🐆

It was back then, when people devised an understanding for a unique way of the world. A soulmate, they called them. Someone supposedly gifted to you by the Universe, and then you had to find them. Some philosophers theorised it was to give us a purpose; others, to be cruel. But the system itself was fairly simple. The only thing that is truly infinite, is numbers. So people would be sent numbers, and they would sub-consciously notice them, over and over again. Until eventually, it would become all too overwhelming to ignore, and they’d know they were close to finding their so-called soulmate.

For generations, this worked. As long as numbers existed, so did soulmates. So did huge, universal, undoubtable love.

Numbers still exist. Soulmates? Now a myth.

Historians assume it was the rise of capitalism. The invention of the dowry. The birth of the belief of the perfect couple. The new societal classes. That dragged apart love-matches, and paired them to financial ones instead. Monarchs could not marry boys covered in mud, and a woman could not love another woman. And so, society scrapped soulmates, and left everyone  rather miserable, and both poorer and richer simultaneously. 

Still, fate did not let up. It was weaker now, easier to ignore, but it still tried.

Most people would start seeing the numbers. The percentage on their phone, the time on the clock. The same number, popping up every time. Still, there was a limit, of sorts. If you didn’t believe in them at all, you’d never notice. If you believed in love, but not quite enough, you probably won’t see it until it was ever too late, or far too early, and then it would be lost again.

It was not infinite, if you did not believe, did not try.

It was easy to dismiss. Everyone has a lucky number. It was those brave enough to be sceptical of its consistency that ever got a reward. Still, it was so rare now. The few cases of soulmates were almost all co-incidences, from lucky run-ins on city breaks. 

Very few chased it, and you are not one of the few.

81. That’s your favourite number, lucky number, whatever else. You were born on 8/1, anyway. You figure it’s that. Just seems to settle in the right way in your soul, like a guidance. You’re not sure what it means, if it means anything at all. 

81. That’s Oscar’s favourite number, lucky number, whatever else. He’d been drawn to it, and at the mere age of ten,  he’d been told to pick a number to drive under. He’d blurted it out instantly, without thinking at all. Just a quick, definite decision. He’s not sure what it means, if it means anything at all.

The first time you almost meet Oscar Piastri is when you’re barely five years old. You’re having a taster day at kindergarten, and you’re being rather moody about the whole thing.

“Mum, I don’t want to go in. I already don’t like it here.” you grumble, tugging on her sleeve, and she shrugs you off.

“It’s okay. It’s going to be fun, come on.” she replies quietly, giving you an enthusiastic smile, and you scowl in response.

“Here are some kids you can buddy up with for the day, okay? Amy, Jules, Henry and Oscar.”

You count the heads dutifully, but come up one short. Amy is dramatically adorable, with red pigtails and muddy knees. Jules looks a little colder, and she’s tall, but she’s carrying a bright pink lunchbox so you figure she’s not nearly as tough as she looks. Henry is covered in freckles and his shirt has a ridiculous assortment of paint stains, but you think he might be fun. So, that just leaves Oscar, who is apparently a no-show.

The teacher grimaces.

“Does anyone know where Oscar is?”

The kids look from you to her blankly, with scattered shakes of their heads and shrugs, and she sighs.

“Alright, you three give her a tour, and we’ll see if Oscar ever shows up.”

Amy grabs your hand instantly, while Jules and Henry bicker over which staircase to take, and you let yourself relax a little. But something blares in your mind: Oscar. You’re not sure why you’re so hung up on the fact he didn’t make it, on who he is at all, but you can’t shake the feeling that he’s almost… important. Still, by the time you’ve made it to the art room, that’s long forgotten.

Once you make it back to the main foyer, dutifully following the three children around with the desperation of a new kid, you hear the teacher from the morning.

Her voice is quiet, but her tone is serious, and she’s muttering about impressions and tardiness. 

The boy on the receiving end of the lecture looks about your age, with floppy brown hair and bunny-like teeth. He's gripping his orange backpack and shuffling his feet, and you wonder if he might cry if she raises her voice even just a little. When he looks up from the floor, his eyes shift from her stern face to your curious one, and for a second, the world seems to inhale. And then you’re dragged into an overly colourful classroom, and you wonder if you made it all up. You don’t see him again, as the final bell rings, and you reach your mother’s open arms.

“Still don’t wanna come here? You look like you had fun!” she says cheerfully, and for a second, you think about when the World Stopped. And then you stop thinking about it, fold your arms, and shake your determined head.

The second time you almost meet Oscar Piastri is at a funfair. The dodgems are gleaming, playing some obnoxious music, and you can feel Jasper tugging at your arm relentlessly.

“Come oooooon. I want to go.” he whines, yanking you into the queue. 

You don’t like dodgems. Primitive, insane, and overly painful. And way too expensive.

But Jasper is desperate, with a disgusting grin on his face. You’d always found him to be slightly too energetic for a nine year old. Still, apparently maturity was a myth for many boys at school, and they seemed to take the foundational skills of maths as rather unimportant. 

So you oblige, chucking him one of your last tokens, and you pile into the arena, darting towards an open car.  As you reach an orange one, the number #81 painted on it, you feel something that isn’t the plastic of the seat beneath your hand.

You look up quickly, meeting brown eyes.

The boy looks oddly familiar, and you just can’t quite place it, until the sounds of shrieking children and blasting music fades into something quieter than the hammering of your heartbeat. He glances down, at your hand on his, and his ears turn a vicious shade of pink. Still, he doesn’t shift away, and neither do you, and you stand like that for what feels like an eternity and less than a second. You begin to splutter out something between an apology and an accusation, his name somewhere hidden in the fog of your brain, but he’s gone by the time you manage to remember it started with an O.

The third time you almost meet Oscar Piastri will also be the last, or so you think. Marty is shimmying into various different skirts in front of your mirror, while you offer short comments about how she ‘looks good in anything’ and she really ought to ‘stop stressing.’ 

“Who’s this party even for, anyway. Who’s the pastry kid?” you ask, lying down on your messy bed.

“Piastri,” she corrects, with a hidden laugh, “and it’s a goodbye party. He’s off to England, to drive, or something. I don’t actually know him.”

“England? At fifteen? Lucky bastard.” you complain, with a disgruntled scoff.

“What, would you move if you could now? Wouldn’t you miss us all terribly?” she asks, catching your eye in the mirror, and you shrug.

“Terribly, sure. But worth it. I’m going there, one day.” Marty pauses. “Are you going to come back?”

“I don’t know.”

You both fall quiet, before you realise there’s no point in thinking about it too deeply. So instead, you hit play on your speaker, and wait for her to finish getting ready.

It’s busy, when you arrive at the house. You don’t know who’s house it really is, or who the people piling out the door are, but Marty's hand in yours keeps you calm.

“We can find Jasper and the others, okay? C’mon.”

She drags you through crowds and awkward people shuffling to the blaring house music, before you see familiar faces sprawled on the couch. 

As you sit down, you scan the sofa, and in one inhale, it blurs.

He gives you a flicker of a smile, and his name finally forms in your whirling head.

“Everyone, this is-” 

“Oscar.” you whisper, cutting off Jasper’s introduction.

“You know each other?"

You nor Oscar reply, because you’re not sure what the right answer is. How to explain whatever’s going on.

It’s soon forgotten, and then Marty is leading you away. You try not to think about how this is probably the last time you’ll ever see him. He tries to understand why he feels such a sharp sting in his stomach, and a sudden urge to chase after you.

It’s only when the charm on your necklace gleams at him, a small silver ‘81’, that he feels a deep regret as you disappear into the evening.

⛐✦

8:01. The number blurs as you unlock your phone, clicking off your alarm. With a desperate effort, you’re up, and the day begins. Clara is already fiddling in the bathroom, her music quietly waking you up, as you stumble towards the sink.

“G’morning.” she chirps, dabbing at her concealer, and you give her a tired smile.

“Well, if it isn’t my best friend!” exclaims Lando, his voice slightly distorted by his evidently bad wifi.

“Lando.” you mutter, rubbing your face, and he laughs. 

Lando and Clara had been a thing for a while now. Never quite official, but something more unspoken hummed between them both. It was hard, you appreciated that. Clara was never one to reach for fame, and it was somewhat impossible to be seen with Lando and not have it rub off on you. So, she didn’t go to races, and they existed hidden in summer breaks and glitchy facetimes.

You’re not sure why they keep going. How they’re surviving. But you don’t judge, don’t comment, just stare at their lovesick eyes and question the eventuality of it all.

Once he hangs up, the noise increasing behind him, she looks disappointed for a second, and then it’s gone.

She passes you the toothpaste wordlessly, and you search her eyes for something, but instead you look at her hands. And there, as she flexes her knuckles, is something resembling a ‘4’.

“When d’you get a tattoo?” you ask, gesturing to her fist, and she frowns.

“I don’t have one?”

She scans her hand, giving you a confused shrug.

“Can you not, like, see it? That is a four, is it not?”

She stares at you now, her voice faltering a little.

“What did you say?”

“A four.” you repeat. “Y’know, like Lando’s number? I know you’re a 444 person, so-” you begin, but her widening eyes make you fall silent. 

When you look again, it’s gone.

“I don't, I don't know what you’re talking about. See? Nothing there.”

You swallow, rubbing your eyes again, and wonder what you just saw.

81 hangs over Oscar’s head as he sits on the concrete step, trying to block out the clamour of noise from the paddock.

“Yeah, love you too. Bye.”

Lando shuts off his phone and sits beside him, extending a palm. Oscar takes it gladly, but he notices the stretch of his number on his thumb.

“I like that.” Oscar states, nodding towards the ‘4’ on his finger, and Lando frowns.

“Like what?”

“The four, up the side of your thumb. It’s cool. Maybe I should match.”

Lando retracts his hand and analyses his thumb carefully.

“I know you’re obsessed with me, mate, but you’re seeing my number now. Nothing there.”

It’s ironic, Lando thinks, considering he spent the last year trying to convince himself he wasn’t going insane when he saw his number everywhere. Still, he waits for Oscar to react, and he just blinks.

“Oh. Right. I’m tired.”

Once Clara closes the door behind her, you descend to your laptop. It blinks back at you, 81%, and that’s what cements it for you.

‘What does it mean when I see the same number a lot and start seeing tattoos of other peoples lucky number?’

The initial results are unhelpful- number tattoos inspiration, maths answers, what different numbers mean, and so on. Until you see a title that catches your eye- ‘I can’t stop seeing the number 47 everywhere I go, what’s going on?

With a determined click, you read the responses. People agreeing, people unsure. And then, an answer.

‘Not sure how helpful this is, but these are some historical accounts of the same things happening. People called it the ‘soulmate way’ back then. Not really a thing anymore, but maybe that’s what you’re experiencing?’

You click onto the link in the answer, and you’re engulfed by a rather wordy account of exactly what you’re going through. The constant appearance of the same number, some strange understanding linked to it, and feeling a bit overwhelmed.

The second page goes into detail into the ‘apparitions’ of numbers. When someone is running out of time to find their soulmate, they start seeing marks on other people, of their number, as if to entice you to try and find your ow- 

When someone is running out of time?

Your next search is more frantic. ‘Can you run out of time to find your soulmate?’

Another article pops up, confirming your fear.

‘Yes. Once a person starts seeing their number, they have a finite time to find the person who sees the same number. They will know when they’ve found them, as there is often a feeling of ‘the world stopping’, or ‘time slowing down.’. They will also begin to see those who have found their soulmates with identical markings, to try and keep them believing a little longer, and keep the number alive. Some people see their number from birth, other in old age. It can be terribly unfair. Once it becomes noticeable, overwhelmingly so, then you know you do not have long left. If you are to meet your soulmate after this subsides, you will be unaware of who they are.’

The world stopping. It’s a familiar feeling.

You wonder if that boy with the orange backpack, whose name you’ve forgotten once again, was your soulmate. And now, he was in England somewhere, and you’d lose him without ever having him at all.

The next few weeks are hell for Oscar. Every time he opens his phone, he sees it. 81 unread emails, 81k likes, 81 songs on his playlist. His fruit, 81g. His fucking McDonalds order. Still, he ignores it. He smiles at the fans, posts the stupid videos, and focuses on the championship. When Lando asks him what’s up, he doesn’t answer. Just a shrug, another complaint of tiredness, and then it’s free practice. 0.81 seconds between him and Lando, naturally. And so, it becomes part of life, but he remains as unbothered as he can be. That’s until he starts dreaming about you.

It happens for the first time in his driver’s room, after an exhausting qualifying. As soon as his eyes close, he sees it. Kindergarten.

The corridors are exactly as he remembers them; lined with crappy art working and half open backpacks. But it’s oddly silent, only the muffled shouts of impatient children behind closed doors. With a mortifying step, he releases he’s late, and that classic childish terror hits him square in the chest. It drags, time slows, and his breaths grow heavy. It’s the closest thing to a nightmare he’s had in a while, and he just can't figure out why he’s dreaming of this right now. He also doesn’t understand why he’s so aware he’s asleep, but then he hears an awkward cough. 

And it's you, although he doesn’t really know who you are. And he’s no longer at school, he’s stood by that scuffed dodgems car. That crawling heat he’d felt when your hand had pressed on his comes back instantly, and he wants to pull his arm away, but he can’t. When he looks up at you, you’re not the nine year old he’d met that night. Instead, you look older. As he assumes you might look now.

“Oscar.”The background shifts to that leaving party now, your necklace gleaming at him once again.

“Oscar?”

You’re speaking, and it sounds different from how he remembers you saying his name.

“Yeah?”

He doesn’t know why he’s replying. How he’s replying.

“What the fuck is going on?”

He straightens. 

“Are you talking to me?”

You look around the room, at the blurred faces and the hum of music.

“Can we even talk to anyone else? They don’t have, like, faces.” you whisper, a slow look of horror painting your face.

Oscar wants to wake up. He doesn’t understand what’s going on, but seeing your matured face, and knowing you without really knowing you at all is abrasive in a way he wasn’t expecting.

“It is Oscar, right? That’s your name?”

He nods, his mouth drying.

“This isn’t real.”

You snort. “Nice one, genius. Obviously we’re not back at a house party from nine years ago.”

He frowns, and then Lando’s voice rings out.

“Oscar, mate? It’s time.”

You scrunch your face up in disdain.

“Is that Lando? Why can’t I escape that guy?”

Light is pouring into the room now, as his eyes begin to open begrudgingly. Before he can ask you how you know Lando, he’s awake.

“Coming,” he croaks, trying to ignore the ache in his chest.

⛐✦

“Who’s Oscar?”

Clara blinks at you curiously, with a wicked grin. 

“Who?”

“Oscar.” she repeats, with a determined eye roll.

You shrug. “I don’t know an Oscar.”

She raises an eyebrow.

“Mate, you called his name last night. While you were sleeping.”

You give her a mortified look.

“Are you serious?”

“Deadly.”

You hide your face in your hands, bringing your knees to your chest.

“That’s so embarrassing. I genuinely don’t even know an Oscar!” “You seriously don’t know him? What were you dreaming about?”

“I can’t remember.” you mumble, desperately trying to think, but nothing comes to mind.

She explodes into an outrageous fit of giggles, and you drop your head further into your knees.

“Stop, s’is not funny.” you groan, but she keeps cackling, giving your shoulders an affectionate shake.

“You really need to go talk to some more people. Or go find this Oscar guy.” she suggests, and you scowl.

“Don’t mention this. Ever again.”

Oscar doesn’t dream that night. Or the night after. He barely even sleeps. Something keeps him up, keeps him thinking. Like he’s lost something, or something’s missing. It’s the third restless night, when his eyes finally close, that he sees you again.

“I think I’ve figured it out.” you nod wisely.

“Where are you? We?” he asks, gesturing to the sofa you’re crouched on, and the bustling blank people around you.

“I was thinking about work before I fell asleep. This is where I eat lunch.” you explain casually, and he blinks.

It suddenly occurs to him that he wants to know everything about you.

“What do you do for work?”

You pause, and give him a sideways glance. He’s gripping the armchair he’s sitting in rather tightly, and it’s so bizarre that he can feel the fabric beneath him.

Your voice is muffled when you reply.

“I couldn’t understand that.”

It’s the same jumbled sound when you try again. 

He stares at you, exasperated. 

“I’m an F1 driver.” 

As he speaks, he sounds just as distorted as you.

“Personal stuff. I don’t think we can actually tell each other anything.” you suggest, and he frowns.

“Why?”

You shrug. “So we actually have to find each other, I don’t know? I don’t think we remember this when we wake up, either.”

You wait, to see if he says anything. When he stays silent, you continue.

“I figure it’s about dreaming at the same time. So, if we’re both asleep, then we show up. I mean, I obviously don’t have much data to go off. But it makes sense. Like, I’m assuming you’ve just fallen asleep, ‘cause you’ve ended up in my office now.”

Oscar pauses to think.

“So, if I fall asleep first, you’ll end up with me, in whatever I’m dreaming of?”

