Page 124 of Downforce

The next morning, after countless minutes of watching Annalise sleep, I manage to unglue myself from her body. Which is almost a failure when the moment I move away she lets out a little sigh and a moan, turning deeper into my side, her arm reaching in my direction. My heart lurches inside of my chest seeing her, even in sleep, reaching for me.

I lightly kiss her on the forehead and pull away to see her eyes are still closed. Intent on making us breakfast, I extricate myself from the bed.

I’m mentally running through the contents of my refrigerator as I pad from my bedroom to the kitchen on the other side of my flat, dressed in a pair of boxers. From the shop I did yesterday, I know I have everything I need to make a goat cheese and bacon quiche with a fruit salad on the side.

After washing my hands, I start pulling ingredients out of the fridge and set the oven to pre-heat. While chopping vegetables for the quiche, I don’t hear the front door of my flat opening. Once I do, my heart stumbles inside of my chest with the fear that Annalise might be trying to sneak out.

It’s as if I can physically feel my heart shrivel inside of my chest at the thought. The idea that somehow this morning she’s come to her senses. That she’s had time to think over what she confessed last night, and not only regrets it but has come to realize that I was, in fact, deserving of her ire that night seven years ago.

Those are the thoughts spinning in my head when I reach the front door. My heart immediately sinks at the woman standing in front of me.

It’s not Annalise.

Not even close.

“What are you still doing here?” Mum asks as she looks me up and down, her lips sneering.

“I own it,” I dryly remind her.

She frowns while slowly removing her oversized glasses.

“What are you doing in my flat?” I glance over at the clock, noting that it’s just after nine o’clock in the morning.

“I needed to get something.”

“Then you should’ve called first.” I don’t bother asking her what it is she needs because that’s probably a lie. I suspect she knew I was still in town, and since I changed her access to my Monaco flat, she likely came over here to catch me since I’ve also been ignoring her calls.

Even during the weekend’s Grand Prix, I made sure to tell Edwin and my team to keep her as far away from me as possible. I’ve had very little interaction with this woman since the Monaco race.

“Is that how you talk to your mum?” she asks in that degrading voice she uses whenever she believes I’ve forgotten the proper sensibilities. “It must be that Brazilian blood running through you,” she chides.

I flinch at that. This isn’t the first time that she’s alluded to how she feels about my Brazilian blood as she calls it. Throughout my childhood she’d make comments about it whenever she believed I’d become too unruly, loud, or emotional.

Everything from my hot temper to sour moods after a race loss were attributed to my Brazilian side, not possibly because I was human and had normal emotions. And assuredly it had nothing to do with the fact that I had a mother who took every opportunity to degrade me in private.

Though she never made those types of comments when my father was around, they intensified in frequency after his death.

“Was it your British blood that made you forget it’s proper manners to call before you pop over to someone’s home?” I snark back.

Her eyes bulge, unfamiliar with my throwing her condescension back at her.

The surprise doesn’t last long. My mother’s eyebrows narrow.

“You really are something else,” she charges. “You think because you’ve won two out of your last three races, you’re on top of the world, do ya?” Her put-on posh accent slips, her northern, rougher accent peeking through as her anger grows.

Satisfaction courses through me at seeing the shiny, chic veneer she’s crafted over the decades crack. Not for the first time, I wonder if my father ever saw this side of her. If so, what did he make of it? Did he know the way she spoke to me when he wasn’t around?

Would he have done anything differently if he did know?

“You’re nothing,” she spits at me with more venom than I can ever remember her hurling at me. “You’re pathetic. It’s not you, it’s the car and everyone knows it! You’ll never be the winner your father was. You’re nothing more than the embarrassment I wish I’d aborted when I found out I was pregnant. You⁠—”

She stops abruptly, mouth falling open as she gazes at something over my shoulder.

My hands curl into fists because I know what she’s seeing without needing to turn around.

Or rather who.

“Annalise,” my mother says in a breathless whisper. Her voice is strangled in either embarrassment or shock … or both.