by Kat Ransom
Lennox leans back from the microphone and stares at me, totally confused by this inexplicable outburst. Every eye in the room is on me as I march to the podium ready to plow my way through any idiot who dares to try and stop me. A few long strides and I am astride the podium.
“I will not let you do this!” I yell at Lennox as if it’s just the two of us in this room.
“It’s ok,” he speaks at a normal volume, of which I am not capable of right now, and tries to take my hand but I don’t let him. He must think I’ve gone completely insane, a jilted ex-girlfriend gone mad. “Please, just trust me, it will all be ok,” he whispers.
“I do trust you, you stupid asshole!” A symphony of laughter breaks out in the audience. “You should have trusted me!” I point my finger at him.
He tries reaching for my hand again. “Ok, ok. Let’s just go somewhere and…”
“No! I’m not going anywhere! You’re going to listen!” I turn to the crowd, “All of you are going to listen!” There are dozens of cameras facing me, journalists pointing oversized microphones to the front of the room and leaning forward in their chairs.
Oh god, I am screaming in front of a room of media. I look unhinged.
No buckets of blood, Mallory.
This is not the speech I had prepared to give. I’m going to have to wing it. I glance at Lennox beside me in a power stance ready to take control, throw me over his shoulder, ready to handle whatever arises. I imitate his strength and square off my shoulders, raise my chin.
“This man,” I speak into the microphone and point to Lennox, “is not retiring from Formula 1. He misspoke and he’s very sorry.” The room collectively laughs again. From the corner of my eye, I see the tiniest of smirks start at the corner of Lennox’s mouth and he crosses his arms watching me, waiting to see what else I’m going to say.
“This man,” I continue, “is a World Drivers’ Champion. He holds nine FIA records. His talent is beyond reproach. But he is also a good man, an honest man who loves this sport. He has dedicated his life to racing. Because of his integrity and his passion for F1, out of concern for the safety of other drivers and track personnel, you will understand why Mr. Gibbes called this press session when he learned of the illegal and immoral activities happening on-track, and off, by his teammate, Digby DuPont.”
“What the hell are you doing?” Lennox whispers to me, his eyes growing round.
“Will the audio-visual team please play the Cooper Media video file now?”
Lennox rocks his head back in shock and looks around as the room lights dim and the video Max prepared starts playing on a drop-down screen. Max’s staff cleaned up the images so it’s crystal clear what’s happening and then he spliced several of Digby’s videos together to make one file that will sum up Digby’s offenses quite nicely.
As Digby comes onto screen, it’s him snorting coke off that woman’s stomach. She turns out to be a prostitute in video clip number eight, but we’ll get to that. In the back of the room, I catch the sight of Digby running out of the exit doors. I smile because he can run, but it’s too late for him.
Then we see Digby cutting up cocaine in the motorhome with the Celeritas logo on the wall right behind him. Reporters gasp and cameras flash. Moving on, we see Digby in his race suit and helmet doing a finger full of cocaine right before he gets into the car in Melbourne.
Alessi from Anora stands from his seat and shouts, “What the fuck? He’s doing coke in the car? That fucker hit me at that race! He could have killed me!”
The video continues as Digby appears to buy a brick of a ‘powdery white substance’ on his yacht in Monaco and rubs it all over his teeth and gums. Another driver in the audience stands to yell. Then we see Digby bragging about the prostitute he just bought who’s going down on him in his Hummer. The video goes on for several minutes with several clips as the audience gasps and journalists grow frantic.
As the videos play, I feel Lennox take my hand. I grip it hard as he stands beside me at the podium.
When the video ends the lights come back on and the room is in a frenzy. All the Celeritas staff is long gone, they scurried out like rats on their own sinking ship. Reporters start yelling questions out over one another and clamoring to get to the front of the room. There’s going to be a stampede.
Max comes to the podium and is smiling from ear to ear. “Want me to take over from here?”
