“I should really get some sleep,” I said, just to bug him.
“Sleep is for losers. Plus, I’m good luck. We’ve proven that.”
Grinning, I shifted so I was lying on my side, facing him. “I guess I can’t argue with that.” The last three races I’d won, I’d spent the night with Jacob beforehand. “Plus, Brian’s always saying I need to do more cardio on race weekends.”
Jacob pulled a face. “Jesus, don’t talk about that douchebag in bed, I’ll never get hard again.”
I chuckled. “Oh, I don’t know about that.”
I wrapped a hand around his back and pulled him closer, capturing his mouth in a rough kiss. Jacob was the only person I’d ever slept with, but we’d been together for months, and I’d paid attention. When he was drunk, he liked to be in control, crawling into my lap and dictating his desires in rough, breathless orders. The rest of the time, he was—notshy, exactly, but he liked for me to take the lead.
I tangled my fingers in his hair and kissed him hard and deep, then pushed his arms up over his head, pressing his palms into the mattress.
“Keep your hands there,” I said.
He chuckled. “Bossy jackass.”
I shifted back so I could pull off his boxers and then knelt for a moment at the foot of the bed, admiring the picture he made stretched out on the sheets. Featherlight, I traced my fingertips up his legs, earning a soft hitch of breath when I reached the sensitive skin on the insides of his thighs. I crawled forward and settled my weight on his hips, continuing the slow, gentle trace of fingertips over his chest and neck and jaw, then brushing one thumb over his lower lip. I kissed him once, soft and open-mouthed, then traced my mouth down the same path my fingertips had taken.
I could feel the steady thud of his pulse under my lips, and when I finally put my mouth on him, he made a soft noise at the back of his throat. I moved slowly, without any intentional rhythm, enjoying the building tension in his frame, the quickening breath and increasingly impatient squirms. I stepped away for a moment to rummage through my bag, returning with slick fingers that set him shifting even more helplessly against me.
After a few minutes under my mouth and fingers, there was an urgency building in the rhythm.
“Travis,” he panted, and I pulled back obediently. A shiver ran through me when I saw he still hadn’t moved his arms from over his head, and I had to bite sharply into my cheek to refocus myself.
He groaned when I pushed inside, his back arching, his fingers grasping at the sheets. My eyes were on his face; his were on my shoulders, my chest, my abs. It was the one tiny thing that always felt strange to me—he never quite made eye contact when I fucked him. It was as though it was too intimate for him, like I might look into his blown-out gray eyes and see too much.
Regardless, it had been over two weeks since I’d been with him, and with every tight, hot thrust I was hurtling closer to the end. I shifted positions so I could hit that sensitive spot inside him every time, and he started panting, a sure sign he was about to fall apart.
He came about a second before I did, crying out and clutching at the sheets. The sight of him pushed me over the edge—I came deep inside him, gripping him tight as the last aftershocks ran through me. For a few seconds, it was very quiet, the only noise the thump of my pulse in my ears and the rough sounds of our breath.
Jacob was always odd during those moments immediately after, too. He was quick to shift beneath me and slip away to the bathroom. But he would always emerge with a crooked smile and chuck a roll of toilet paper or a washcloth at me, so casual that I never bothered bringing up those few strange moments. And once we were under the sheets with the lights off, he would curl up with his chin tucked into my shoulder and his arm wrapped around me. I figured those little quirks were just normal parts of sex. I’dnever had anyone fuck me before, not that I hadn’t offered Jacob the chance. Probably I would feel just as shy after.
And anyway, I thought, as his breathing evened out and he drifted into a heavy sleep, he only slept well when he was with me. I was like Ambien for his soul. He’d said so himself.
11
Antony
The week leading up to the Austrian Grand Prix is a blur of press appearances and meetings. My days are booked from dawn to dusk, and in a bizarre way, the distraction is helpful. Every night when I get back to my hotel, I phone the hospital for news. The first night, I made the mistake of asking the ICU clerk how Jacob Nichols was doing. She told me coldly that no information was being given out over the phone, and that the family would release a statement to the press when it was appropriate. I didn’t dare call back straightaway, in case the same clerk picked up, and spent the night worrying about Jacob and cursing my own stupidity.
The next morning, I called and asked for the nurse Jean, and by a stroke of luck was put straight through. Once he realized who I was—which took a lot of very rapid Google Translate searches on my end—he told me that Jacob’s pressor had been stopped, and that his blood pressure was doing well, and that the doctor planned to do something called “spontaneous breathing trials” in the next few days, to see if he could get the breathing tube taken out.
Every day since, the news has gotten better. His blood counts have been holding steady without any more transfusions, his kidney injury has resolved, and yesterday Jean said Dr. K told his family they had “reason to be hopeful.”
I cling to this notion all through free practice on Friday, and my race engineer, Freddie, slaps me on the back as I get out of the car and tells me he’s glad I’m finally getting over my illness.
A lot of the press ask me about my migraine, because it’s news, at least in F1, when a contender for the championship gets a headache.
“I get brutal migraines once or twice a year,” I tell some reporter after practice on Friday. “It’s not a big deal, this one just knocked me out a few days.”
“So you’re not expecting any difficulties this weekend?” the reporter asks.
“Nothing out of the ordinary.”
“And tell me—” The reporter pauses mid-sentence, cocking her head to one side like she’s listening to something in her earpiece. “Tell me—”
She breaks off again, her smile dropping, and murmurs into her earpiece, “You’re sure?”
