Chapter 7
It takes two hours before I’m ready to leave the track.
There’s some press, a debrief with the team, even more press, then a pleasant few minutes chatting with Anne and Ben and Trevor and Jonathan, who promise to watch from the garage again tomorrow.
“We’ll be your good luck charms,” Trevor says, grinning charmingly. “Plus, I heard Quin McCarthy is hanging around in the Harper garage next door, and Jonathan thinks he’s super hot.”
“I do not,” Jonathan protests, blushing bright red.
“Well, I do,” Trevor says.
“Me, too,” Anne chimes in.
“Oh, for the love of—” Ben shoots me a beleaguered look and drags the three of them away, and I head to the Harper garage to find Travis.
I run into Matty on the way, who ruffles my hair and says, “Nice job, little one.” He laughs when I bat him away and then adds, over his shoulder, “Just wait till you see what your boyfriend did.”
I push open the door to Travis’s room, and—
Oh, boy.
There’s a very scrappy-looking white dog sitting on the couch, its tail thumping loudly as Travis pats it on the head. Heather is leaning on the physio table massaging her fingers into her temples.
“Oh, thank god,” she says when she sees me. “A voice of reason.”
Travis beams at me. “They caught the dog! Isn’t he cute?”
“Cute” might be a matter of opinion. The dog has short fur that would be paper-white if it was clean, very dark, almost black eyes, and slightly pointed ears that remind me of a German Shepherd.
It’s about the same size as Morocco, but scrawny and underfed, and its frame is covered in a constellation of half-healed scars.
It looks like a dog that’s used to fighting—and winning fights, for that matter.
“I think we should call him Ghost,” Travis says.
Heather groans. “You can’t take him home, Travis. Jacob, tell him he can’t take him home.”
The dog looks at me and thumps its ratty tail a bit harder.
“Why not?” Travis says. “He doesn’t belong to anyone. And he ran out in front of my car twice. That’s, like, fate.”
“He’s a stray,” Heather says. “He probably has fleas, and ticks—”
“Easily fixed,” Travis says.
“—and he might be violent—”
“Oh, yeah, I’m really scared,” Travis says, as the dog starts licking his hand.
“—and you already have a girl dog, and he’s probably not neutered—”
“Also an easy fix.”
“—and we’re in a foreign country! You can’t just pick dogs up off the street and fly them home. It doesn’t work like that, there’s got to be a process.”
Travis shrugs. “It can’t be that hard.”
Heather groans and looks at me. “Talk some sense into him, please.”
I look at the dog, then at Travis, then at Heather’s imploring gaze. I could probably earn a lot of brownie points with her if I took her side on this.
Instead, I grin at Travis. “It can’t be that hard,” I agree.
Heather groans again as Travis beams. “You like the name?” he says.
“I love it.” I hold my hand out to the dog, who sniffs it cautiously and then clamps his jaws around it. Not biting, just holding it gently, like my hand is a fun new toy.
“You’re going to get rabies,” Heather says. But then she comes forward to pet the dog, too, and looks extremely smug when it gets super excited and tries to jump up on her shoulders. “I suppose I’m the one who’s going to find a vet to take him to, and sort out how to get him home, am I?”
“I don’t remember paying anyone else to be my PA,” Travis says.
“You were so shy when I first met you,” Heather mutters. But then she goes off for five minutes and miraculously reappears with a collar and a leash, which she procured from Cole Milton, of all people.
“He takes his dog with him everywhere,” she says, which is weird, because I’ve literally never seen that guy with a dog in my life. It’s probably some snooty expensive breed with its own private security detail. Still, it makes me hate Cole Milton a little less, which is annoying.
“Now smile for a picture,” Heather tells Travis, holding up her phone and waving me out of the frame. “I’m going to post this on your Instagram.”
“What? Why?” Travis complains. In the six months since we got back together, he’s posted exactly three times on his Instagram, always at Heather’s insistence and under heavy protest.
“In case I need to persuade the authorities that millions of people would complain if they don’t let you take him home.”
Travis sighs but smiles obediently for the photo, which Heather immediately posts on his account with the caption, “New best friend.”
If it has less than a million likes by morning, I’ll be shocked.
We spend a few minutes playing with the dog—Ghost—then Heather takes him off to find a twenty-four-hour veterinarian.
“You want us to come with you?” I offer.
She heaves an exaggerated sigh. “It’s fine. Go get some sleep. You must be exhausted.”
Travis loops an arm around my waist and pulls me against him the moment she’s gone. “Are you exhausted?” he asks, in a tone that sets my blood pulsing harder.