“That’s my current guess, yeah. I wish I could remember this, so I can google it later.” 

He laughs. “D’you really think google can help you here?”

“It helped me before. With seeing the number, and everything. And Clara’s tattoo.”

“You see it too? 81?”

“Yeah. Fuckin’ everywhere. It’s killing me.”

“What does it mean?”

You give him an awkward stare. 

“Apparently, that we’re soulmates. Interlinked and all that.”

He swallows, and you both sit with it for a minute. Then Clara becomes your interruption, shouting about dinner, and the room disappears.

As Oscar’s timezones change with every other week, your meetings seem to shift into things a little more desperate. You test what your subconscious and the fates choose to blur.

You learn he has three sisters, but he can’t say their names. He learns that you cried for a week when your cat died, and that he was named after a Star Wars character, but you can’t say who.

You make fun of him for his house music- he plays it as he falls asleep in the hope it’s still playing when you see each other, so he can convince you it’s worth listening to.

It turns out you have a much stronger imagination than he does, so you often hope you fall asleep first. Because you can weld the dreamscapes into anything you want. When you tell him you’ve always wanted a conversation pit, you can make one appear.

When he tries to show you his favourite model of car, you end up in some badly imagined saleshouse, with deformed buggies and odd workers in plastic suits.

You do not mention the ‘soulmates’ idea again, but it settles between you like a mantra, a truth. You agree with it, he strives for it, and you talk of when you’ll see each other, one day.

It turns into something a little more affectionate, and it feels just as real as if he wasn’t hidden somewhere else in the world. When you brush his arm on false walks through fake fields and tours of your childhood town, comparing your favourite parks, it feels true.

Maybe even a little like love, which is such a ridiculous thing to admit that you keep it to yourself.

He pieces it together, that Clara is your best friend, and she’s Lando’s girlfriend. He curses himself that he can’t just find you through them the next morning, because he’ll forget it all.

You live whole lifetimes together, in your heads. Dreams have no concept of time. Sometimes, they’re years. Sometimes, they feel like less than an hour.

On some days, when you’ve fallen asleep with your head in a book, that’s where you end up.

On this particular occasion, the two main characters are getting married, but it seems that it’s morphed a little. You’re the one with the ring on your finger.                                                                                                   

“Who got you that?” he asks, gesturing to the rock, and you laugh.

“Hi, Osc. Didn’t think I’d see you tonight. You haven’t been around for a while, or at least it feels like that. Guess you’re somewhere far away.”

Oscar nods, but his eyes tear around the setting. It’s an extravagant barn, with an arch at the end of the aisle, and an officiant with some large headgear. The guests on the benches are clearly well dressed, but he can’t make out who they are. Except, he recognises a man standing up by the front of the room.

“That’s Lando.” he mutters, pointing towards him, and he’s right. And stood beside him is a girl he swears he knows, in a pale pink dress, matching her hair.

“And Clara.”

He runs his hands through his hair inquisitively. 

“Why can we see them? They’re not blurred. And that’s my sister. How did you-” he calls, rushing towards Edie who’s clapping in the front row.

“This isn’t my dream anymore. I wasn’t the one getting married, before you showed up. And I sure as hell didn’t make up your sister, so, it’s our dream, I guess.”

That hits him, so hard, he almost doubles over. He can see them now, his family materialising. The lull of the piano, the grin on Lando’s face. You. He sees you.

‘It’s our dream.’ And he realises it’s your wedding. Your fucking wedding, and it’s not even real, and when he wakes up, his chest will ache as always.

“This is, I mean, it’s a lot.”

“It’s not real, Oscar.”

There’s a level of defeat in your tone, and it’s bitter.

“But it feels even more real this time. I can see them. I can hear them.”

“I think we’re running out of time. They’re getting desperate.”

He looks to the guests, bewildered.

“The fates, I mean. The universe, I don’t know. We’re running out of time.”

“What are you saying?”

“They’re giving up on us. That’s why we can see everything clearer. My cat’s name was Luke.”

He shakes his head in denial. “Or maybe we’re getting closer, and it’s stronger, and we’re beating them.”

“Oscar.” your voice breaks a little, like you’ve accepted it. That you’ll never make it, and that you’ll forget him permanently, not just when the sun rises.

He doesn’t want to accept it, doesn’t want to admit you might be right. So he soaks up the sight of you desperately nonetheless, until it burns his eyes and he doesn’t care about the rules of this stupid ordeal. He will wake up, and remember how you look right now, how you are, and that will be enough.

“We can get married, in our heads, and that can be it. And then this will never have happened, and all of it will stop.”

“You mean like, seeing the number everywhere? You, haunting me? It all goes?” he asks carefully, and you purse your lips.

“I guess so. You don’t need to sound so glad.”

“I’m not glad. I’m annoyed. Seething, if anything. It’s bullshit.”

“Maybe.”

He blinks.

"Have you been seeing it less too? Like, is it just back to being more like a lucky number now?"

You give him a pained smile.

"I forgot to put my necklace on this morning, because I didn't see the charm on it. For the first time. Since I got it at thirteen."

He knows what you mean by seeing. it's more like a feeling. A consuming pull towards the number, towards him.

"We can't just, I don't know. Give up. I can't lose you." he exclaims, and it feels a little like his heart is surrendering.

"Did you ever really have me anyway? Maybe it's okay. Once we forget, it will be easier. It won't hurt for long."

What he can't bring himself to admit is that he wants it to hurt, wants to feel like he's a little insane, because he knows you're going insane with him too. The idea of you, real or not, is better than nothing at all.

"We can find our way back." you promise, but the hope in your voice almost sounds fake.

"Wait-"

⛐✦

A few weeks later, Oscar arrives rather dishevelled at the airport the next morning. There’s a dull throb in the back of his head, and a heavy sadness weighing on his chest, but he can’t explain it. He’d been feeling that for a while now; he’d woken up with a rather sudden sadness. His ticket to Monaco rests in his hands, as he goes to check in. The lists of flights flash on the board, as he scans for his own. But one catches his eye. It doesn’t jump out at him, as it usually does. He has to read it twice before he lingers on the #81 at the end. There’s something relieving in the way it doesn’t haunt him anymore, but it still feels deeply important. And there’s a small tug at his heart, pulling him to the desk. He goes to show his boarding pass, but instead, he speaks.

When he goes to drop his baggage, he is heading far away from Monaco, sandwiched on a random middle seat between two strangers, on a whim that he hopes might bring him to you. Obviously, he doesn’t know that in truth, but rather his soul is screaming that at him, and he is unaware. He instead just questions his own sanity, and that is the end of the matter.

There’s a desperation to get to work in the air the next morning. You’ve overslept, ever so slightly, and your presentation is uncomfortably soon. As you arrive at the station, you search the timeboard for an inkling of which train to get on, but your regular isn’t appearing.

Underneath it, though, is a train you don’t recognise. It’s a bit slower than you’d like, since it stops at the airport, but you’d still get there in time. It’s meant to come in a couple minutes, at 8:10, so you wait dutifully on a bench, taking a long sip from your flask.

It’s ironic, you think, when you see the number flashing at the end of the train on the screen. You almost forget how important #81 had once been to you, until your fingers flick to your neck. You’re not sure why you wore it today- you hadn’t worn it in about a month. It’s a blurry memory, how desperate you’d been. How you’d believed in that soulmate nonsense, how you’d flicked between Lando and Clara in photos and wondered if there was some invisible tie between them.

And then they’d argued, and you’d stopped marvelling at your 81 new messages, and it had all been forgotten. Even the boy in the orange backpack that had made The World Stop feels like a myth.

Oscar can barely feel his legs when he steps out from the plane, the pins and needles a searing flash of white. He doesn’t quite understand why he’s ended up back here, back home. He hasn’t even called his mum, and let her know he’s back in Australia. He’s meant to be resting, after a triple header. And yet, he still doesn’t reach for his phone. His headphones stay jammed in his ears, a drumbeat he used to listen to when trying to fall asleep, although he can’t really remember why. He waits, for his luggage to arrive, scouring the moving belt. But his half orange suitcase never comes, as the people beside him thin out.

“Shit.” he mutters curses under his breath, begrudgingly heading to lost property. There, half opened, is his suitcase, unfolded laundry spilling out. 

“Mate, this yours? Someone took it earlier and realised they got the wrong one.” 

Oscar nods quickly, gathering is things and shoving them back into the luggage, before hauling it ridiculously fast towards the train station. He’d wasted a solid twenty minutes there, and for some reason, that filled him with a ridiculous sense of dread. He wasn’t particularly sure why, considering he didn’t even know where he was going. Still, as he stumbles to the platform, yawning, something tugs at him to get whichever train came next. 

He almost laughs at the board, at the code. 081. It feels much more like a joke now, like an elaborate, overly convenient game of ‘where’s wally’, which he finds a way to win every time. So as it arrives, he gets on and collapses onto the first vacant seat. He praises the universe for delaying it, because he would've missed it, and the next one wasn't for a while.

As he closes his eyes, for a moment of respite, you pop into his head. Not a dream, just an image. A singular shot, mid laugh, feet tucked behind you on a couch he somehow recognises. And then there’s a pang in his stomach, and he realises he misses you. Even though he’s certain you’ve never really met. You look vaguely like a girl he’d seen once-

Each memory swirls in his head like soft bullets, each blow as beautiful as they are painful. He can’t remember where they’re coming from, what they mean, but he sees them all. Conversations down roads he doesn’t know. Descriptions of restaurants he’s tried on different race weekends, and your face lighting up at the sound of them. A room you had a spelling bee competition in once, but he didn’t see you because Hattie was in a more junior category. Then, you’re both older. He has a beard. You’re walking somewhere, with a determination to not look back, to keep pushing forward. Then you’re dancing, to that same song he was playing just a minute ago. It clicks into place, like some ridiculous, made up jigsaw, as he watches lifetimes pass at the same speed of the carriage, the light flickering across his confused face in golden shards.

He realises now why his flight has taken him here. Why he's on this train. Because somewhere further down, in a carriage, you’re waiting. 

You don’t take the 8:10, because it’s delayed. The red writing on the screen taunts you, testing the pulling at your chest versus the logic in your brain. You let the logic win out. With heavy steps, you sprint to the other platform, and get the train that’s actually there. It feels like a betrayal as you sit down, as the doors close, as it hums to life. But you don’t know who you’ve just betrayed. 

The guy beside you has one earphone in, the other dangling by his neck. The beats of the song are familiar, like you ought to know it. It’s not really your kind of music, too blaring and not melodic enough. But this particular track feels familiar, like you should recognise the drum pattern. With an awkward inhale, you tap him on the shoulder. 

“Sorry, I hate to bother you, but what’s that song called?”

The boy shrugs, flashing his phone screen at you. He’s 1:21 in, to a song with a vaguely familiar title. You take out your own headphones and play it carefully, desperately searching for an answer as to why anyone even puts up with this abomination of a music genre. And then, you hear someone humming along, and your own laugh. 

“How can you even hum house music? It barely has a tune. You could at least be a man and beatbox it for me.” 

It’s your voice, clear as day, ringing in your head.

“I’m hopeless at beatboxing. One of these days, I’ll figure out how to play some music here. I don’t understand how you’re so good at it.”

The person replying has a muted accent, and you can’t quite tell if he’s smiling or not, but it’s so warm that you can barely feel the chill of the morning anymore.

You hear more snippets of your conversation now, easily banter. And then they morph into more meaningful things. Things you promised you’d never tell anyone. And you hear him talking back, mumbles of things he’s normally too shy to say.

“It’s only me, Oscar.”

And with that, you remember. You remember all of it, you hear it all. Telling him you’re running out of time. All those dreams you couldn’t recall. The obsession, the insanity, the hesitancy to tell anyone. Telling him that you’ll forget it all. 

Does he think you have forgotten about him?

‘Oscar, do you think I have forgotten about you?’

The song has ended a long time ago. You almost expect a response in the silence, but he does not whisper back to you. The only sound is the squeal of the brakes, and the train lurching forward. You stand up rather suddenly, throwing yourself towards the door, pressing the button rapidly. 

He gets up, as the train shuttles along. He’s in the first carriage. He doesn’t know where you are, or when you’re getting off, so he moves with purpose. He checks every seat, hopeful with every turn of a head. You’re not in the second, nor the third. The fourth is practically empty, and the fifth is ridiculously packed, but you’re not there either. As he reaches the eighth door, his hope dwindles, until it’s gone. There’s no one there, except for a rather elderly woman, absent mindedly reading a book.

He clings to the pole by the door, willing himself to turn around, or to sit, but he can’t. He just keeps looking, as if you might materialise.

“It’s rude to stare, boy.” the lady croaks, glaring at him through her purple glasses. He gives her a sheepish smile and ducks his head, preparing himself to shuffle through the rows of bodies again.

“You can sit here, if you need to. You won’t disturb me.”

And so, he does. He sits on the row beside her, trying to ignore the slight welling of his eyes and the way the exhaustion and disappointment has seeped into his very bones. 

“She got away?” the woman asks, rather suddenly, and Oscar startles.

“Sorry?”

“The look in your eyes.”

He shakes his head, almost giving her an incredulous laugh.

“It wasn’t ever real anyway. I’m just tired.”

“Then why are you staring at the door like you’re expecting to see her get on? Or, you’ll get off, and she’ll be there?”

Oscar hadn’t even realised he was staring so desperately at the door. It’s rather embarrassing, really. It’s then that the train jolts, and with a whistle, the very same door opens.

He’s not entirely sure why, or what takes over him, but he gets up. With a muffled ‘goodbye’, he steps onto the platform, the suitcase narrowly missing the step. It’s almost eerie, how quiet it is. The wind, and the departure of the train, are the only things he can hear. And then, the hammering of his heart, when he looks up. 

Because standing there anxiously, necklace gleaming at him, is you.

And the world stops.

“Come to Belgium with me.” 

“I would love to, but I literally can’t,” you sighed softly, finally looking up from your laptop screen. 

Oscar was stretched out across your couch, one arm tucked behind his head, completely at ease—like your apartment had quietly stopped being somewhere he visited and had simply become somewhere he existed. 

The only reason you were sitting at the dining table instead of hiding away in your well-equipped home office was him. You'd migrated out without really thinking about it, laptop open in front of you, coffee slowly going cold beside it. You'd told yourself it was for the natural light. It was not for the natural light.

Half working. Half simply existing in the same room as him.

"I'm already behind on my tasks," you added more quietly, another email sliding into your inbox before you'd even finished reading the last one. Another issue. Another thing not working the way it was supposed to for one of your clients.

Your shoulders dropped slightly as you read it, the tension settling back in almost instantly—familiar, automatic. The particular brand of tired that came not from too little sleep but from too many things requiring your brain at the same time.

Oscar didn’t speak right away. 

Didn't tell you to ignore it. 

Didn't tell you to relax, which you appreciated, because the fastest way to make someone stop relaxing was to instruct them to relax.

He just watched you. Steady. Present. Like he was trying to understand what weighed on you without making you explain it. 

“I know,” he said eventually. Quiet. Simple. No pressure in it. 

That was the thing about him. He rarely tried to argue you out of your reality. He just stepped into it with you. 

You let out a small breath, fingers hovering over your keyboard without actually typing anything. 

"It's just this new client…" you started slowly, eyes still on the screen, half-reading, half-talking. "As soon as this settles, I'll stop feeling like I'm drowning and maybe upgrade to... barely surviving."

That earned the smallest laugh from the couch. 

"I think I need another two weeks," you guessed, eyes moving across your project timeline instead. Campaign rollout. Product launch. Brand approvals. Content calendars. 

It all blurred together eventually. 

Oscar thought for a moment. 

You went back to work. 

Your inbox kept refreshing like it had its own agenda. One client wanting luxury but understated but also viral, another asking for timeless branding with TikTok relevance, which in your professional opinion was basically asking for a unicorn with a LinkedIn account. 

You loved your job, and you were good at it—fast, precise, efficient. But onboarding a client this large always meant weeks of deep water. Luxury consulting came with impossible expectations, and when a client specifically requested you, it was flattering—but a responsibility that didn't ease until everything was running smoothly. 

And with this one, it had been weeks already. 

The Austrian and British GPs hadn't helped either. You'd known that even before they started. You'd gone anyway.

Of course you had.

“Then a summer vacation together.” 

His voice suddenly sounded much closer than before. 

Before you even looked up, you felt him. The warmth of him crossing the room. A familiar hand brushing lightly over your shoulder as he leaned down to press an absentminded kiss against your cheek — the kind that wasn't asking for anything, just leaving something behind.

Your eyes closed for half a second on instinct.

Then he pulled out the chair beside yours. The metal legs scraped softly across the floor as he sat down, close enough that your knees almost brushed. Close enough that his arm nearly touched yours, close enough that if he leaned even slightly, he could read your screen.

Not that it would mean anything to him. 

