ログインJayda Marlowe gave up the only thing she ever loved—racing—for a man she believed would choose her forever. But he didn’t. When Antonio Moretti asked for a divorce, she didn’t beg. She didn’t fight. She just walked away… and never told him she was already running out of time. Now, with only months left, Jayda returns to the track and the boardroom, determined to build something that will outlive her. Strong. Untouchable. Unreachable. Or so she makes the world believe. Antonio thought losing her would be easy. But it wasn’t. Because the woman he let go is no longer the one who loved him quietly—she’s colder, sharper, and completely out of his reach. Now he wants her back. But how do you win back a woman who is already preparing to disappear?
もっと見るAku sama sekali tak menyangka kalau liburanku kali ini, akan mempertemukan aku dengan seorang yang paling aku benci dan ingin aku hindari. Dia adalah mantan suamiku.
Aku melihat Mas Haikal tengah berada di lobi hotel yang sama tempat aku menginap, di Denpasar. Aku yang sedang menggendong anakku seketika menjadi panik. Tentu saja aku panik, karena aku takut dia akan melakukan apa saja, apabila tahu kalau Pasya adalah putranya.
"Del, kamu gendong dulu deh si Pasya. Kamu lihat sendiri itu di lobi hotel ada Mas Haikal. Jadi untuk menghindari hal-hal yang nggak diinginkan, lebih baik kamu gendong dulu anakku. Nanti misalnya dia tanya tentang Pasya, kamu jawab saja kalau Pasya adalah anak kamu," kataku yang membuat Adelia-adik sepupuku, membelalakkan matanya.
"Wah, nggak bener ini. Mbak Amanda bisa menjatuhkan reputasi aku ini. Masak aku yang masih gadis disuruh mengaku sudah punya anak sih, ck." Adelia menggerutu panjang lebar meskipun dia akhirnya menerima Pasya dari tanganku, dan menggendongnya.
"Nggak apa-apa lah, Del. Mengakunya kan hanya sama Mas Haikal. Cuma sebentar saja kok. Setelah melewati dia atau setelah kita masuk ke dalam lift, Pasya akan aku gendong lagi. Soalnya kita nggak bisa menghindar lagi. Dia sudah melihat ke arah kita. Kalau kita pergi, dia akan curiga. Apalagi dia sudah lihat aku gendong Pasya tadi. Jadi akting dikit deh, ya," ucapku dengan nada memelas pada adik sepupuku itu.
Akhirnya Adel menganggukkan kepalanya dan tersenyum seraya berkata, "Iya, tenang saja. Aku jago akting kok. Semoga saja Pasya juga bisa diajak akting sama aku, Mbak."
"Insya Allah, bisa. Anakku biar masih sebelas bulan sudah bisa diajak akting lho," sahutku jumawa
"Aamiin. Ayo, kita jalan ke lift! Pura-pura nggak lihat saja kita. Semoga Mas Haikal nggak sadar dan masih sibuk ngobrol sama temannya." Adelia lalu melangkah dengan percaya diri menuju ke arah lift, yang ada persis di samping posisi Mas Haikal berdiri saat ini.
Aku berjalan beriringan dengan Adelia yang berjalan terlebih dulu. Aku berdoa dalam hati agar Pasya bisa diajak kerja sama, karena dari tadi dia selalu menatapku dan sepertinya ingin segera aku gendong kembali.
Jantungku semakin berdegup kencang ketika kami sesaat lagi akan tiba di dekat Mas Haikal. Benar saja dugaanku kalau Mas Haikal sudah memperhatikan kami dari tadi. Tepat ketika kami sudah melewati dirinya dan berdiri di depan lift, dia mendekatiku dan menyapa.
"Halo, Manda. Apa kabar?"
Aku sontak menoleh padanya dan memaksa untuk tersenyum. Rupanya dia sudah selesai ngobrol dengan temannya
"Eh, kamu. Liburan ke sini juga rupanya," jawabku basa-basi.
"Liburan plus kerja, karena aku akan mendirikan cottage di sini," jawabnya dengan menampilkan senyuman manis.
Aku seketika memalingkan wajahku agar tak berlama-lama menatapnya. Bagaimanapun sekarang dia adalah suami orang. Mengingat itu membuat hatiku sakit. Luka yang sudah mulai mengering perlahan terasa nyeri kembali.
Tepat ketika pintu lift terbuka, Pasya menangis. Rupanya dia sudah tak sabar ingin aku gendong kembali. Aku refleks meraih tubuh anakku dari gendongan Adel, lalu aku dekap dia dengan erat dan mengusap punggungnya dengan perlahan.
