Chapter 39
Clarke is released from the hospital Saturday afternoon. To her mom’s dismay and resignation, she heads straight for the paddock.
Thanks, me too, she says a million times. Feeling good as new. Still a couple tests to pass before I’m officially cleared, but it’s looking good. I’m happy to be here supporting Matthew.
Yves is there to greet her at the door of Elemental Hospitality, a big smile on his face. “Clarke! We can’t tell you how happy we are to have you back.”
I am going to destroy you, Clarke thinks, and shakes his hand while people applaud. “Thanks, Yves. That means a lot.”
Clarke makes a preplanned loop through the hospitality and garage levels, seeing all the right people and saying all the right things.
Sara’s cameras follow her every step. There’s been an outpouring of support in Clarke’s favor since Wonderland that shows no sign of slowing now that she’s up and about.
All of Clarke’s flaws, both real and perceived, have been smoothed away by her near-death experience.
Clarke really screwed up Yves and Anders’s plan by surviving.
After filming a bunch of awkward canned media bits with Matthew and Raff, Clarke is turned loose. She’s supposed to head back up to the hospitality level and schmooze.
She does not. She has a lot to accomplish and not a lot of time in which to do it.
Everyone’s too busy to pay her much attention.
Matthew is flying Clarke’s ship, staffed by Clarke’s crew.
The amount of work they’ve done in the past five days—physically, to repair the ship from the Wonderland crash and modify it to account for Matthew’s style and preferences, and strategically, to adjust the game plan for supporting a different pilot—is insane, and that rush isn’t over yet.
On top of that, it’s expected that she be here, in and around Elemental’s garage.
No one gives a second glance when she grabs Amira for a quick chat, and everyone’s used to seeing Clarke and Sara walk off together.
Clarke’s at the engineering station, reviewing the spreadsheet of known issues?
She’s done that every weekend this season.
Maki’s the hardest to get a minute with, because the start crew has a lot to do before qualifying. But qualifying starts from the pit lane, not the grid, so there are a few minutes after Matthew heads through the veil when Maki’s free.
He comes to her. “Is that weird for you?”
She’s standing at the edge of the box, watching Matthew fly away. “Seeing someone else fly my ship? Seeing Matthew fly my ship, when the ship that’s supposed to be his is one stall away? It’s not my favorite. Got a second to talk?”
They talk.
Matthew gets eliminated in the second round of qualifying, and will start at P13 tomorrow.
Raff will start at P7. Delphine edges Julian out for P1 by a handful of hundredths of a second.
Thierry’s sitting at P4, and is hoping to keep that spot tomorrow so Martian Motors can’t pull further ahead in the race for third.
Mistakes that would barely have mattered at the beginning of the season now feel like they’re make-or-break moments.
Friendly asides between teams are at a minimum.
Tensions are high, patience is thin. Small disagreements turn into blowouts behind hastily shuttered garage doors.
The team principals’ meeting that wraps up qualifying day is full of sniping comments.
“Is it just me, or do they get more immature by the minute?” Imogen asks when Clarke arrives at the hotel later that night. She’s insisted on staying for the weekend, and Clarke didn’t argue.
“When it’s professional immaturity, I think they just call it spirited competition,” Clarke yawns. She side-eyes the holoscreen on the wall, on which Val is needling Yves, as she passes. “They say anything interesting?”
“Do they ever, when the cameras are on?”
“Not on purpose. I’m counting on it.”
Imogen gives her a confused glance, still mostly focused on the screen. “What?”
Her mom looks exhausted, Clarke realizes. She’s been away from home on short notice for almost a full week. Her work granted her emergency family leave, but Clarke’s seen her trying to catch up on messages.
“Nothing,” Clarke says, pulling her hair into a ponytail so she can wash her face. “I’m just thankful that you’re here. I really love you.”
“Love you, too,” Imogen says absently. “Hey, come here for a picture real fast before you get ready for bed? I promised the Council of Moms proof of life when you got back.”
—
Clarke watches the Olympic City Grand Prix from the Elemental garage, where a model of the track projects up from the floor and every screen on the walls is displaying a live feed.
It’s a thrilling race, from start to finish.
Delphine holds Julian off until the twenty-sixth lap, when he passes her with a daring inversion.
She takes the lead back when they both pit on lap twenty-nine, an error from the Chronicle crew keeping Julian stationary for a full two seconds longer than usual.
Oliver gets right on Julian’s tail after that, and Julian spends the next fifteen laps defending.
Immediately behind those three, Engel is also defending, putting on a master class in opening up space between P3 and P4 so Julian only has to think about Delphine and Oliver.
It works until it doesn’t. He puts off pitting until lap forty-three, but has to come in eventually, and Enclave delayed Thierry’s trip to the box until late in the game, too.
Thierry’s got fresh shells and a fresh battery when Engel exits, and he catches up to and passes Oliver quickly.
Thierry’s amazing, but he doesn’t have the machinery or experience to match Julian and Delphine when they’re in top form, which they are today. They pull away, and with six laps to go, Julian makes his move.
It’s perfectly legal. Aggressive, but legal.
Julian tries to overtake on the outside of a turn that curves back over itself and into a vertical drop.
