Helmet on my head, I say the words I haven’t uttered since right before the accident that changed everything. The race that I thought had almost ended my life, but instead, it led me straight to the best thing in my life, India.
“Being second is to be the first of the ones who lose,” I whisper under my breath.
With one last look at India—with Jett on one side, my mother on her other—I mouth to her, I love you.
A stunning smile spreads across her face, and then she mouths the words right back to me, leaving my heart feeling full.
I climb into the cockpit. Time to go.
I run through the tire warm-up. Then, we are at the starting line. I’m on pole position from qualifying first yesterday. Now, I just need to win this race.
I’m not going to win the Prix. Carrick is just a little more up on points than me. But if I’m retiring, then I’m going out with a win.
Red…
Red…
The usual flicker of anxiety grips my chest. But I control it and then dispel it.
Red…
Red…
Red.
Go!
My car starts off, rapidly gaining speed, until I’m flying around the track. The voices in my ear are drowned out by my own focus on winning this race and getting back to my family.
My family.
“Yes!” I pump my fist into the air as I cross the finish line, coming in first.
My team comes running toward my car as I slow to a stop. I pull the steering wheel off, tossing it aside, and I climb out of the car. I tear my helmet off as I’m being hugged and patted by all the members of my team. The cheer of the crowd roars through my ears as my eyes search out India.
The instant my eyes meet hers, a sense of ease moves through me, making me smile even wider. I push through the crowd. Reaching her, I sweep her up into my arms. Her hands pressing against my face, I kiss her.
I kiss her with every ounce of love I feel for her.
Breaking from our kiss, panting, she quickly glances at the crowd of people in the stands, all cheering my win around us.
“Are you sure you want to leave all this behind?” She gives a gentle tilt of her chin in the direction of the stands.
My eyes do a quick sweep over her shoulder. I can see the banners with my name on them, some begging me not to retire. Then, I look back to my girl. “I’m more than sure.”
She smiles wide and presses her lips to mine again, softly kissing me.
God, I fucking love her.
“Sorry to interrupt the love fest.” Carrick’s voice comes from behind me, and I feel the pat of his hand on my back. “But we have to take our places on the podium.”
I reluctantly break away from India’s lips.
“I’ll wait here,” she tells me.
Turning to Carrick, I slide my arm around India’s waist. Andi comes over to Carrick, and he wraps his arm around her shoulders.
“You mean, the podium on which I’ll be standing on first place.”
A grin spreads across Carrick’s face. “You know I totally let you win this one, right? I mean, it was the least I could do, with you retiring, and the fact that I had already won this year’s Prix on points.”
Laughing, I shake my head. “You’re a prick, you know that?”
“Yeah, Andressa tells me all the time.”
Andi slaps a hand to his stomach.
Jett comes over, standing beside me.
I drop my other arm over his shoulder. “You want to come up on the podium with me?” I ask Jett.
His face lights up bright with a smile. “For real?”
“For real.” I smile at him. “You might as well have a taste of what it’s like for when you are up there on your own one day, accepting your own trophy.”
His smile gets wider, and I feel India’s hand tighten on my waist. I remove my arm from Jett and turn my eyes to hers, seeing them filled with nothing but love and that watery look she gets in her eyes whenever I do something for Jett.
“I love you,” she whispers.
I cup her cheek, pressing a soft kiss to her lips. “Love you, too, babe.”
Releasing her, I take ahold of her hand and sling my arm back over Jett’s shoulders. “Come on then, son. Let me show you what it’s like to look down on Carrick Ryan.”
Carrick discreetly gives me the middle finger. I let out a laugh, and with India’s hand in mine and my arm around Jett, my family and I start the walk toward my last podium climb.
I’M STANDING IN THE TEAM GARAGE at Silverstone, watching Jett prepare for his first race. Leandro is with him.
My baby boy is seventeen and has signed with his first team, and he is debuting in the FIA Formula 3 European Championship. Leandro is his manager. They make quite the team.
“A little someone wanted you.”
Turning at the sound of Kit’s voice, I smile at the little girl wriggling in his arms.
“Mama!” Adriana holds her arm out to me.
“Hey, baby girl.” I take her from Kit.
Adriana has her father’s dark eyes and hair, and—of course, I’m biased—she’s the most beautiful little girl in the world. She’s just turned two. It took Leandro and me about a year to get pregnant, but we’d sure had fun trying.
“You okay with holding her?” Kit nods his chin at my pregnant belly.
I’m six months pregnant. We’re having a boy.
“I’m fine for a few minutes.” I press a kiss to Adriana’s soft hair. “She is getting heavy though.” I give her a gentle squeeze.
“She was getting fussy upstairs,” Kit tells me. “You know how she wants to be in the midst of the action.”
“Like her father, brother, and uncle.”
Kit chuckles at that.
“Petra here yet?” I ask Kit.
“She’s on her way.”
Kit is settled down and married now to Petra, Andi’s best friend. It took them a while to come together, and it was a messy long process, mostly because of my brother, but they got there in the end. They’re happy together now. I’m really glad because Petra is good for him.