In a daze, I nod and then everything is a flurry as Lennox pushes past the mob of people in the room, pulling me behind him as we escape through the side door.
Thirty One
Lennox
My elbows are out as I push past media crew and support staff and the crowd of people who stuffed the conference room for Mallory’s bombshell. As soon as the video started rolling, a herd started amassing in the room. Everyone from team bosses to cleaning crews are packed in like sardines. I’m clearing a path and dragging her behind me. It’s a fucking frenzy.
I push the conference room doors open with my shoulder and break into the hallway. I feel Mallory’s hand jerked out of mine and look back. A journalist I don’t recognize has her arm and there’s a giant camera in her face. “Back off!” I roar and shove him away from her.
“Go, go!” She scurries to my side and we take off again. We jog through the building being chased by a flock of cameras and take the first exit door we come across. Outside there are more cameramen waiting and I search up and down the paved path behind the track buildings but there’s nowhere to go to get away from them. The motorhome is absolutely out of the question now.
“Hey!” I hear Jack yell behind us. He, Matty, and Aria have pushed through the crowd and are jogging toward us outside. What the hell is Aria doing here?
“Do you have my keys?” I yell to Jack as the trio hustles to catch up.
Jack digs into his pants pocket, “Does Raggedy Anne have a cotton crotch?”
He hands me the keys and I pull Mallory to continue our escape but she tugs back, “No, I can’t leave Aria.”
“Girl, go!” Aria is between Jack and Matty and slips her arms around both of their waists smiling like the Cheshire Cat.
“Take care of her,” I tell them both, nodding to Aria, and grab Mallory’s hand.
We need to get the hell out of here. There are reporters and cameras everywhere, circling us like buzzards. They’re trying to tug on both of us to ask questions. I make long strides through the track and into the parking garage when I feel her arm pulling on mine to match pace with my long legs. “Keep up or I’ll pick you up,” I tell Mallory as plow through the crowds. If someone else grabs her or she gets hurt in this mob we’re going to have another scene.
By the time I hand her into my car there are only six or eight cameramen filming us but Mallory is out of breath and shaking. “Are you ok?” I speed out of the parking lot.
She takes several deep breaths with her eyes closed, “Yes. Holy shit, holy shit,” she pants.
I have no idea where I’m going or what just happened but I need to get us away from the track first, away from the crowds, the news teams. My hotel won’t be safe from them now. Silverstone is in the middle of bumfuck nowhere England and soon there’s nothing but cows and crops on both sides of the road. Mallory is silent beside me but I know she’s freaked out.
“Where are you going?” She finally asks me.
“I don’t know, just, away from this,” I wave with my arms to convey the gravity of everything we need to escape right now.
“Just pull over somewhere, I’ll call Max to come get me.” She pulls out her phone and her hands are shaking.
“What? No. Mallory, we need to talk.” I put my hand over hers on the phone but she pulls it away. Now that she’s had a spell to calm down, she’s pissed. I spot a dirt road up ahead and pull off and far enough down the road to be out of sight from the main road. There’s nothing around us but orchards of some kind of fruit trees.
I pull to the side with branches hanging over the car and kill th
e engine. Mallory is looking at her knees and gripping her phone. I run my hands through my hair and try to focus. I don’t even know where to start. This is absolute insanity and thoughts sprint across my mind faster than I can keep up with, but no. That’s not what’s important.
Unclipping my seatbelt so I can sit sideways to see her, all I want to do is drag her into my arms and make sure she’s ok. “There’s so much I need to say to you but I’m not sure where to start,” I admit.
“Same,” she nods and stares out the windshield.
“Do you mind if I go first?”
“Since when do you ask?” She’s defensive and won’t look at me.
I wish I could deliver an impassioned speech on her like she gave to that conference room of reporters, but I’ve always been better about showing her how I feel rather than tell her.
And that shit stops now.
