“Whatever,” Athos said, waving his arms. He took one big inhale and only began speaking again once he’d exhaled. “Explain to me how you can do the one but not the other.”
Aramis grinned. “He’s shy around her.”
“I am not shy!”
“You’re not,” agreed Aramis. “Except around her. Weird.”
It was weird.
Maybe I am a little shy around the girl. But that’s only because of the other thing.
Impulse control. Or rather the lack of it.
What Clarke thought of asthat switch. When it was on, it ignited a ravenous desire to win, succeed, and plunge headlong into things that were thrilling, daring, and even at times—dangerous.
All that had been nurtured by his father and his father’s determination that his sons experience anything and everything he’d been denied, his desire that they live life to the fullest.
Turning that switch on had served Clarke well, earning him more championships than anyone racing F1 at present. But it was also responsible for something he couldn’t shake or forgive himself for—something he feared he would never be able to forgive himself for.
When that switch was turned on, it spoke only one language, and its entire vocabulary consisted of three words:Go. Fast. Hard.
He couldn’t even add “consequences be damned” to its vocabulary. Because as far as that switch was concerned, consequences didn’t exist.
But that’s a lie, because I know all too well they do.
And because of that, he’d made a commitment to turn that switch off.
So far he’d been successful. Until that crash at Silverstone and those DMs with Ceci Rivers.
He acted the way he did around her because she made him feel like it was her fingers on that switch. As if it were up to her and not him whether to turn it back on.
His dick twitched, and he hastily turned his back on his brothers.
It wasn’t just the bet that drove him to approach her. He’d felt that urge, that desire to flip that switch, and at the same time flip the script that she was always writing. He wanted to be the one to make her uncomfortable, unable to meet his gaze. The way she’d always done with him.
Before Silverstone, the exchanges between them had been more like a game, although he always felt like he’d come out on the losing side. But since the crash, he wasn’t just unnerved and unsettled around her. He felt like the blood that flowed through his veins was made of fire.
The mask made it easier. Easier to approach her. Easier to take her in my arms and sweep her onto the dance floor without even asking. Easier to … well … do all of it. But what’s the point if she doesn’t know it’s me doing it?
He was a coward for hiding behind that mask. And he hated that.
When he turned around, his brothers were staring at him.
“You used to be different,” said Porthos. “Before …”
It wasn’t just his brothers that went quiet then. The room itself did. The clock on the mantelpiece was ticking off the seconds. Jinx, one of the family cats, was purring in a corner and scratching the baseboard as he played with a bit of fluff he’d scrounged off one of the Persian carpets. But none of it made any sound. Not even the wind, which was picking up speed and shoving the snow horizontally as much as vertically. It should have rattled the windowpanes. But it didn’t.
Porthos didn’t finish his thought. He didn’t need to. They all knew. And they’d all learned not to broach the subject with him. Except for Athos, when the two of them were alone. But that was Athos. And he was different.
It doesn’t matter. I don’t need them to voice their thoughts. I can hear them all the same. No one knows better than me that I used to be a different man off the track as well as on it.
Clarke eyed the rifle. He’d tried to find Ceci after he’d retrieved it from Porthos that night. He could have just left it with the Huntington family, who’d been throwing the party. They would have located her and returned it.
But he couldn’t bring himself to do that. Not given her tone when she’d talked about the rifle and mentioned her father.
It was Aramis who broke the silence. “At least tell me this, after you ran off with her, you kissed her, right?”
“How could he kiss her with that mask on?” bellowed Porthos.
