Arthur believes in happily ever after. He thinks if he wants me, if he picks me, everything will work itself out, because he’s a hero.He’s golden. And more than anything, I know that he’s an unstoppable force, and he knows that I’m an immovable object, and one of us will always have to give in, and that’s why he’s asking me to move out of his way. So he can do what he wants to do.
Delaney’s words dance through my memory.
Liking a driver is pointless if you end up standing between them and a car.
You’ll only get hurt when they pick racing over you.
Tears blur him into three figures, all of them reaching for me. I step back and cover my eyes. “No. No—I can’t. If you’re going to go to Leone, then do it. Go. But don’t say you’re picking this because you think it’ll make me happy. Don’t lie to me. And don’t expect me to be here when you get back.”
My skin goes cold as Arthur takes my hands, covers them, pushes my hair back from my face. I don’t know if he believes me. He doesn’t say. But he’s warm, so warm, and I wonder if this is why we love the golden hour. Because it’s a trick of the light. Because it’s always about to end.
“Don’t say that,” he says roughly. “I know you’ve been hurt, but please,pleasetrust me. You can rely on me. Just… stay in Italy until I’m done. Go to our hotel room and wait for me.”
The rest of me breaks. “You’re leaving right now?”
“They want to meet today. I have to.”
He doesn’t. That’s the truth; he could choose to stay. He could believe me over the ending he’s told himself that we have, the one where somehow, he has me and I’m okay with him working for people who punished his pain and ingrained his anxiety into his bones, a team that blamed him for getting hurt, fired him for needing help, turned him into this perpetual actor who only cares about cars because that’s why the world cares about him. A pigeon, bred to race. And I’m not okay with it. I can’t be. How could I be?
Sniffling, I try a different approach. “Have you seenRoman Holiday?”
“No.” He sounds confused, maybe irritated. Maybe. “But, Lilah—I’m sorry, I don’t have time for this. I have to go.”
I nod. After that, I watch him leave. I don’t move, hardly blink. And I wonder if he sees what I’m seeing; we’d teamed up to break us both free, and he’d managed to break us apart in the process. I watch as he opens the closet door. I watch as he steps outside. I don’t yell, fight, or beg. I just see him pick his ending for us and silently take it in.
Quietly watching, like I used to.
Then, when I’m alone in the dark, my eyes stinging and my nose running and my throat full of tears, I call Delaney and start to cry.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
I don’t crash until I get to Delaney’s room.
But then… I do. In every sense of the word.
When I can sleep—curled up in a pile of blankets on the floor because what did she mean,take the bed—I dream about my childhood porch and a spotlight that’s always on, a lighthouse covered in salt and the birds that live on the very top floor. Then the hotel’s very real housekeeper actually walks in, and all of us scream. “I’m sorry, I thought the room was empty,” she apologizes for the hundredth time. There’s a metaphor there, somewhere.
When Delaney and Sarah aren’t in meetings, they sit with me in my burnt-out grief. I knew Delaney was going to be furious about Arthur’s decision, like I am—and she is, silently sitting by the window, a bag of potato chips in her lap, as she thumbs through a long contract from Cavalli. “Static sent one over, too,” she adds, almost emotionless. Almost.
I didn’t expect the same anger from Sarah. “He’s such a freaking idiot. Like, logically, no one should pick Leone over Cavalli. Cavalli is aninfinitelybetter team.” She rubs my shoulders, too empathetic. “He’s only thinking with his ego. They always do. It isn’t your fault, and you couldn’t have changed his mind, I promise. Nobody blames you for how this went down, or needing space from him.”
Tears sting my eyes. Neither of them says they told me so.
They don’t have to.
Around the time they go to another meeting I’m not invited to, my phone starts buzzing with texts from Arthur. I glance at the first sentences.
Where are you?
Did you leave Monza?
Talk to me.
At least tell me you’re okay.
I turn my phone to Do Not Disturb when, an hour later, I get an email that Black & Graywood has been fired.
The subject line is definitive. Heavy.Lilah Graywood: Contract Termination.I lay on the floor while I read Max and I’s official severance letter. It’s generic, from a nondescript Ignition address. Nothing about Arthur or Holmes. Just a block of legal-department text that explains, given that Max and I were both fired, Ignition has through the end of the month to hire another team to wrap up the documentary unless I’d like to buy the film rights off them.
