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“Let’s just start there then, what do you want to know?” She refuses to answer me and is staring off into the grass that’s whistling in the breeze. “Childhood, car collection, what do I do in my spare time, girlfriends…” Her eyes dart to mine when I say girlfriends and then dart back to the grass. “Ah, there it is. Girlfriends, it is, let’s start there.”
I wait her out until she finally asks. “Why did you say you’ve never brought another woman here?” She won’t look at me but she’s gazing into the fire in front of her now, so at least her head isn’t turned in the opposite direction anymore.
“Because I haven’t. I bought this place when Kate and I broke up.” Her eyes lift to mine. She’s been all over my online accounts, she knows all about people I’ve been with, Kate was just the most public. And the most awful. “Everything went to shit right around then and I needed somewhere to get away from it all. I sure as hell didn’t want to stay living in the same house with memories of her in it. Found this place. It was a decrepit pit when I bought it, seemed fitting.”
“Why did you break up?” She’s speaking so quietly I can barely hear her over the crackling of the fire and the sound of the waves breaking in the distance.
I should have brought scotch out instead of coffee. “Technically? Cheating.”
“So you did cheat on her.” I see her whole body tense up and her teeth gnash.
“Wow,” I lean back in my chair. “That’s what you think of me.” I think this interview, or whatever the hell it is, is telling me far more about Mallory than she’s learning about me. I thought I could fall in love with her, but this is how little she knows me.
“Photos don’t lie, Lennox,” she snarls at me. “And I read the messages she sent to you. Online.”
“And? I haven’t looked at any of that shit in years. Couldn’t even imagine what they say and I care even less.”
“Are you saying you didn’t cheat on her?”
“If I have to answer that, Mallory, I’ll just call the plane and have them take you wherever…”
“You said you’d answer anything,” she snaps and interrupts me, her eyes hard and accusing.
I am contractually bound from discussing this, most definitely for any kind of media. But there is lava coursing through my veins and the old familiar roll in my stomach and I’m sick to death of it. “You want to know if I cheated on her, Mallory?” I stand from my chair and yell, pacing along the fire. Her head is tracking me, a tear rolls down her cheek. “I walked in on her fucking someone else in my room in the motorhome, Budapest, two years ago!”
Her hands shoot to her mouth and she gasps. “I’m…”
“No, you want to hear the gory details? You want to know?” I yell. It’s too late to stop my adrenaline surge now, it’s all coming out. “She was fucking our pal Digby goddamn DuPont. I had one shit season and she jumped ship for the golden boy of F1! Then,” I roar as tears stream down her face, “then the little pissant joins our team and I have to play second fiddle to the motherfucker! Not because he can drive, he’s a useless twat! Because of money and politics! They turn my engine down during races, Mallory! They’ve made a fucking joke out of me! Everything I worked for! Everything my parents gave up for me, gone!”
I can’t even see straight I’m so furious. Every muscle is clenched and I’m storming back and forth looking for something to drive my fist through.
“Lennox,” Mallory sobs and starts toward me.
“Don’t!” I put up a hand and she stops. “Just don’t.” I pace back and forth until my vision returns. “You know what, do me a bloody favor and publish that,” I point to her phone. “That’ll definitely violate my contract and then I can get on with my life.”
Enough time passes that my breathing returns stable and I lean up against the waist-high stone wall surrounding the fire pit. Mallory is still standing there watching me, full-on sobbing with tears soaking her face. She’s probably freezing and I don’t know why that’s the thought going through my stupid head right now.
She takes another couple of steps toward me and I have no idea how I plan to react, but she doesn’t come to me. Moving like a catatonic zombie, she grabs her phone from my chair, turns around, and tosses it into the fire without a word.
“What the hell?” I step forward but it’s deep in the red embers and already melting, black plastic oozing, green and blue fire wrapping around it and sucking it under.
Mallory moves in front of me, her face is wracked in pain, streams pour from her eyes and run down her neck. “I am so sorry. Please forgive me,” she sobs, her shoulders heaving. “I was stupid and insecure…”
Jesus, I can’t.
I can’t take her crying like this, fighting for breath she’s so upset. I drag her to me and crush her in my arms, hold her head tight against my chest. She wraps her arms around my waist and is squeezing the air from my lungs but she won’t stop crying.
Needing her closer to me I bend down and lift her up, her legs wrap around me and she clings to my neck. I walk us past the house and to the cliffs overlooking the bay and sit us in the tall grass, her still clinging to me. I don’t know what else to do but sitting here watching the waves break gives me peace and we both need that.
I keep my arms around her to keep her warm, running my hands up and down her back, and eventually, she calms. “I don’t want any of it, I only want you,” she squeezes and mumbles into my flannel shirt. “I want to hide here with you fo
rever and never see any of them again.”
Aye, wouldn’t that be a dream. If only life were that simple. I kiss her hair. I have to fix this, all of it. I can tie her father up indefinitely with lawyers far better than his but that won’t mend what’s broken. She’ll be stripped of her dream and her family. I can break my contract with Celeritas and walk away but then I’ll never drive again, Mum and Pop would never understand, it’ll all have been for naught.
The sun finally comes out, a rarity for spring in Scotland, and the warmth heats us up. Far out in the water a couple of dolphins or whales surface. I think they’re dolphins because the minke whales shouldn’t be here until next month, but I’ve told worse lies for worse reasons. I flip Mallory around, stretch my legs out, which are both asleep and tingling, and point to the ‘whales’ out in the bay.
She clings to my arms around her shoulders until Bodach, the old-man-cat of the clan, finds us and crawls into her lap like the attention whore he is. “This one’s taken, mate, find your own girl,” I joke.
