My medal still hung around my neck, after he insisted and made love to me with it between us. The sport that brought us together, the championships that forced us from rivals to lovers.
His hand was on my hip, thumb brushing slow, tender circles like he was memorizing my skin all over again.
“Good morning, my little champion,” he whispered, voice rough and sinful in my ear.
I melted. “Morning, mon champion.”
He propped himself up on an elbow, eyes warm and entirely too knowing. “Get up,” he said. “I have something for you.”
I blinked. “Right now?”
His mouth twitched. “Yes. Before you start spiraling about interviews or debriefs or whatever else you think you’re meant to do today.”
I opened my mouth to argue, but he leaned over me, kissed me once. Long enough to stop the world, soft enough to ruin me.
Then he went to the closet and pulled out a dress. A soft, impossibly feminine, blush-pink dress. It was light, airy, beautiful… and I had no idea what it was for.
I frowned. “This is… not what I expected to wear for post-race anything.”
He shrugged one shoulder, casual in that way he only ever was when he was hiding something monumental. “It’s what you’re wearing with me.”
I narrowed my eyes. “Where are we going?”
“A celebration,” he said simply.
My heart fluttered stupidly. I opened my mouth, and—because the universe has a sense of humor—I absolutely butchered the sentence. “I think you, ah…calibratedme plenty last night.”
Silence.
Then Callum’s face cracked—actually cracked—into a grin so bright I could’ve punched him. But his laughter was infectious, and it was pointless trying to stop myself from joining him.
“Merde,” I groaned, slapping my hands over my face. “Why can I not speak English anymore?”
He stepped forward to pry my hands away. “God, I love when you short-circuit like that.”
Heat burned up my neck. “Shut up.”
“I won’t. It’s one of the things I love most about you,” he said, kissing me again, making me melt all over again. “Get dressed, Mrs. Fraser. Trust me.”
And I did. I always did. He knew I’d follow him anywhere.
While I got ready, I couldn’t stop thinking about how far we’d come — from that first conversation in a bar in Bahrain, to our collision in Suzuka, to Barcelona, to the crash in Montreal, to everything in Silverstone. To Greece and Scotland and even to the fucking bathroom in my parents’ estate, to now. Fighting for each other. Fighting with each other. Loving each other through wreckage and rebirth.
When he took my hand and led me out of the suite, but not out of the resort. My chest tightened in that familiar, overwhelming way.
His thumb traced my palm as the elevator climbed and climbed and climbed.
Higher, higher, and higher still.
When the doors opened, the world spilled into gold.
A private terrace sprawled before us, all glass and white marble, overlooking Abu Dhabi from dizzying, glittering heights. Lanterns hung like stars. A string quartet tuned softly in the corner.
And everywhere I looked were the details I once mentioned only in passing.
The pink peonies I said reminded me of Provence. The candles I loved from a little shop in Monaco. The exact pastries from our resort in Milos. Soft pink linens and glass trays of rose-petal ice. Photographs printed of the two of us, framed in delicate silver.
Every friend. Every teammate. Our families.