You blinked, slightly caught off guard by the proximity. By how easily he filled the space next to you, like he'd calculated exactly how much room to take up and chosen all of it.

“Okay,” you nodded slowly. 

“But like a proper vacation,” he said. 

You turned your head a little toward him. 

“Define proper.” 

His mouth curved faintly, like he’d already thought about this more than he was admitting. 

“Two weeks,” he said. “Just you and me. No work. No phones. No schedules.” 

A beat. 

"No one asking me about tyre degradation." 

The corner of your mouth twitched. 

"And no one emailing you because somebody suddenly decided beige is no longer the right shade of beige."

You laughed. Actually laughed. The sound escaped before you could stop it — easy and sudden, the kind that loosened something in your chest you hadn't realized was wound tight.

Oscar smiled immediately. Like that was all he'd been working toward for the last twenty minutes.

"There she is," he murmured, looking almost unfairly pleased with himself.

"That sounds illegal," you said, still smiling.

“It should be,” he replied, completely serious. 

That earned a real smile from you this time. 

You leaned back slightly in your chair, finally letting your hands fall away from the keyboard. 

“No phones at all?” you asked, narrowing your eyes slightly. “That’s not realistic.” 

Oscar tilted his head. 

"You say that like you're addicted to your phone."

"I am not—"

He raised a brow.

You stopped mid-sentence.

A pause during which you made several faces that did not help your case.

"…okay, I am mildly dependent on communication for survival, yes."

"Exactly," he said, satisfied in the way only someone who had been right and could prove it was ever satisfied.

You shook your head, but there was no real resistance in it anymore. 

“And where would we even go?” you asked. 

Oscar didn’t answer immediately. 

His gaze dropped briefly to your laptop, then back to you. 

“Somewhere quiet,” he said. “Where no one needs anything from you.” 

That landed differently. Not heavy—just soft. Like something inside your chest quietly loosened. 

You looked at him for a moment. Actually looked at him.

“You’re really serious about this,” you said quietly. 

Oscar nodded once. 

"Yeah."

No performance. No persuasion. Just certainty — calm and complete, like he'd already decided and was simply waiting for you to arrive at the same place.

You exhaled slowly, turning back toward your screen. But not really seeing it anymore.

Two weeks. No work. No demands. No client who considered a slightly off-shade beige a five-alarm emergency. Just life, uninterrupted. Just you, uninterrupted.

It sounded impossible.

Which meant, in a way, it also sounded necessary.

"I can't just disappear for two weeks," you said automatically.

“Yes you can,” Oscar replied simply. 

You glanced at him. 

He was watching you like this wasn’t a debate he was trying to win. Like it had already been decided in his head—you just hadn't caught up yet. 

“You’re looking at me like I’ve already agreed,” you muttered. 

“Have you?” he asked. 

You huffed a small laugh. 

“I haven’t even checked my calendar.” 

"Then check." He gestured toward the laptop with the calm authority of someone who had done the math and already knew the answer.

You rolled your eyes and reached for your laptop anyway — because that was easier than admitting he was right — and Oscar leaned back slightly in his chair, content to watch you now instead of the screen. Patient in the particular way he was patient. Not restless. Not waiting for you to hurry. Just there.

You opened your calendar. 

Scrolled. 

Paused. 

Two weeks right now while on-boarding a new client was insane. Logistically messy. Work-wise irresponsible. 

And yet— 

Nothing was actually on those exact dates that couldn't be moved.

That realization irritated you more than it should have. You'd been so prepared to have a very reasonable objection.

You glanced sideways at him.

He looked entirely too pleased for someone who hadn't said a single word since you started scrolling. He had the specific expression of a man who had done absolutely nothing and was somehow still winning.

“You planned this already,” you accused lightly. 

“I suggested it,” he corrected. 

“You suggested it with intent.” 

“I always have intent.” 

"That's either romantic or alarming."

"Can't it be both?"

That made you snort.

You closed the laptop halfway, exhaling.

"You're dangerous," you said.

"Because I want to take you on holiday?" he asked, eyebrows lifting like the concept was entirely innocent.

"Because you make it sound reasonable."

Oscar smiled faintly, then reached out, gently taking your hand off the table. His fingers slid between yours easily, familiar now in a way that still sometimes surprised you. 

He shrugged, like it was the simplest thing in the world. 

"I just want time with you." he said quietly. 

Just that.

The joke disappeared from the room, replaced by something quieter and harder to deflect. No punchline coming. No follow-up. Just the truth of it, sitting there between you.

You looked down at your joined hands for a moment.

Your thumb brushed against his.

Somewhere on the screen beside you, another email arrived. 

Another problem. 

Another deadline. 

Another thing waiting to be solved. 

And for the first time in weeks, you found yourself not caring quite as much. 

Oscar watched you patiently. No pressure. No expectation. Just waiting — and somehow that was more persuasive than any argument he could have made.

Somewhere in the back of your mind, practical objections immediately began lining up. Work. Clients. Responsibilities. Every reason to say later. 

But hadn't you spent enough years doing that already? 

Waiting until things were calmer. Easier. Waiting until you'd earned rest. Waiting until you'd earned happiness. 

Oscar squeezed your hand once.

Warm. Familiar. Real.

And before you could talk yourself out of it—

"Okay."

The word left your mouth so easily it almost surprised you. 

Oscar blinked. 

"Okay?" 

You nodded once, a smile slowly appearing despite yourself. 

"Okay."

For a second, he just stared. Then he broke into such an immediate, boyish grin that you actually laughed — the kind of grin that had nothing composed about it, that he absolutely would have tried to control if he'd had any warning.

"Don't look so shocked."

"I'm not shocked."

"Oscar."

"I'm a little shocked."

"Rude."

"You usually require at least three business days and a risk assessment."

"That's called being responsible."

"That's called opening Excel before making a personal decision." 

"Excuse you. I have never done that." 

Oscar looked at you with an expression that said, very clearly and without a single word: I have watched you do exactly that.

Before you could mount a defense — which would have been compelling and well-structured, for the record — his hand settled at your waist.

You narrowed your eyes immediately.

"Oscar—"

Too late.

With an ease that suggested he had been planning this since approximately the moment he sat down, he stood from his chair and pulled you with him. A surprised laugh escaped you as your hands landed automatically on his shoulders, and then he dropped back into the chair a second later — this time with you securely in his lap.

Your protest dissolved somewhere between the standing and the sitting.

Mostly because it was comfortable. Unreasonably comfortable. And because Oscar's arms settled around your waist like they were designed for exactly this purpose, which, increasingly, you suspected they were.

"There," he said, satisfied.

"That's not a solution."

"It is for me."

"I was in the middle of—"

"Being stressed," he supplied helpfully.

"Working."

"Both of those things, yes."

You shook your head, but the smile wouldn't leave. It had made itself at home on your face without asking permission, which was very on-brand for the situation.

The laptop sat forgotten on the table. Your inbox continued collecting problems somewhere behind you, each one patiently waiting its turn. For once, neither of you paid it any attention.

Oscar rested his chin against your shoulder. Then he turned his head slightly and pressed a soft kiss against your temple — not dramatic, not performed. Just warm lips against your skin, affection so natural it felt almost unconscious. The kind of thing you didn't brace for. The kind of thing that landed before your defenses could catch up.

Then another.

Lingering a fraction longer this time.

You felt his smile there.

"Thank you," he murmured.

Your chest did something complicated and quiet.

"For agreeing?"

"Mhm."

You turned your head slightly, finding him already looking at you. 

The excitement was still there. 

Not loud. Not childish. Just genuine. Like the thought of two uninterrupted weeks with you was simply enough. No condition attached. No bigger reason needed.

A simple thing.

A dangerous thing.

The kind of thing you still weren't entirely used to — someone being this straightforwardly, unhurriedly happy because of you.

Your fingers slid into the hair at the back of his neck.

"You know," you said softly, "most people would be excited about Belgium."

"I am excited about Belgium," he said.

A beat. 

“I’m more excited about the vacation.” 

You laughed quietly. “That’s objectively the wrong answer.” 

“I stand by it.” 

His arms tightened briefly around your waist, pulling you a little closer. 

Oscar didn't say anything else. 

He didn't need to. 

His chin settled against your shoulder again, his breathing evening out little by little as the excitement gave way to something quieter. 

Home.

Not a place.

Just this.

Just you.

For someone who spent most of his year living out of suitcases and hotel rooms, maybe that was why two weeks mattered so much. Not because of where you'd go or what you'd see. But because he'd get to wake up beside you every morning, and go to sleep knowing you'd still be there, and have nothing else that needed his attention in between.

And for a moment — surrounded by unanswered emails and half-finished tasks and every responsibility that would still be waiting for you later — you let yourself lean into him completely.

Not planning.

Not calculating.

Not preparing for what came next.

Just staying exactly where you were.

And judging by the way Oscar immediately settled his cheek against your shoulder like he had nowhere else to be and no intention of being anywhere else, he seemed perfectly content with that outcome too.

❁✿❀❁✿❀ 

And Oscar truly was excited for Belgium. 

With good reason. 

Notification after notification lit up your phone over the course of the weekend. 

P1 in FP1. 

Then again in FP2. 

FP3 wasn't any different. 

Every session seemed to fall into place almost effortlessly — the McLaren looking planted through Eau Rouge, Oscar somehow finding another few hundredths each time it mattered, like the car had simply decided to agree with him this weekend and was doing its absolute best to cooperate.

By Saturday afternoon your phone barely stopped vibrating, and your eyes stayed glued to the TV screen far more than your project timeline appreciated.

POLE POSITION. 

A small, helpless laugh escaped you. 

“Of course he’s on pole,” you muttered under your breath, shaking your head as you tried—unsuccessfully—to refocus on the laptop balanced on your knees. 

On track, he looked like he belonged there. 

His race suit was unzipped just slightly to below his collarbone, white fireproofs visible underneath, damp with heat and effort. Sweat still clung to his temples and disappeared beneath the papaya collar, the late afternoon sun catching the faint flush across his cheeks. His hair was a mess under the team cap he’d already shoved back on, and his breathing was still just slightly uneven from the final flying lap. 

Like the car hadn’t just obeyed him. Like it had responded. 

Like it always did when he got it right. 

"So far," Nico Rosberg smiled, beginning the post-qualifying interview with the easy warmth of someone who had been in exactly that car, in exactly that headspace, a long time ago and remembered it clearly. "I'd say this has probably been your strongest weekend of the season."

Oscar nodded immediately, a small smile still lingering as he lifted the mic. 

“Yeah,” he agreed. “You could say that.” 

Nico hummed. “Anything you changed this weekend?” 

“Not really,” Oscar shook his head. “Everything’s just… working, I guess.” 

A pause. 

“Car feels good. Confidence is there. It’s all coming together.” 

"So no lucky charm then?" Nico teased lightly, in the tone of a man who absolutely already thought there was a lucky charm.

Oscar almost answered too quickly. Almost shrugged it off with the kind of reflexive deflection he was very good at. Almost let the truth slip past his better judgment on a wave of adrenaline.

Instead, he tilted his head slightly.

"I don't know what you're talking about," he said, with the exact measured evenness of someone who knew exactly what was being talked about.

Nico laughed. "Oh come on."

Oscar let out a short breath, already sensing where this was heading with the accuracy of someone who had been interviewed enough times to recognize a setup from the first sentence.

"I've seen the photos," Nico continued, in the tone of a prosecuting attorney who had already won. "So have about four million other people."

A faint smile broke through Oscar's attempt at neutrality.

"Right."

"So?" Nico leaned in just slightly, clearly enjoying himself. "Is she your lucky charm?"

There it was.

The question — simple, direct, sitting in the air between them with nowhere to go.

Oscar laughed softly, not because it was funny, but because laughing was easier than the three seconds he needed to decide what came next.

Did he want to say your name? Absolutely.

Did he want to tell the world, plainly, without hesitation, that you were his? Without question.

But not like this. Not here. Not in a post-qualifying interview with the cameras still rolling and you watching alone at home, without any warning, without the conversation you'd quietly agreed you'd have together first. Saying your name here would be taking something private and handing it to an audience before you'd even decided you were ready for one.

He wasn't careless with you.

Wasn't going to start now.

So instead, he chose the closest honest version of the truth — the one that didn't need a name to land.

"Yeah."

One word.

Simple. 

Honest. 

Nico's grin widened instantly. 

“I knew it.” 

Oscar huffed a laugh, rubbing briefly at the back of his neck. 

“She’s here this weekend?” Nico pressed immediately. 

Oscar shook his head once. 

"No."

A pause — brief, considered.

"But…" His shoulders lifted in a loose shrug, the look of a man calculating how much trouble he was about to cause for himself on live television and deciding the answer was a manageable amount. "I've definitely got her luck with me."

A beat.

Then he looked directly into the camera and winked.

Casual. Infuriatingly unbothered. 

Like he hadn’t just said something that would immediately set half the paddock on fire. 

On your end of the screen, your cheeks burned immediately. Because that wink had a very specific address. You were the only person in this interaction who knew exactly where it was going, and somehow that made it worse. Or better. You were still deciding.

Nico’s expression shifted instantly—interest sharpening, already preparing to dig deeper—but before he could fire off another question, the segment timing cut in like a saving grace for Oscar. 

“Alright, that’s all we’ve got time for!” 

Relief, disguised as professionalism. 

Oscar handed the microphone back with a polite nod, the faintest satisfied smile tugging at the corner of his mouth as he stepped away from the interview spot. 

If Nico looked mildly betrayed by unfinished business, Oscar looked like a man who had narrowly escaped a trap. 

But before Oscar could even properly breathe—before his mind could fully shift out of the tunnel-vision of the race and into whatever came next—Kimi was already there. 

Grinning. 

Too wide. Too knowing. The grin of someone who had been watching the interview from five meters away and had taken notes.

Oscar stepped back toward the parc fermé area where the other front-row qualifiers still lingered: Kimi in P2, Charles in P3, both of them still carrying that post-session electricity that made paddock conversations slightly louder and less filtered than usual.

Kimi tilted his head, eyes gleaming with the energy of someone who considered himself investigatively gifted.

"You almost said her name," he said.

He was wrong. 

Oscar didn’t even need a second to know that. The adrenaline was still buzzing through his system, heart rate not quite back to baseline, thoughts still half in the car, half in the podium run—but he wouldn’t have said your name. Not here. Not like that. Not in a way that turned something private into paddock currency. 

But Kimi looked far too pleased with himself to care about accuracy. 

Charles only shook his head beside him, laughing under his breath at the younger driver’s confidence. 

“You did go a bit red at the mention of her, though,” he pointed out, in the tone of someone contributing a fair and balanced observation.

Kimi’s head snapped toward him immediately. 

“You know her?” he asked, eyes widening. 

“Her?” Charles echoed, amusement flickering across his face. 

Kimi gestured vaguely, as if the entire concept of subtlety was optional. 

“His girl. The one he hid in Monaco,” he clarified, still not letting go of the near-miss from earlier in the season like it was a personal unfinished investigation. 

Charles’ gaze drifted back toward Oscar now, eyebrows lifting slightly in silent question. 

Oscar exhaled through his nose, the faintest hint of resignation slipping in. 

“Yeah,” he said simply. “He almost caught us during the Monaco GP.” 

That made Charles laugh outright—because of course it did. 

To him, it was funny in that detached, slightly chaotic way only someone who had lived through Monaco too many times could manage. But there was something else in it too: understanding. Not intrusive, not judgmental. Just awareness. 

He knew exactly what it meant for you two to keep things quiet. Not as a game. Not as secrecy for drama. But as something carefully held back while you figured out how to exist properly before the world got involved. 

Kimi, meanwhile, looked personally offended by how little scandal there actually was. 

“So you’re just all pretending I didn’t almost solve it,” he muttered. 

“You didn’t solve anything,” Charles said lightly. 

“I was close.” 

“You were guessing.” 

"I was investigating," Kimi corrected, with the emphasis of someone who felt the distinction was important and underappreciated.

Oscar let out a short laugh at that, shaking his head as he finally started walking toward the garage. 

"Keep investigating," he said over his shoulder. "Just maybe leave my personal life out of it."

And behind him, Kimi immediately followed. 

“I’m very good at investigations.” 

Charles sighed. 

“I’m watching a child argue with a wall.” 

Oscar didn't look back. But for the first time since stepping out of the car, something in his chest fully eased. Not the result of the session. Not the pole. Just the ordinary, grounding thought of you — still at home, still knee-deep in different colour palettes and impossible briefs, and completely untouched by all of this noise.

That, more than anything, stayed with him.

❁✿❀❁✿❀ 

oscarpiastri 

Cirquit de Spa-Francorchamps • Fun (feat. Roses Gabor)

oscarpiastri Did I mention I like Spa? 