"Mbak Manda, ayo kita masuk lift sekarang!" ajak Adel seraya merangkul bahuku.
Aku mengangguk dan melangkah ke dalam lift. Namun, tanpa diduga kedua tangan Mas Haikal menahan pintu lift agar tetap terbuka. Dia menatap lekat wajah Pasya, yang kebetulan anakku kini sedang menatap Mas Haikal juga.
"Manda, siapa anak ini?" tanya Mas Haikal tanpa mengalihkan pandangannya dari wajah Pasya.
"Anakku, Mas!" sahut Adel mewakili aku menjawab pertanyaan mantan suamiku itu.
Mata Mas Haikal menyipit seolah tak percaya dengan jawaban Adel.
"Memangnya kamu sudah nikah?" tanya Mas Haikal dengan tatapan menyelidik pada Adelia.
"Ya sudah dong. Buktinya itu aku sudah punya anak. Masak kalau belum menikah sudah punya anak sih. Aku ini perempuan baik-baik lho, Mas," sahut Adel yang membuatku tertawa dalam hati, karena aktingnya lumayan juga.
"Mas, tolong tangannya dilepas dari pintu lift itu. Supaya pintunya bisa tertutup dan liftnya bergerak naik. Kami ingin segera sampai di kamar, dan beristirahat," sahutku datar.
Mas Haikal tetap tak melepas kedua tangannya dari pintu lift. Dia terus menatap Pasya dan aku secara bergantian.
"Aku akan cari tahu tentang anak ini."
"Silakan!"
Aku menjawab dengan cukup tenang walaupun dalam hati sudah ketar-ketir. Hingga setelah puas memandangi Pasya, Mas Haikal melepaskan kedua tangannya dari pintu lift. Dalam hitungan detik, pintu lift tertutup dan segera naik ke lantai tempat kamar kami berada.
***
"Mbak, bagaimana kalau Mas Haikal beneran cari tahu tentang Pasya? Terus kalau dia marah karena selama ini nggak diberitahu tentang keberadaan Pasya, bagaimana?" tanya Adel ketika kabin lift sudah bergerak naik.
Aku pandangi wajahnya yang tampak cemas. Aku mengulum senyum karena ekspresi wajah adik sepupuku itu, sangat berbeda dengan yang tadi dia perlihatkan saat di depan Mas Haikal. Tadi Adel sangat percaya diri ketika mengatakan kalau Pasya adalah anaknya. Tapi, kini dia takut kalau Mas Haikal tahu identitas Pasya.
"Biar saja dia cari tahu. Memangnya aku akan diam saja kalau dia berusaha untuk merebut Pasya dariku."
Tepat ketika bibirku terkatup, pintu lift terbuka. Aku serta Adel segera keluar dari kabin lift dan melangkah menuju ke kamar kami.
"Ma…Ma…Ma."
Pasya menjulurkan lidahnya ke arah dadaku, memberi kode kalau dia sedang ingin menyusu.
"Pintar banget sih anak Mama ini. Sudah sampai kamar baru minta ASI," ucapku dengan senyuman ketika tatapanku dan tatapan anakku bertemu.
Aku tanpa menunggu lama langsung duduk di sofa, dan melepas tiga kancing teratas blus katun yang aku kenakan. Aku lalu mulai menyusui anakku. Sementara aku melihat Adel sudah merebahkan tubuhnya di atas kasur sambil memejamkan mata.
"Mbak, andaikan Mas Haikal masih cinta dan mengajak rujuk, apa Mbak Manda mau?" tanya Adel yang sontak membuat aku terkesiap.
"Kenapa kamu punya pikiran kayak gitu? Nggak mungkin lah dia mau rujuk sama aku. Dia kan sudah punya istri dan anak, Del. Apa kamu lupa kalau aku diceraikan olehnya karena aku dikira mandul?"
"Apa Mbak lupa kalau yang menggugat cerai itu adalah Mbak Manda, bukan Mas Haikal?" ucap Adel balas bertanya padaku.
Aku mengalihkan tatapanku ke arah Adel yang sedang berbaring di kasur.
"Aku menggugat cerai karena aku tak sudi dimadu. Apalagi Mas Haikal sudah berkhianat sebelum minta ijin untuk menikah lagi. Pelakor itu sudah hamil enam minggu! Jadi buat apa aku mempertahankan rumah tangga yang sudah bobrok karena pengkhianatan," sahutku agak ketus yang membuat Adel menoleh ke arahku.
