We grin at each other, stupidly wide, then it’s Travis’s turn to be interviewed.
“Say lots of nice things about me,” I tell him.
He doesn’t, but only because the interviewer, an obnoxious guy named Carl, only asks him stupid questions, like “What went wrong at the end there?” and “Are you worried about holding onto such a fragile lead heading into Austin, where Crosswire is so heavily favored?”
Tool.
He can’t pull that crap with me, though, mostly because the crowd is cheering so loudly I can’t hear a word he says. I ask him to repeat his first question twice, then I give up and just smile at the grandstands and thank everyone for their support. I hear half of Carl’s second question—“—give you some sort of closure after the crash?”—but I pretend that I don’t.
“Sorry, didn’t catch a word,” I lie. “Thanks again, everyone.” I wave at the crowd. “This really means a lot.” I glance sideways at Travis and give him a smile, crooked and subtle and just for him. “I couldn’t have done it without you.”
Chapter 10
The podium celebration is a bright, surreal blur. In the cooldown room beforehand, which is always televised, Travis makes polite chitchat with Mahoney while I watch the race replay on screen. They’ve condensed sixty-two laps into a handful of moments: Travis taking the lead on the second lap, Harper’s pit crew struggling to get the front left off during his pit stop, flashes of our epic battle at the end, the moment I finally got past him. I see Travis smiling wide as he watches it, and I smile back even harder.
We’re called out onto the podium one by one. The roar of the crowd when I step out is deafening, the world below us a sea of smiling faces. I find Kelsie in the crowd and give her a wave. She looks like she’s crying, which is something she never does. It almost makes me want to cry, too.
I get a shiny medal and an even shinier trophy. It’s heavier than it looks, and my arms shake when I lift it overhead. I’m more physically exhausted than I ever remember being in my life, but I’m ignoring it, riding high on the tears streaming down Kelsie’s cheeks and the brightness of Travis’s smile whenever I look at him.
The classic podium music kicks off, and Travis and Mahoney absolutely drench me in champagne. Cory is on the podium, too—the team chose him to accept the constructor’s trophy—and he dumps half of his bottle over my head. My eyes sting so badly from the spray that I don’t notice the confetti raining down until Travis touches my arm and offers me a handful of shiny golden paper.
“For my Christmas present,” he says.
I splutter out a laugh. “You’re not supposed to know about that!”
“Then you should have done a better job of hiding it. I swear, there’s so much damn glitter on our couch?—”
“The glitter was Kelsie’s idea!”
His eyes dance. “Sure it was.”
Laughing, I tuck the strands of confetti into my race suit, then Travis and I join Mahoney and Cory for a picture, trophies in hand and arms wrapped around each other. I find Kelsie in the crowd again and smile directly at her phone. The press can deal with me looking off-center. I want to share this moment with the people who helped me get here. Like Kelsie, and Travis, whose fingers tighten on my side.
I hold onto him for a few extra seconds, letting the moment sink into my bones. I meet his eyes and I know that he knows what I’m thinking. How happy I am to be here with him, how happy I am to be here at all. For several long, dark months last year, I had stopped believing this could ever happen. I had given up on my career, given up on myself. But I clawed my way out of it—with a ton of help from my therapist Amanda, who I make a mental note to text as soon as this is done—and I made it here. Sticky with champagne and sweat and confetti, with an F1 trophy in my hand and Travis’s arm around my side.
A few more minutes of cheers and then we’re swept off the podium and herded to a press conference, where I try not to laugh at Travis’s trademark one-word answers. The only times he’s slightly more expansive is when he’s answering questions about me, and at one point, when I’m answering a question about him, I stare out at all the reporters and think, can they really not hear it? Isn’t it totally, utterly obvious that my entire world hinges on him?
After the conference is done, he and I are pulled in different directions, and I smile through a blur of rapid-fire interviews. By one a.m., I’m free, and I head to the back of the paddock, behind the Harper garage, where Travis, Kelsie and Heather are playing with Ghost. Heather took him to a vet yesterday, who confirmed he was already neutered and got him all the shots he needs to be allowed back home. She also filled out an enormous pile of paperwork on our behalf, and bought Ghost a fancy new houndstooth collar.
“He really is a very good boy,” she says, feeding him treats from her bag.
“And he’s so well behaved for a stray,” Kelsie adds.
“Except for that one tiny incident with the guy on the scooter,” Heather says.
“And he also peed on Matty’s car.”
“That stack of tires, too.”
“Hey, you,” Travis greets me quietly, while the girls keep listing things that Ghost has peed on. “You done for the night?”
“All done.”
“Tired?” he asks.
Tired isn’t the word. All of my muscles have liquefied, my bad hip is throbbing in time with my pulse, and even though I’ve chugged about ten bottles of water, little sparks still explode at the edges of my vision if I turn my head too quickly.
But Travis is dressed in his soft gray hoodie, and the black gym shorts that call attention to the muscles of his thighs, and I don’t want this night to be over just yet. “Only a little,” I say.
