CHAPTER TEN #2
Claire continued, tapping again. “Lucas confirmed it this morning. He’s dating Sienna Vale—the influencer. They’ve been seen together over the break. Mia, let’s draft the first statement. Low-key, positive. ‘Happy for him, focused on the season,’ etc.”
The name landed like cold water down her spine.
Not Jax.
Lucas.
Mia’s lungs emptied. The pen in her hand froze mid-air. Her pulse slammed once, hard, then steadied into something dull and aching. She kept her face perfectly neutral but inside the room tilted.
Dana’s text suddenly made brutal sense.
She forced a small nod, voice level. “Got it.”
But her fingers tightened around the pen until the plastic creaked, and the words on her tablet blurred into nothing.
* * *
Lucas
The Swiss Alps had been the perfect escape.
Christmas at the family estate in Kent had been the usual mix of comfort and quiet pressure.
The house—sprawling, ivy-clad, with grounds that stretched into misty fields—was beautiful in that old-money way that never quite felt like home.
His mother had been kind as always, pressing extra servings of Christmas pudding on him, asking gentle questions about the season, telling him how proud she was.
His father, though, had been the same as ever: impatient, expectant.
“So, when do you think you’ll bring home that championship, son?
” he’d asked over port, half-joking, half-serious. The question hung like a challenge.
Lucas had smiled, deflected, then escaped with his brothers to Verbier for skiing. Fresh powder, cold air, no media obligations. Just speed on the slopes and the burn in his legs.
That’s where he’d met Sienna Vale.
She had been at the chalet bar—long blonde hair catching the firelight, gym-honed figure impossible to miss, her laugh carrying across the room.
Sweet enough, easy to talk to. Her attention had flattered him at first, a welcome distraction from the weight of expectation.
One drink became two, conversation turned flirtatious, and then—inevitably—one thing led to another.
The sex had been good. Hot, urgent, uncomplicated.
He’d told himself it was exactly what he needed: a clean reset.
A way to burn out the memory of Mia’s mouth on his after Abu Dhabi—the slow, searching way she’d kissed him back, the soft hitch in her breath when his hand slid to her waist, something uniquely her that had lodged under his skin.
Sienna was the opposite. Blonde where Mia was dark. Loud where Mia was quiet. Easy where Mia was careful. He could touch her without second-guessing every inch. No rules, no team optics, no debrief waiting to judge him.
What he felt for Mia was attraction—stupidly, dangerously strong attraction.
The kind that hit him low and hard: his cock twitching to attention the second she walked into a room, pulse slamming in his throat, heat coiling tight in his gut like he was five seconds from dragging her into the nearest dark corner.
Every time her voice came through his earpiece during media prep—calm, clipped, running him through talking points or correcting his phrasing—he felt it stir again, thickening against the seam of his jeans, demanding attention he couldn’t give.
And yet it wasn’t only that. Being near her settled something restless in him.
She was sharp without ever turning cruel, sweet in ways that disarmed him when he least expected it, steady when the rest of his world spun too fast. She listened—really listened—like what came out of his mouth mattered, not just the polished version the sponsors paid for.
He craved her company the way he craved air after a long stint in the cockpit—necessary, grounding, impossible to ignore.
But that was just… compatibility. Chemistry. Unfinished business from one stupid, heated moment when her mouth had opened under his and her body had arched just enough to make him ache for days. Nothing more.
So he kept seeing Sienna. Let her post the subtle couple-y shots—coffee in the snow, her hand on his arm.
Let the tabloids pick it up. Let it look like he was moving on, living a normal off-season life.
It was easier than admitting the truth: that every time Sienna’s lips met his, he was waiting for the same electric snap that had cracked through him in Abu Dhabi. And it never came.
He told himself it was just bad timing—adrenaline, hormones, nothing more.
He could move past it the way a driver slips into clean air after a perfect pit stop: fresh tires biting, undisturbed flow over the wings, everything suddenly sharper and faster.
Until today.
He walked into the pre-season team meeting—the first big gathering of the year, all key department heads and whiteboards waiting for the new messaging frameworks—and there she was.
Mia. Talking to Claire in the media corner, tablet in hand, dark hair falling across her cheek as she pointed something out on the screen. She was wearing the navy team jacket he’d seen her in a hundred times, sleeves pushed up to her elbows, posture straight but not stiff. Professional. Composed.
She looked up as he entered.
The hurt in her eyes hit him like a brake failure at 300 km/h.
Sharp, real, impossible to ignore. It wasn’t dramatic—no gasp, no tears—just a flicker.
A quick tightening around her mouth, a blink that lasted half a second too long, then her gaze sliding away like she’d been caught staring at something she shouldn’t.
Lucas’s stomach dropped.
He hadn’t seen her since that night. Hadn’t messaged.
Hadn’t called. Hadn’t even let himself think about her too hard, because thinking led to remembering: the way her fingers had curled into his race suit, the soft sound she’d made when he deepened the kiss, the way she’d pulled back first and said, “We can’t,” like it physically cost her.
He’d told himself he was doing the right thing. Protecting the team. Protecting her career. Protecting his own focus for the season ahead. Sienna was proof he could move on. Proof it was just physical want he’d been fighting, nothing deeper.
But the proof was lying.
Because standing ten metres away, watching Mia force her attention back to the tablet while Claire kept talking, Lucas felt it—the same current that had snapped between them in Abu Dhabi. Stronger now, because it had been denied. Because he’d tried to drown it in someone else and failed.
His chest tightened. Not with anything soft or sentimental—he refused that.
This was need. Raw, physical want. The kind that made him itch to cross the room, pull her aside, finish what they’d started just to prove it was only that—heat, friction, release.
Not because he missed her voice in quiet moments, or the way she looked at him like she saw past the helmet, or how being near her made the constant noise in his head quiet down for once.
He didn’t move.
He couldn’t.
The room carried on around them—Marcus Lang’s low voice calling the meeting to order, Claire laughing at something on the screen, department heads shuffling papers—but Lucas felt the shift like a grid position slipping away.
Like he’d just flat-spotted a tyre on turn one and knew trouble was coming.
He took his seat at the far end of the table. Forced his eyes to the whiteboard. Told himself to focus.
But every few minutes, against his better judgment, his gaze drifted back to the media team corner.
And every time, Mia was looking anywhere but at him.