“That hotel clerk. Recognizing you, delivering luggage to your room with my name on it.”
“I never thought of that.”
I drop a kiss against his arm. “I know you haven’t. But it could happen.”
“And if it does, then we deal with it like we planned.”
“Yeah,” I agree. “Like we planned.”
Harper and Crosswire have it all sorted, or so they’ve promised us. I imagine there’s a file in Tom Kellen’s desk labeled “Jacob/Travis Disaster Plan.” It probably has flowcharts and diagrams and a glossary of terms.
It all hinges on a single event, though. A hotel clerk posting a picture on TikTok or an F1 fan filming something they shouldn’t. An accident, a betrayal, something out of our control.
But if it were something intentional, instead—an unambiguous photo posted on Travis’s Instagram, maybe, or a joint statement put out by our teams…
The aftermath probably wouldn’t look any different. But it would feel a lot different, I think.
“What are you thinking about?” Travis asks quietly.
I shift back a little further into the warmth of his arms.
“You,” I say. “Always you.”
Chapter 8
After he won the championship last season, Travis was featured on the cover of Vogue. He muttered and complained and sulked about doing it, but he’d already blown off five or ten similar offers, and Harper—or, more to the point, Heather—insisted. The photos turned out really well, a bunch of shots of him looking effortlessly handsome on track and lounging in expensive clothing he would never wear in real life. The article, on the other hand, was a little bit abbreviated. The poor writer had to bend over backwards fleshing out Travis’s monosyllabic answers, and most of what he did say was—not a lie, exactly, but not entirely accurate, either.
Like when she asked him what his race day routine was.
Whatever’s on the press schedule, he said.
I could imagine the poor woman stifling a sigh. Anything in particular you like to do besides that? she pressed.
Get up early, he said. Listen to music. Think about the race.
The interviewer was probably hoping he’d tell her about some secret routine he always used, but that’s just not how Travis operates. And while he usually does get up early, and sometimes listens to music, I’m not convinced he ever spends much time thinking about the race. Like, before the race in Silverstone this summer, which he won in a brilliant recovery drive from P12, he spent the morning helping me install a new dryer in our laundry room. And right before he got in the car in Suzuka to secure a brilliant win from pole, he was on the phone with his credit card company ordering a second card with my name on it (which I objected to, by the way, and have never once used).
Today, before the race in Singapore, he sets his alarm to wake us at two. The race doesn’t start until eight p.m., and neither of us are scheduled for press until four, so we order room service and laze around in bed, watching a replay of the latest MotoGP race. More than once, Travis has described MotoGP as the world’s best motorsport—Heather has begged him never to say it in an interview—and I’m convinced he has a crush on one of the riders, Adrien Baker.
“I do not,” he says, when I point it out again today.
A smile tugs at my lips. “Cheer for someone else, then.”
“He’s the only Canadian,” Travis says. “I have to cheer for him. It’s patriotic.”
“Patriotic,” I agree. “Of course. Nothing to do with the fact that he walks around with his suit unzipped half the time.”
He grins. “Absolutely nothing.”
“Looks like he’s taken, though,” I say, as the camera shows Aiden kissing a gorgeous dark-haired girl after winning the race.
He pokes my side. “I guess I’ll have to stick with you.”
“Speaking of which…” I trail my fingers up the side of his leg. “Shower with me before we head out?”
He laughs. “Absolutely not.”
“Why not?” I complain. “We’ve got time.”