Liked by f1fan300, op81, yourusername and 388’993 Other’s 

f1updates 🚨 OSCAR PIASTRI POLE POSITION SPA-FRANCORCHAMPS 🚨

verstappendefender yeah yeah but did you see the WINK in the interview user4829174 okay but can we talk about the wink. THE WINK. he looked directly into the camera and WINKED. that wink had a recipient. that wink had an address. that wink had a ZIP CODE piastriobsessed THE ZIP CODE SENT ME mclarengirlboss that wink was point-to-point delivery. tracked shipping. signature required upon arrival.

f1wags_updates wait wait wait is oscar piastri in a relationship???? asking for 4 million people

oscarpiastri @.f1wags_updates I don't know what you're talking about f1wags_updates SIR. user9918273 HE REPLIED WITH THE EXACT SAME THING HE SAID TO NICO papayastan consistent king. he has ONE answer and he's sticking to it kimianthonisen he absolutely has a girlfriend @.f1wags_updates I was standing right there

formulafemme "I've definitely got her luck with me" and then the wink. and then "I don't know what you're talking about." this man is performing plausible deniability while simultaneously CONFIRMING EVERYTHING

piastrifan2025 he's doing both things at once. he's confirmed it and denied it in the same breath. quantum girlfriend. mclarenaccount the quantum girlfriend era of oscar piastri's career user0019283 this is the funniest thing i've ever read in a formula 1 comment section

f1gossip why is no one trying to figure out who the girlfriend is. we have had TWO photos of oscar with a blonde girl in the last two months and nobody has done anything with this information

user8827364 wait what photos f1gossip the one from the after ones during and after the monaco GP. blurry but it's there. smoothoperatorf1 and lets not forget the pictures where he himself soft launched!!!

user8123 what if it's Lily. they dated. it was serious. things ended quietly. oscar never spoke about it publicly. what if they reconnected?

user0019283 oh we're doing this user8827364 also lando would NOT be able to keep that secret. lando cannot keep any secret. if it were lily, lando would have accidentally confirmed it in a stream six months ago. landnorris @.user8827364 I keep secrets f1detective let's be for real, it's not her. lily is brunette. the girl in both photos is clearly blonde. user8123 she could have dyed it

op81fan I'm going to sound nuts, but what if it's @.yourusername? he's been in her likes recently

mclarengirlboss it's not, be realistic op81fan i mean, she's often in the paddock with Alex, maybe they've run into each other once and hit it off? user9901827 wasn't she rumoured to be with kimi like three months ago though op81fan that's exactly why it could make sense now! kimi confirmed his girlfriend last month and it's not her, so Y/N L/N was clearly available this whole time user4829174 LMAOOO smoothoperatorf1 okay I'll bite. Y/N IS blonde. the timeline does work. oscar has been in monaco basically all season between races. mclarengirlboss she's a practical princess of monaco dating a formula 1 driver who grew up in melbourne. be serious. formulafemme I mean he literally lives in monaco?? the overlap isn't that crazy?? mclarengirlboss ...okay fair but still

see all comments...

❁✿❀❁✿❀ 

"So," Nicole said, with the particular warmth of a woman who had been waiting patiently to ask this question for several weeks and had earned it, "when am I going to meet the beautiful Sol?"

Oscar paused mid-movement.

He had, genuinely, completely forgotten that he'd given his mother a paddock pass for the Spa weekend. In his defence, his brain had been occupied — mostly by you, and the holiday idea that kept surfacing at inconvenient moments, and the quiet, ongoing effort of being a Formula 1 driver at what was becoming a genuinely complicated point of a championship. So when Nicole had appeared in the McLaren motorhome on Thursday morning, perfectly composed and already greeting the engineers by name like she'd been there all season, his surprise had been immediate and very visible.

Slightly embarrassing for someone who drove a car at three hundred kilometres an hour for a living.

How do you forget your own mother? He'd asked himself this. He didn't have a satisfying answer.

He shrugged now, towel still in hand, drying his hair in the absent way of someone whose mind was only partially in the room. Freshly showered, back in a black T-shirt and loose shorts, the particular post-race quiet settling into his limbs — the kind that came after the adrenaline finally ran out and left everything feeling slightly slower and softer than usual.

"I was hoping she'd be here this weekend," Nicole admitted, more quietly. "It would've been nice to finally meet her properly."

Oscar's posture shifted — not defensive, just attentive. The way it always did when you came up in conversation.

"She's got a lot of work right now," he said easily. “End of quarter stuff. Deadlines. Meetings. You know how it is.”

Nicole nodded, though her eyes stayed on him. 

She studied him properly then. 

Not casually anymore. 

Like a mother who had watched her child long enough to notice when something had shifted. 

"And still," she added, voice lighter again, "you've been smiling at your phone like it personally delivered good news every twenty minutes all weekend."

Oscar let out a short laugh, rubbing the back of his neck.

"I don't know what you mean."

"Of course you don't," she replied smoothly, in the tone of a woman who knew exactly what she meant.

That earned her a reluctant smile. He dropped onto the couch next to her then, stretching his legs out in front of him, finally letting the adrenaline of the race weekend drain out of his system. Spa still lingered behind his eyes— heat, pressure, podium champagne, interviews—but underneath all of it, there was something else now. 

Something softer. 

Something that kept pulling his thoughts away mid-sentence. 

Nicole tilted her head slightly. 

“So?” she asked again, quieter this time. “What is she like?” 

Oscar didn’t answer immediately. 

Not because he didn't know. He knew. He could have answered in any number of ways — practical, chronological, efficient. But everything that came to mind when he thought of you didn't quite fit those shapes.

His gaze drifted briefly toward the window of the motorhome, where the paddock buzzed on outside—busy, loud, relentless. 

Then back to his mother. 

“She’s calm,” he said finally. “But not in a quiet way. More like… steady. Like she makes everything feel less rushed without actually slowing anything down.” 

Nicole nodded slightly, encouraging him without interrupting. 

“And she notices everything,” he added. “Like things you don’t even realise you’re showing. It’s annoying sometimes.” 

That made Nicole’s mouth twitch. 

"But also good," he added quickly, because it was. Genuinely, unexpectedly good.

A beat.

“She remembers things people forget they said. And she listens like she actually wants to understand, not just reply.” 

His voice softened a fraction without him noticing. 

Nicole's expression changed subtly — not surprised. Just quietly noting something.

"That sounds like someone who makes you think," she said.

Oscar huffed a quiet laugh. 

“She makes me stop thinking, actually.” 

Nicole smiled — the warm, genuine kind that had nothing performative about it.

“Even better.” 

Oscar glanced at her. 

“You’re enjoying this.” 

"I am," she admitted, without an ounce of apology. "It's nice hearing you talk like this."

“Like what?” 

“Like you’re not trying to control how it sounds.” 

That landed a little deeper than expected. 

Oscar looked away again, this time more thoughtful. 

Outside, a mechanic laughed loudly somewhere down the corridor. A door slammed. Life continuing at full pace. 

Inside, everything felt slightly slower. 

Nicole leaned forward slightly, studying him again. 

"I'm really proud of you," she said.

Oscar smiled, reflexive and small. "Thanks."

"I'm not talking about the weekend."

That made him look at her properly.

Nicole’s expression stayed gentle, but firm in the way only mothers could manage. 

“I’m talking about her.” 

A pause. 

“She sounds good for you, Oz,” she said. “And I don’t just mean nice. I mean… good. Like she doesn’t make you smaller or louder. Just more yourself.” 

Oscar didn’t answer straight away. 

His thumb rubbed once against his own palm. 

Then, quieter: 

“Yeah,” he said. “She does that.” 

Nicole’s smile softened. 

“Then don’t mess it up.” 

That finally made him laugh—properly this time, shaking his head. 

“I’m trying not to.” 

“I know,” she said simply. “That’s why I like her already.” 

❁✿❀❁✿❀ 

Chat between Oscar and Sol 

✿❀ Let the Light in ❁✿

soooooo, Nicole?

what do you thing will happen?

Back then, though, I was convinced it was only a matter of time. After all, how was I supposed not to believe it? He was always the one who came looking for me first. The one who took the seat next to mine before anyone else could. The one who always found some excuse to text me after the rest of our friends had already gone to bed.

And I fell for it completely.

That’s why, when Matteo showed up hand in hand with Julia—the girl who had so conveniently started showing up to all of our get-togethers—my heart nearly stopped.

Months of mixed signals, months of believing we were only one step away from becoming something real, came crashing down in a single moment.

The news of their relationship caught our entire friend group just as off guard as it caught me. Every single one of them had been convinced that Matteo and I were going to be endgame.

That was the most humiliating part of everything. The awkward smiles. The sympathetic glances. The quiet pity in their eyes. Everyone had words of comfort for me after that day.

Everyone except Kimi.

That’s exactly why he became the perfect place for me to hide.

Kimi and I met a couple of years ago. I was studying in Switzerland, and some of my classmates were Italian. During a summer trip to the Amalfi Coast, they introduced us.

He had always struck me as incredibly kind, and, to some extent, painfully shy.

Our friends loved teasing him, insisting he only acted that way around me because it was obvious he had a crush on me. I usually ignored their comments. A harmless crush wasn’t something anyone deserved to be embarrassed about.

Kimi didn’t seem to care much either. Whenever he had the chance, he’d find an excuse for us to talk or spend time together.

Just as friends.

After everything that happened with Matteo, those moments became even more frequent.

“And?,” Kimi asked, blowing lightly on his coffee before looking up at me, “is the ice cream good?”

“It is.” I smiled, licking the last bit of ice cream from my spoon. “Thanks for inviting me, by the way.”

For a split second, his eyes followed the movement before he quickly looked away again.

“So…” he said carefully. “Have you heard from Matteo?”

I shook my head, absentmindedly twirling the tiny spoon between my fingers.

“No. Ever since he started dating Julia, he barely replies in the group chat anymore. I guess he’s… busy.” I tried to sound indifferent, but even I could hear the faint bitterness creeping into my voice.

Kimi nodded quietly.

He didn’t make a single comment about Matteo, and I appreciated that. Most people felt obligated to remind me that “someone better would come along” or that “he wasn’t worth it.”

Kimi, on the other hand, seemed to understand that sometimes people simply needed to talk about something else.

He took another sip of his coffee before setting the cup down.

“Have you started the paperwork for university yet?”

“Not yet.” I shook my head. “I don’t start until after summer, so technically I’m still on vacation.”

“Must be nice.”

I let out a quiet laugh.

“Says the Formula One driver who spends his life traveling around the world.”

He shrugged with a small smile.

“Trust me. It stops being fun a lot faster than you’d think.”

The silence that followed wasn’t awkward.

Kimi tapped his fingers lightly against the table a couple of times, like he was debating whether he should say something.

“Hey…” he began at last, scratching the back of his neck. “Now that the season’s started, I’ll be spending most of the summer traveling around Europe.”

I looked at him, unsure where he was going with this.

“Okay…”

“And I was thinking…” His gaze dropped to his coffee for a second before he let out a nervous little laugh, clearly embarrassed with himself. “Since you don’t start university until after the summer…”

He hesitated.

“…maybe you’d like to come with me. To a few of the races.”

“…With you?” I blinked, completely caught off guard.

“Yeah. Well—not with me all the time.” He laughed awkwardly. “I’ll be busy pretty much the entire weekend. But you’d have paddock passes, you’d get to see the circuits… and once I’m done working, we could go out and explore whatever city we’re in. My parents will be at most of the races too, so you wouldn’t be by yourself.”

He said the entire explanation so quickly it sounded like he’d rehearsed it over and over before asking.

“You don’t have to answer right now,” he added almost immediately. “I just… thought it might be fun.”

A small, shaky smile spread across my face.

“I’ll think about it.”

His invitation stayed in my head for days. If I was being honest with myself, that wasn’t the kind of invitation you gave someone of the opposite sex if you only saw them as a friend. At least, not from where I was standing.

Kimi had taken the opportunity after everything that happened between Matteo and me, and little by little, he seemed to be making his feelings more obvious.

The more I thought about it the less I minded. I mean, if I went with him, I was guaranteed to have a good time. It would be the perfect distraction from Matteo. The only thing that worried me was his parents. What if they misunderstood the situation? Still, I figured any awkwardness would only last a moment.

One night, while mindlessly scrolling through Instagram, I came across a photo Matteo had posted with his new girlfriend.

The moment I saw it, a knot tightened in my throat. How could he be telling her he loved her when, not that long ago, he’d been saying those same things to me?

My mind refused to come up with a reasonable answer. Instead, through the haze of heartbreak, it desperately searched for a way to pull out the thorn that had buried itself deep inside my chest. Eventually, it landed on the worst possible solution.

I knew Matteo was jealous of Kimi. Kimi was younger than him, yet already far more successful—and wealthier than Matteo would probably ever be.

I also knew Kimi was attracted to me. At least enough to invite me to spend the summer traveling across Europe with him.

So in my mind the most logical solution was to start dating Kimi. Just to make Matteo jealous.

At first, I tried to shake the idea away. It was immature, petty and almost ridiculous. There was no way something like that would actually work.

But as the hours passed, the thought refused to leave. If anything, it only grew stronger. By the following morning, it had completely taken over my mind. So I decided to make the first move.

With trembling hands, I dialed Kimi’s number. It rang a few times without an answer. I was just about to hang up when he finally picked up.

“Hello!” His voice sounded breathless, and I could hear muffled voices and movement in the background.

“Kimi, are you busy? I can call you back if you’re—”

He cut me off before I could finish.

“No! Just… give me one second, please.” His voice grew even more strained, as if he was running.

I waited quietly. For a few moments, all I could hear was the wind, distant conversations, and hurried footsteps. Then a door slammed shut.

“There,” he said a second later, still slightly out of breath. “Sorry about that. I was in the middle of training.”

“Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t know you were busy. You could’ve just called me back later.”

“No, no.” He answered almost immediately. “You’ve never called me before, so… I figured it had to be important.”

My heart melted just a little at the shy sincerity in his voice.

“Honestly, I don’t know if it’s that important,” I admitted with a nervous laugh. “I just thought it would be easier to call.”

“Oh… okay.” A brief pause “Go ahead.”

“It’s about what we talked about at the café.” I bit my lip, trying to suppress the smile that kept threatening to appear.

“…Yeah?” He sounded so hopeful it almost made me lose my nerve.

“I was wondering if your invitation still stands.” I hesitated for only a second “I’d like to come with you.”

Without realizing it, I had started absentmindedly biting my thumbnail while I waited for his answer.

The line fell silent. For two long seconds, I wondered if I’d somehow managed to break him.

“Uh— I—” A soft, nervous laugh escaped him. “Yeah, of course”

Another laugh.

“Of course you can, Y/N.” The excitement in his voice was impossible to miss.

We spent another few minutes talking through the details before eventually hanging up.

I wasn’t entirely sure what I was doing was morally right. Using someone’s feelings to make someone else jealous wasn’t exactly something to be proud of.

But if life was handing me an opportunity… Why shouldn’t I take it?

(…)

Our first stop was Monaco.

Needless to say, I was completely blown away. I’d never seen that much luxury concentrated in one place. The streets were overflowing with supercars, enormous yachts lined the harbor, and it seemed like every other man had a supermodel on his arm.

And there I was… A bundle of nerves.

Kimi had booked me into the same hotel where his parents were staying, but because our schedules were different, we didn’t actually see each other until we met at the entrance to the paddock.

“Hi, Y/N!” His little sister, Maggie, greeted me so naturally it felt like we’d known each other for years.

“Hi,” I replied shyly, giving her a small wave.

“Y/N, we’re so happy you’re here supporting Kimi.” His mother wrapped me in a warm hug, smiling from ear to ear.

A second later, his dad hugged me too, patting my back affectionately.

It was obvious how much they adored Kimi, and they seemed genuinely grateful to anyone who supported him unconditionally.

We walked into the paddock together, and once we reached the garage, Marco started introducing me to everyone.

It felt strangely surreal.

Every time he introduced me, it was almost like he was doing it with pride, as if simply having me there meant something. What made it even stranger was the way everyone reacted.

Almost every single person gave me the exact same knowing smile.

Oh… so you’re Y/N.

That Y/N.

I had absolutely no idea what Kimi had told people about me.

The race arrived much faster than I’d expected. From lights out to the checkered flag, my heart never stopped racing. Thankfully—for my sanity as much as everyone else’s—Kimi crossed the line in P1.

Only then did I finally remember how to breathe.

Marco wanted me to go with him to greet Kimi in the parc fermé area, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. I felt like I’d attract too much attention. So instead, I stayed in the garage, watching the podium ceremony on one of the team’s monitors.

Kimi stepped onto the top step, beaming as champagne sprayed in every direction.

I couldn’t help smiling.

My attention was suddenly pulled away by the vibration of my phone. An Instagram notification.

My heartbeat instantly sped up when I saw the name.

Matteo.

He had replied to the photo I’d posted from inside the garage. My hands immediately started trembling.

MATTEO: Nice. Didn’t know you were into Formula One.

ME: Kimi invited me hahaha.

I didn’t hesitate for a second. If I was going to follow through with my terrible little plan, I might as well commit to it.

A few seconds later, another message appeared.

