Chapter 4 CHAPTER FOUR: MILA

•AVERY•

I woke up this morning realizing I hadn’t actually deleted it this time.

Like, I actually left it there.

I didn’t rewrite it or delete it at two in the morning, after coming to my senses.

That should probably have bothered me more than it did but I just couldn’t find it in me to be bothered.

I knew it was a bad bad idea while I was doing it.

Which in all fairness had never stopped anyone from doing anything.

I got dressed and went to the paddock.

I’ll deal with that later.

You know, professionally speaking? Later is terrible.

Non-race days always feel different.

No engines are tearing through the air every few minutes, no photographers appearing out of nowhere with lenses the size of small children. The paddock still moves tho, but just quieter.

I hear footsteps and low voices.

Then metal clanging somewhere deeper in the garage.

Kade is outside when I get there, leaning against the wall with a coffee in one hand and a printout in the other while Denny points at something on the page.

He glances up and glopped his head a little.

“You’re early.” He said.

“So are you.”

“I live here.” He said deadpan.

His eyes drop back to the page.

“Denny says you asked him about brake bias yesterday.”

“He explained it well.”

Denny looks absurdly pleased with himself.

Kade hands the printout back to him and pushes off the wall.

“Come on then.”

He doesn’t give me any explanation but instead just starts walking.

Oh-

I fall into step beside him.

We walked in no particular direction, there were no comms people hovering somewhere nearby pretending that they weren’t hovering. Just us walking through a paddock that feels like it’s taken a breath and finally let it out.

“You actually listened,” he says a minute later.

“About brake bias?”

“In general.” He had his hands in his pockets with his eyes facing forward and not at me.

“Most people switch off when the technical stuff starts.”

“I told you, didn’t I?” I look over at him. “I’m interested in how you think.”

That gets his attention because he turns his head to face me completely now.

“Why?”

I open my mouth—

Then Mila appears.

She comes from the direction of the hospitality unit moving fast enough with her bag hanging off one shoulder and a bottle of water in one hand.

She barely got here before she started talking.

“Before you say anything,” she says to Kade, “I cleared it with Connor’s assistant, I’m not in the way, and I brought you that thing from Mum so don’t…”

“How did you even get in?”

“Media pass.” She said it like it was obvious and gave Kade a face. “Luisa sorted it.”

Like obviously.

Then her attention lands on me

With no hesitation or polite sorry, who are you?

“You’re Avery.”

“I am.”

“Good.”

She stuck out her hand and I took it.

“I’m Mila. He’s told me absolutely nothing about you, which probably means you're the most interesting thing happening in his life right now.”

She glances at Kade.

“That was a compliment, by the way.”

“It really wasn't.”

But Kade says it while fighting a smile.

And there it is again, the careful blankness he wore everywhere else, just gone.

He looks younger for a second.

And lighter? Yes, lighter

Like somebody reached over and switched off whatever he keeps running all the time.

And my chest does a weird little thing.

No just no. Absolutely not.

Mila hooks her arm through mine. “Walk with me,” she says. “I need proper coffee and if we leave it to him he’ll just stand there.”

“I’m standing right here,” Kade says.

“Exactly.”

And suddenly I’m being steered away.

She spoke as if she competed with someone on who spoke the longest without catching a break. Just one thing rolling into the next before the last one has even fully finished through the entire drive from London.

I found it so cute, I always wished I could talk that fast.

“So have you been to Silverstone before?”

I blinked twice because I was caught off guard.

Oh boy.

“No.”

“Right.”

Then somehow we were already somewhere else again.

“He used to make me playlists,” she said, pouring more coffee into her cup. “Before every exam, every shitty time I had something stressful. Proper ones too, specific order mattered. He also made little handwritten notes about why each song was where it was.”

She glances over her shoulder toward where we left Kade.

“He’d actually die if he knew I told you that.”

“Then just you know I heard absolutely nothing.”

That gets a smile out of her.

Then she looks at me.

Really looks. Not long but long enough for me to notice the shift in the atmosphere.

“He’s doing okay,” she quietly says. “In case you’re wondering.”

