Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Eight
“Champagne?”
I hold up my glass of sparkling apple juice. “Learned my lesson last time.”
Delaney shrugs one pastel blue shoulder. “Smart,” she says, finishing her flute. “As the last man standing, I’ll take one for the team.”
“Cameron is also still employed.”
“Was he ever standing?”
When the three of us were choosing when to attend the wedding of Ignition’s owner—after Sarah revealed that she’d been placed on temporary leave by Holmes for “marketing negligence”—we’d unanimously decided to skip the vows. It seemed too awkward to sit through syrupy sweet nothings and timed dove releases if we were planning on attending Bob’s big day at the Royal Villa simply out of spite. “I read the Habsburgs built this place,” I whisper to Sarah.
“That’s nice,” she whispers back. “Who are the Habsburgs?”
I keep my palace history lesson short. I don’t know who Bob talked into marrying him, but when we spot the happy couple in front of the black-tie crowd, lifting twin bottles of Veuve Clicquot as horses bow behind them, I have to muffle a laugh. True to his Texas roots, Bob has paired his glossy black tuxedo with white cowboy boots and a Stetson hat on top of his beaming head.
“Ridiculous,” Delaney grumbles as we pass by a long harvest table draped in white silk and not one, not ten, but thirteen wedding cakes.
“You don’t like cake?” Sarah asks.
“I don’t like thirteen cakes.”
“There have to be, like, two thousand people here. Thirteen isn’t enough.”
“Remind me again why I’m here?”
“You like me, unfortunately,” I say. “And you wanted to help us make a point, since Sarah and I wouldn’t have made it past the guards up front.”
A smile threatens Delaney’s mouth. “Oh, right. I’m the employed friend.”
To no one’s surprise, the inside of the neoclassical palace isn’t less ridiculous. Small spotlights are nestled in the villa’s lush golden interior, highlighting the swirling gilded wallpaper and illuminating the various chandeliers, candles, drink glasses, rows of cutlery framing each porcelain plate. As we get closer to the many tables, I square my shoulders and clench my hands at my sides so I don’t tug at my brand-new floor-length black dress. This is me being brave, facing my fears, and standing tall under the judgmental glances from the Formula 1 elite, living my one life. I smile as Delaney and Sarah introduce me to an endless assortment of people—F1 staff from every country, sculpture artists, chemists, a billionaire’s wife who moonlights as a girls-in-STEM activist, an actor who’s convinced that he knows me from a childhood gig. “I swear I’ve seen you somewhere else,” he says.
“It’s the glasses.”
“Are you a DJ?” a professional horse trainer asks me. “You look like a DJ.”
“No, but thank you.”
“I know you!” squeals a champagne heiress. Not that one. “I saw you on Reddit!”
“That you did.”
Once we’ve made it to an open table by the dance floor, Delaney goes to find water and Sarah leaves for cake. Alone, I slide a hand up my forearm, surveying the warmly lit, richly perfumed room. Okay. I’m here. With all the rich, powerful people, for one more night. I should… go dance. Or, maybe, stuff as many vegan appetizers as I can in my tiny sequined bag? I bite my lip, the old shame trickling in. I’d told Arthur that I was going to come but hadn’t told him when. I’d just hoped we’d miraculously bump into each other, finale style.
Which feels overwhelmingly immature now that I’m here, waiting to be bumped into.
A hand brushes the back of my arm, and I turn, my heart already in my throat. But it isn’t Arthur. Dressed in head-to-toe glitter is an older, statuesque British woman with the sharpest eyeliner I’ve ever seen. “Lilah Graywood?” She tilts her head, slicked-back bun not moving an inch. “I’m Miriam, the director of marketing here at F1. Do you have a moment?”
Many, in fact. The word that leaves my mouth is, “Um.”
She arches a gray brow. “Is that a yes?”
My brain kicks back into gear, and I nod to the glitter-F1 lady. Once she’s seated next to me, Miriam crosses her legs—revealing an impressively high slit up one side of her silver dress—and smiles. “You’re a hard woman to track down.”
“I am?”
“I’ve been emailing you all week.”
“Oh.” The hamster wheel in my head spins, then stops. “I’m sorry. Ignition probably deleted my work email.”
The edges of Miriam’s impeccably lipsticked smile turn up. “About that. I’ve been following your project with Ignition, and I was wondering when you were going to make that documentary of yours.”
I laugh, then clap my hand over my mouth. “Sorry, I’m not laughing at you. It’s just, um, I… I can’t make the movie. I don’t have the rights to the files. Among other things.” Namely, I fell in love with the subject matter. Also that.
Miriam blinks. “But you do. I cleared the paperwork yesterday.”
I’m not following. Paperwork to love Arthur? “Ah-ha,” she says, lightly banging a posh fist against her very smooth palm. “My email must’ve gotten lost in your deleted inbox. Lilah, you do own the rights to the film footage. Or rather, they were purchased in your name.”
I’m… confused. There isn’t anyone here that would want me to have those files. “What do you mean?”
“Arthur Bianco purchased the rights for you,” Miriam answers.
At that, my brain does the same thing it always does: spits out every bad ending like I’m a doomsday algorithm. “No. He bought the footage? Arthur—Arthur wants me to make a documentary?”
“That is the implication I received, yes,” Miriam says tactfully. “He also noted something about IP theft? I didn’t quite understand that part. Here.” She pulls her phone from her clutch. “Do you have a functional inbox? I’ll redirect his note your way—network admin perks.”
I nod, wait, and whatever else I was going to say vanishes.
Lilah,
I’m sorry.