Space is tight, and the line he chooses presses Delphine right up to the inner curl of the barrier.
She can stay where she is and let him crash into her, or she can cede.
Julian could cede, too, technically, but Clarke doesn’t think for an instant that he’s going to. She watches, her whole body pulsing with secondhand nerves, as Delphine swerves to avoid contact.
It’s a permeable part of the barrier. Delphine’s off the course for less than a second and there’s no damage, but it doesn’t matter.
Julian takes P1, and he holds it until he takes the checkered flag, winning the Olympic City Grand Prix for Chronicle at their home race.
He’s still behind Delphine by 6 points in the individual bracket, but Chronicle now leads Provenance by 5 points heading into the final three races.
The celebration tonight is going to be legendary.
Clarke can already hear the roar from a jubilant crowd and the overlapping music being blared from speakers just beyond the paddock boundary when she finds herself outside Julian’s prep room several hours later.
The podium ceremony has come and gone, as has the post-race press conference.
Clarke took a chance, gambling that almost all of Chronicle would be either in debrief or out getting a head start on the party, and was proven correct.
The only person she passed in the garage was that same junior mechanic who’d Um’d at her the first time she came by, and he waved her on without comment.
She wants to see Julian. She just—she wants to—
Ugh. She is not this person! She is not the girl who waits around for the guy.
She doesn’t even know if he’s coming back!
He could have already joined the festivities in the city streets.
She should’ve just messaged to see if he wanted to see her tonight, but what if he’d said no, and now she’s standing outside his room like a lovesick fool.
There’s noise from the front of the garage; people coming back from debrief.
Clarke, close to panicking at the prospect of being found here, holds her wrist out to the panel by Julian’s door, letting it scan her cuff.
Julian still had her programmed into his apartment building’s system. Maybe she’s on this access list, too?
The door pops open.
She rushes inside and shuts the door behind her.
It’s not the almost getting caught that has her pulse racing, it’s that Julian’s made deliberate choices to let Clarke into his life.
His apartment, his prep room. Prep rooms are as sacred as it gets for F0 pilots.
It’s the one place a pilot has in-paddock to escape the pressure and the never-ending demands and just exist.
She hesitates halfway between the couch and the desk. Should she be in here? Maybe it wasn’t Julian’s idea to put her on the access list at all. Maybe it was PK’s, for convenience, and Julian just hadn’t argued.
The door opens and closes again, so quickly that the lock has snicked back into place before Clarke’s startled jump-and-turn is complete. Julian’s there, striding across the room at speed, breathing harder than a casual walk would require.
“Are you okay?” he asks, holding her at arm’s length while he sweeps a gaze over her body. “Are you hurt?”
“What? No, I’m fine.”
“My cuff said you were here, and you haven’t come here voluntarily in years, and you got out of the hospital yesterday and your team is full of shitheads—”
“Julian,” Clarke says firmly, catching his wrists. “Nothing’s wrong. I just wanted to see you. Say congratulations.”
He goes still. “Oh.”
Clarke releases his wrists. “I didn’t mean to make you worry.”
“I wasn’t—okay, yes, I was worried.” He runs a hand through his hair, ruffling out the last bits of dampness from his post-race shower and disturbing the curls.
Clarke’s eyes catch on the stretch of fabric across his chest, over his biceps.
He notices her noticing, and smirks. “Just came to congratulate me, huh?”
Heat starts gathering at the base of Clarke’s spine. “Yeah.”
His eyes roam over her face, searching. Hungry.
Some distant part of Clarke’s brain whispers that it was probably a bad idea, coming to him this soon after a race, particularly a win.
His blood will be up, adrenaline still coursing through him.
When they were younger, a lot of their near-misses happened immediately after races.
“You’ve done that. The congratulating. What next? ”
Clarke’s laugh sounds nervous. Clarke is nervous, in that gut-twisting, delicious, anticipatory way. “I didn’t have an elaborate five-step plan, I was just—”
He takes a step toward her.
Clarke steps back. “Julian.”
“Clarke.” He steps in again.
Clarke backs away again. Her calves bump into the couch. “Stop.”
He stops, instantly. Air rushes back into the room. “No?”
“You—I—” Clarke drags a hand over her face as a brief wave of frustration sweeps over her. “This is your boundary I’m trying to protect. You’re the one who said we can’t just hook up.”
“This isn’t a hookup. This is a reward.” The atmosphere starts getting heavy again, the temporary reprieve over now that Julian knows Clarke’s not evading his advances because she doesn’t want him.
“You kissed me, the last time I won a race. It’s a very effective system.
Very incentivizing. But for two wins in a row, I’m thinking I should get something else. Something more.”
Clarke’s eyes drop to the front of his pants, imagined sensation blazing through her. The weight of him on her tongue, his fingers in her hair, how he’d groan and tense and shake for her—
He makes an amused noise in the back of his throat when he sees where she’s looking. “Not quite what I had in mind.”
He takes another step forward. Clarke tries to maintain some breathing room, some sanity between them, but forgets that she doesn’t have anywhere to go. She sits down hard on the couch.
He drops to his knees.