In here, I was left with the question no headline could answer: how long could trust carry him, and us, before it demanded a price we couldn’t pay?
49
AFTER THE FLAG
The last mechanicswere rolling tire blankets into crates when I finally slipped away from the media center. Monza was shrinking, hospitality units coming down like circus tents at dawn, the echo oftifosifading into memory. I found Jonathan on the service road behind the Meridian garage, still in his race suit, fireproofs unzipped to his waist.
“You disappeared,” he said, voice small in the dark.
“I had to file the story.”
“Of course you did.” He nodded, breath fogging in the cooling air. “Did you… write about the win?”
“I wrote about the choice,” I said. “Yours. Shep’s.”
He looked up then, the kind of look he only gave me when everything was stripped away. No sponsors, no PR handler hovering nearby. Just a boy, exhausted and proud and a little bit scared.
“I didn’t think about you during the race,” he said quietly.
That surprised me, but it shouldn’t have.
“I couldn’t,” he continued. “You know what it’s like in there. It’s numbers and tire temps and trusting Shep even when the call feels insane. There isn’t room for anything else. Not fear. Not love. Not even myself.”
He rubbed a hand over his face. Exhausted, no cameras left to impress.
“But when it was over, when I was alone in the cool-down room waiting for the podium, it hit me.”
He glanced up, meeting my eyes. Raw. Unarmored.
“I want to win. I want the championship. I want all of it. But none of it means anything if I walk back into the garage afterward and you’re gone.”
My throat felt tight.
“I don’t need you during turn eleven,” he said. “I need you after. When the helmet comes off and I’m just… me again.”
I stepped closer. Oil stains, champagne, and ozone from overheated brakes still hung sharp in the air.
“You don’t have to win everything,” I said. “You just have to choose.”
He let out a rough sound, half-laugh, half-pain. “Then I choose you. Not on weekends. Not when it’s easy. Not just in hotel rooms and paddocks.”
“And I choose you,” I said, quieter. “Even when you’re an idiot. Even when I have deadlines in Marrakesh and you’ve got simulator work at 2 AM in Maranello.”
His shoulders dropped, as if he’d been holding his breath for months.
“So,” he whispered, “we figure it out?”
“We figure it out,” I said. “Together. No more parallel flights. Even when we’re going in different directions.”
He kissed me then, soft, just once. No adrenaline. No spectacle. Just… us.
For the first time in a long time, it felt like enough.
The hotel lobby was chaos, flashes bursting like fireworks as we crossed the marble floor. Jonathan didn’t flinch. He reached formy hand, laced our fingers together, and held tight. For once, we didn’t have to pretend. The cameras could take what they liked. This was us, walking in together.
Upstairs, the suite was dim and quiet, the noise of Monza finally fading behind thick hotel walls. On the table by the window, a bottle of champagne sat in a silver bucket, condensation sliding down the glass. A card leaned against it: For Jonathan and Wally. Congratulations, The Meridian Team.
Jonathan laughed when he saw it, an unguarded sound I’d missed all weekend. “They’re really not subtle, are they?”
