Chapter 33
“Anders and Yves are going to buy Elemental,” she begins.
On the screen in front of her, Julian’s ship jerks to the left. “Wow.”
“Yves offered me an extension. It’s the exact same as the contract I’m on now. If I stay, I’m agreeing that that’s what I’m worth, and giving Anders formal power over me.”
“So go somewhere else! I don’t believe for a second that other teams wouldn’t—”
“I’m not done.” Clarke passes one of the computer-generated pilots on a tricky cutback.
“I think Yves is withholding repairs to my ship on purpose. So that after he and Anders take over, they can magically fix the technical problems and say that it was my fault for not being able to handle the ship properly.”
Julian pauses the sim. He closes his eyes, knocks his head against the headrest, and takes a very audible, very slow breath. “Your suspension, at Tempe Terra?”
“Maybe. I’m not sure yet which exactly—”
“Your power unit failure, at Monza?”
“I don’t know.”
Outrage rolls off Julian in waves. “You could have died. You need to—”
“I can’t prove anything. I don’t even know for sure if I’m right.”
She really doesn’t. What she overheard between Anders and Naomi was suspicious, not damning, and even if it were it’d be her word against theirs.
Clarke’s word isn’t worth much in F0 circles these days, not in the wake of Matthew’s article.
She’s got ideas about how to get proof, especially since talking to Val, but there’s a long road between where she is now and where she needs to be to go public with an accusation.
Clarke restarts the sim. Julian pauses it again immediately, eyes hot on the side of her face. “Clarke. You can’t just keep going like this doesn’t change anything.”
“The job’s no more dangerous now than it was before. If anything, I’ll be safer now that I’ll be expecting things to go wrong.” She starts the sim again. “And I’m talking to other teams. Not Provenance. Others.”
Julian swerves through the barrier and takes a time penalty. “You are?”
“Trying to, at least. Haven’t heard back from anyone yet.” Rhynn says it’s not surprising, that the teams they reached out to will need more than a few days to figure out how or if they want to respond, but the second-guessing is at an all-time high.
“You will,” Julian says without even a shred of doubt, then makes a valiant effort to go along with Clarke obviously trying to move the conversation forward. “So, Anders and Yves. It’s a done deal?”
“They were talking about shareholder management and plans for next season.”
He makes a considering sound. “I wouldn’t have thought they had that kind of money.”
“Majority ownership is only fifty-two percent of the team.”
“Still. Do you know how much Chronicle’s worth?”
He rattles off a number that Clarke can’t wrap her mind around. Even the 52 percent math is too big to comprehend. “Yeah, but that’s Chronicle. You’ve been second in the team bracket for three years. Elemental can’t be worth anywhere near that.”
“Not while you’re in fifth or sixth, maybe. But if you were where you should be, in third or fourth?”
“Overall team valuation really changes that much based on ranking? Not just funding for the next year?”
“I know you don’t give a shit about the economics of racing, Clarke, but you should maybe start if you’re caught up in crap like this.”
“But that’s why I have you.”
Clarke thought they were falling into their normal banter, but Julian lets too many beats pass, and the cadence stalls. It’s not until they start the next lap (he’s P4, Clarke’s P5) that he says, “You do. In whatever way you’ll have me, you have me.”
“Julian.” Clarke has to stop after his name, has to work around all the other words trying to tumble out of her. “This isn’t—we’re not—”
“No, I know, that’s what I’m saying,” he says. “I’m trying to tell you that I’m going to back off. Focus on being your friend. Just your friend. You asked me not to push at Tempe Terra, but I pushed at Iani, at the photo shoot. That’s not fair to you, and it’s not the sort of person I want to be.”
This should make Clarke happy. This is what she’s been wanting, to get her best friend back with no pressure for anything more. She should feel like a weight’s been lifted off her shoulders.
Instead, a creeping sense of disappointment makes her limbs heavy. “Oh. Okay.”
Julian stops the sim, completely turning it off this time. Clarke’s headset goes dark. She finds him staring at her incredulously. “ ‘Oh, okay’? That’s what you have to say?”
The unexpected, irrational hurt makes Clarke defensive. “What am I supposed to say? It’s for the best, really.”
“ ‘For the best,’ ” he echoes.
