AllFreeNovel
Share Us
She did not regret last night and surely never would.
It had been a very deliberate choice that she had made.
Abby went back in and Matteo was sleeping and so she dressed in her race-day bottle-green and then headed out to face the most important day of her life.
Her working life, Abby amended.
There was more now.
The build-up to the race passed in a blur.
Pedro was locked into his video games and Bernadette was doing her own thing, catching up with friends on her phone and present but not getting in the way.
She was good to have around, Abby thought.
Matteo and Kedah arrived just after one and there was a sense of calm in the Boucher camp.
Even if they came last they’d already won.
They were more united than they had ever been. Pedro was staying on and they had two amazing races behind them.
As the starting time to the final race of the Henley Cup approached, Pedro came out in his leather and he looked determined rather than tense. Bernadette gave Pedro a kiss for luck and everyone else wished him well but then it was just him and Abby for that last little talk before he took his place.
This time Pedro’s teeth weren’t chattering with nerves and there was no need to talk him down. Still, Abby carried on with what she had planned to say, that it was the taking part that counted and to remember ho
w far they’d come. The Henley Cup would be the icing on the cake, she told Pedro.
‘You always eat the icing first.’ Pedro grinned as he put on his helmet.
‘Okay, I lied,’ Abby admitted and gave up on her losers-are-still-winners approach. ‘Bring it home.’
It was a spectacular race. How could it not be? The scenery was straight from a travel brochure, the weather perfect and the car that Abby loved so took off like a bullet from the chamber and left half the field behind.
They were off.
Matteo juggled cola and binoculars as the cars took to the gorgeous hilly streets and then later wished that he hadn’t had so much cola because, with only five laps to go, and the top five a close pack at that, he had to excuse himself, leaving Pedro in fourth.
Matteo returned to Kedah’s side to be told that Pedro was now third.
The Lachance team and Hunter were first, the Carter team with Evan at the helm in close second.
Matteo glanced over to Abby and saw her concentration as she spoke into her mouthpiece.
Not a stolen glance between them.
And he loved that about her—her drive, her focus—and so he got back to watching the race but, as he did, something happened.
Not on the track.
Well, yes, something happened on the track, because Pedro overtook Evan but, as he did so, hope overtook fear for Matteo.
Just this quiet second in a noisy world where Matteo lost the dread that he never showed, or rather, his fears that he had shown only to one other—Abby.
And if Pedro won, he was going to do it, Matteo told himself.
He was going to somehow put everything right.
‘Come on,’ Matteo shouted and it felt like Pedro must have heard because, just past the final bend, Pedro not just overtook Hunter, he almost blew him off the track.
