Page 84 of Fast & Reckless
Underneath it screamed the headline “Formula One’s Bad Boy Champ Takes Out Rivals on and off the Track!”
Part of her had known the second she’d come face-to-face with Brody that her hiding was done. Her past from seven years ago was about to come screaming back into her present. And now Will was right in the middle of it, too. It had nearly killed him. She felt sick … cold and shaky with dread. She didn’t want to read the story, but her eyes moved over the text against her will, every word hitting her like a physical blow.
This season’s Formula One sensation, Will Hawley, seems to be just as aggressive off the track as he is on it. Just moments before taking to the track for qualifying, Hawley took a swing at fellow driver Brody McKnight when he caught his lady friend chatting up Brody in the paddock. Team members for both drivers broke up the fight, but not before Hawley unleashed his rage and landed several blows on McKnight.
The woman in question, Miranda Wentworth, is not only the daughter of Lennox Motorsport’s principal, Paul Wentworth; she’s also got a bit of a past with Brody McKnight. Several years ago, she lured McKnight into a torrid affair just weeks before his marriage to actress Lulu Heatherington.
Wentworth returned to America after that scandal broke, but it seems, on her return to the sport, she’s wasted no time snagging herself another driver. Or maybe two?
She fought back a swell of nausea and thrust the iPad at Violet, but the damning article still glowed on its surface. There was no escaping it now. Apparently, there never had been.
Violet surged to her feet, pacing back and forth across the tiny waiting room. “They’re going to go crazy over this. It feeds right into Will’s bad-boy narrative, and you know how much they love flogging that.”
“It’s bullshit, Violet! I told Brody to leave me alone and he wouldn’t. He was harassing me and Will just—”
“Will threw the first punch,” Violet said quietly.
“He was provoked.”
“Doesn’t matter in stories like these. It hits all the right selling points. Two hot superstar athletes fighting on the track and now fighting over a woman.”
“I wasnotflirting with Brody. God, he disgusts me.”
Violet stopped her pacing and came back to sit beside her. “Mira, you know I’m on your side. You were involved with him once, though.”
Mira swallowed hard and dropped her eyes to the floor. “Yeah, I was.”
“That’s all these bloodsuckers are going to care about. They’re going to have a field day with this. Withyou. They always try to paint the woman as the bad guy in these things. It’s not fair, I’m sorry. But it’s probably going to get a lot worse.”
Right now, it was hard to imagine how things could possibly get worse. The last seven years of her life—her perfect grades at UCLA, her nonexistent personal life, all her hard work this season with Lennox—it was all washed away, deemed irrelevant because she’d once been stupid enough to sleep with Brody McKnight and was now audacious enough to get involved with Will Hawley. None of this was her fault and yet she couldn’t help feeling frozen with shame.
Violet’s phone rang, startling her out of her shock. Violet looked at the face and her expression grew impossibly grimmer.
“It’s Ryan from Velocity. This can’t be good.”
Her heart sank. Will’s major endorsement deal with Velocity, the new label they were supposed to roll out … Things had just gotten much, much worse. He might lose his endorsement. He’d been in a crash that could have killed him, one that might still end his entire season. Her father might get hauled in front of the FIA to answer for another scandal, and once again, here she sat at the center of everything.
As Violet turned away and accepted the Velocity call, Mira closed her eyes and folded in on herself, pressing her forehead to her knees. It was all too awful. There had to be something she could do to fix this, to keep it from getting any worse.
She lifted her head and blinked. Of course there was. There wasonething she could do. The thought of doing it made her feel like she was cutting out her own heart, but really, she had no choice, did she? Maybe she never had.
WILL HAD BEEN TRYING,unsuccessfully, to convince the Italian medical staff that he was fine, but no one seemed to be listening to him. Whether it was due to their rigorous commitment to his well-being or to his terrible Italian, he couldn’t be sure.
The doctor and nurse were still prodding at him, shining a light in his eyes, taking notes in his chart, when the exam room curtain was ripped open to reveal Paul, Tae, and Mitchell, the team physician. Paul’s expression was impossible to read, somewhere between panic and rage.
“Hi, Paul.” He glanced over Paul’s shoulder but couldn’t see any sign of Mira.
Paul’s eyes raked down Will and then cut to the doctor. “How is he?” he asked in perfect Italian. Will didn’t understand the words, but he didn’t miss Paul’s gesture in his direction.
“Doing okay?” Tae asked him as the doctor, Paul, and Mitchell proceeded to have a discussion in Italian. Was he the only one who failed languages in school?
“I’m fine. They’re just being cautious,” he told Tae. “Is Mira out there?”
Tae cast an apprehensive glance at Paul. “She is.”
“Can you go get her? I need to tell her—”
“How’s the head?” Paul said to him.
