Page 108 of Double Apex

Push push push.

It’s time I accept that she will make up her own mind. Even if what she chooses is a future that does not include me.

Natalia heads my way. “Can I get a few words, Cosmin?”

“Certainly.”

Her focus shifts past me and she waves enthusiastically, rising on her toes to peer into the milling crowd. “Phae—oh my God, you came after all!”

I wheel around, and Phaedra’s smile envelops me.

I can barely feel my feet. Her eyes are wide, glossy, the new green of growing things. My arms lift, then drop, uncertain.

“You’re…here,” I say simply.

She’s not dressed for work, but in white from head to toe: a tuxedo-style jacket with a longer, gauzy shirt beneath, skimming the hips of white trousers. My eyes travel to her feet, where I find her usual black Converse sneakers.

“Gotta do it my way,” she jokes, pointing at the shoes.

We’re still two strides apart. Eyes are certainly on us, given the persistent gossip since Silverstone, months ago. Not knowing what she’s feeling—though I have my hopes—I don’t dare move any closer. Then I notice the way she peeks at my lips in tentative invitation. I recall the first time I saw that shift of her eyes, in her room at Santorini.

The white noise of crowd chatter brings to mind the sigh of the Aegean outside the windows that night. Our words, like small pebbles dropped to test the depth of a well:

Afraid of losing those earrings to Natalia?

I’m afraid of losing more than that…

I narrow the gap between us by another step, unable to hold back my surge of emotion at the memory.

“Whatever else happens today, seeing you here… will have been the best part, draga.” My brow furrows at having let the pet name slip. “If I may call you that,” I add.

She takes the final step, so close now. “I’d prefer dragamea. Because…” A smile—uncharacteristically shy, yet expectant—blooms on her lips. She hooks one finger into the placket of my race suit and pulls me toward her. “I’m yours.”

Her words assemble my ruined heart and spur it into motion. I pick her up around the waist. A happy whimper spills from her, and it almost sounds like pain. Then my mouth is on hers. Sixty thousand spectators at the track around us disappear, the grim voices inside me fall silent, and we are the only two people on earth—dizzy and kissing as if breathing depends upon it.

The clicking of cameras pulses in the background, but I can’t stop—I’m almost afraid if we part now, she’ll change her mind. I put into our kiss the echo of every moment we’ve had together, and I sense she’s doing the same. I devour her lips, an arm bracing her waist, crushing her against me, the other hand tangled in her hair.

The blast of a horn signals ten minutes until the race—timeto clear the grid of guests, journalists, and nontechnical team members. I set Phaedra down with one last kiss and a contented sigh, unable to take my eyes off her, and cradle her face, stroking it with my thumbs.

I know I should already be in the car for the systems check, and Phae knows it too. She plants one palm on my stomach and gives me a shove.

“Get in the fucking cockpit. What am I paying you for?”

“You’ll still be here when I cross the finish line?”

She snakes her arms around my waist, looking straight up at me, and her expression is half teasing, half serious.

“I hope I’m with you when webothcross the finish line, at a hundred years old.”

I offer a wink and a mischievous quip to head off the swell of emotion her words bring.

“You’llbe a hundred, draga mea—I’ll only be ninety-five.”

“You’ll be planted in the back garden if you don’t watch it, you pain in the ass.”

She steps back and lifts her hand in a small, static wave. Near my car, the chief mechanic calls out to me, and I trot off.

After donning my helmet and climbing in, we fasten the harness and collar-like HANS device. I can undo the safety harness but can’t fasten it—a mechanic does the job. There’s little opportunity to change it if it isn’t perfect. During a pit stop, one doesn’t want to be fiddling with the harness—a good stop is under 2.5 seconds. Emerald’s pit crew is the best, averaging quicker this season than even the two leading teams.

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