"Tapi, aku lihat sorot mata Mas Haikal masih penuh cinta saat menatap kamu tadi, Mbak," ucap Adel yang membuat aku tersenyum kecut.
Aku baru saja akan menanggapi ucapan adik sepupuku itu, tapi aku urungkan karena bunyi ketukan di pintu yang menginterupsi pembicaraan kami.
Adel segera bangkit dari kasur dan melangkah ke pintu, lalu membukanya.
"Mas Haikal!"
"Amanda mana, Del?"
Aku yang mendengar suara Mas Haikal langsung panik. Aku ingin menyudahi memberi ASI pada Pasya. Tapi, anakku ini masih lahap menyusu. Hingga akhirnya aku pasrah ketika Mas Haikal menerobos masuk ke dalam kamar, dan melihat aku sedang menyusui Pasya.
He looked at the helmet.Then at her.She was holding it the way she held things she meant, with the specific quality of someone who had decided and was not performing the deciding but simply enacting it, the way she held the wheel when the race was real and the corner was coming and everything that mattered was the quality of the attention she brought to the next three seconds.He reached out and took it.It was heavier than he had expected.He didn't know why that surprised him. He had watched her race for years, had watched the helmet go on and come off across the ceremonial distances he had always kept, had understood it abstractly as a thing with weight and purpose. But holding it was different from watching it held. It was the specific difference he had been learning across the year, between knowing something and understanding it in his body, and he stood in the Silverstone paddock holding her helmet with both hands and un
They walked to the far end of the paddock.Not by agreement, not with a destination discussed, just the natural movement of two people who needed to be somewhere quieter than where they had been and who both understood that quieter was what the conversation required. The paddock thinned at the far end, the team garages giving way to the service corridor where the noise became background rather than immediate, and they stopped there without discussing the stopping and stood with the Silverstone afternoon on one side and the conversation on the other.She spoke first."The diagnosis," she said. "When it came. I was alone in that office and I drove home alone and I sat with it alone because I didn't have — " she stopped, finding the specific word rather than the approximate one. "I didn't have anyone I trusted with the full version of myself anymore. That was what your distance had produced. By the time the worst thing that had ever happened to me h
The paddock after a win had a specific quality that was different from the paddock after any other result.Not louder, necessarily — the paddock was always loud in the specific layered way of a space where multiple teams were conducting multiple simultaneous debriefs and the logistics of packing and moving an entire operation were already beginning before the podium ceremony had finished. But the quality of the noise was different. It had a different texture. The team moved with the specific efficiency of people who had done something and knew they had done it and were now doing the next thing from inside that knowledge rather than in spite of its absence.She had done the podium.She had stood on the top step with the trophy and the champagne and the anthem and had been present to all of it, fully, in the specific way she had learned across the comeback to be present to the things that deserved it rather than processing them from behind the glass of something else. The Silverstone cr
The race was at Silverstone.Not because Silverstone held any particular significance to the narrative of the past year, not because it was the circuit she had won at before or the one she had returned to first or the one that carried the weight of anything specific, but because Silverstone was the round on the calendar and the calendar was what it was and she had stopped organizing her life around significance and had started organizing it around the work.She qualified second.The gap to pole was four hundredths of a second, which was close enough that the gap was not really the story. The story was the lap itself, the specific quality of a lap that had been constructed correctly from the first corner rather than recovered from, the lap that Lucas had watched on the timing screen and had said nothing about because Lucas said nothing when nothing was the right response and the lap had been the right response to three weeks of preparation and the kind of focused accumulation that did
Unless the referencing was itself strategic, was the next calculated move, was the warmth turned up one degree precisely because the document had turned the temperature down and the recalibration was as deliberate as everything else had been.She couldn't know.She had been sitting with the impossi
Lisa Knight had always been good at research.Not in the obvious way, not in the way that required databases or subscriptions or the kind of access that announced itself — but in the quieter, more useful way of someone who understood that the most valuable information about people was rarely in wha
They talked for another hour about other things, easier things, the conversation finding its way back to lighter ground with the naturalness of water finding its level, and Jayda found herself laughing genuinely twice, which she noted with the quiet surprise of someone who had not expected to laugh
The second course arrived and the candles burned lower and the room continued its warm indifferent motion around them and somewhere between the pasta and the question of dessert the conversation shifted in the way conversations shifted when the surface layer had been sufficiently established and so
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