“Because they hate each other? Or because it’d be way easier for Crosswire to just replace me?”
Travis rolls his eyes. “Who are they going to replace you with? They don’t have any good drivers in their academy right now.”
“They have their reserve driver—”
“Who, Farin Leblanc?” Travis shakes his head. “He isn’t half as good as you.”
I pull a face. “I don’t know if that’s true. Even if it is, there are plenty of other drivers.”
“No,” Travis says, simply, as if the idea that Crosswire might pick someone other than me is insane. “They’re lucky to have you. And if they want to keep you, they’ll have to put up with us dating.”
I roll my eyes, flattered and exasperated in equal measure. “That’s easy for you to say. Harper will never fire you. You’ve just won them the championship.”
“And I’ll remind Stefan of that when I tell him to set up a meeting with Crosswire.”
I scrub a hand over my face. “And what’s going to stop Crosswire from firing me?”
“Besides the fact that you’re the best driver to take Mahoney’s place when he retires?”
“Yeah.”
Travis grins. “Maybe the fact that my contract with Harper is up at the end of this year. Crosswire’s been after me before. I don’tthink they’ll risk pissing me off, not if they want any hope of signing me in the future.”
I stare at him in surprise. “You’d really leave Harper?”
He chuckles. “Probably not. But they don’t have to know that.”
He puts the coffee cup back in my hand and kisses me swiftly, then pulls his phone from his pocket and starts dialing.
“Wait, you’re calling Stefannow?”
“Of course.”
I groan. “Travis...”
He waves away my protest and heads into the hall with his phone to his ear. His voice echoes back to me, polite but firm. “Stefan? Hi. Yeah, good, thanks. Look, I’ve got a bit of a situation—”
Morocco bats my thigh with her paw. I put my coffee aside to rub her ears.
“Insane,” I tell her quietly. “Your owner isinsane.”
But as I reach for my coffee cup again, I’m smiling.
A week later, Travis and I sit in a conference room along with Stefan, Tom, and five well-dressed lawyers. Two of them are from Crosswire, two are from Harper, and one is the monstrously expensive, slightly terrifying lawyer Travis hired to represent our interests—mine and his. It’s taken them seven days of what sounds like nonstop work, but they’ve all finally agreed on a nondisclosure agreement for Travis and me to sign.
It’s without a doubt one of the most uncomfortable situations I’ve ever been in. Tom and Stefan really, really don’t like each other, but they’re clearly trying to out-civil each other. They did this strange thing at the start, where they were each trying to flex how supportive and principled their team is comparedto the other’s. Like, Tom said he “fully supports” our relationship, so Stefan had to one-up him by saying he’d be “perfectly happy” to support us going public. Which we aren’t—we talked about it, and we both want to keep things private, for now—but I’ve been thinking about how I would feel if the news leaked someday, and it doesn’t give me cold stabs of panic like it used to. In fact, I kind of think it would be easier, after the media shitstorm settled.
Anyway, Tom and Stefan bragged about their anti-discrimination policies for a while, then the lawyers jumped in and said we should probably get started. I don’t know why it takes fourteen pages to say it, but the agreement they’ve drawn up basically boils down to this: whatever Travis and I share with each other will stay between the two of us. I can tell Travis about Crosswire’s new brake ducts, but he can’t then run and tell Harper about them, and vice versa.
It just seems like common sense to me, and I take no issue with signing until we reach a little note on the last page, which says that neither team will ever hire the opposite team’s driver. My stomach twists a little, but I’m thinking I’ll just ignore it, until Travis speaks up.
“Remove that,” he says. “That’s unreasonable.”
He’s the only one in the room who isn’t tense or red-faced. I know him, so I know he does occasionally get nervous about things—although, now that I think on it, it’s only ever stuff to do with me, like how he handed me a key the other day without any explanation, and it took five minutes of wheedling to get him to explain it was a key to his place—but clearly he isn’t nervous about this. Looking at him, you’d think he’s lounging on a beach in the Maldives. Which, incidentally, is a holiday we’re planning with Heather and Hunter for the F1 summer break.
He’s got one arm on the back of his chair and the other stretched out on the table, his fingers resting next to his phone. It’s his old iPhone, the one he was using when we first met. Heather and Hunter bought him a newer model, and Matty and Erin bought him a fancy case for it, but he hasn’t used them since I gave him the Christmas present I got him last year, the wooden phone case with the picture of the cabin in Harris etched into it. I kind of wish he’d keep it in his pocket, because every time I see it, I remember the look on his face when I gave it to him, and I want to grin like an idiot.
Instead, I bite the inside of my cheek and try to mimic his calm, unbothered expression.