“I meant what I said in Austria. I love you. I know I fucked up. I swear to you there’s only been you since the day I met you and I think you know that. I know you don’t trust me, though, and I’ll do whatever…”
She shakes her head and interrupts me, “That’s not it anymore.”
“What is it, then? Tell me and I’ll fix whatever it is.”
“You can’t fix this,” a tear runs down her eye.
I put my hand on her face and she lets me keep it there, “There’s nothing off the table anymore, Mal. Please. I’m fucking miserable without you. Will you look at me?”
“I can’t,” she closes her eyes and it guts me that she can’t even bring herself to look at me.
“I’m so fucking sorry, please believe me. I’ll earn back your trust, I don’t care how long it takes. I might have a lot of free time now.” I’m not trying to be a smart ass, I just want her to stop crying. I don’t ever want to make her cry again.
“Why did you do that?” She wipes her tears away and brushes my hand off in the process.
I watch her in her seat and I have no doubt that it was the right thing to do. None. “I can live without driving. I can’t live without you. If you want to live in New York and open a firm, or work for Cooper, whatever you want to do now, I’ll support your dreams. I just, I know how it feels to have your dreams crushed and I couldn’t let you go through that, too. And I want to be someone you’re proud to be with, not some asshole fraud.” Like Digby, I think, but I don’t want to speak his name.
“I’ve always been proud of you.”
My chest tightens. “I didn’t deserve it, but I’ll spend the rest of my life trying to be the man you deserve, if you let me.”
All of a sudden she bursts into tears and her shoulders are heaving, her hands cradling her head. I try to console her but I can’t reach her to hold her and she’s trying to get out of the car door. She finally pushes the right button and the door rises and she shoots out. I jog around the car where she’s pacing back and forth along the car, red-faced and trying to get control of her emotions.
“Love,” I reach for her and try her to pull her in.
“No, don’t call me that,” she snaps and turns away from me wrapping her arms around herself.
“Why?”
“You won’t love me anymore,” she sobs.
“Mallory,” I take her by the shoulders and make her face me, “there’s nothing that will make me stop loving you. I know, Christ, I know a lot has happened and I don’t understand it all right now, but I don’t care about any of it.”
“You will when I tell you what I’ve done.”
All of my breath escapes me and my heart sinks to my stomach. I don’t know if I can hear this. “Whatever it is, if it’s over now then it doesn’t matter.”
“You don’t mean that.” She throws her arms up. “Jack and Matty are going to tell you anyway, let me just get it over with then you can leave me again. Leave me in this, this fucking apple orchard this time!”
“I will not leave you. I will never leave you again,” I stand before her and take her tear-stained face in my hands.
“Just, let me get it over with,” she breaks away and starts pacing again. As much as I don’t want the details of whatever the hell has happened that culminated with videos playing of Digby with drugs and prostitutes, she wants to talk and I need to listen. I lean up against the side of the car and brace myself.
“You have to know I was doing it for you,” she starts. I close my eyes and swallow. I can’t live with myself if she did something to make her this upset and she did it for me. “I, I found videos on Digby’s phone and I had to get them away from him, I had to get him alone.”
I’m channeling all of my self-control to stay still and silent and stand still against the car, let her get it all out and then we’ll deal with it.
“I had to lead him on, let him touch me,” she sobs. “I did terrible things, Lennox.”
The thought of him touching Mallory is unbearable, every nerve in my body is on fire. She’s staring at me now waiting for a reaction. “I’m listening. I’m not leaving.”
She’s watching me closely, “He, he grabbed my ass, he touched my chest, he kissed my neck. I let him. I didn’t want him to, but I let him.”
“Still here,” my eyes track her. This is killing me but I won’t leave. Being without her is the only thing that has ever felt worse than this.
“I touched him, Lennox. I groped his disgusting little Digby dick.” Her body recoils and the disgust she feels recalling this is all over her face. “It was the only way, I hated it. I hate him.”
“Aye, I know,” I dip my head and agree quietly.