I am so happy that he found his someone.
I’m just hoping they give me a niece or nephew soon.
Adriana starts to tug on the cute little pink headphones covering her delicate ears.
“No, leave those on, Addy,” I tell her.
“Did you ever think we’d be standing here, waiting for our boy to take his first step into the world of Formula racing?” Kit says from beside me.
I meet his eyes, smiling. “No. But I’m sure glad we are, if not a tad nervous.”
“Yeah, me, too—on both counts.” He exhales. “But he’s right where he was always meant to be. As are you.”
My life has changed beyond recognition since Leandro came into it. Not that it was bad before him because it wasn’t, but the moment he came into it, he brought more color into all our lives.
After Leandro retired from Formula 1, we took some time to settle into our lives together, finding our groove with each other. We lived separately in the beginning, but more and more, Leandro started staying over at my place until he was practically living there.
It was the smoothest way to do the transition for us all. After all, it had been just the three of us for so long, and I didn’t want Kit to feel pushed out in any way. I made sure to be careful of Kit’s feelings, but the house was definitely getting too small with the four of us living together.
Then, when Leandro took me to his restaurant, the place where we’d had our brief first date, and he asked me to marry him after us being officially together for six months. To say I was surprised would be putting it mildly, but I was elated. Of course I wanted to say yes right there and then, but I was concerned about Jett and Kit and how they would react. Getting married would be a big change. Then, when Leandro saw my hesitation, he told me that he’d gotten their blessing before asking me. Once I knew that, nothing could stop me from saying yes.
&nbs
p; After we were married, Leandro had another surprise for me. He had bought us a house in Buckinghamshire, a few miles from where Carrick and Andi live. I’d gotten quite close to Andi, which is strange considering how I first met her, but now, she and Petra are my closest friends.
Jett had helped Leandro pick the house out. But I was worried about Kit and where he would live. I didn’t want him to think we were getting rid of him by getting married and moving into the new house. Because, to be honest, I wouldn’t know how to live my life and not have Kit close by.
But Leandro was way ahead of me. He already had it all covered. It was like he had thought of what all my concerns would be and covered them, ensuring I would be happy.
He had bought another house for Kit to live in, less than a five-minute walk from ours. Even though Leandro could afford to buy the house for Kit without a second thought, Kit being Kit wouldn’t accept it and said the only way he would live in the house was if he paid rent. Leandro reluctantly agreed.
Kit and Petra still live there now. And it finally became their house, when Leandro gave it to them as a wedding present. Leandro always gets his way in the end. I love that about him.
I am the luckiest girl in the world that I get to have the man I love and keep the family I love close to me, too.
So, I was a married woman, and Jett was thirteen and independent, hardly needing me for anything. I was starting to feel like a spare part. I had no job. My license, as expected, had been stripped from me at the hearing, which was held a few months after we’d gotten back from Leandro’s Italian race. Although I’d expected that to be the case, it didn’t make the knowledge hurt any less. I sold my practice to another therapist, hoping he would enjoy his time there as much as I had.
I was bereft, but I wasn’t alone. Leandro was in the same position as me.
There was, of course, Jett’s karting, which he had gotten really serious about at that point, to keep us busy-ish, but Leandro and I are workers. We’d both worked our whole lives, so we needed more.
Then, one day, after one of Jett’s races, Leandro came home with a great idea. He’d heard of some land going up for sale a few miles from where we lived. He suggested we buy it and turn it into a karting track and also a kind of youth center. A place for kids who have nowhere to go to race and have fun. I immediately loved the idea, as it meant I could be helping people—kids who were just like Kit and I had been—lost with no real place to go. And it would also be a place where Jett could train.
So, Leandro put in a generous offer the next day. It was quickly snapped up, and six weeks later, the place was ours. It took a good few months to get it up and running, but Silva-Harris Karting officially opened its doors seven months after we’d put in the initial offer.
We charge no entry fee to the kids, and the money to run it comes through charity donations and fundraising, which I’m in charge of. When we put on races, we charge for the ticket entry. Of course, Leandro’s name pulls people in, and we also call in favors from famous driver friends of Leandro’s. Namely, we get Carrick to come to as many races as we can when he’s not off at the Prix. And Leandro also puts a lot of his own money into the center, but he—well, we can afford it.
It’s amazing, running the center. Leandro helps train kids on the karts, and we have people working there, too. He’s heavily involved with Kit’s career now, and that takes up a lot of his time.
Kit helps out at the center when he can. But he’s busy nowadays. He no longer models, but he acts. Film and TV. He’s made quite a name for himself.
My brother, the famous actor—who’d have thought?
Adriana starts wriggling in my arms. She doesn’t last long. She always wants to be off.
“Mama, want Dada, Jett Jett.” She starts tugging on my hair.
“Okay, baby girl.” I turn to Kit. “You coming?”
He gives me a nod, and we walk over to where Leandro and Jett are talking. Discussing race tactics, no doubt.
As soon as we reach Leandro, Adriana is reaching for him. “Dada!”
His face lights up at her. “Addy Baba.”