MATTEO: Cool.

It was a simple reply. It shouldn’t have meant anything, but I knew Matteo.

Or at least, I liked to believe I did. Somewhere behind that one-word response I was convinced he’d felt at least a tiny stab of jealousy.

Suddenly, a pair of soaking wet arms wrapped around me from behind. I jumped.

“Kimi!” I spun around to face him. “You’re completely soaked!”

His grin was impossibly wide, his racing suit drenched in champagne from head to toe.

“Why weren’t you out there?” he asked.

“I didn’t want to draw too much attention to myself.” I shrugged.

Kimi rolled his eyes dramatically.

“You’re always hiding.”

I laughed.

“Someone has to keep you humble.”

His smile only grew wider.

The next few weeks were the most fun I’d had in years.

Kimi had a way of making me laugh like no one else could, and his family was just as easy to be around.

Things couldn’t have been going much better for him, either. He was having the best run of his championship so far, which only made everyone’s mood lighter.

A couple of times, Marco jokingly told me I was Kimi’s lucky charm and that I should stay with them until the end of the season.

I always laughed it off.

But every time he said it, the guilt inside me grew a little stronger. I didn’t deserve their kindness. I hadn’t accepted Kimi’s invitation because I genuinely cared about Formula One or his career. I’d accepted it because it was convenient for me.

Our friends had started wondering if something had finally begun to happen between us. We’d grown so comfortable around each other that people couldn’t help noticing.

Especially Cleo.

She was probably my closest friend, and more than once she’d let me know how strange she thought it was that I’d suddenly become so interested in Kimi. I tried not to give too much away. Whenever she asked questions, I answered as vaguely as possible.

Between the Hungarian Grand Prix and Zandvoort, there was almost a month-long break. I decided to use the time to take care of my own life for a while.

Kimi had to spend some days in Brackley working with the team, so we said goodbye.

A few days later, our group of friends organized a barbecue at one of their houses. It had been a while since we’d all been together, so I decided to go.

The house was already packed when I arrived. I could hear music and laughter before I’d even walked through the front gate. Several long tables had been set up in the backyard, and the smell of grilled meat filled the warm evening air.

It was exactly the kind of gathering we’d always had whenever everyone happened to be in the same city. I greeted a few people before leaving my bag on an empty chair.

“I didn’t think you were coming,” one of the guys said.

“Honestly,” I admitted with a laugh, “neither did I.”

The past few weeks had been so different from my normal life that being back here felt strangely unfamiliar. Like returning somewhere I’d known forever, only to realize something had quietly changed.

“So… where’s Kimi?” someone else asked, taking a sip of his beer.

“Brackley. He’s working with the team.”

Everyone nodded as if that were the most obvious answer in the world. I didn’t think much of it.

At least not until a familiar voice spoke behind me.

“Haven’t seen you in a while.”

I turned around.

Matteo.

His hands were tucked casually into his pockets, wearing the same relaxed expression that almost made me forget the mess he’d left behind. Almost.

“Hey.”

An awkward silence settled between us. Not because there was anything left to say. But because meither of us seemed to know where to begin.

“So…” he asked eventually, “how have you been?”

“Good.”

“Yeah?”

I nodded.

“I’ve been traveling.”

Something shifted in his expression. Just slightly.

“I saw the pictures.”

He didn’t need to explain which ones. Almost my entire Instagram feed had turned into a collection of racetracks, paddocks, and European cities.

“With Antonelli?” he asked, sounding almost indifferent.

I sighed quietly.

“Yeah.”

He waited, as if expecting me to add something. I didn’t.

“I didn’t realize you two were that close.”

A small smile tugged at my lips.

“Neither did I.”

He looked away for a moment.

“So… you spent basically the whole month with him?”

“Most of it.”

“Huh…” He didn’t sound angry. He sounded… confused. As if he was trying to fit a puzzle piece into a picture that suddenly no longer made sense.

That was when Cleo walked over, carrying two drinks.

“Am I interrupting something?”

“Not at all,” I said.

She handed us each a cup before lingering beside us with a little too much interest.

“We were talking about her summer,” Matteo explained.

“Oh.”

The look Cleo gave me made my stomach twist. It wasn’t curious, it was analytical.

“So you really spent the whole month traveling with Kimi?”

“Yeah.”

“Interesting.”

I frowned.

“What’s interesting about it?”

She shrugged.

“Nothing. I just never imagined you two were that close.”

“I guess we are now.” Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed Matteo staring down at the cup in his hands.

“And does he…?”

He stopped himself.

“What?”

“Nothing.” He shook his head. “I was just thinking… it must be hard trying to keep a friendship like that when someone spends their entire life traveling.”

There was something strange about the way he said it. It wasn’t criticism. It almost sounded like he was trying to convince me it couldn’t possibly last.

I opened my mouth to answer, but someone beat me to it.

“Well…” The familiar voice made all three of us turn around. “I’m planning on making it last.”

For one brief second, I honestly thought I was imagining things.

Kimi was standing there.

Still wearing a black Mercedes team shirt, a backpack hanging from one shoulder. His hair looked slightly messy, like he’d only just taken off his cap.

I blinked twice.

“What are you doing here?”

He smiled.

“I finished earlier than expected.” He dropped his backpack onto the ground before walking straight toward me.

He didn’t greet Matteo. He didn’t greet Cleo. He didn’t greet anyone else. He stopped right in front of me.

“I told you I’d try to make it.”

Before I could answer, he wrapped me in a hug. It wasn’t particularly romantic. But it lasted longer than anyone would’ve expected from two people who were supposedly just friends.

For a brief second, I felt his chin rest lightly against the top of my head before he pulled away.

“I missed you.” The words came out so naturally that, for a moment, I forgot how to breathe.

When I looked up again, the first thing I saw was Matteo’s face. He didn’t look angry. He looked… Left behind. Like he’d just realized he’d shown up late to a conversation that had been unfolding without him for weeks.

“Hey, Matteo,” Kimi said at last, offering his hand.

“Hey.”

They shook hands politely.

It was the kind of politeness that only existed between two people trying very hard to prove they had absolutely no problem with each other.

“I thought you were in England,” Matteo said.

“I was.”

“And you came all the way here just for the barbecue?”

Kimi glanced at me for the briefest moment before answering.

“Yeah.” Just one word, but it shifted the atmosphere completely.

Cleo looked at me. She didn’t have to say anything, I could practically feel the tension radiating off her.

And, to my own embarrassment, a small part of me enjoyed every second of it.

The conversation fizzled out when someone announced the food was ready. As always, any sense of order disappeared immediately.

Everyone got to their feet at once, grabbing plates, cutlery, and searching for empty seats around the backyard.

I’d stayed behind for a moment to pour myself another drink when I noticed Kimi walking ahead of me. At first, I assumed he was just looking for somewhere to sit. It wasn’t until a few seconds later that I realized what he was doing.

He chose a table near the end of the garden. Before sitting down, he quietly pulled out the chair beside him just a little, resting one hand on the back of it as he casually continued talking to one of our friends.

The gesture looked completely unconscious. But it wasn’t. He was saving that seat.

For me.

Cleo reached the table first. Balancing her plate in one hand, she rested the other on the back of the chair.

“Mind if I sit here?”

Kimi looked up. For the briefest moment, something crossed his face, like he’d suddenly remembered something important.

“Oh—sorry.” He stepped aside with an apologetic smile. “I was actually saving that seat for Y/N.”

The silence lasted barely a second. Just long enough for Cleo to smile.

“Oh. Right.” She took her hand off the chair and quietly moved farther down the table.

Anyone else watching would’ve thought absolutely nothing of it. I probably would’ve too… If I hadn’t caught the way Cleo clenched her jaw before turning away. I tried convincing myself I was imagining things. That it had just been an awkward little moment.

“You gonna stand there all day, or are you coming?” Kimi called from the table.

His voice pulled me back to reality. I laughed softly before walking over. As soon as I reached him, he pulled out my chair.

“Thanks.”

“You’re welcome.” He waited until I was comfortably seated before sitting down himself.

The gesture was so natural it felt automatic. Maybe that was exactly why everyone noticed it.

Almost instinctively, I looked up.

Matteo was still standing with his plate in his hands. He’d been walking toward our table, but the moment he saw me sitting beside Kimi, he quietly changed direction.

Instead, he sat at the opposite end of the garden. He tried joining another conversation. Still, every now and then, I caught his eyes drifting back toward our table.

Kimi noticed too. Their gazes met for only a second.

There was no challenge.

No smug smile.

Just the uncomfortable silence that exists when two people understand exactly what’s happening without either of them saying a word.

Then Kimi looked back at me.

“What?”

I shook my head.

“Nothing.” I was lying.

I’d gotten exactly what I’d wanted.

Matteo was watching me. For the first time, he finally seemed to understand that he could lose me.

And yet that victory stopped feeling important the moment Kimi, completely unaware of the game unfolding around him, reached over and spooned some salad onto my plate because he remembered it was the only way I’d eat tomatoes.

It was such an absurdly small gesture. But somehow, it unraveled something inside me.

The satisfaction I’d felt seeing Matteo’s expression faded into the background. What stayed with me for the rest of the night wasn’t Matteo at all.

It was Kimi’s easy smile as he talked to me… Completely unaware of the chaos he was causing inside my heart.

(…)

Kimi had the next two weeks off, so he invited me on a quick trip to St. Barths.

At first, I hesitated. It took him nearly half an hour of convincing before I finally gave in.

We flew first class. I’d assumed his family would be coming with us, but they weren’t. It was just the two of us.

That only made me more nervous. Up until then, every trip we’d taken together had included his parents and Maggie. Everything had always felt comfortably family-friendly.

Now we’d be alone. I didn’t know what that might lead to and I wasn’t sure I was ready for things to become more intimate.

Kimi seemed to understand that without me saying it out loud. Because he’d booked us separate hotel rooms. To my immense relief.

Our first day was spent by the hotel’s pool.

Kimi practically lived in the water while I stretched out in the sun, hoping to catch that soft golden glow summer always leaves on tan skin.

The following day, we went to the beach.

That was where I made my first mistake.

The water was so impossibly clear it looked more like an infinity pool than the ocean.

The moment we arrived, Kimi insisted I get in. I only dipped my feet into the water while looking for somewhere to leave my towel.

“It’s freezing,” I complained.

“You’re lying.”

“Kimi, you willingly sit in an ice bath after every race. Your opinion doesn’t count.”

He laughed. Without warning, he splashed a handful of water at me.

“You’re such an idiot!” I immediately splashed him back.

That was all it took.

We started chasing each other through the shallow water, laughing, soaking each other over and over again like two children who had absolutely no interest in behaving like adults.

While trying to escape, a wave caught me off guard. My footing slipped. Before I could fall, a pair of hands caught me around the waist.

Everything happened so quickly that I ended up crashing into Kimi’s chest.

Neither of us moved.

The ocean was still roaring around us. People were still laughing somewhere farther down the beach. But somehow it all felt impossibly far away.

One of Kimi’s hands was still resting around my waist. Mine had landed against his chest.

“Sorry…” he murmured.

Though he didn’t seem particularly eager to let go.His eyes drifted from mine to my lips, then back again. Like he was fighting himself.

“Y/N…” His voice was barely more than a whisper. “I don’t want to read this the wrong way.”

My heart pounded painfully against my ribs. I knew exactly what he was asking. I knew exactly why he was hesitating.

Part of me was still thinking about Matteo. About how much he’d hate this if he ever found out.

The other part simply wanted to know what it would feel like to kiss Kimi.

A small smile found its way onto my lips. I couldn’t look away.

“Why don’t you find out?”

For a split second, every trace of uncertainty disappeared from his face. Like he’d been waiting for permission all this time.

He closed the remaining distance between us.

The kiss was slow. Tentative. So unbelievably gentle it almost felt like he was asking every second whether I was still okay.

There was no urgency. No desperation. Just the soft brush of his lips against mine and, at some point, the warmth of his hand slowly tracing comforting circles along my back.

Time seemed to stop.

When we finally pulled apart, neither of us spoke.

Kimi was smiling. That small, almost disbelieving smile I’d started seeing more and more often. Like someone who’d just lived through a moment he’d imagined for years.

And all I could think was that I’d just made my plan infinitely more complicated than I’d ever intended.

That night, I couldn’t stop tossing and turning in bed. I felt awful, I didn’t deserve someone like Kimi. I’d taken advantage of him in the worst possible way.

He’d been nothing but honest with me. What I was doing was cruel. And somehow I couldn’t make myself stop.

Over the past few weeks, Kimi had slowly occupied more and more space inside my mind. Instead of fading, his presence seemed to grow stronger every single day.

Morning arrived together with an endless stream of notifications.

My eyes flew open. There were photos of Kimi and me at the beach. Standing much too close to be mistaken for just friends.

I kept scrolling.

Then my heart nearly stopped.

Pictures of us kissing. When had someone even taken them? As far as I knew, no one had been anywhere near us.

I knew Matteo would inevitably see them.

That realization should’ve made me feel satisfied.

Instead… I felt nothing. If anything, I felt even worse. It was like I’d fallen into a hole that kept getting deeper and every wall was too slippery to climb out of it.

Before Kimi woke up and discovered the media frenzy that was already unfolding online, I slipped out of the hotel.

The beach was almost empty. I wandered aimlessly along the shoreline, letting the waves wash over my feet while desperately trying to convince myself there was still a way to fix everything.

There wasn’t.

Footsteps echoed softly behind me. I didn’t need to turn around to know who it was.

“I’ve been looking for you.”

His voice startled me anyway.

When I looked back, he was walking toward me with his hands tucked into the pockets of his shorts. His hair was still damp. The concern on his face only made the guilt worse.

“Sorry… I just needed to get out for a while.”

He nodded.

He didn’t ask why. He simply stopped beside me and looked out at the ocean. After a while, he finally spoke.

“I saw the pictures.”

A knot tightened in my throat.

“I’m sorry.” It was all I could manage.

He turned to look at me, clearly confused.

“What are you apologizing for?”

I opened my mouth. None of the real answers would come.

Because I’m using you. Because I never should’ve kissed you. Because none of this started because of you. In the end, I chose the easiest lie.

“I didn’t want this to become public.”

A quiet laugh escaped through his nose.

“Believe me… I wasn’t expecting there to be a photographer hiding behind a palm tree either.”

Despite everything, I smiled.

When he noticed, he smiled too. Just for a second, he’d managed to pull me out of my own head.

Silence settled between us again.

He took a slow breath.

“If this makes you uncomfortable we can just tell everyone it was a misunderstanding.”

I looked at him confused. He avoided my eyes.

“I don’t want you thinking one kiss means you’re suddenly obligated to anything.”

My chest ached. Even believing I’d regretted kissing him, his first instinct was still to make things easier for me.

He was always like that. Always thinking about how I felt before himself.

“I just… I need a little time today.”

The disappointment that flickered across his face lasted barely a heartbeat.

Most people would’ve missed it. I didn’t.

He smiled.

“Take all the time you need.” He reached over, gently ruffling my hair before turning away.

He didn’t push, didn’t ask questions, didn’t try to convince me to stay. He simply respected what I’d asked.

I spent the rest of the day hiding in my room.

I tried sleeping. Then reading. Then convincing myself I could still stop all of this before it went any further. Every attempt ended the same way. With the memory of Kimi smiling at me on the beach.

By the time night fell, someone knocked on my door. I opened it expecting room service. Instead, It was Kimi.

He was wearing a plain white T-shirt, his hair was still slightly messy. His hands were buried deep inside his pockets.

He looked so nervous that, for a second, I thought he might change his mind and leave.

“Can I come in?”

I stepped aside.

He sat down on the small sofa by the window but stayed quiet for several seconds. His hands rubbed nervously together, like he was rehearsing every word in his head.

“I’ve been thinking a lot since yesterday.” He finally looked up at me. “And I don’t think I want to keep pretending this doesn’t mean anything to me.”

My breathing stopped.

“I know maybe that kiss was impulsive for you…” He smiled shyly. “And if it was… I understand, but it wasn’t for me.”

He lowered his eyes before meeting mine again.

“I’ve wanted to kiss you for a long time.” Another quiet breath. “I’ve liked you for a really long time.”

My heart pounded so hard I could barely hear anything else.

“I don’t want to pressure you, I just… I wanted to ask if you’d like to give us a real chance.”

Silence swallowed the room.

No.

I needed to say no, that was the right thing to do. I could still stop this before I hurt him even more.

But I also knew that saying no wouldn’t erase the kiss, It wouldn’t erase the photographs, It wouldn’t erase everything that had already begun to grow between us.

All it would do was make me lose the one person who had spent months trying, every single day, to make me happy.

I let out a slow breath.

I was still trapped in that hole, but now instead of trying to climb out, I picked up a shovel and started digging even deeper.

I’d already crossed too many lines.

And instead of turning back, I crossed one more.

“Yes.”

The smile that lit up Kimi’s face was so genuine that I had to look away.

