He slows, just enough for her to think. “People are going to be looking for you.”
“They can wait.”
“You’re very—ah—” Clarke breaks off when he flexes his wrist to coax her hips into action. “Demanding.”
He kisses her again, shallower than before but no less thorough. “Oh, Mads. You havenoidea.”
—
Clarke exits Julian’sprep room…later. Late enough that she has messages from multiple people asking where she is, the sky is a swath of black velvet, and the paddock is nearly abandoned. The teams who packed up tonight are long done with that work; teams like Chronicle, who are taking advantage of a bye week to be lax in their schedules, have cleared out to sleep or party.
Clarke left Julian showering (I came in my pants that time, Clarke, a rinse in the sink isn’t going to cut it). He kissed her as he undressed, the type of kiss that made her stomach flip, and ushered her out the door after confirming that she didn’t look like she’d been doing what they’d just been doing. Her underwear is on. Her hair is braided. Her makeup is fixed.
“Finally.”
Clarke shrieks, hand flying to her chest and shoulders hunching up around her ears. Val is sitting at the engineering station in the middle of Chronicle’s otherwise empty garage. “Saints, Val, you scared me.”
“Sorry,” Val laughs, waving her hand to turn on some overhead lights. “I didn’t realize how dark it had gotten in here. I’ve been waiting for—never mind. Is Julian still back there?”
“Uh, yeah. He should be out in a few minutes.” Clarke shifts her weight, uncomfortable. She doesn’t care if Val’s assuming Clarke and Julian just hooked up, but that tangent her conversation with Lennox had taken into Val maybe meddling with Delphine and Oliver’s marriage has been lurking in the back of her mind. “Sorry.”
Val snorts. “Don’t apologize. He just won two races in a row! I want him to keep doing whatever he’s doing.”
There’s an obvious joke here about Clarke being what Julian’s doing. Neither of them make it. Clarke struggles to find the next thing to say in a way she hasn’t with Val recently.
Val picks up the slack. “I hope it goes without saying, Clarke, but I’m very glad that you’re all right. The, ah, incident—do you think it was related to what you and I spoke about?”
When Clarke went to Val’s house, she hinted heavily that Yves was behind Elemental’s mechanical woes and had Val explain the finer points of parc fermé. It feels like that was a million years ago. But Clarke did that because shetrustsVal, right?
“Maybe.” Clarke follows Val’s lead and keeps her wording vague. “I haven’t been able to verify it yet.”
If there’s proof that Yves knew about the problem with Clarke’s air supply at Wonderland and hid it from the team, it’ll be in the information Maki sent her. Clarke hasn’t had a chance to look at it yet, what with being unconscious in a healing pod and then under Imogen’s watchful eye every second she wasn’t at the paddock this weekend.
“I almost went to the FIC,” Val says. “I still could. I have friends on the board. If I request an investigation, they’ll—”
“No,” Clarke interrupts. “Thanks, but I have it under control.”
Val looks skeptical. “You could have died.”
“But I didn’t. And I don’t plan to.”
“Don’t plan to what?”
Clarke and Val both turn at the sound of Julian’s voice. He emerges from the back hall, hair wet, wearing fresh pants. He looks…not at all happy to see Clarke and Val talking, actually, which is odd.
“Clarke was just telling me that she’s not going out to join the celebrations tonight,” Val says smoothly. “Yourcelebrations,Julian, at which your absence is being commented on. Frequently.”
“I told you I’d go when I’m ready,” Julian says, stiff. He crosses the empty floor to Clarke. “Walk you out?”
“Uh, sure,” Clarke says, bewildered by the sudden tension. Julian didn’t also recently find out about the Val–Delphine–Oliver thing, did he? “Good night, Val. Congratulations on today.”
“See you at the gala,” Val calls, waving over her shoulder as she heads for the stairs.
Clarke stays quiet while she and Julian loop around to the main strip of the paddock. It’s a short walk from here to the gate, where Clarke will take a car to the hotel and Julian will go wherever he plans to go. To meet up with Graham and Engel, probably.
Clarke waits for some of the rigidity to ebb out of his shoulders before asking cautiously, “Did something happen with you and Val?”
A muscle flexes in his jaw (Clarke now knows what it feels like for him to use that muscle and that jaw to reduce her to a writhing mess. It’s distracting). “Remember at Hanoi, when our friendship thing was supposed to be a meeting with Eclipsis? Val told PK that you and I would be fine to work with them. She never talked to me about it, she justdecidedthat it was okay.”
