I hated it.
Even when we were investigating the planes, his smiles were forced.
We were real with each other. Always. Until now.
I hadn’t seen his dimples in weeks.
As the weeks passed, I expected it to get lighter. The pain. The agony I’d felt when my Nana passed had started to slip froma hounding constant thought to a niggling reminder whenever something reminded me of her.
The sport forced him to relive it.
Everyone else on the team knew Alv and focused on their own little worlds. They threw sympathetic smiles his way, but he was left to his own devices—in his trailer. Alone.
Even checking trailer weights had become a solo mission for him. He liked to be alone. He liked to have a purpose. On the odd occasion I joined him, we went back to his trailer after and he would cuddle me, but… There was this wall that I couldn’t break through.
The only person he normally bickered with or would force him out of his shell was Nix. When he returned from his two-week break, he was in his own cloudy mood.
The atmosphere in the pit box was so fake it made my teeth grind.