He believed he’d just lived through one of the happiest moments of his life.

I’d just made my second mistake.

(…)

The next few weeks were complete chaos.

Kimi hadn’t publicly confirmed our relationship, but people didn’t need a statement after seeing us walk into the Zandvoort paddock hand in hand.

His family, on the other hand, couldn’t have been happier.

“Finally,” Marco declared dramatically after finding out. “I was starting to think I’d die before Andrea finally admitted how he felt about you.”

Kimi and I exchanged an embarrassed laugh.

Just like his father, several members of the team came over to congratulate us, joking about Kimi’s little crush that, apparently, everyone had known about for a very long time.

A knot tightened in my stomach. Now I finally understood what all those knowing smiles had meant. I understood why everyone had welcomed me so warmly the first day I’d stepped into the Monaco paddock.

Social media, however, wasn’t nearly as supportive.

People were deeply divided. Some were genuinely happy for Kimi. Others had taken the opportunity to pour out every ounce of jealousy and hatred they’d apparently been saving.

I found that out one morning when a post appeared on my X timeline.

@kimi12aka: I don’t know who needs to hear this, but Kimi deserves someone who loves him for who he is, not for everything he can give.

He looks at her like she’s the love of his life, and she looks like she wouldn’t have given him a second glance before he became a Mercedes driver. You can tell she’s good at manipulating men. One day Andrea’s going to regret trusting the wrong person.

I couldn’t understand why the algorithm had decided to show me something like that. Until I looked closer.

Cleo’s private account had reposted it.

My eyebrows immediately drew together. How could she share something like that? But the longer I stared at the repost, the more all of Cleo’s recent behavior started making sense.

She was jealous.

I wasn’t entirely sure of what. But it was the only explanation that fit.

I was about to message her when Matteo’s name flashed across my screen.

MATTEO: I saw you’re in Italy. Want to grab a coffee?

For the first time I hesitated before saying yes. A few months earlier, I would’ve done anything for that opportunity.

Now, accepting somehow felt like betraying Kimi.

MATTEO: Just an hour. Don’t worry.

His persistence made me feel guilty enough that, eventually I agreed.

I arrived at the café ten minutes early.

I wasn’t sure why I was so nervous. Matteo and I had shared dozens of coffees before. But this one felt different. Maybe because, for the first time, I wasn’t secretly hoping something would happen between us.

He arrived a few minutes later wearing a simple white T-shirt and a dark baseball cap. He smiled the moment he spotted me.

“Thanks for coming.”

“It was no trouble.”

An awkward silence settled over the table as the waiter brought our drinks. Neither of us seemed to know how to begin.

Matteo broke the silence first.

“I saw the pictures.”

He didn’t need to explain which ones.

“Oh…”

“You look happy.” There was no bitterness in his voice. Only sadness.

“I’m trying to be.”

He let out a quiet, humorless laugh.

“I guess I deserve that.”

I frowned slightly.

He rubbed a hand over his face before speaking again.

“I’ve done a lot of thinking these past few months.”

“So have I,” I admitted.

He nodded slowly.

“…I don’t think in the same way.” His fingers absentmindedly traced the rim of his coffee cup. “When you started traveling with Kimi, I thought you were just trying to get my attention.”

My stomach twisted.

“I figured if I waited long enough, you’d get tired of it and everything would go back to the way it used to be.”He paused. “But it didn’t.”

He took a slow breath.

“That’s when I realized…” His eyes met mine. “The problem was never Kimi. It was me.”

I didn’t know what to say. So I stayed quiet.

“I got too used to having you around.” He smiled bitterly. “You were always there, and I just assumed you always would be until one day you stopped looking at me the way you used to.”

My throat tightened.

“I broke up with Julia two weeks ago.”

I blinked.

“What?”

“I realized I was trying to build a relationship while I was still thinking about someone else.”

My heartbeat quickened.

“Y/N…” His voice softened. “I love you.”

For a moment the world stopped.

“I know I’m late and I know I hurt you. But if there’s still even the smallest chance… I want to try again.”

The words I’d spent months dreaming about were finally right in front of me.

And yet I felt nothing. Nothing like the happiness I’d imagined all those times before.

I lowered my gaze to my hands.

I tried.

I truly did.

I tried to find the girl who would’ve jumped out of her chair to hug him. But she wasn’t there anymore.

Instead all I could see was Kimi.

Kimi laughing while trying to teach me how to swim.

Kimi pulling out a chair for me.

Kimi remembering that I’d only eat tomatoes if they were in a salad.

Kimi looking at me like I was the best part of every single one of his days.

I took a deep breath.

“A few months ago I would’ve given anything to hear you say that.”

Matteo closed his eyes for just a second. He already knew my answer.

“But you were too late.”

He smiled sadly.

“It’s because of Antonelli… isn’t it?”

I slowly shook my head.

“No.” I paused. “It’s because of me.”

He frowned.

“What do you mean?”

“It means, while you were realizing you loved me, I realized I’d stopped waiting for you.”

The silence that followed was devastating.

Matteo nodded once. He didn’t argue. He didn’t try to change my mind. He simply left some cash on the table.

“I hope he knows how lucky he is.”

I watched him walk away without looking back.

For the first time in months, I finally felt that chapter of my life had come to an end.

When I got back to the hotel, I found Kimi sitting on the balcony. His phone rested in his hands. He didn’t look up right away.

“Everything okay?” I asked, trying to sound casual.

“Yeah.” The answer came too quickly. Too flat.

He set the phone down on the glass table before finally looking at me.

“How was coffee?”

I froze. I didn’t remember telling him I was meeting Matteo.

“It was… fine.”

He held my gaze for a few long seconds.

“Did you just talk?”

My stomach dropped.

“Why are you asking?”

Without saying a word, Kimi picked up his phone again. He unlocked it. Then turned the screen toward me.

There were several photos. Matteo and I walking into the café. The two of us smiling across the table. Matteo leaning slightly toward me and one taken through the café window where the angle made our hands look much closer than they’d actually been.

My breath caught.

“Who sent you those?”

“I don’t know.” His voice remained calm but his knuckles had turned white around the phone.

After several long seconds, he spoke again. Almost in a whisper.

“I just need you to tell me one thing.” He swallowed hard “Do you still love him?”

There was no anger in his voice. Only fear. A fear so deep that the photographs themselves suddenly stopped mattering.

I stepped closer until I was standing in front of him.

“No.”

He searched my face.

Looking for even the smallest hint of hesitation.

“He asked me to meet him. He broke up with Julia and told me he wanted another chance.”

I watched Kimi’s jaw tighten.

“And you?”

I slowly shook my head.

“I said no.”

For the first time since I’d walked into the room, his shoulders relaxed. He let out a slow breath, like he’d been holding it all afternoon.

“I’m sorry.” He lowered his head. “I didn’t want to doubt you. It’s just… When I saw those pictures…”

He didn’t finish.

He didn’t have to.

I took one more step toward him and gently took his hand.

“I’m here.”

Almost instinctively, he laced his fingers with mine. When he looked back at me, the tension between us had changed.

It was no longer fear. It was the quiet need to feel close again. Without taking his eyes off mine, he slowly closed what little distance still remained between us. His lips sought mine with excruciating slowness until contact finally came.

His hands tightened around my hips, anchoring me against him as a low moan escaped his throat—a mixture of relief and desire that vibrated straight through my chest.

"Are you sure you want to keep going?" he asked, his words coming out between ragged breaths.

I could only nod hurriedly.

The air grew heavy, saturated with the citrus scent that always clung to him, now mixed with the metallic tang of adrenaline. We stumbled backward, bumping into the edge of the table and knocking a few decorations to the floor with dull thuds that neither of us even registered.

Kimi lifted me in one fluid motion, wrapping my legs around his waist before sitting me on the cold tabletop, the chill creating an electric contrast against the suffocating heat of his hands sliding beneath my blouse.

His kisses were no longer driven by urgency alone; they had become territorial, trailing down my jaw until they found the exact spot on my neck where my pulse hammered wildly.

I felt his teeth graze my skin, a deliberate pressure that arched my back and drew a moan from me, one that was swallowed by his mouth when he claimed my lips again.

There was no room for doubt anymore.

"You're beautiful," he said, his hands still wandering gently over my body. "I love everything about you."

His fingers, rough and resolute, found the fastening of my pants, undoing it with an efficiency that suggested he had imagined this moment a thousand times. When his hand finally reached the warm wetness between my thighs, a sharp gasp escaped me as my world narrowed to the single point where his skin touched mine.

I pressed myself closer to him, desperately trying to erase every last millimeter between us, feeling the hardness of his cock pressing against my stomach.

Kimi pulled back just enough to meet my gaze, his eyes burning with an intensity that set me on fire, while his breath struck my cheek in short, hot bursts.

There were no words, only the sound of my pants and panties sliding down my legs with an urgency that bordered on desperation. He left me vulnerable, exposed to the cold air of the room, but the chill lasted only a heartbeat before his mouth claimed my collarbone again, leaving behind a trail of fire that made my fingertips tremble.

His fingers sank into my wet cunt with a steady, rhythmic pressure, exploring the texture of my walls with ravenous curiosity. I felt my body arch involuntarily, craving more of that friction, while a deep moan rumbled from his chest, resonating through the empty space between us.

His movements were anything but gentle; they were precise, driven by a muscle memory that seemed to know exactly where to press and how long to hold the tension before releasing the first spasm.

Without warning, he lifted me off the table only to turn me around, pressing my chest against the cold wooden surface. The sharp contrast stole my breath, leaving me exposed as I felt his body—solid and burning hot—anchor itself against my back. His hands slid down to grip my thighs, spreading them apart with a firmness that left me defenseless, while his breathing, now ragged, scorched the back of my neck.

There was no pause for tenderness; the rough brush of his pants against my damp skin was a delicious torture that made me want to bite the edge of the table to keep from crying out.

I felt the cool fabric of his trousers grazing my hip before he stripped out of them in abrupt, almost violent movements, driven by an urgency he could no longer contain.

When he finally felt the direct friction of skin against skin, an electric shiver raced down my spine, and a muffled sob escaped me, absorbed against the skin of my shoulder as he marked me with the possessiveness of someone reclaiming something they had believed was lost.

The entry was slow, a deliberate penetration that forced me to close my eyes and dig my nails into the wood as I felt every inch of me stretch to make room for him.

It wasn’t smooth; it was a struggle between resistance and surrender, where the air grew thick and the sound of our bodies colliding began to set the rhythm of the room.

He buried himself inside me with one deep thrust that stole the breath from my lungs, stopping at the precise point where the tension became unbearable, savoring the uncontrollable trembling of my legs beneath his grip.

Then the cadence changed. There was no longer any room for anticipation; it became raw, almost animal urgency. His thrusts grew heavy, driving into me with a force that shook my entire body against the table, the wood creaking beneath the weight of our desperation.

It was a feverish rhythm, stripped of every trace of tenderness, where each impact felt like a claim, an invisible mark being etched into my skin as rough, ragged breaths escaped him.

There was no subtlety in the way his hands closed around my hips, his fingers digging into my flesh to anchor me in place, making sure there wasn’t a single millimeter of air between us.

I felt small, overwhelmed by the intensity of his desire, like it was meant to consume me. Every thrust was a jolt, a sharp, visceral collision that forced me to arch my back to its limit, desperately chasing the point where pleasure fused with an almost painful pressure.

I could feel the tension coiling low in my abdomen, a knot tightening with every stroke of his cock against my cunt, while he whispered my name in a broken voice, almost a plea, against the curve of my neck.

His movements became erratic, shorter and deeper. Then, without warning, the rhythm broke. His hands clamped down on my hips with desperate force, pinning me against the wood as a guttural groan tore from his throat.

I felt the first contraction, an involuntary spasm that made my vagina tighten around his cock, and then the dam broke. A wave of liquid heat surged from the very center of my being, spreading outward in ripples that forced my head back as a cry escaped me, swallowed by the heavy air filling the room.

He didn’t stop. If anything, he drove into me one last time with a depth that stole the oxygen from my lungs, releasing a moan that reverberated through my entire chest as his body tensed like a rope pulled to its breaking point.

Pleasure ceased to be a sensation and became a deafening hum. For a single moment, we remained suspended in that precise instant when desire stops being hunger and becomes pure exhaustion. The table no longer creaked beneath us, replaced only by the dull echo of our breathing colliding with one another.

For a long moment, neither of us moved. Our breathing gradually slowed until the urgency dissolved into something quieter. Something deeper.

He brushed another kiss against my shoulder.

“I thought I’d lost you today,” he admitted softly. His voice cracked ever so slightly.

I closed my eyes.

“You didn’t.” The words came out barely above a whisper.

He held me a little tighter.

“As soon as I saw those pictures…” He exhaled shakily. “I kept thinking maybe I’d never really had you to begin with.”

My chest tightened. I turned in his arms until I was facing him again.

“You have me.”

For the first time that evening, the tension disappeared completely from his expression. His forehead rested gently against mine as he smiled—a small, relieved smile that reached his eyes.

“I love you,” he whispered.

The words settled quietly between us.

I couldn’t bring myself to answer, not because I didn’t feel anything. But because I still wasn’t sure I deserved to.

(...)

Months later, I found myself in a get together with our friends. The party looked exactly like every other party our group had ever thrown.

The music was far too loud, someone was burning the meat on the grill, and half a dozen conversations were happening all at once.

Seeing Cleo again made me wonder if I'd overreacted about Twitter. Maybe Cleo's repost had just been a stupid, impulsive decision. Maybe if we both pretended it had never happened, things could go back to the way they were.

I was wrong.

"Y/N!" One of the guys waved me over from the backyard. "Come here—we were just talking about Kimi."

I couldn't help smiling as I walked over.

Cleo was already sitting there, a glass of wine in her hand. Our eyes met for only a second. She was the first to look away.

"So?" Marc asked. "How's Mercedes' golden boy doing?"

I laughed softly.

"Pretty well. He's feeling really confident with the car."

"It shows," another friend said. "I've never seen him this relaxed."

He smirked.

"Must be because he finally has a girlfriend."

Every pair of eyes immediately turned toward me. Heat rushed to my cheeks.

"Don't start..."

Laughter rippled around the table. Everyone laughed... Except one person.

"Yeah." Cleo's voice was so quiet it almost disappeared beneath the music. "Some people really do have all the luck."

I chose to ignore her. Someone else quickly changed the subject, asking what life inside the paddock was actually like.

I told them a funny story from Monza about a Mercedes mechanic who had mistaken me for a member of the team. Everyone laughed.

"Look at you," Cleo spoke again. "Six months ago you couldn't tell a Ferrari from a Williams, and now you sound like an F1 commentator."

The laughter this time was noticeably weaker. I simply smiled.

"I guess you learn a thing or two when you spend that much time traveling."

"Of course." She slowly swirled the wine in her glass before looking at me. "When someone offers to take you around the world for free, the least you can do is learn a little about their hobbie."

Silence crashed over the table.

One of the guys awkwardly cleared his throat, another suddenly became very interested in his phone. No one seemed to know what to say.

I took a slow breath.

No.

I wasn't going to give her the satisfaction. I kept talking to everyone else like nothing had happened. For almost twenty minutes, I managed to convince myself the night might end without us confronting each other.

Then someone pulled out their phone to show us vacation pictures. As they scrolled from one photo to the next, one image appeared.

Kimi and me. Walking through the Zandvoort paddock hand in hand.

"You two look adorable here."

I smiled faintly.

"That was the day we—"

"...made it official," Cleo finished for me. She took another sip of wine. "Although... I suppose for Andrea, it had been official long before that."

I frowned.

"What do you mean?"

She shrugged.

"Nothing. I just think it's funny how some people spend years waiting for a chance while others just happen to show up at exactly the right moment."

This time, I wasn't the only one who caught the poison behind her words.

The conversation died completely. I slowly set my glass on the table.

"Cleo."

She looked up.

"Yeah?"

"Come with me for a minute."

For the first time all evening, she smiled. A real smile, like she'd been waiting for exactly this.

"Sure."

"We need to talk," I said the moment we were alone in the kitchen.

She barely looked up.

I waited.

She said nothing.

I pulled my phone from my pocket and placed it on the countertop in front of her.

The repost was already open. The post calling me a gold digger. A manipulator. The girl who was only with Andrea because of everything he could offer.

Cleo looked at the screen for barely a second, then calmly took another sip of wine.

"So?"

My patience started slipping.

"You're seriously asking me 'so?'"

"Yeah."

"Why did you repost this?"

She looked back at the phone.

"Because I felt like it."

I frowned.

"You know exactly how much hate I've been getting ever since my relationship with Andrea became public."

"I know."

"Then why would you add to it?"

She let out a dry laugh.

"Because for once, someone on the internet actually said something that made sense."

Anger surged through me.

"Do you really think that's who I am?"

She set her glass down.

"I don't think it. I suspect it."

"Suspect what?"

She held my gaze.

"That Andrea wasn't your first choice."