“That’s it. You can go now.” She turns her back to me and takes a few steps away toward the trees.
“That’s it?”
She turns back around. “What do you mean that’s it?”
I shrug my shoulders, “Ok. I’m still here, Mal.”
“You’re not mad?”
“Oh, I’m plenty mad,” I stand up from the car and take two steps so I’m inches from her, “but I’m mad at myself that I let this happen to you. I don’t know how I’ll ever forgive myself, but I’ll figure it out.”
“You didn’t make me do it,” she looks up at me.
“But you did it for me.”
She nods.
I run my fingers through her long hair and hold the back of her head. “I wish you would have just let me handle this so I could keep you safe. I would have done anything for you. I will do anything for you. But I understand why you did it.” I pull her body into mine and hold her head against my chest. This is the first time in weeks I’ve held her and there’s no power in the universe that I’ll let take her from me again.
“I’m sorry, I had to do something. It wasn’t fair, I had to fight.” Her arms are to her side and she goes back and forth with them wanting to wrap around my waist, then back to her sides.
I chuckle into her hair, “I think I fell in love with you the first time you fought with me. So fucking sassy.”
“It’s the competitive streak in you, you like the challenge,” her arms finally go around my waist and my eyes close in relief.
“You’re probably right.” I kiss her hair and whisper to her, “I love you, Mallory. You don’t have to love me back right now. One day I hope you will.”
She pulls back and looks up at me, “You didn’t see my texts.”
“What texts?”
“You blocked me, on your phone.”
“I was out of my mind, Mallory. After everything that happened in the past with him, I thought you were the last person who would lie to me and it just, it fucking wrecked me. I couldn’t bear the thought.”
She nods and looks to her side at the apple trees again. “Can you take me back to the track now? Or I can call Max, I guess.”
“Max? Why?” The track is the last place on earth I want to be right now, and we have so much more to talk about.
“I have to figure my life out now, Lennox,” she says with no small amount of frustration. “I have no job, no home, my dad
is probably having a heart attack as we speak, I stole a car and the cops could be looking for me for all I know!”
“What?” Stole a car, what the fuck? None of it matters. “I’ll come with you, then, wherever you want to go. New Y…”
“No,” she cuts me off.
“Then Scotland, move in with me. Please. I don’t even know if I’m supposed to race on Sunday now or not but, fuck it.”
“No, Lennox.” Her face is stern and she’s holding her elbows across her stomach. “It’s not that simple. You hurt me.”
Her hazel eyes are glossy and bloodshot. Knowing I put that look in her eyes guts me and is a shame inside me worse than any of the bullshit I’ve ever done in my life. “I know, love, and I’m so fucking sorry.”
“You did it deliberately. You want me to trust you, but you didn’t have trust in me either. You were hurt and you lashed out to hurt me on purpose. I have never felt so terrible, Lennox. I don’t know if I could go through that again.”
“I swear to you it will never happen again. I want to spend the rest of my life with you, Mallory. I don’t care where we go or what we do, but I need you. I know I’m selfish but I won’t give you up. I can’t.”
“I don’t know if I can,” she shakes her head. “I don’t trust myself right now, much less you. Running away with you to your castle won’t solve anything. I ran away once when I came here to escape my problems. I’d feel like I’m always waiting for the other shoe to drop. The next time you’ll throw some supermodel in my face.”
“Don’t do that. Look at me,” I take her face. “You are the only woman I have ever felt this way about, I have never loved anyone like this. I mean it, I want to spend the rest of my life with you. You’re fucking everything to me.”
“I need time. Time away from you. Everything is completely out of control and I don’t know which end is up.”
Time apart is the last thing I want. I’d cut off my right arm if I could just take her back home right now and marry the shit out of her. But I came prepared to do whatever it takes and I will. I need her to trust me and be all in with me. “There’s nothing I won’t give you, tell me what you want and I’ll do it. Just promise you’ll come back to me.”
