Epilogue
Hutch
“Are you ever going to let me drive?” Kip whines as he slides into the passenger seat of my Golf GTI.
We’re at the tail end of our European stint, and this is the third Grand Prix we’ve driven to together since our little adventure through Switzerland, Germany, and France. First Zandvoort, then Monaco, and now Barcelona. All those miles, and he hasn’t driven one of them.
“Let you drive?” I snort. “Mate, I’ve heard the way you talk about rental cars.”
“They like it,” he claims.
“My car doesn’t.”
He pats the dash anyway. “Don’t listen to him, sweetheart. You deserve better than a man who hoards the keys.”
I swat his hand away. “Stop flirting with my car.”
“Then let me drive her.”
“Absolutely not.”
“Fine,” he huffs, but there’s no heat behind it.
We’ve been through this familiar dance before.
Every trip starts with him begging for the keys and ends with him pretending not to be relieved I’m the one driving.
Shame it’s our last road trip for a while.
After this we’re back to planes, queues, and stale airport pretzels for the next few races.
He slumps back in the seat, crossing his arms. “One day, you’re going to let me take the wheel, and you’ll realize what you’ve been missing.”
“Oh, I already know what I’d be missing,” I say, starting the engine. “My suspension.”
He shoots me an injured look. “You wound me.”
“You’ll recover.”
Kip scoffs, then grins out the window, crinkling his eyes and loosening something in my chest.
“Whatever,” he mutters. “But I’m choosing the music.”
“You always choose the music.”
“And you always complain.”
“I complain because you keep making me listen to that one playlist.”
He lights up. “You mean the one that’s ninety percent queer love songs and ten percent angry women? You’re welcome.”
I shake my head, already smiling. “Just press play, Carmichael.”
He does, and the cabin fills with the opening chords of something achingly sweet and stupidly romantic.
Figures.
Kip settles in, fiddling with the vents like they offend him personally, and I ease us into the flow of traffic. The music shifts to something bright and bouncy—what he calls his “don’t crash, Hutch” playlist—and I can’t help the grin that tugs at my mouth.
It’s mad, really, how quickly we’ve fallen into this—whatever this is.
A real relationship. Out loud. Agreed upon.
The weeks since our impromptu road trip home from China have been a kind of controlled chaos.
My chaos, his control. Kip keeps our lives stitched together with his colour-coded calendars and neat little plans, and I keep tugging him out of them, dragging him to late dinners and stupid detours and one unforgettable sunrise outside Monaco because I insisted we “see where this road goes.” He acts exasperated every time, but he always comes with me.
Always reaches for my hand first. Always kisses me like he’s relieved we didn’t wait another minute.
And somehow, it works. Him with his exhaustive lists, me with my spontaneous misadventures. We meet in the middle. Or he meets me, and I try very hard not to knock his neat little world on its arse.
We’re still figuring it out, but it’s good.
Better than good. It’s easy in ways I didn’t know relationships could be, and electric in ways I can’t seem to get used to.
Every early morning scramble, every late-night drive, every stolen kiss in hotel corridors—we’re learning each other’s rhythms, building something steady out of the mess and the planning and the road between circuits.
And even though we’ve been together less than two months, I can’t imagine doing any of this without him.
By the time we hit the queue for the Channel Tunnel, he’s got his sunglasses pushed up in his hair, the afternoon light making him look annoyingly angelic. The attendant is waving us forward when I tap Kip’s thigh.
“Shit. My passport. It’s in my bag behind you. Can you grab it for me?”
He twists around, muttering something about how this is exactly why someone should let him drive, and unzips the top pocket. There’s a beat, then a slightly stunned “Maurice?”
I sigh. “It’s pronounced Morris, not More-eese. And please don’t make a thing of it.”
Kip squints at the passport, then at me. “Hang on. Your name’s Maurice? I thought it was Daniel. Someone in the garage called you that once. I assumed it was your first name and Hutch was a nickname.”
“Daniel is my middle name. No one’s called me Maurice since primary school.”
His laugh is instant and delighted. “Maurice Hutchinson. Oh, this is rich. No wonder you prefer to be called Hutch.”
“It’s not my fault. My mum was obsessed with the Bee Gees.” I tighten my grip on the steering wheel, already bracing for eternal mockery. “She felt bad for Maurice because everyone always liked Robin and Barry better, so she named me after the least favorite Gibb brother.”
Kip is still staring at the passport as if it’s the greatest treasure he’s ever unearthed. “This is incredible.”
“It is not incredible. It’s a private tragedy, and I’m trusting you with it.”
“Mm hmm,” he says with a grin that suggests he’s absolutely not to be trusted.
And yet I can feel him soften as he hands it over, fingers brushing mine. Like my humiliating Bee Gees backstory is weirdly endearing to him.
“I mean it. You can’t tell the crew. I’ll never hear the end of it.”
Kip lets out an undignified sound that’s somewhere between a hiccup and a snort. “Please. I’m not wasting this on the crew. This is premium blackmail material. I’m saving it for when I really need it.”
I shoot him a flat look. “You’re supposed to talk me off the ledge, not threaten me with emotional extortion.”
He pats my thigh in that patronizing way that says I’m being unreasonable. “Maurice, sweetheart, if you didn’t want to be blackmailed, you shouldn’t have been born into a disco dynasty.”
“Oh my God.” I drop my head against the steering wheel for dramatic effect. “I knew this was a mistake.”
But when I lift my head, he’s laughing, full-bodied and open, the kind of laugh that gets into my ribs and settles there.
“Relax,” he says, still grinning as he taps the passport. “Your secret’s safe with me, Maurice. Mostly. Probably.”
“Very reassuring.” I ease the car forward as the line inches up to the border booth.
He slouches back in the passenger seat, unbearably proud of himself. “Hey, look on the bright side. Now that I know your tragic origins, it makes total sense why you’re such a menace.”
“A menace?”
He flicks a glance at me, eyes dancing. “Chaotic. Unpredictable. Always two seconds from breaking into interpretive dance.”
I scoff. “You’re thinking of Barry.”
“Oh no,” he says, dead serious. “Barry had moves. And fantastic hair. You? You’ve got … enthusiasm.”
I groan. He beams.
And as we roll toward the checkpoint, him teasing me about disco genes and me pretending I’m not secretly delighted by it all, I realize—again—that this part, the ridiculous banter and the stupid jokes and the way he keeps finding new corners of me to poke at, has become my favorite stretch of any road we take.
I tuck my passport into the glove compartment like it contains state secrets, and by the time we’re waved forward into the tunnel loading queue, the whole Maurice debacle has settled into that warm, fizzy place between us, the space where all our stupid, private jokes go to live.
The train rattles beneath us, the car rocking just enough to make Kip lean into my shoulder. Twenty minutes later we roll off into France, the sky wide and golden and full of possibility, and it feels stupidly simple. This, us, the whole damn thing.
A few kilometers down the motorway, Kip kicks his feet up on the dash, completely at home, the hem of his ribbed tee riding up just enough to be distracting as he grins at me, lazy and content.
We drive in comfortable quiet for a stretch, something that used to feel impossible and now fits like it was tailor-made.
Then, without looking up from whatever playlist he’s scrolling, he tosses out, “You missed the exit.”
I lean back in my seat, enjoying this a little too much. “Maybe on purpose.”
Kip finally looks at me, sliding his sunglasses down to let his eyes meet mine. They’re full of mischief and impossible to ignore.
“Yeah?” he says smugly. “Guess I don’t mind getting a little lost with you.”
I face forward, the horizon unspooling ahead, and take the next turn without asking. Because with him, every road is the right one.