“Yeah.” Clarke can’t keep sitting here looking at him. She stands abruptly, knees knocking against his as she goes, trying to calm herself down. “This will be good for us. We can concentrate on racing.”
“It’s not about racing,” he says, coming after her. “Stop making everything about fucking racing!”
“Everything is about racing! It’s who we are, Julian, I can’t believe I have to explain this to you.” She’s heading for the door. She didn’t make a conscious decision to leave, but this—it’s good. She should go. This is what they do, right? Clarke leaves, and Julian lets her, and nothing changes.
Except he catches up and slides around her, pressing his back to the door. His jaw is set, and his eyes are blazing. “Do it. Explain it to me.”
Clarke squeezes her hands into fists. Of all the infantile—fine. He wants it spelled out like this, fine. “Six years ago, we agreed—”
“I know what we agreed!” he half shouts, composure suddenly evaporating.
“Six fucking years ago we agreed that since we were both going to try to make it to F0, we couldn’t take it past friends, because people were already going to say shit about how you got to where you were thanks to Anders, and because we didn’t want to make things weird with Connor, and because I was living with your family, and because we were seventeen.
” He spreads his arms wide, chest heaving.
“Well, we’re both in F0. Every shitty thing that could’ve been said about Anders helping you get your seat has been said.
Connor’s gone. And I live here, by myself, thinking about how close I came to kissing you right up against this damn door two years ago every time I fucking leave. ”
He slaps the door when he says the word, and Clarke remembers. She wasn’t sure he remembered, because they’d been drinking and he never brought it up after, but then—they never talked again, after.
It had been close to the one-year anniversary of Connor’s death.
Julian had been having one hell of a second season in F0, racing like he was determined to dethrone Delphine in Connor’s memory, and Clarke’d been feeling unmoored.
They hadn’t spoken much since Connor’s funeral, but she knew Julian would make her feel better, so she’d shown up here unannounced, like tonight, and he’d let her in, like tonight. They talked for hours.
At the end of the night, as she’d been on her way out the door, he’d caught her arm. Touched her waist. Called her Maddie, like the name was precious. Asked her to stay.
She’d left. She’d walked away for the millionth time, thinking she was protecting their friendship by not letting them cross a line. Julian let her go for the millionth time, thinking he was protecting their friendship by respecting a boundary.
“I always understood your reasons for not being with me,” he says, voice raw with emotion.
“I don’t, anymore. I get that things are complicated for you, but you keep giving me excuses and deflections, so all I can think is that even though you want me, you don’t trust me, and I can’t fix that by trying to pull you over a line you’ve never been willing to cross.
I have to step back, and you don’t get to be angry with me for doing that. ”
Clarke’s blood is boiling by this point, a clash of rage and indignation and tenuous restraint. “I will be angry about whatever I damn well—”
“How can you not see the mixed signals you’re sending me?” he demands, a flush high on his cheeks. “I’m trying to do what you want, and you’re pissed about it?”
“Maybe you don’t know what I want! Maybe I needed time to sort it out! Maybe I came here tonight to tell you I’m choosing you despite the rest of my life still being a mess, and you conveniently decide that now is when you’re done?”
The air between them goes taut. Julian’s voice is a full octave lower than normal when he asks, “Is that why you came here tonight?”
“No,” Clarke says on a hard exhale. The boiling of her blood is complete, and she’s left with nothing but rushing bubbles in her veins and the heady feeling that if she doesn’t touch him soon, she’s going to burst. “I only figured that part out about ten seconds ago.”
She closes the rest of the distance between them and kisses him.
It’s not perfect, as first kisses go. Julian wasn’t expecting it, and he freezes long enough for Clarke to panic. Did she misread this somehow? What—
Julian’s brain kick-starts. His hands are on her so quickly that she doesn’t even process it as a transition: One second, his arms are at his sides and she’s retreating, the next he has one hand on her waist and the other along the side of her throat, fingers hooked around the back of her neck and thumb stroking her cheekbone.
He pulls her in, and this—this is what she knew it would be like to kiss Julian Casperi.
His lips are soft. His jaw is strong. His tongue is sure. He lines up their bodies, opens her mouth with his, fills her head with Julian and yes and more.
She’s on fire. She’s floating. She’s drowning in him. She’s aware of every point of contact between them like a constellation in the dark sky.