“I’m a shit,” I admit and reach down to hug her again. I love Cordy and she has no idea what a complete clusterfuck my life has become, or that she’s stepping into the middle of it in her fancy high heels. “I’m surprised but of course I’m happy to see you. I love seeing you.”
“I miss having you right around the corner,” Cordy tells me as our second hug breaks apart and she rubs the sides of my arms lovingly. “I mean sure I hardly ever saw you even when you did live there.”
“Unless you had a Prosecco emergency,” I note. My sister is the only person I know who will pop by unannounced, in a complete panic, begging to borrow a bottle of wine instead of a cup of sugar.
"I don't have those anymore. Did you know they deliver wine?" She smiles like she just discovered electricity. "But I still miss you. And worry. So I'm here. Also, I hear F1 drivers are hot. Are any single? Or straight?"
I smirk at her. “A few.”
“Is yours single?” she asks and my gaze grows pointed. “Not for me. Ew. Gross. I don’t do my bro’s sloppy seconds. I mean… I heard his legal issue was cleared up. He’s racing better than ever. Are you still… working for him?”
“I was never working for him. I was working for…” I sigh and pull her toward the elevators. I still have a plan I want to execute before Gabriel gets back from the track. I work best with a plan. “I have real feelings for him. And he has them for me. We’re… trying to sort through it, which is why although I love seeing you, the timing sucks.”
She takes that all in, furrowing her dark, straight eyebrows and puckering her mouth which is nice and full without the help of additives. She gets that from Mom, whose nickname is Rosebud due to her full, puckered mouth. It was given to her by the bassist of a rock band when she was seventeen. It's a famous band I've purposely blocked out to avoid trauma. Your mother's mouth being named by a rock star is definitely therapy fodder. "I need to meet him. I need to run him through my bullshit filter, Axe. Yours is defective."
I roll my eyes. “You’ll meet him. How about tonight? We could do a late dinner at the hotel restaurant?”
I am fucking with my plan, but the situation requires it. And besides, I kind of like the idea of Gabriel meeting someone in my family. Cordy is the best one to start with. There’s baggage with my mom and an elephant in the room with my dad. “Dinner is good.”
I kiss the top of her head and step into the elevator alone. I’ll be able to get a little time alone with Gabe before dinner, and I can profess my true feelings then. So maybe when he meets my sister it will officially be as the man who knows I love him, not the fake boyfriend I may or may not be really dating.
As the doors begin to close she waves and announces, “I’ll pop over to the restaurant and make the reservation. For five. Did I mention Mom and Dad are here? Toodles!”
Did she just…
What? No. Fuck.
32GABRIEL
I don’t knowwhat I’m expecting when I finally make it back to the hotel. But I can tell you if I had to bet my career on it, I wouldn’t have put my chips on ‘meeting Axel’s entire family’. I am exhausted and achy as hell, thanks to being slammed into a barrier at one-hundred and fifty-two kilometers. The car needs work, so everyone is pissed. It’s funny when Samuels hits a wall, which he has done more than me this year, no one makes him feel like shit. When I do it, they act like it’s on purpose.
All I want as the doorman holds the door to the hotel ajar for me, is to take a long shower, eat something, and finish the night with a massage because I convinced Enzo to come to the hotel and work on my back. I can't afford to be stiff in the qualifying tomorrow. Of course, I also want to see Axel and talk through what, exactly, our next steps are. But I'm feeling somewhat confident about the fact that there is an 'our' and that feels good. I've never been in love before so I don't know how to tell him, or even when. Is it too soon? I know Axel has had more relationships than me. And longer ones too. But the last one he was in sounds like it was shit. I don't want to do this wrong and hurt him. Or me. For the first time in my life, I care about my feelings. Because I have them.
I'm barely in the door to the hotel room when he walks right over to me. He's got his arms out like he's going to reach for me, but then he drops them and stops abruptly about a foot away. "How are you feeling? Everything must be sore."
“Yeah. Everything is,” I admit and roll my neck. But then I lift both my arms, stretch them above my head, and watch as his gaze slips to the patch of exposed skin between my team shirt and my black pants. I smile and drop my hands on his shoulders, pulling him into me. “But this makes it feel better.”
I nuzzle his neck, a glutton for the scent of him and the feel of him. His hands slide up my back, pressing me closer to him. I feel his lips touch my head and his breath rustle my hair.
“We need to talk.” He says it with such seriousness that my stomach bottoms out. I rear back a little to look at him. “I didnotinvite them but… my family is here.”
My head juts back farther and my arms slide from his shoulders. “Here? In France?”
"Worse. In this hotel." Axel looks so pained. He rubs the back of his neck and bites his bottom lip a moment and exhales. "And I have to meet them for dinner. And at first, I thought you should come. But now…"
“You don’t want me there?”
"No. I always want you there, Gabe. I want you everywhere," Axel blurts out. He bites his lip again. "I didn't realize you'd be so long at the track. I thought we could talk first. And also, I can imagine you just want to relax after the day you've had, and my family… they aren't exactly Zen. My sister is a well-meaning wrecking ball, my mom is a hippie with a capital dippie, and my dad and I… our relationship is currently strained. Slightly. So—"
“So give me ten minutes to shower and change.”
His eyelashes flutter in confusion. “Did you hear anything I just said?”
"I heard it all," I reply, pulling my shirt over my head and trying not to groan at the new, unwelcome tightness between my shoulders. "I need us to have a heart-to-heart too, but I'm not going to leave you hanging with your family. I have a feeling they've all seen the news stories and even if they know they're fake… I mean, that it was supposed to be fake, I think they should get to know me. Because we aren't faking it now, right?"
“No. We aren’t.” Axel’s dark eyes somehow get darker, and he presses a hand to my chest, right above my heart. I cover that hand with one of my own. “Gabriel, I’m falling—”
I kiss him. Hard and fierce, my tongue purposely blocking any more words he might try to form. His hand curls, nails pressing into my skin with a delicious ache. And then I pull back. Because if I don’t, we will never make it to dinner. Hell, I might not even make it to qualifying tomorrow. “Do not finish that sentence until we have the time to back those words up with actions, okay?”