For many things. Wasting time. Not telling you sooner that I wanted you so badly that I was pacing hotel hallways at night, thinking about knocking your glasses off with my mouth. For lumping you in with bad journalists and past relationships. For hiding the panic attacks—because you’re right, that’s what they are, and I can get help.
But most of all, I’m sorry for trying to make you, the most honest person I’ve ever met, go along with my lies. I’m sorry that it took me this long to see that, despite what my family taught me, a true man would listen to you.
I was a child when I first drove. My parents and I were out at a restaurant, and a woman had a reaction to her food. Allergies, maybe. But my parents were gone, waiters, too. The keys were on the table. I did what anyone would do and drove her to the hospital. She lived. That’s when I discovered that driving is freedom, but it’s taking care of people, too. When I’m out there on the track, I’m driving for people. They’re in the car with me. When you win, you don’t just do it for yourself.
I’d forgotten that until I met you.
I was wrong when I said you make movies because you want to be invisible. You do this for other people, too. You record the world because you love the world. And I will not be the person who comes into your life and changes that by forcing you to close those big eyes of yours. And I can’t say you can rely on me and not show it.
So, I’ve paid for the documentary footage. For you. My lawyers are in the process of transferring the film rights to your name. You should be receiving an email with the new file links and notes shortly. I’m not sure if you’ve reviewed the footage yet, but—hell, sweetheart. Put a camera in your hands and you’ve made a movie.
Make the documentary you want to make. About Leone, or Holmes, or me. Rip me up. Find some good shots of birds. Do whatever you want with it. Your work is yours now, like it always should have been.
Also yours,
Arthur
P.S. My lawyers have been busy reviewing our options with Holmes, but they’ve found a moment to draft what’s perhaps a strongly worded email to Max regarding his IP theft of the name “Black where his heart beats. “Belgium, Hungary, Monaco, England. You give me air.”
My throat tightens as Arthur searches my face, looking for the wrong turn he doesn’t see coming, a fear I’ve felt a thousand times. Waiting for someone to leave, loving without being loved back.
This time, there’s no wrong turn. There’s just his Adam’s apple bobbing as his jaw sets, and his glassy eyes sweeping mine, and all the love Arthur has in his heart reflected back to him from me. I get to be the person who loves him back.
Lucky me.
I already know his next question. “And are you sure that you really…”
“Love you? Yes.” I cup his face, not caring who sees us touch or what they’ll think. Our friends, the team, all these rich people and their opinions. “I love your mind. I love your optimism. I love… I love how you don’t let anything go.” Tears line my eyelashes, making it hard to speak. “That future you see in me… I see mine in you. I think I can only see it with you.” Like a camera , I think. To work, cameras need light. But I need him more than that—more human than that. And that’s why I ask, “Can I kiss you?”
A surprised breath leaves his mouth, and he looks around again. “We have company.”
I look, too. The wedding photographer has a camera pointed our way. She has curly bangs, glasses, that blush we camerapeople get when we’re at the right place at the right time.
My heart pounds. “I’m ready,” I say. “Are you?”
There’s a piece of me that knows this isn’t our last conversation about what happened, by far. That tiny, steadfast sliver of logic is outweighed by his smile, though. Arthur grins .
“Born,” he answers.
Being a main character is going to be an adjustment. Letting go of creative control and letting life happen—that’s hard. But it’s only Arthur and me in this last breath of summer when he kisses me. There aren’t people watching. No music, no cameras. It’s just us. Forget us here , I’d tell the watch ticking away at my wrist if time had ears and would listen to someone as small as me. Go on, we’re okay being left behind.
Time does me one better, though. It keeps going and going, giving me the only other option I’d take.
Every next second with him.
“Want to get out of here?” I say once we’ve broken our mildly scandalous kiss. “It is a school night.”
“Since I’m not driving tomorrow, I was thinking we could stay,” Arthur says, tucking a strand of my hair behind my ear. “I know of a few rooms. Private ones. Where no one could see us.”
I catch his hand with mine. “Thought you liked being watched?”
“Rude.” A heady cocktail of want and affection darkens his eyes, and he clicks his tongue. “And to think, you seem so nice from the outside.”
“Arthur.”
“So… calm?”
“Hmm.”
“So honest.”
“Very true, good boy. Best boy.”
He laughs, and then his arm is around me, and I have just enough time to text Delaney and Sarah an explanation before he’s leading me down a darker, less populated hallway, off from the wedding party. “Rumor says there’s a way to get on the roof, too,” Arthur says against my cheek, nose barely close enough to graze my skin, a whisper of a non-touch. “But only the brave of heart and sound of mind can find it. Like Excalibur, for exhibitionist debauchery.”
Briefly, I debate the repercussions of getting kicked out of a multimillionaire’s wedding. Seems pretty inconsequential at the moment. So I trail my hand up his sleeve, pull him down to my level, and try to say everything I feel by pressing a tiny, breathless kiss to his flushed cheek. “Let’s see if we have what it takes.”
“Was hoping you’d say that,” he hums. With only one tug, he has me pressed into his chest in this empty palace hallway, his mouth a warm promise on mine.
And this time, I let myself believe in him. On the night-swept roof, back at the hotel, in the crisp white sheets scattered with his bow tie and my dress and one thousand kisses, I believe every promise Arthur makes. I believe that it’s real when he drags me onto his lap and says it’s where I belong, here, on him, in any country, anywhere, his wife whenever I want to be. And I want it. This. How Arthur winds our fingers together when he pushes me to my perfect breaking point, a reminder that he’s right there, too. How he kisses me like I’m the one who smells like champagne, tastes like breathing, and feels like home.
I believe in Arthur, in me, in us.
And when he says he loves me, I say those three words right back to him.