Silence settled between us. I forced myself not to react.

"You're talking nonsense."

"Am I?" She crossed her arms. "A few months ago you cried over Matteo every single day. Then Julia showed up and, conveniently, weeks later you were traveling around Europe with Andrea. How convenient."

I clenched my jaw.

"You have no idea what actually happened."

"No." Her voice remained infuriatingly calm. "I don't. But I do know how to add two and two together."

I inhaled slowly.

"You're letting your jealousy make up stories."

That finally made her smile, not because she'd found it funny. Because I'd hit a nerve.

"Jealous?"

"Yes." I pointed directly at her. "You're jealous. You've always liked Andrea."

She laughed.

"And if I do?"

The question caught me off guard.

"What?"

"If I like Andrea... Does that automatically make me wrong?"

I didn't answer. She stepped closer.

"Answer me something instead. When Matteo started dating Julia how did that make you feel?"

I looked down for a split second.

She noticed immediately.

"Exactly. It hurt."

I nodded.

"Yeah."

"And right after that, Andrea invited you to travel with him."

A knot formed in my stomach.

"Yeah."

"And you said yes."

"...Yeah."

She smiled sadly.

"See why I have my suspicions?"

I raised my voice for the first time.

"That doesn't prove anything!"

"Oh?" Her voice never changed. "Then tell me why did you say yes?"

I opened my mouth.

The answer was simple.

Because I wanted to forget Matteo. But I couldn't say that. Because then I'd have to explain how.

My silence condemned me.

Cleo sighed.

"That's what I thought."

I immediately tried to defend myself.

"Things changed. I love him now." I said it firmly, because it was true.

She believed me. I saw it in her eyes. But it didn't make her feel any better if anything... It only made her look sadder.

"I don't doubt that you love him now." She paused. "What I doubt is why you gave him a chance in the first place."

My breathing quickened.

"Stay out of my relationship."

She slowly shook her head.

"Do you know what makes me the angriest?" She didn't wait for an answer. "He genuinely believes you chose him. That one day you woke up and thought I want to be with Andrea. When we both know that's not how it happened."

A hollow ache spread through my chest. Because even if she didn't know the whole story, she'd gotten far too close. I took a step toward her.

"Don't ever speak like you know my life."

"And you should stop pretending this started because of love."

That was it. I completely lost my temper.

"You don't know anything!"

"I know enough." She didn't blink. "I know you went to see Matteo."

My entire body froze.

"...How?"

Cleo slowly let out a breath.

"Because I'm the one who sent Andrea those pictures."

The world seemed to stop. I stared at her in disbelief.

"What did you just say?"

"You heard me."

"It was you?" She nodded.

A mixture of anger and disbelief rushed through me.

"Why would you do something like that?"

It took her several seconds to answer. When she finally did, her voice sounded utterly exhausted.

"Because I wanted to be wrong."

I frowned. She smiled sadly.

"I wanted Andrea to receive those pictures and for you to be able to look him in the eye without being afraid. But after I saw you I knew I'd hit something, I don't know what. But something."

My heart pounded painfully.

"You could've destroyed my relationship."

"No." She shook her head firmly. "If a few photographs were enough to destroy your relationship then the photographs were never the problem. The problem was the secret you've been hiding from him since the very beginning."

Silence fell between us.

I was shaking with anger.

She was shaking with sadness.

She picked up her wine glass. Before walking away, she stopped beside me.

"I really hope you love him as much as you say you do. Because if he ever finds out otherwise... I don't think he'd survive it."

I watched her walk away, unable to move a single muscle.

For the first time since I'd accepted that trip, I realized the truth no longer belonged to me alone.

Someone else had started to see it. Even if they could only make out its outline through the shadows.

I didn't go back inside the party. I said goodbye to the few people who were still outside using whatever excuse came to mind, then drove for almost an hour without any real destination.

I didn't cry. I'd already cried every tear I had left during my argument with Cleo.

All that remained was an unbearable emptiness in my chest. For the first time since all of this had begun, I realized there was no point in putting it off any longer. I could keep hiding the truth. Keep waiting for the perfect moment. But the perfect moment was never going to come.

And with every passing day, the lie only grew bigger.

The apartment was completely silent when I got home.

I glanced at the clock, it was almost eleven at night. For a moment, I considered turning around, waiting until the next day, making up another excuse.

Doing what I'd spent months doing: Running away.

My hand was already on the doorknob when the bedroom door opened.

Kimi looked up the moment he saw me. He was wearing gray sweatpants and a matching sweatshirt, a glass of water in one hand. The expression on his face changed immediately.

"What happened?"

I shook my head. I tried to smile but I couldn't.

He set the glass down on the table without taking his eyes off me.

"Come here."

He didn't ask another question. He simply opened his arms and I did exactly what I'd spent weeks trying to avoid.

I fell apart.

I felt his arms wrap tightly around me as I buried my face against his chest. He didn't say anything. He just slowly rubbed my back, like he knew that any words would only break something that was barely holding together.

I don't know how long we stayed like that. Five minutes, maybe ten.

Until I finally managed to speak.

"I need to tell you something."

I felt his hand stop moving against my back. He didn't let go of me, but his breathing changed.

"Okay."

I took a deep breath. I pulled back just enough to look at him. I'd never found it so difficult to hold his gaze.

"I don't even know where to start."

Kimi sat down on the couch and quietly gestured for me to sit beside him. Then he waited. Just like he always did. Without pressuring me, without filling the silence, simply waiting. I sat down beside him.

My hands were shaking.

"Do you remember the first time you invited me to travel with you?"

A faint smile appeared on his face.

"Of course."

"I've been wanting to talk to you about that day for months."

The smile slowly faded. I lowered my eyes to my hands.

"It all started long before we kissed, before we started dating, before I even understood what I felt for you."

I took another deep breath. I knew that once I said the next words... There would be no taking them back.

"When I accepted that trip I didn't do it for the right reasons."

The silence that followed was unbearable. I waited for some kind of reaction.

A question, a change in his expression, anything. Nothing came. Kimi remained perfectly still, watching me quietly, waiting for me to finish.

I swallowed hard.

"I was completely heartbroken over Matteo. I thought about him all the time. I couldn't understand why he'd chosen Julia and then you came along." I looked up at him for only a brief moment. "You were the only guy I knew had feelings for me, and I..."

My voice began to crack.

"I convinced myself that if I started dating you I'd be able to forget him." The tears came before I could stop them. "I thought I was taking advantage of an opportunity not a person. But I was wrong, because the person was you and you never deserved that."

The room fell silent again. This time for much longer.

I struggled to breathe.

"I don't expect you to forgive me, I don't even expect you to want to see me again after this, I just couldn't keep lying to you anymore. For months, every time you told me 'I love you,' it felt heavier than the time before." I lowered my head completely. “I'm sorry, I'm so, so sorry."

Kimi didn't answer.

I heard him slowly let out a breath. Then I felt him gently take one of my hands between both of his. He held it there for several seconds, like searching for the right words.

When he finally spoke... His voice was much calmer than I ever could have imagined.

"Are you finished?"

I looked up at him, confused. I nodded.

A very small smile appeared on his face, sad, but genuine.

"Then let me talk now."

Kimi remained silent for a few moments.

He never looked away from me. His fingers still held my hand with the same gentle touch they always had, as if he was afraid that one careless movement might break me.

He lowered his head for a second and let out a quiet breath of laughter through his nose. It wasn't mocking. It was the nervous laugh of someone who had been waiting for this moment for far too long.

"I've spent months imagining what this conversation would be like."

I frowned slightly.

"What?"

He looked back up.

"Not exactly like this." A sad smile tugged at the corner of his lips. "But I always knew it would happen someday."

My breathing stopped.

"What do you mean?"

He stayed quiet for a few seconds, choosing each word with care.

"I never knew exactly what had happened." He slowly shook his head. "There were just... things that never quite added up."

A chill ran down my spine.

Kimi took a breath before continuing.

"At first, I thought I was imagining it. It was easier to believe I was just being insecure. That I was seeing problems that weren't really there." A faint smile crossed his face. "George always says I overthink everything."

That managed to pull the smallest smile out of me before it disappeared almost instantly. His expression grew serious again.

"But the more time I spent with you the harder it became to ignore." He looked down at our intertwined hands. "There were moments when I'd catch you looking at me and I knew you were really there, with me. But then there were other moments..."

His voice softened.

"...when someone mentioned Matteo, and something changed in your face. Just a little, if I hadn't been paying so much attention to you I probably never would've noticed."

A sharp ache spread through my chest. Because he was right. I hadn't even been aware of those tiny changes. He had.

"Then you agreed to come to every race, we became closer, then we kissed, then we started dating and there were still things I couldn't understand." He looked back at me. "Not because I doubted that you cared about me. That was never the problem, what I couldn't understand was... Why me?"

I blinked.

"What?"

"I never understood why you'd chosen me. There were better-looking guys, older guys, guys with more experience, guys who looked a lot more like Matteo. I was just..."

He let out an awkward laugh.

"...me."

I immediately shook my head.

"Andrea..."

He smiled softly.

"Let me finish."

I nodded without saying a word.

"Then the coffee happened. It wasn't the pictures, the pictures just forced me to ask myself something I'd been avoiding for a long time." He closed his eyes for a brief moment. "What if I'd just come along at the right time?"

Fresh tears filled my eyes.

Kimi had never had proof. He'd never read a message. He'd never overheard a conversation. He'd figured it out entirely on his own. Just by piecing together tiny details that anyone else would've overlooked.

"I thought about asking you. So many times, there were nights when I almost did. But every single time I came to the same conclusion." He took a deep breath. "If I forced you to answer before you were ready I'd never know whether your answer came from love or guilt."

The first tear rolled down my cheek.

"Kimi..."

He slowly shook his head.

"Just listen to me a little longer." His thumb gently brushed over the back of my hand.

Such a tiny gesture and somehow It was enough to break me all over again.

"Then Matteo came back, he broke up with Julia, he came looking for you and I thought this is it, this is where it ends."

A sob escaped before I could stop it. He smiled at me with endless tenderness.

"I was convinced you were going back to him and do you know what the worst part was? I wasn't angry with you, I was just scared. So unbelievably scared, because I understood exactly why you'd choose him. He was the boy you'd been in love with for so long, the one you'd spent months waiting for."

I tightened my grip around his hands.

"But you didn't go back."

His voice cracked for the first time. Only slightly, enough for me to notice.

"You came back to me, not because he didn't love you anymore. You came back after he told you he loved you, after he offered you exactly the life you'd wanted for so long and that's when..." He smiled. "That's when I stopped asking questions."

Through my tears, I frowned.

"Why?"

"Because I realized that was the first decision you'd ever made thinking only about us. Not about Matteo, not about the past, about us."

A long silence settled between us. A very long one. I could barely breathe.

"Everything else, everything that happened before..." He let out a slow breath. "Of course it hurt, it hurt more than I can explain. There were days when I wondered whether every kiss had really been for me. When you told me you loved me, whether you already loved me or whether you were still trying to forget someone else."

He let out a quiet laugh, though I could see his eyes beginning to glisten.

"It was awful I'm not going to lie to you. But one day I realized something." He slowly lifted his hand and gently tucked a loose strand of hair behind my ear. "I stopped asking myself why you'd come into my life and I started asking myself why you were still here."

"Because you'd already had the chance to leave and you didn't. So I decided to wait until one day you trusted me enough to tell me everything."

"Even if it took months, even if it took years." His smile grew just a little wider. "I just wanted it to be your choice. Not because someone found out, not because someone forced you. But because you no longer wanted to hide from me."

I couldn't bring myself to meet his eyes. I'd spent months imagining this moment. In every version I'd played out in my head, he stood up from the couch, asked me to leave, or—at best—told me he needed time.

I never imagined the hardest outcome would be this. That he would understand me.

That hurt so much more, because there was nowhere left for me to hide.

A broken laugh escaped me as I wiped away my tears with the back of my hand.

"You're an idiot."

Kimi raised an eyebrow.

"Oh, yeah?"

I nodded several times.

"A complete idiot."

He chuckled quietly.

"I already knew that."

I shook my head.

"No, no you don't." I pointed a trembling finger at him. "Who waits that many months knowing there's a chance they're being used?"

He lowered his gaze. It took him a few seconds to answer.

"Someone who was afraid of hearing the answer before it was ready." The honesty in his voice completely unraveled me.

I started crying again. This time, I didn't even try to stop. Kimi didn't do anything.

He didn't move closer, didn't try to hug me, he simply let me feel everything. And somehow the space he gave me was exactly what made me close the distance myself.

I rested my forehead against his shoulder and closed my eyes.

"I'm sorry." My voice was barely a whisper. "I really am."

I felt him gently rest his cheek against the top of my head.

"I know."

We stayed like that for a long time. Neither of us seemed in any hurry to break the silence.

I was the one who spoke again.

"You know what makes me the angriest?"

He slowly shook his head.

I took a deep breath.

"If I could go back, I'd change the reason I accepted that trip. But I'd never change the fact that I accepted it."

Kimi lifted his head slightly to look at me. I continued before I could lose my nerve.

"Because it was the worst decision I've ever made and somehow, it was also the best."

A small smile appeared on his face. He didn't say anything. He waited, just like he always did.

"I just wish I'd found my way to you differently. That's what I can't forgive myself for, not being the person you deserved to meet." I lowered my gaze again. "Sometimes I think about the girl who got on that plane and I don't like her very much. Not at all, because she had no idea how much damage she was about to cause."

Kimi let out a quiet laugh through his nose.

"I do."

I looked up at him, confused.

He shrugged.

"She was an eighteen-year-old girl with a broken heart. People do stupid things when their hearts are broken and that doesn't make them bad people."

I stayed silent. I'd never looked at it that way.

"Besides..." He paused. "If that girl hadn't accepted that trip, I never would've met the woman I'm in love with now."

I felt my chest tighten again. Not from guilt, this time was something else. Something much closer to peace.

I took his hand in both of mine.

"Promise me something."

"What is it?"

"If I ever make you doubt how I feel again don't wait months. Tell me, even if we argue, even if I get upset, even if you're scared. I want you to be the one who tells me."

He smiled.

"It's a deal."

I smiled back. The first completely genuine smile I'd given all night.

We didn't need to say I love you. We'd already said those words hundreds of times before. The difference was that, for the first time those words were no longer resting on top of a lie.

I rested my head against his shoulder while he intertwined our fingers.

Neither of us spoke again. We didn't need to, we'd spent far too long trying to rewrite the past and, at last we both seemed ready to make peace with it.

There's a version of this story where I'm the villain.

And honestly...

I'm not going to argue with it.

Because the only thing that version never tells you... Is that people are rarely defined by the worst decision they've ever made.

Liked by yourusername, lilamoss and 136,761 others

IrisLn turning 18 with mama... now we're onto canada

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user1 omg the 2nd pic my hearttt

lilamoss gorg…. what’s in canada girl 😭

->IrisLn the canadian gp!! invited by ferrari me and my moms first time going ->user2 ugh nepo baby's always living my dreams.. ->IrisLn im very lucky user2 ! wouldn't have these opportunities without the help of my last name <3 ->user3 a aware nepo baby.... rare

user4 the vibes are adorable

user5 happy birthday queen

yourusername My pretty girl!! That second picture needs to be framed!

->IrisLn it's one of my favs <3

user6 how cute are you two!!

user7 your photo dumps are always so cozy

user8 your mom being one of the biggest icons of the 2000's wow

user9 face card is so crazy

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enews Fans speculate the identity of Y/n L/n's daughter is Formula One Driver Lewis Hamilton.

Y/n L/n and Hamilton were spotted leaving the same party 18 years ago and L/n's daughter Iris just turned 18...

Prior to L/n giving birth in 2008, L/n alluded to not knowing anything about her daughters father aside from his first name. Years later while talking about the identity of her baby's father she replied "I've loved every second of raising Iris [her daughter] and I think when she gets to a certain age we'll have that conversation or get that test done." When asked for a comment L/n didn't reply.

Are you among the crowd of people who think Hamilton is the father?

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user1 she’s truly a perfect mix of them both

user2 wait she does look like them 😭

user3 based on her saying "get that test done" does this mean she had no idea who lewis was...?

->user4 im assuming if it is true but i don't know how she couldn't ->user5 y/n isn't really that online and only goes to major events so it's not crazy to not know who is is lowkey ->user6 also 2008 lewis and 2026 lewis do look fairly different 😭 and if she was tipsy she might not remember his race that well

user7 imagine finding out your date is THE Lewis Hamilton WHILE your mom is THE Y/n L/n wth

user8 she hit the genetic lottery

user9 fans putting this together before y/n or lewis did is crazy

user10 why is this now coming out im so!???!?!

