Chapter 43
Max
Four Weeks Later …
Abu Dhabi
He’s coming up fast, I realize as I glance in my left side mirror again. In front of me is Travis and almost right behind is a driver from Maxim, who’s been tailing me the entirety of the first twenty laps of this final race of the season.
My strategy is to stick close to Travis until I can make my move. Even if the race were to finish right at this moment, I would place number two in the overall standings this season. The highest I’ve ever been in my professional F1 career.
That’s not good enough.
I promised the woman I love right before the race that I would see her at the end of it with tears in her eyes because she just watched me achieve greatness. A promise I intend to keep. Even when it means beating her brother.
Travis and I are within a few points of one another. So close that whichever one of us finishes will be crowned king of the season.
My engineer’s voice breaks through the piece in my ear, “How are your tires, Max?”
“They need changing,” I reply.
With twenty more laps left in the race, now is a good time to pit. If I’ve timed it right, I can ride the soft tires until the end of the race.
The pit stop is in and out, less time than it takes most people to get their keys out of their pocket, before I’m racing back onto the track. I ask for an update on where I’m at.
Briefly, my position slips to third place, but I’m back in second when the Maxim driver leaves a hole as wide as the Louvre open for me to successfully slip through.
With ten laps to go, I gain on Travis. I know he hasn’t gone in for his pit stop yet. I bide my time while the scar on my arm starts to throb with the anticipation coursing through me.
The injury from that night in Sao Paolo doesn’t hurt so much as it reminds me of how close I came to losing Annalise. My bitch of a mum’s resentments and Edwin’s betrayal still cause an ache in my chest whenever I think about it.
But knowing that within minutes I’m going to be the second Severino to win this title, while they’ll have to find out about it from a jail cell, is more than enough retribution. My real win will come later on today without thousands of cheering fans watching.
A smile crosses my sweaty lips as I see my chance to pull ahead of Travis’ car. Once I do, I don’t let up. My focus tunnels in on my goal, the final laps of the race breezing by in a haze of lightness, until I hear Drake and my engineer screaming in my ear that I’ve done it.
“Holy shite!” are the first words that plummet out of my mouth. “Holy shite, mates!”
My body and muscle memory take over as I point the car around the rest of the track to circle to my team’s garage. They’re all waiting there, waving the red Amato hats and flags, fists in the air, cheering me on.
This is a familiar scene, played out weeks ago in Las Vegas when we were all crowned the Constructor’s Champions. That was a win for the entire team.
This victory, while not completely mine, is more mine than the previous win.
“Fuck!” I scream out, hands in the air in victory as I stand on top of my car to the gathering crowd.
The moment I hop off of the car I’m swarmed by a sea of red. My team. They’re all here to congratulate me.
While I appreciate it, my eyes scan the crowd in search of the one person I want to hold right now.
She’s there, smiling, eyes glossy from unshed tears.
I cut through the crowd around me like a knife through butter to get to her.
Annalise wraps her arms around me. laughing the moment I take her and spin her around in a circle like we’re the only two fools in the room. Right now, I don’t much care what everyone around us is seeing or thinking or if there are cameras catching this.
I spin and kiss her, thanking her out loud for believing in me. For giving me the faith I never had in myself.
“I never would’ve won this without you,” I say, my forehead against hers once I finally allow her feet to touch the ground.
“You already had the talent to win,” she tells me.
I run my gloved hand along the key pendant she never takes off. “But you unlocked my potential.”
Her searing faith in me is what propelled me over that finish line.
“You know what this means, right?”
Her brows raise. “What?”
My smile opens up even wider. “You have to marry me.”
Annalise raises an eyebrow. “I don’t remember you asking me.”
I go to reply, but I’m suddenly pulled off the ground by at least five members of my team. It seems they’ve decided they gave me enough time with Annalise and are now ready to celebrate this victory with me.
Though I don’t lose sight of her, not once, during the celebration, I drift farther and farther away from Annalise as she pulls back, making way for the rest of the Amato team to celebrate this win.
The next few hours are a blur of champagne sprays, loud war shrieks of victory, and smile after smile as I pose for cameras while raising the Driver’s Championship trophy over my head. It’s not until I bring the silver trophy to my lips for a kiss that tears begin to well up, filling my gaze.
Days later, and the genuine glow of winning the championship hasn’t worn off. However, I’ve redirected my attention to something more pressing and even more life changing.