He grins at her, taking her from my arms, and she squeals, grabbing at his hair as he blows a raspberry on her cheek.
I love watching them together. Something Jett never got to have with his father. But thank God he had Kit, and now, Leandro, too.
“Silly, Dada! Not Addy Baba!” she tells him off.
He laughs at her and then looks at me. “You doing okay, babe?” He presses a hand to my stomach, rubbing it.
“I’m good.” I press my hand over his, smiling lovingly at him.
Then, I turn to Jett. He looks exactly as Kit did at that age. The age I found out that I was pregnant with him.
My boy is going to be breaking hearts all over the world soon, if he isn’t already.
“How are you feeling about the race?” I ask him.
“Fine.” He gives a lazy shrug. He has the teenager thing down pat.
“You’re not nervous?”
He’s usually fine at his karting races, but Formula 3 is a whole different ball game. If what Leandro says is anything to go by, he says Jett will be up to Formula 1 within three to four years. He’s that good.
Jett glances at Leandro and then back to me. “Nah, I got this in the bag, Mum.” He grins at me.
I love his confidence. He’s always had confidence, but Leandro has rubbed off on him over the years, and now, he has it in spades. The ever-growing relationship between Leandro and Jett has been a joy to watch happen. A true privilege. They have a great bond. A father and son bond.
My son might not have his biological father in his life, but he has better. He has a wonderful uncle, who loves him like he’s his own, and an amazing man who might have come into his life later but loves him like he’s been there since the day he was born.
He has two men who would do anything for him.
After Leandro and I got married, Leandro told me that he wanted to become Jett’s father in the legal sense, too, that he wanted to adopt him. After carefully approaching the subject with Jett, he told us he wanted that, too.
Leandro and I were so happy to make it legal, but we had a hurdle to jump, and I knew it wouldn’t be easy. And sadly, it wasn’t. Leandro couldn’t legally adopt Jett because Paul refused to sign the papers. He didn’t do it out of love for his son. He did it out of spite.
But it didn’t matter. Leandro was his dad where it counted. Still, Jett never let it go, and he wanted to do something to show Leandro that he was his dad. So, we were colored surprised when Jett came home on his sixteenth birthday to tell us that he’d legally changed his name to Silva. Even though he had my maiden name and no link to Paul in that way, he wanted to show Leandro that he saw him as his dad and that we were a family in the fullest sense.
Aside from the day Adriana was born, it was the only other day I saw Leandro brought to tears. Of course, I cried, too.
The call comes through that the first race is soon to start.
I hug Jett. “I’ll see you at the finish line,” I tell him, cupping his cheek.
“I’ll be the one crossing it first.” He grins confidently.
“That you will. Love you, kiddo.”
“Love you, too, Mum.” He plants a kiss on my cheek, and he goes over to his car.
Leandro hands Adriana to me and goes with him.
Once Jett is set, Leandro comes back over to us.
He takes Adriana from my arms again and puts his arm around me, pulling me close.
“Jett’s okay?” I ask.
He smiles at me. “He’s fine, babe. Don’t worry.”
“You’re not worried?”
“No, because I know how good he is. And I trained him, so you know…” He smirks. “I better get over to the desk, so I can talk our boy through this race.” He nods in the direction of the bank of desks where Jett’s team is watching on the screens, their earpieces in so that they can communicate with him.
“Okay.”
He leans in close and kisses my lips. “I love you.”
“Love you, too.”
He presses a kiss to Adriana’s neck, and she squeals happily.
“You okay?” Kit asks me, as I watch Leandro walk away.
“Yeah. But I’m really nervous now though.”
“Jett’s golden, Indy. He’s got this in the bag.”
“Yeah.” I bring my eyes to him, giving him a light smile. “You’re right.”
The engines roar, and my body tenses up as I see the race about to begin on the screens before me.
And I think about my life then and now.
If someone had told that scared shitless pregnant seventeen-year-old girl that, in close to eighteen years’ time, she’d be getting ready to watch that baby boy growing in her stomach take his first drive as a Formula 3 driver, she would have told them that they were crazy.
Or if someone had told me five years ago that I would be happily married and pregnant with my second child with that broken, angry Brazilian racing driver who’d just walked through my office door, I’d have definitely said they were insane.
Falling in love with Leandro wasn’t part of my plan, and I know for sure that it wasn’t his, but God, am I glad it happened.
We were wrong for each other but so right in the truest sense of the word.
Leandro and I were inevitable.
Life has twists and turns and sharp bends and throws all manner of hardship at you, but it’s how you deal with it that counts.
If you stand up and be truthful, with yourself and others, everything will come out right.
Telling the truth about Leandro and me showed me that.
Yes, I might have lost my career over our relationship, but I don’t regret it. Not for one single minute.
Leandro always tells me that I saved his life. But really, I think we saved each other. I was living but not to the fullest. Not until him. And now, we’re both living to the max, together, as we were always meant to be. We had to endure the worst, to be able to find each other.
But it was those things we endured and faced separately that made us who we are together.
Revived Page 23
