Chapter 10
The podium celebration is a bright, surreal blur.
In the cooldown room beforehand, which is always televised, Travis makes polite chitchat with Mahoney while I watch the race replay on screen.
They’ve condensed sixty-two laps into a handful of moments: Travis taking the lead on the second lap, Harper’s pit crew struggling to get the front left off during his pit stop, flashes of our epic battle at the end, the moment I finally got past him.
I see Travis smiling wide as he watches it, and I smile back even harder.
We’re called out onto the podium one by one. The roar of the crowd when I step out is deafening, the world below us a sea of smiling faces. I find Kelsie in the crowd and give her a wave. She looks like she’s crying, which is something she never does. It almost makes me want to cry, too.
I get a shiny medal and an even shinier trophy.
It’s heavier than it looks, and my arms shake when I lift it overhead.
I’m more physically exhausted than I ever remember being in my life, but I’m ignoring it, riding high on the tears streaming down Kelsie’s cheeks and the brightness of Travis’s smile whenever I look at him.
The classic podium music kicks off, and Travis and Mahoney absolutely drench me in champagne.
Cory is on the podium, too—the team chose him to accept the constructor’s trophy—and he dumps half of his bottle over my head.
My eyes sting so badly from the spray that I don’t notice the confetti raining down until Travis touches my arm and offers me a handful of shiny golden paper.
“For my Christmas present,” he says.
I splutter out a laugh. “You’re not supposed to know about that!”
“Then you should have done a better job of hiding it. I swear, there’s so much damn glitter on our couch—”
“The glitter was Kelsie’s idea!”
His eyes dance. “Sure it was.”
Laughing, I tuck the strands of confetti into my race suit, then Travis and I join Mahoney and Cory for a picture, trophies in hand and arms wrapped around each other.
I find Kelsie in the crowd again and smile directly at her phone.
The press can deal with me looking off-center.
I want to share this moment with the people who helped me get here.
Like Kelsie, and Travis, whose fingers tighten on my side.
I hold onto him for a few extra seconds, letting the moment sink into my bones.
I meet his eyes and I know that he knows what I’m thinking.
How happy I am to be here with him, how happy I am to be here at all.
For several long, dark months last year, I had stopped believing this could ever happen.
I had given up on my career, given up on myself.
But I clawed my way out of it—with a ton of help from my therapist Amanda, who I make a mental note to text as soon as this is done—and I made it here.
Sticky with champagne and sweat and confetti, with an F1 trophy in my hand and Travis’s arm around my side.
A few more minutes of cheers and then we’re swept off the podium and herded to a press conference, where I try not to laugh at Travis’s trademark one-word answers.
The only times he’s slightly more expansive is when he’s answering questions about me, and at one point, when I’m answering a question about him, I stare out at all the reporters and think, can they really not hear it?
Isn’t it totally, utterly obvious that my entire world hinges on him?
After the conference is done, he and I are pulled in different directions, and I smile through a blur of rapid-fire interviews.
By one a.m., I’m free, and I head to the back of the paddock, behind the Harper garage, where Travis, Kelsie and Heather are playing with Ghost. Heather took him to a vet yesterday, who confirmed he was already neutered and got him all the shots he needs to be allowed back home.
She also filled out an enormous pile of paperwork on our behalf, and bought Ghost a fancy new houndstooth collar.
“He really is a very good boy,” she says, feeding him treats from her bag.
“And he’s so well behaved for a stray,” Kelsie adds.
“Except for that one tiny incident with the guy on the scooter,” Heather says.
“And he also peed on Matty’s car.”
“That stack of tires, too.”
“Hey, you,” Travis greets me quietly, while the girls keep listing things that Ghost has peed on. “You done for the night?”
“All done.”
“Tired?” he asks.
Tired isn’t the word. All of my muscles have liquefied, my bad hip is throbbing in time with my pulse, and even though I’ve chugged about ten bottles of water, little sparks still explode at the edges of my vision if I turn my head too quickly.
But Travis is dressed in his soft gray hoodie, and the black gym shorts that call attention to the muscles of his thighs, and I don’t want this night to be over just yet. “Only a little,” I say.
“Hell, yeah.” Kelsie leans over to aggressively tousle my hair. “Time to party.”
“Oh,” I say, while Travis says, “Well—”
“No, hush, both of you,” Kelsie says. “We’re celebrating. There’s a fancy party one of Harper’s sponsors is throwing at the hotel. I heard Quin McCarthy might be there!”
Travis smirks at the name. I elbow him hard. “We can’t leave Ghost, though,” I say, beckoning him toward me. “You two go to the party, Travis and I will take him home.”
“Nice try, but no,” Kelsie says. “I know you two are secretly eighty-five-year-olds who’ve been married sixty years, but this is a huge deal, Jacob. We need to celebrate it. And may I remind you that I flew thirteen hours to be here with you?”