“Are you all packed?” Annalise asks as she rounds the corner from her hallway.
“Ready to go,” I answer calmly, although everything inside of me vibrates with nervousness. I might be more anxious than I was before the race a few days ago.
In the morning, Annalise, me, her brother, and his family return to their hometown of Williamsport to spend a week with her immediate family before then flying to the family’s estate on the West Coast of the States to spend the holidays together.
Outside of Travis, I get along with Annalise’s entire family very well. They’ve all given me shite for besting Travis in the race to win the championship, but even Tristan has come around.
And while her father asked me if I were the ‘son of a bitch’ who called his daughter a bitch, even he seems to tolerate my and her relationship more than Annalise expected. Mrs. Townsend did pull me aside to tell me that she spoke with her husband and told him to take it easy on me.
If him taking me aside and revealing that he keeps a cache of weapons at his disposal and he has more than one secret place for disposing of bodies that do harm to his family is going easy on me, I’ll take it, I suppose.
Despite all of that, her family is not the reason why I’m feeling anxious.
“Come sit with me.” I extend my arm in her direction.
The second she touches my fingers, I grasp ahold of hers and bring her down onto the couch next to me. I pull out the sudoku book I’ve had tucked behind my thigh.
“Is that a new one?”
“It is.” I flip the book over in my hand as if examining it like I’ve never seen it before. “There’s word puzzles in this one.”
She looks at me with a raised eyebrow.
“I’m still more of a numbers guy, but it looked interesting. Want to help?” I open the book to the page I have already marked.
Her head juts backwards. “You’re going to let me work on this with you? Don’t I always take over?”
I chuckle at the offense in her tone while handing her a pencil.
“First dibs? Someone’s still in a good mood from their recent win,” she sing-songs.
God, I love her.
For longer than intended, I watch her as she reads the clues and writes in the appropriate letters in each box.
“Oh, this is one where you solve the questions and then fill in the blanks at the back of the book to decipher a word or phrase,” she says happily, completely missing that I’ve let her take over the solving of the puzzle while I sit and watch.
“In which ancient city does A Midsummer Night’s Dream take place?” she mumbles the question before quickly writing the city in the puzzle. “That was easy.”
I watch some more.
“What is the name of the 1995 film retelling of Jane Austen’s Emma?” She huffs. “Only one of the best movies to come out of the 1990s.”
She writes ‘Clueless’ in the squares before stopping and turning to me.
“These are so easy.” She looks at the book and back to me. “They’re right up my alley. It pays to have an English lit degree when doing one of these, huh?” She holds up the book, shaking it a bit before going back to answering the clues.
“Let’s see what the big reveal is.” She hums as she flips back and forth, filling in the letters at the back.
My stomach does a somersault, and I swear I feel a trickle of sweat run down my back.
“Will …” she drags out once the first word is completed. “You …” Second word. “Marry …” She stops.
Annalise turns to look at me.
“There’s one more word,” I tell her, urging her to complete the question.
“Me,” she says slowly.
This time when she turns to me, I’m down on one knee, in front of her, ring box in hand, opened to show the teardrop yellow diamond ring set in a white gold band.
“You had this made,” she says, holding up the book.
With a nod, I tell her that with the help of my new assistant, I tracked down a company that creates crossword and sudoku puzzles to have it made.
“There are tons of more puzzles in there for you. They don’t all ask you to marry me though,” I joke, because my nervousness has me speaking when I should be waiting.
“Marry you,” she says before her eyes move over my head to a far corner of the room. She almost whispers, “You want me to be your wife?”
“More than I want my next breath,” I admit.
“Annalise, I love you beyond measure and reason. I want to build a life with you and bring you as much happiness and purpose as you’ve filled my life with. Will you marry me?”
The first tear falls from her eyes.
She doesn’t answer, and for a second, I swear I can see all of the reasons why this won’t work moving through her mind.
We haven’t been together long enough.
What if we’re not in love as much as we think we are?
What if the bridge between her brother and me is made of straw and breaks down again?
What if …
What if …
What if …
“Yes,” she says with a certainty in her voice that reaches all the way down to my soul. “I’ll marry you, Max.” She cups my face. “Because you owe me all of the happiness you plan to bring me for the rest of our lives.”
A burst of laughter fills the room before I bring her lips to mine.
She is the power that keeps me grounded. That keeps me from spinning out. My downforce in life, and I will be that for her.
* * *