I don’t say anything.

“He’s better when he’s racing.” Her fingers lightly tap against the coffee cup. “The gaps are harder.”

She didn’t explain what the gaps contained. She didn’t need to because I’d already read the file.

“He seems better this week,” I carefully say.

“Yeah.”

She watches me for a second.

“Yeah, he does.”

Mila leaves after lunch. The three of us end up standing outside the garage for a moment and then she steps toward Kade and wraps her arms around him.

She says something against his shoulder too quietly for me to catch and he nods once, his jaw tight.

And when he hugs her back his hand stays there a second longer than he wanted to.

She pulls away and before I can even blink she is gone.

Kade stands there for a moment after.

“She’s good,” I say.

“She’s a nightmare.”

“She’s good.”

He looks over at me but doesn’t argue.

Later we end up near the far garage wall where fewer people are cutting through and for a while, we just stand there without talking.

And weirdly—

Wait no, not weird.

“What made you want to do this?” he asks.

I look at him and he’s looking back.

Actually looking, no distracted glances somewhere over my shoulder. No half attention while checking a phone.

Just me.

“I grew up reading people quickly,” I say.

“You had to?”

“The house I grew up in.” I stare at the ground for a moment. “You learn to track the temperature when nobody tells you it's changing.”

Then came silence.

I look back at him and he’s still watching me.

He doesn’t rush to say something, but after a long moment of silence, he speaks.

“The car bias thing,” he says eventually. “You actually want to know, or…”

“I actually want to know.”

So he tells me properly this time and not the simple version people get. He tells me the real one and I listened and sometimes asked questions and at some point, he stopped checking if I was following and just kept talking.

And there it is again.

That thing he keeps doing with the side of his lips, the one where something switches on, the one where he forgets himself for a second.

I made the mistake of looking at him too long and realized that oh boy—

I was in serious trouble.

The drive back to the hotel is quiet.

The radio's on low somewhere in the background. Neither of us says anything. Streetlights slide across the windows and disappear again.

At some point, I notice his hand resting on the centre console.

And then unfortunately I notice where mine is.

With my hands four centimetres away from his or maybe less.

I look back out at the road, and think about brake bias, think about Mila saying yeah, he does, think about the buildings outside, the traffic, the weather, literally anything else.

Neither of us moves.

When we pull up outside the hotel he gets out first and walks around to my own side and holds the door open for me. I step out and look very deliberately at literally everything except him.

I stare at the pavement and then the hotel doors, followed by a plant.

Probably a strong decision on my part.

Connor rings at nine.

“Just checking in,” he says, like it’s nothing. “Notes are looking thorough.”

I don’t move.

“I haven’t sent you anything this week,” I say.

Thirsty seconds pass with no response from him before he speaks up.

“Digital access,” he says. “Remember? We set that up in the initial briefing.” He says it like it’s obvious.

Like I’m supposed to nod along.

I don’t remember that part of any briefing. I place my hand on my head.

God, I’m so tired already

“Right,” I say.

“The sibling observation was a good instinct,” he adds. “Keep going.” He hunts up.

My phone is still warm in my hand, I place it down open my laptop, pull out the notes file, and click into document properties.

Last accessed: today. 14:32.

I was in the paddock until four.

A different device.

Which means Connor has been inside this file without me sending it. Which also means he’s been reading everything, even the parts I didn’t mean to leave there, even the parts I didn’t realise were there.

I pick up my phone and call Ray.

It rings.

And keeps ringing.

No answer.

I listen to it anyway.

Again.

Again.

A third time.

The laptop stays open in front of me.

Connor’s access is still sitting in the system like a quiet fact nobody thought to warn me about properly. And I realise I don’t actually have anyone to call who sits in the right space between knows nothing and knows too much and I realised I’ve never needed to hear my father’s voice more than I did right now.

I try to hold it in but it slips anyway, first came the sting behind my eyes, and then the sharp pull in my chest. My breathing turns uneven. 8 look down at my hands because I can’t look at anything else and I just break down instantly.

And the phone keeps ringing.