“But Ghost—”
“I’ll take him to Matty,” Heather says. “I think he could use an emotional support dog right about now.” She nudges Travis with her hip. “Kelsie’s right. We need to celebrate.”
Travis looks from Heather’s face to Kelsie’s and then gives me a crooked smile. “I don’t think we’re getting out of this.”
“You’re not,” Kelsie and Heather say in unison.
Ghost barks once, like he agrees with them, and I crack a smile. “Yeah, alright.”
Heather and Kelsie are right, like they usually are.
The party, which takes place in a club on the top floor of our hotel, is really fun.
A lot of Travis’s friends from the Harper crew are there, and Marcie and Samuel from Crosswire, too.
We all crowd into a booth and Heather orders a tray of old-fashioneds for the table and a pitcher of ice water for Travis and me.
Under the noise of the loud, thumping music, Marcie tells me that Clayton is definitely retiring next year—apparently she got the inside scoop from his wife—and Samuel promises to eavesdrop freely anytime Sofia and Cory talk about his replacement.
“It’ll be you,” Travis says, leaning close to speak low in my ear.
A shiver of nerves courses through me. “Will I still make your life perfect when I beat you in the championship next year?”
His lips curve. “Yep.”
I glance at the party around us, the mass of dancing bodies, the Harper and Crosswire crew. “Will I still make your life perfect if I kiss you right now in front of everyone?”
His smile widens; his knee nudges mine under the table. “Yep,” he says again.
I don’t kiss him, but only because Kelsie chooses that moment to try to drag us both onto the dance floor. I’ve said it, though. I’ve put it out there. Whether it’s a day from now, or a month, or a year, I know the moment is coming. And I’m not scared of it, not even at all.
Ben and Anne and Trevor and Jonathan arrive, and they spend some time chatting with us before joining the others on the dance floor.
The club is getting more and more crowded, and even Quin McCarthy makes his promised appearance.
We see him talking with Trevor and Jonathan at the bar for a while before Trevor drags them both out dancing.
For a while, we watch them all, then Travis leans close and says, “You want to get out of here?”
There’s nothing in the world I want more.
I follow him out of the club, but instead of taking the elevator downstairs, he leads me up a stairwell to the roof.
The heavy door is propped open with a janitor’s bucket, and we slip through and step out into the warm night.
The skies are clear but the stars are faint, like they are back in London.
When we were in Canada, we stayed in a cabin a few hours outside of Whitehorse, and the stars were so close and bright it felt like you could reach out and grab them.
We lay outside for hours, staring up at them with our fingers tangled together inside our shared sleeping bag.
“Pretty,” Travis says, as we step past a whirring air-conditioning unit to lean against the railing. The city stretches out before us, the track still lit up from the race. I’m sure there are hundreds of parties going on in the city right now, but up here, the world is still and quiet.
“So,” Travis says. “How does it feel?”
“Good,” I say, smiling. “Strange.” I shift sideways so my arm is touching his. “It was fun racing against you.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. I don’t think I could’ve beaten you if you didn’t have that slow stop.”
“I know you couldn’t have.” He laughs as I elbow him. “I’m kidding. You belong on the grid next year. You’re a great racer.”
“You’re better,” I say. “At least for now.”
He trails his fingers up my arm and then frowns. “Do you seriously have goosebumps right now?”
“It’s cold!”
He laughs, deep and warm. “It’s, like, twenty-five degrees. That’s seventy-something in Fahrenheit,” he adds, since he knows Celsius is still a complete mystery to me. “You want to head inside?”
I turn my gaze back to the city. “Five more minutes.”
He smiles and shifts to stand behind me, wrapping me in the warmth of his arms. A moment later, the darkness is split by a glittery starburst. Fireworks are shooting off from the top of the Marina Bay Sands, lighting up the sky in sprays of green and purple and gold.
We watch until the final burst of color fades to smoke. It feels like a chapter coming to a close. The end of the weekend, the end of the night.
I turn in Travis’s arms and loop my arms around his neck. He kisses me, slow and deep, and my blood shifts in my veins. “Take me home?” I murmur.
He steps back a little and captures both of my hands in his. He presses his lips to the center of each palm, then brushes a soft kiss against the back of my left hand.
“Always,” he answers.
The word writes itself on the center of my heart, a scribble of Sharpie that will never come off.
As we head to the door, side by side, hand in hand, I glance back one more time at the city.
This is the place where I became a race winner, the place where I might have earned myself an F1 seat for next season.
In thirty years, I might look back on this night as the turning point in my career.
It should feel important. It does feel important.
But it can’t compare to the feeling of Travis’s fingers threaded in mine, or the look in his eyes when he smiles at me. And it will never hold a candle to him saying I make his life perfect, or to the faint tingling on my left ring finger, where his lips last touched my skin.