Chapter 28
chapter twenty-eight
seb
Icall Mia the night before the press conference, because the question I need to ask her belongs to the new terms, not the old instincts.
"They're going to ask about you tomorrow," I say. "Directly. After the documents, the article, Hartfield, all of it — there's no version of this press conference where someone doesn't ask whether I'm prepared to confirm the relationship publicly."
"I assumed as much."
"I want to know what you're comfortable with before I'm standing in front of forty cameras improvising an answer. Not what's strategic. What you actually want said."
She's quiet for a moment on the other end of the line. "Tell them the truth. Not a curated version. Not a statement Pascal's vetted into something safe. The actual truth, in your own words, the way you'd say it to me if there were no cameras at all."
"That's considerably riskier than the safe version."
"I know. I'd rather have the risk than the management."
"Then that's what you'll have," I say, and something in my chest settles, the particular relief of being given permission to simply be honest instead of strategic.
The press conference room is overfull by the time I arrive — more journalists than a mid-season race typically draws, the visible evidence of a story that's expanded well beyond the sports pages.
Pascal meets me at the door with the tightness of a man who has spent the morning fielding requests he can't fully control.
"They're going to lead with it," he says. "I tried to get them to open with the championship standings. Nobody's interested."
"Let them lead with it."
"Seb—"
"I'm not asking you to manage this, Pascal. I'm telling you what's happening."
He doesn't look reassured, but he doesn't argue either, which I've learned to recognize as his version of trust.
The first question comes within ninety seconds of the floor opening, exactly as predicted, from the sharp-eyed journalist who's clearly decided this story belongs to her now.
"Mr. Carras. There's been considerable speculation about your relationship with Amelia Callahan, including documents suggesting it predates the Monaco incident, and reports of a recent visit to her workplace. Can you confirm the nature of the relationship."
The room goes quiet in the specific way it does when forty people simultaneously decide a question actually matters.
"Yes," I say. "I can confirm it."
A ripple moves through the room — pens moving, phones angling, the visible mechanics of a story being written in real time.
"Could you elaborate."
I think about Mia's voice on the phone last night. Tell them the truth. The actual truth, in your own words.
"Amelia Callahan is not a rumour," I say.
"She is not a story manufactured to explain documents, and she is not a calculated arrangement designed to manage my public image, regardless of what anyone has implied.
My trust in her predates Monaco by more than a year.
The reasons for that are private, and they will remain private — not because there's anything to hide, but because some things belong only to the people who lived them.
What's happened between us since Monaco is real, and it has cost her things I'm not interested in minimizing for the sake of a clean headline.
She is not a rumour. She is the woman I asked for. "
The silence that follows is the kind that doesn't happen often in a room full of professional sceptics.
"Will you be answering further questions about Ms. Callahan's history with you?" someone calls out, testing the edge of the moment.
"No," I say. "That's the full statement. Anything beyond it belongs to her, and she hasn't offered it to you. Neither will I."
Renzo finds me in the garage two hours later, three screens already lit.
"She is not a rumour. She is the woman I asked for." He says it back to me with the flat, deliberate cadence of a man testing whether a phrase holds up to scrutiny. "I checked it from several angles. It holds up."
"You checked my romantic declaration for structural integrity."
"I check everything for structural integrity.
It's the job." He glances at the data in front of him.
"Sector three's been clean in practice. You've stopped protecting it entirely now, not just partially.
" He pauses. "She flew in this morning, by the way.
Before the briefing. Matteo mentioned it. She's at the pit wall already."
"She came on her own."
"That appears to be the pattern with her, yes." Renzo doesn't look up from his screens. "Now go win a race so tomorrow's headline is about something other than your love life."
The race itself is clean, controlled, the particular satisfaction of a session where nothing goes wrong specifically because I've stopped fighting the parts of my own driving I used to treat as enemies.
Sector three, lap after lap, costs me nothing.
I start second and finish first, the overtake coming on lap thirty-one through a gap that exists for exactly the length of time I need it to, no longer, no shorter.
Mia watches from the pit wall — not hidden, not performing, simply present, exactly where she's chosen to be — and when I find her after the podium, the crowd noise still rolling in waves behind us, she's smiling in a way I haven't seen from her since before any of this started.
"You said it on camera," she says. "In front of everyone."
"You told me to be honest instead of careful."
"I didn't expect you to keep Boston out of it."
"It was never the press's to have," I say. "It's yours. I just confirmed the part that's actually theirs to know — that I chose you before I had any right to, and I'm not pretending otherwise anymore."
She looks at me for a long moment, the podium champagne still drying on my collar, the entire paddock continuing its noisy, indifferent business around us.
"I have something for you," she says. "I was going to wait until tonight, but I find I'd rather give it to you now, with people watching, since apparently that's the theme of the week."
She hands me an envelope — official, formal, the unmistakable weight of legal paper.
"What is it."
"Open it."
I do. Inside: three documents, my name listed beside hers in language I recognize immediately — a healthcare proxy, an emergency-contact directive, narrowly scoped, every signature line bearing her handwriting instead of mine.
"You filed documents," I say, and find my voice isn't entirely steady.
"Three. Not thirty-seven. I'm pacing myself.
" She watches my face with the attention I've spent weeks learning to recognize as entirely hers.
"They're narrow. Emergency authority only, and I confirmed I can revisit or revoke them whenever I need to — I wanted you to know this isn't a lifetime arrangement, it's a choice I can make again and again.
I'm not doing this because you did. I'm doing it because somewhere in the last month, I realized I wanted you to have an informed, limited version of the same emergency authority you gave me over yours, freely, with full information, having actually met you first." A pause.
"It felt important that the next time either of us needed to decide something about the other, it would already be mutual. "
I look at the documents. I look at her.
"This is considerably more than I expected from a woman who specifically told me, two weeks ago, that she wasn't offering forever."
"I'm not offering forever," she says. "I'm offering today, with paperwork attached, which I'm aware is an extremely on-brand way for me to express it.
" Something softens in her expression. "Ask me again properly, sometime, when there isn't a paddock full of people watching and champagne drying on your collar.
I'd like the forever conversation to happen somewhere quieter. "
I don't answer that yet. I look down instead — at the three pages in my hand, her signature on each one clean and deliberate, fully informed, no fourteen-month delay, no stranger's documents finding her without her knowledge.
For the first time, her name was in front of me because she had put it there herself.