“Are you ever going to let me drive?” Kip whines as he slides into the passenger seat of my Golf GTI.
We’re at the tail end of our European stint, and this is the third Grand Prix we’ve driven to together since our little adventure through Switzerland, Germany, and France. First Zandvoort, then Monaco, and now Barcelona. All those miles, and he hasn’t driven one of them.
“Let you drive?” I snort. “Mate, I’ve heard the way you talk about rental cars.”
“They like it,” he claims.
“My car doesn’t.”
He pats the dash anyway. “Don’t listen to him, sweetheart. You deserve better than a man who hoards the keys.”
I swat his hand away. “Stop flirting with my car.”
“Then let me drive her.”
“Absolutely not.”
“Fine,” he huffs, but there’s no heat behind it. We’ve been through this familiar dance before. Every trip starts with him begging for the keys and ends with him pretending not to berelieved I’m the one driving. Shame it’s our last road trip for a while. After this we’re back to planes, queues, and stale airport pretzels for the next few races.
He slumps back in the seat, crossing his arms. “One day, you’re going to let me take the wheel, and you’ll realize what you’ve been missing.”
“Oh, I already know what I’d be missing,” I say, starting the engine. “My suspension.”
He shoots me an injured look. “You wound me.”
“You’ll recover.”
Kip scoffs, then grins out the window, crinkling his eyes and loosening something in my chest.
“Whatever,” he mutters. “But I’m choosing the music.”
“You always choose the music.”
“And you always complain.”
“I complain because you keep making me listen to that one playlist.”
He lights up. “You mean the one that’s ninety percent queer love songs and ten percent angry women? You’re welcome.”
I shake my head, already smiling. “Just press play, Carmichael.”
He does, and the cabin fills with the opening chords of something achingly sweet and stupidly romantic.
Figures.
Kip settles in, fiddling with the vents like they offend him personally, and I ease us into the flow of traffic. The music shifts to something bright and bouncy—what he calls his “don’t crash, Hutch” playlist—and I can’t help the grin that tugs at my mouth.
It’s mad, really, how quickly we’ve fallen into this—whatever this is.
A real relationship. Out loud. Agreed upon.
The weeks since our impromptu road trip home from China have been a kind of controlled chaos. My chaos, his control. Kipkeeps our lives stitched together with his colour-coded calendars and neat little plans, and I keep tugging him out of them, dragging him to late dinners and stupid detours and one unforgettable sunrise outside Monaco because I insisted we “see where this road goes.” He acts exasperated every time, but he always comes with me. Always reaches for my hand first. Always kisses me like he’s relieved we didn’t wait another minute.
And somehow, it works. Him with his exhaustive lists, me with my spontaneous misadventures. We meet in the middle. Or he meets me, and I try very hard not to knock his neat little world on its arse.
We’re still figuring it out, but it’s good. Better than good. It’s easy in ways I didn’t know relationships could be, and electric in ways I can’t seem to get used to. Every early morning scramble, every late-night drive, every stolen kiss in hotel corridors—we’re learning each other’s rhythms, building something steady out of the mess and the planning and the road between circuits.
And even though we’ve been together less than two months, I can’t imagine doing any of this without him.
