“Do you need to pack?” Sloane asked, placing a hand on the back of her hip, almost like she didn’t know what to do with it.
“Probably,” Reese said, still not ready to move away from Sloane if there was anything they needed to talk through. “But …”
“Go, Reese. I mean it. You’ve got a race to train for.”
The smile that took over Reese’s face was immediate, unstoppable. Because there was no sentence as thrilling as that one. After being out of the driver’s seat for far too long, she was back.
She was racing. And in her first Formula 1 race.
Reese pressed her forehead briefly to Sloane’s, grounding herself in the warmth of her, the reality of this moment, before the world shifted again.
For the first time, she wasn’t chasing the dream.
She’d caught it. It was here.
And in just a few days, she was going to climb into an F1 car and finally show the world exactly what she could do.
Sloane stacked one hand over the other and pressed them together until the tremor eased. The apartment felt suddenly too quiet, the air thick with the aftermath of the call, with everything it had set in motion. Reese was in the bedroom packing, the soft rasp of zippers opening and closing carrying down the hall like a countdown.
She forced her breathing to slow. In through her nose. Out through her mouth.Get your head right.
She knew what this moment meant and had known it long before Reese ever let herself hope for it. A first Formula 1 race wasn’t just an opportunity; it was a threshold. A once-in-a-lifetime crossing. Sloane refused to be the person who dimmed that. She would not let her fear reach Reese’s joy, even if it meant locking it away where it could bruise her in private.
She’d always known the call would come. There were too many eyes on Reese now, too many people who understood what they were seeing. If it hadn’t been Laurens, it would have been someone else, some other team, next season at the latest. Sloane had just believed—wrongly—that she would have more time to prepare herself for it, get some safeguards in place.
She’d already left a message for her old therapist, the one she’d walked away from back when she thought she had everything under control. She’d been so sure she could build a safety net before the ground gave way again.
Now the moment was here, and she was standing without one.
“Okay, so apparently Jeremy’s assistant managed to snag me the last seat on a flight to New York,” Reese said, bursting into the room with a duffel slung over her shoulder, words tumbling out in a rush of adrenaline. “There’s a tight connection to London, but it’s the best they could do.”
Sloane turned toward her, letting her face soften into something calm and open, even as her pulse skittered.
“I’ll probably need to sleep on the plane,” Reese went on, already pacing. “I just talked to Shanelle—she’s excited but wants to get straight to work. Use every second we have and maximize every practice session they’ll give me.” She paused, eyes bright, grin breaking through. “I know the circuit, though. I mean, it’s Silverstone for God’s sake. Couldn’t be more full circle.”
Sloane nodded. “That’s where Veronica recruited you, right?”
“Exactly.” Reese shook her head slowly, wonder creeping into her voice. “I had no idea how much that moment would change everything. Not just my career. My life.”
Her gaze found Sloane’s, purposeful and earnest, and something in her expression softened.
“Can you imagine if I’d said no?” Reese said quietly. “I never would have met you.”
“Who would have taught me about racing in a bar?”
“I thought we were never going to talk about that again?”
“Oh, I don’t know if I can agree to that,” Sloane said. “Lore is lore.”
Then Reese crossed the space between them and wrapped her arms around Sloane, holding on longer than necessary. Sloane closed her eyes and held Reese back, anchoring herself in the weight of her, the truth of this. It was love and fear braided so tightly she wasn’t sure where one ended and the other began.
But joy still mattered, right?
And for Reese, today, that came first.
Reese pulled back just enough to find her eyes. For a moment, neither of them spoke. The house held its breath with them, the sound of the ocean drifting in through the open window, wholly indifferent.
“They’re sending a car,” Reese said softly, like saying it too loud might make it real too fast. “It should be here soon.”
