Burning Heart // CL16

Twenty Eight

Act Two

I check the hallway, caution filling my body. My decision made as I sneak back down to the garage, spotting Kiraz instantly in the garage and shaking my head subtly to let her know as I blink back tears as I beeline towards her. The second I'm with her she passes me my sunglasses to cover my eyes despite the night time scene around us currently and pulls me into a hug. "What happened?" She whispers in my ear and I try and focus on matching my breath with hers as I close my eyes, determined to stay calm and fly under the radar.

"I couldn't tell him," I whisper back before I pull away and shake my hands slightly, fighting the urge to put a hand on my stomach too smooth myself. Even though there was nothing to see, if I do what I was planning then I needed no suspicion around my exit from public life. Any photo getting out would ruin this.

"Lacey! You have to-"

"I can't, okay? He proposed to her..." I tell her quietly as I pick up my bag and take her hand in mine, leading her out the garage without another glance around to check who was there and watching us, instead I looked down at my phone.

"He what?!" She half screamed as we were in the paddock and I shot her a cold look to tell her to cut it out. She instantly went mute as she looked around and gave me an apologetic smile before looking back at me before she repeated herself more quietly and I gave her a bewildered shrug to signal that I still didn't understand myself. I didn't get it at all but I did need to get out of here now. "You still need to tell him Lace," she says quietly and I just shake my head as we continue to walk to the paddock exit.

"I-I can't Ki... you don't know what that's like. You don't know what he was saying, you didn't hear him... he wants nothing to do with me. You really think he's going to change his mind if I tell him I'm pregnant?" I whisper yell as I don't slow down. "What if he tries to get me to... I-I tried but I can't do it. So I'm leaving now. I'm doing exactly as he asked. I'm leaving and I'm never coming back," I tell her resolutely before she stopped and stopped me in place also. She didn't say anything as her eyes scanned me and all my distress before she just let it go and realised that my decision was made and the she needed to stick with what she had promised me before. That she would support me with whatever.

"Okay...okay, do you not want to say goodbye to Isa and Carlos?" She asks and I do look around at her suggestion, noting with relief that they were actually walking up the paddock towards us. They seem to sense that there's something going on when they see us paused in a random part of the paddock and they make their way quickly to us.

"Hey, what's going on?" Carlos asks me and I look at him confused, wondering why he's even asking me that question in the first place. "Charles is in a bad mood... which isn't abnormal for him this year but it seems different," he says as form of explanation as he looks at me confused and searching for answers that unfortunately I don't have.

"I-I went to go and talk to him... he didn't want to hear what I said. He asked me to leave, so that's  what I'm doing," I tell them simply, pulling a hand nervously up and down my arm and I see Isa look at me in shock and I realise that while Carlos may be clueless - she is not, not the way that she's looking between me and my stomach before nodding to let me know that she won't say anything.

"Like, forever?" Carlos asks and I pull my eyes back off Isa and towards him. Despite all the drama of the last few months, I'd become very close to the couple and I was going to miss being there each week, grabbing lunch and dinners with them when they were around. I'd had several nights just with Carlos when Kiraz wasn't around and neither was Isa - both of us just going to dinners together and we had become close. Like, really close.