Mia: Thank you. That means more than you know. I’ll keep you updated on the scans. Love you.
Aria: Love you too. Hug him for me when you can. And take care of yourself, okay?
She pocketed the phone, heart aching a little for her friend. Watching someone you love get hurt from the sidelines was its own kind of hell.
With Jax still gone, her thoughts drifted back to him. She cared about him — deeply. More than she’d let herself admit for a long time. The way he’d looked at her when she arrived in Melbourne, the visible relief on his face when she confirmed she’d be there… it had felt real. Like he needed her, not just the image.
Yet the Min-Jae messages still sat unread on her phone. Three polite, careful texts since Seoul. She hadn’t replied. Hadn’t even felt the old pull. That chapter was closed, and the clarity of it both terrified and freed her.
She wondered how she could even begin to raise any of this with Jax. Was there a chance this had become something more for him too? Or was she reading too much into every glance and touch?
A few minutes later she stood and walked down the corridor to find him. As she approached the doorway, Marcus’s voice carried out — low and pragmatic.
“…sponsors are loving this new image. Steady, committed, no drama. It’s exactly what they wanted to see after last season.”
Jax’s reply came tired but with a hint of his usual dry humour. “Yeah, the sponsors have nothing to worry about. I’m all aboutthe steady image now. No scandals here. Jax the serious guy, right? I’ve got this.”
Aria stopped just out of sight, chest tightening. The steady image. The girlfriend thing helps. Keeps everything clean.
She’d seen the relief on his face when she arrived. She’d felt the way he pulled her close. But maybe she’d been overthinking it. Maybe that relief wasn’t about her — it was about having the perfect plus-one while he stepped into the number one role. The optics were more important than ever now. A stable, high-profile relationship would keep the sponsors happy while the team leaned on him to carry the season.
She didn’t know what to think about how he really felt.
But she knew she wasn’t ready to lay her own feelings bare. Not yet. She needed to know more — needed to be sure — before she risked revealing how much she had already fallen.
When Jax stepped back into the room a moment later, she was waiting with a soft smile. She didn’t mention what she’d overheard.
Instead she leaned her head against his shoulder, breathing him in — faint traces of sweat and champagne mixed with the cedar of his cologne. His arm tightened around her waist, instinctive and protective.
She closed her eyes.
She didn’t know what this was between them yet. She didn’t want to rush to name it and risk shattering the fragile thing that had started to grow. But she knew one thing with absolute certainty: she wasn’t going anywhere. Not tonight. Not tomorrow. Not until she was ready to walk away.
And right now, she wasn’t ready.
She tilted her head up and pressed a soft kiss to the underside of his jaw. “I’m not going anywhere,” she whispered against his skin. “Okay?”
He exhaled — long and shaky — and rested his forehead against hers. “Okay,” he murmured.
And for the first time in a long time, the silence between them felt like peace instead of distance.
???
Chapter Twenty
Jax
Melbourne had rewritten the season before it even really started.
The weeks that followed felt like proof he could carry his new role. Jeddah came fast—high-speed sweeps, desert heat, floodlit nights. The car finally obeyed: sharp turn-in, planted rear, tires holding just long enough for the late-race push. He started P5, carved through traffic with clean aggression, and crossed the line P3—his second podium in a row. Champagne under the lights tasted like confirmation.
Finn Hartmann, the new reserve driver, slotted in seamlessly. Twenty-eight, German, built like he could bench-press the car but moved with surgical precision. He was quiet, methodical, always had telemetry printouts in hand and spoke in clipped, efficient sentences. They got on well enough—professional respect, clean radio exchanges, the occasional post-debrief beer where they dissected sectors in broken English and shared dark jokes about tire degradation. Finn was good. Reliable. No drama. But he wasn’t Lucas. There was no shared history of karting disasters, no easy ribbing over team dinners, no onewho’d known Jax since they were both teenagers with too much ego and not enough money.
Jax messaged Lucas most evenings—short updates, podium selfies, memes about the new front wing looking like a confused aeroplane. Lucas was recovering in his Villa in the South of France.
Lucas : P3 in Jeddah? Slow down, mate. Save some for when I’m back.
Jax: You’d have eaten that track. How’s the shoulder?