I lean into him and look up into his eyes. “Exhausted,” I murmur.
He grins. “Then let’s get you to bed.”
Twenty minutes later, I’m stretched out naked on the bed in our hotel room, with one hand gripping the headboard and the other tangled in Travis’s hair.
His head is moving between my legs, the wet heat of his throat turning my brain inside out while his fingers dig possessively into my thighs.
I’m going to have bruises there tomorrow, sore purple smudges that mark me as his.
“Fuck—fuck, fuck,” I say, eloquently. Travis hums, amused, and the vibration nearly tips me over the edge. I push him off of me hastily. If he keeps going like that, this is going to be over way too soon.
He captures my mouth in a brief, bruising kiss, then slaps the side of my hip impatiently.
“Bossy fucker,” I mutter, which earns me a sharp bite on the back of my shoulder.
I spend the next stretch of time at the mercy of his fingers.
I’ve lost count of how many times we’ve been together like this, and yet somehow, every single time, it’s like a hill I have to climb, a choice I have to make.
To be vulnerable with him or not, to hold a part of myself back or let him see how much I need him.
It should get easier with time, but it never does.
But it never stops being perfect, either, when I summon up the courage to let him in.
My choked-out words give way to incoherent noises, broken sounds with the cadence of pleas.
Travis’s free hand slides against my stomach, pulling me up and back.
This is how he likes it, his chest pressed against my back, his mouth on my neck, one hand tight around my waist and the other moving between my legs.
His skin against my skin at every possible place.
This is how I like it, too.
The edges between us blur and disappear, building pleasure threaded with pain.
Travis gets quieter, his grip gets tighter, then my voice splinters and breaks as I fall apart.
It takes several long minutes to come back to myself.
The world reforms around Travis; the weight of his chin on my shoulder, the warm press of his fingertips on my skin.
“Missed you,” he murmurs.
I rest my temple against his. “Missed you, too.”
We migrate to the shower, where I stifle yawns in the steam and Travis smiles at the way my muscles shake when I shampoo my hair.
“You sure you’re going to survive sixty-two laps tomorrow?” he asks, running his thumbs over my biceps.
I fight another yawn. “Hopefully.”
“If you feel yourself slipping, give me a signal, and I’ll do something to cause a red flag so you can have a mid-race nap.”
I laugh and say, “Please don’t do that,” but as he turns away to scrub the shampoo from his hair, something unpleasant tugs at me, just like it did when James Riley was interviewing him.
I try to chase the feeling, but my mind is too tired, my thoughts slipping away like soapy water through my fingers.
As we’re crawling into bed, there’s a soft knock on the door. I glance at the clock. It’s well past midnight.
“Maybe it’s Heather and Ghost,” Travis says.
Instead, it’s an apologetic hotel clerk delivering my lost luggage. I hear her wish Travis luck on the race before the door clicks shut.
“Your luggage, sir,” he says, rolling my bag into the bedroom.
I grin. “Did you give that girl a tip, or d’you think the visual of you in boxers was enough?”
He laughs. “At least you’ll have your own stuff for tomorrow.”
“Yeah. I think I’ll keep your shoes, though,” I add, as he slides into bed beside me. “Unless you need them back.”
“They’re yours,” he says. “Lights off?”
“Mm.”
The room goes dark. I slide deeper under the cool sheets, shivering slightly until Travis’s arms slide around me.
“Do you ever think,” I say after a moment, “that all it would take for everyone to find out about us is one little thing like that?”
“One thing like what?”
“That hotel clerk. Recognizing you, delivering luggage to your room with my name on it.”
“I never thought of that.”
I drop a kiss against his arm. “I know you haven’t. But it could happen.”
“And if it does, then we deal with it like we planned.”
“Yeah,” I agree. “Like we planned.”
Harper and Crosswire have it all sorted, or so they’ve promised us. I imagine there’s a file in Tom Kellen’s desk labeled “Jacob/Travis Disaster Plan.” It probably has flowcharts and diagrams and a glossary of terms.
It all hinges on a single event, though. A hotel clerk posting a picture on TikTok or an F1 fan filming something they shouldn’t. An accident, a betrayal, something out of our control.
But if it were something intentional, instead—an unambiguous photo posted on Travis’s Instagram, maybe, or a joint statement put out by our teams…
The aftermath probably wouldn’t look any different. But it would feel a lot different, I think.
“What are you thinking about?” Travis asks quietly.
I shift back a little further into the warmth of his arms.
“You,” I say. “Always you.”