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yourusername time well spent in canada! ❤

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user1 heyyy queen i have a quick question

IrisLn insightful weekend 😅

->user2 "insightful in many ways" DOES THIS MEAN?!??? ->user3 it's real what the fuckkkkk ->user4 this is crazy wth

user5 im sure the time was WELL spent

user6 lewis in the likes too :D

user7 i can't prove it but those flowers are from lewis

->user8 LITERALLY!!! ->user9 they have to be

user10 can we talk about the elephant in the room please

user11 omg she got the podium lift on video how cuteee

user12 iris' comment is soooo 😭

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tmz Y/n L/n and Lewis Hamilton confirm the rumors of Iris L/n being their child in newly released statement.

Hamilton says “I kind of knew she had a baby but I didn’t look too much into it, I thought she’d reach out if she [Iris L/n] was mine but when Y/n and I met again recently it reminded me that when we first met she had no clue who I was. So all this time she just thought I was a random guy who she met at a party, it’s strange she’s [Y/n L/n] has always been in the back of my mind for years. Reconnecting with them all these years later it feels like I found a missing piece.” L/n and their daughter Iris were in attendance at the Canadian Grand Prix which is where the two met again after 18 years.

When asked for a comment Y/n L/n replied "I was so focused on raising our daughter, that who her father's identity was wasn't really a main priority of mine. I also only knew Lewis. I didn't know he was Lewis Hamilton, if I'd known sooner I would've 100% reached out to him. I feel bad for how long it took but we have forever to get to know each other." L/n was seen arriving at Hamilton's Monaco apartment recently, confirming the two are reconnecting.

Click the link in our bio to read more.

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user1 this is so insane

user2 after seeing them all side by side it just makes sense

user3 i just can't make myself believe she didn't know who he was

->user4 well they both said it so believe it ->user5 y'all are so annoying... why would they lie about it?

user6 all because she went to a f1 race with her daughter wow

user7 ugh i feel bad because she had no clue about him :/

user8 missed 18 years because she had no clue who is was is crazy

->user9 i think that's why she said "we have forever to get to know each other" because it would've been fairly easy to find out who lewis is ->user10 she was just busy trying to raise her kid... i honestly don't think she should feel to bad tbh ->user11 yeah user also probably wanted to let her daughter have the choice of knowing who her dad is

user12 having go through this all in the public eye would ruin me

user13 if this brings lewis and y/n together... i'll cry

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lewishamilton Family ❤

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user1 i can't 😭❤❤

user2 so adorable omfg

IrisLn <3 !!! liked by lewishamilton !

user3 most important photo dump ever

user4 STOP ARE THEY LIKE TOGETHER TOGETHER?!!????

->user5 I THINK SO 😭 ->user6 saw a vid of the walking and they were holding hands

user7 pleaseee she looks just like them

user8 tagging y/n in the second picture 😭 they are so dating

georgerussell63 ❤ liked by lewishamilton !

user9 girlfriend hard launch and daughter reveal in one post wth

user10 so happy for you three <3

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Your forearms were burning, your throat felt like sandpaper, and your heart was hammering frantically against your ribs at a rate that could only be described as medically alarming. But as the checkered flag finally flew and the crowd exploded into a frenzy, the pain seemed to vanish. The car's radio crackled with celebration, your engineers and team shouting over one another as pure exhilaration poured in from the speakers.

Your gloved hands trembled, flooded with raw adrenaline as your car rolled to a stop into parc fermé in first place. You scrambled out of the cockpit, the roar of the grandstand hitting like a physical wave. Despite your legs quivering like jelly, you sprinted to the pit wall.

“Phenomenal! Truly amazing race. Congrats!” Mekies, the Red Bull team principal, exclaimed as he pulled you into a hug over the barrier. Before your feet could grace the ground again, another engineer caught you in another embrace.

Your whole team bombarded you with congratulations, hands clapping your shoulder as you vaulted over the pit wall. You exchanged high-fives all the way down the line before a staff member grabbed your arm, steering you towards the scales before you could bounce off somewhere else.

The transition was jarring. One moment your ears rang with praises from mechanics, and the next, you were in the quiet, sterile garage on an industrial scale. As the adrenaline pumping through your veins faded, the aches and exhaustion took hold again. Your helmet was now suffocating, your muscles on fire, and throat drier than the Sahara.

The moment the scale flashed green, your frantic hands tore off the tight helmet and balaclava. Cool air met the sweat that pooled on your forehead, sending a welcome chill down your spine. You trainer shoved a water bottle in your hands, already sending you down the corridor and towards the reserved cool down room.

"Congrats!" The familiar Italian voice echoed down the empty hallway, sending a wave of warmth through your exhaustion.

"Kimi!" You leaped towards him, energy spiking again at the sight of your friend. He was quick to catch you, nearly lifting you off your feet in a breathless hug. "Congrats to you, too!" You laughed into his shoulder.

"Grazie, grazie," he beamed, setting you down. His hair was in shambles from the helmet, his curls sticking out in a multitude of different directions.

 Another small laugh involuntarily escaped your lips at the sight.

Kimi tilted his head, his eyes playfully scanning your face. “What?”

“Your hair,” you managed to choke out between winded breaths, “Was that the helmet, or did you accidentally stick your finger in an electrical socket?” 

“Uh, it’s called aerodynamics. You should try it sometime, might make you faster.” 

You scoffed, pushing the door open to the cooldown room that was reserved for the top three. “Woah, slow your roll there, P2. You can criticize my aerodynamics when you're first.”

George was already sitting on the couch when you got there, a cold towel draped over his neck as he watched replays from the race on the screen. 

“Aye, P3! How’d you beat us here?” you asked, crashing on the sofa next to him. Kimi slid down next to you, looping an arm around George’s shoulders to pull his teammate in for a messy sidehug. George didn’t flinch at the sudden pile-up on the couch, just offered a tired but genuine smile and made room. 

“You guys took forever,” he shrugged, his eyes darting between you with a knowing glint. “I thought you had skipped the cool-down room to go have a celebration of your own. Though, clearly, Kimi was busy… losing a battle with a hairdryer?” You laughed once again, your head rolling back to rest on the couch as you lazily glanced at Kimi. He gave George a playful shove, but didn’t deny a thing.

He was probably used to it by now, given how often people would make comments about the two of you together. But beside him, your stomach did that familiar, heavy flip, the one that always made you question everything. 

“Strictly aerodynamics talk. Very professional,” you quipped. You hastily unscrewed your water bottle cap, taking a long sip to deflect from the involuntary heat rising to your cheeks.

“Mhm, sure, whatever you say.” George flashed a smirk that proved he didn’t buy a word you said. You set the bottle down with a deliberate click against the table. 

“Maybe if you listened to our aerodynamics chats, you’d be the one sitting P1, Russell.” 

George let out a dry chuckle, obviously not taking your insults to heart. “Chill, rookie, it’s your first P1. Don’t let it get to your head just yet.”

“I know!”  The sheer excitement and realization peeked through your cocky mask. “First P1! First woman ever to win a Grand Prix. You’re looking at history, baby!”

George’s smirk instantly melted into a genuine, brilliant smile. He reached across the back of the sofa, giving your shoulder a rough, proud shake. "Alright, alright, fair point. History has been made. I suppose I can allow the arrogance just this once."

"Just this once?" you scoffed, leaning into the warmth of the couch.

Beside you, Kimi hadn't spoken, but when you glanced over, his eyes were locked on you. The playful, teasing glint was gone, replaced by an expression that was entirely soft, and entirely too dangerous for your peace of mind. 

For the rest of the time, the three of you just watched the race replays on the big screen until an official popped their head in to signal it was time for the podium. 

The room had fallen into a peaceful silence, and suddenly the distance between you and Kimi felt miniscule. It would be so easy to shift your weight. To lean into his embrace, to let your exhaustion win, and let him hold you the way you knew he wanted to. But you forced yourself to remain upright, your eyes locked on the screen to prevent them from drifting in his direction. 

You loved him. It was a terrifying, undeniable truth that had haunted you for months, a lingering feeling that sat heavy and suffocating against your chest. Kimi was the one who spent all those late nights analyzing telemetry data with you, the one who made you his favorite Italian dishes when you cried over cruel media headlines, the one who made loving someone seem so easy in such an awful world.

It was no secret he felt the same. It had become an unspoken barrier in your relationship, the quiet knowledge that you both felt entangled with one another in a way, though neither of you dared to utter the words into existence. 

As a woman in such a male-dominated sport, you couldn’t afford a romance with another driver. All of your energy already went into proving yourself, fighting to be respected in a world that cared more about your gender than your lap times. Dating Kimi would ruin everything you worked so hard for. You would become a WAG first and a driver second, and compromising your values and career wasn’t an option. So, you held back, choosing to suffer with the ache of “almost” rather than the risk of losing everything you had built. 

“Time for podiums,” An FIA official announced, popping their head into your room. The three of you sluggishly rose from the couch. The celebrations were fun, of course, but nothing could beat the craving of rest after a grueling race like that. George strolled ahead, leaving you and Kimi walking together slowly. 

“What are you doing tonight?” Kimi asked, shattering the comforting silence between you.

“After the never-ending press conferences? A team dinner, I think,” you sighed, adjusting the sleeves on your race suit.

Kimi slowed his pace just a fraction, keeping his eyes fixed straight ahead as he spoke. “You wanna come over after? We can have celebratory affogato and watch that new movie you were talking about.”

Your chest tightened. Say no, your brain demanded. Tell him you’re too tired, the team dinner will run too late. Hanging out in his hotel room at night, even if nothing actually happened, was far too intimate for just friends. You knew how it would go, laughing in the kitchen, holding hands under the blanket, splitting the dessert with a shared spoon, all while desperately pretending nothing was going on. It heavily blurred the dangerous line between friendship and something more, and you couldn’t risk that right now. Please, god, just say no. 

“Yeah,” you murmured, your smile masking your internal panic. “I’ll text you when I’m done with media.” 

Screw his stupid, messy curls and his stupider eyes that you were powerless against. 

By the time you had finished surviving the dozens of interviews, smiled through a fancy team dinner, and escaped back to your hotel to change, it was past midnight. You pulled up to Kimi’s room in an oversized tee and comfy shorts, knowing not even the affogato could stop you from passing out soon, probably in his arms. He opened the door in his Mercedes hoodie and plain sweatpants,his hair now clean but still adorably messy. 

“You’re doing it wrong,” Kimi muttered a few minutes later, hips resting on the counter as he watched you struggle with the espresso machine. 

“I am literally just pressing a button, Kimi,” you said, not bothering to look up as he scooped vanilla gelato into a large bowl. “How can someone press a button wrong?”

He abandoned the spoon and headed towards you, swooping in to fix the machine. “You’re too aggressive. You need to be gentle. It can sense your stress, like a wasp,” he nodded and softly clicked a button, and of course it worked now. “See? Fine Italian engineering requires respect.”

You rolled your eyes, picking up the spoon and licking it clean. “It’s a cheap hotel coffee maker, not a Mercedes. And speaking of terrible engineering, have you used the showers in this place? They’re so… confusing.” 

Kimi shot you a dirty look at the Mercedes dig, but decided to let it slide. “I know, right? So many dials and levers, and half of them are useless.”

You laughed, the easy warmth of the moment filling the space between you as he poured the hot espresso over the gelato. Taking the bowl, the two of you moved away from the counter and sat cross-legged on the edge of the hotel bed, facing each other. For a moment, the room was silent, the only sound being the metal spoons softly scraping against porcelain. You ate in a peaceful manner, enjoying each other's presence silently with no pressure.

Kimi looked up from the bowl, his eyes slowly tracing your face. He studied the way your eyelashes fluttered calmly, the way you tucked your hair behind your ears when it drooped down, and the way your lips wrapped delicately around the spoon. And suddenly, it was all too much for him.

“You were incredible today," he murmured, his voice dropping to a low, quiet register that made your chest ache. "But watching you up there... it just made me realize how hard it is to keep pretending that you're only my friend." 

You finally looked up at him, a cold sense of dread spreading throughout your chest and poisoning your heart. You knew where he was going with this, and you knew what it would cost you to say no. 

“Kimi, please,” you whispered, voice shaking as you set the bowl on the nightstand. Your heartbeat rang in your ears as tears blurred your vision, a silent, desperate plea for him to stop talking.  “Don’t do this. Don’t say it.”

“I have to,” he said softly, reaching out to grasp your hand, unaware his touch only made everything sting more. “Because I love you. Ti amo, tanto. I’ve known for months, and I tried to keep it hidden for your sake, but I can’t, not anymore.”

Each word was like a violent strike to your chest. His eyes were filled with absolute certainty, a look that was hauntingly beautiful, terrifying, and completly devastating. The exact words your heart so desperately longed to hear were also the same words that could ruin your career and passion that you had sacrificed your whole life to build.

Hot tears streamed down your face before you could stop them. “I can't," you choked out, pulling your hand out of his grip as if his touch burned. “I can’t do this, Kimi.” 

You couldn’t bear to look him in the eyes as you said it, grabbing your keys and fleeing before he had time to even try and understand. The weight on your chest had crushed your heart, sobs filling the corridor as you bolted from his room. 

The heavy door of your own hotel room shutting behind you felt like the final nail in the coffin. It was over. Everything was over. There would be no more midnight sleepovers, no more running around the paddock together, no more Kimi. 

Sliding against the door, you fell to your knees and gave in, violent, painful sobs racking your body. His voice replayed in a cruel loop, consuming your entire mind.

Ti amo, tanto. 

You loved him too, so much, and that was the worst part. It made your stomach twist into sharp knots thinking of what you had lost, of all that you had sacrificed for your career that now felt insignificant. For just a fraction of a second, the trophy on the counter felt worthless compared to his touch. But of course, reality always won. You couldn’t let yourself be diminished to just his girlfriend in the eyes of the world. You wouldn’t be able to look in the mirror again if you ever willingly let your work be overshadowed. So, you spent the rest of the night crying in the darkness of your room, praying to whoever would listen, begging for someone to take your feelings away so it would stop hurting. 

The sudden silence after the slam of his door was utterly deafening. 

He sat still on the edge of the mattress, his hands still outstretched to the empty air where you had just been moments ago. The room, which had just felt so warm and cozy, was now large and freezing.  On the nightstand, the abandoned affogato melted, the flavors swirling together to create a murky puddle. 

He had imagined that conversation a thousand times in his head, but he never pictured this. He thought you felt it too, the lingering glances in the paddock, the squeeze of your hand under blankets, the unspoken gravity that pulled you together every racing weekend. Had he read everything wrong and fucked it all up?

A sickening flood of regret suddenly threatened to drown him. He hadn’t meant to push you away, and he certainly hadn’t meant to make you cry. But he couldn’t bury his feelings any longer. He couldn’t hide how every weekend, when his mind should be focused on racing, his eyes always searched for you in the crowd. He couldn’t hide how empty he felt during breaks when you weren't by his side. The weight of it had become too much to bear, and it had all just spilled out. 

For a second, he thought about following you into the corridor, but the memory of tears streaming down your cheeks as you fled kept him exactly where he was. It was over. 

The next two weeks between racing weekends had been, simply put, an agonizing blur. You hadn’t spoken to Kimi since the night in his room. No texts, no calls ,no late-night hangouts, nothing. Just radio silence, from both ends. 

Which only made your arrival at the next track ten times worse. The paddock buzzed like usual, teams from everywhere meeting, testing, and socializing under the beaming sun. Normally, you and Kimi naturally found one another among the chaos, sneaking snacks between data analysis, or even just sitting silently together whenever you could grab a moment of freetime. This time, you could pass as strangers. 

When Kimi eventually passed the Red Bull garage, deep in conversation with one of his engineers, you purposefully pulled out your phone, pretending you were busy (you were staring blankly at the weather app). You didn’t look his way. He didn’t look yours. The distance between you felt loud, a noticeable pause in the crowded paddock. 

“What’s going on with you two?”

You nearly jumped out of your racing suit, looking over to see Max leaning next to you, also watching Kimi disappear as he turned the corner. Max wasn’t one for prying into people’s personal lives, but as your teammate, he spent way too long with you to not know when something was wrong. 

“Nothing,” you shook your head, eyes locked on the ground. “I’m just trying to stay focused on the season.”

“Bullshit. You haven’t stood within ten feet of each other since the last podium, and your telemetry data from yesterday looked like you were distracted,” Max said, his tone surprisingly blunt as he pushed off the wall and stepped closer. “You can lie to Mekies, but you can't lie to me. Did you guys fight or something?”

The walls you had been hiding behind for the past fourteen days suddenly came crashing down. You dragged him to the side, a spot hidden from nearby cameras and reporters, before pouring your heart out. You spilled everything. The espresso machine, the ti amo, the panic, and how you had fled out of a terrifying certainty that letting yourself love a competitor would turn your career into a media shitshow. 

Max sat and listened silently as you rambled on, his expression not wavering even as he wiped a stray tear from your face. 

“You’re overthinking this,” He stated firmly.

You blinked, caught off guard slightly. “Max-”

“No, listen to me,” he interrupted, looking at you sternly. “It doesn’t matter what they think. It doesn’t matter who you date, or how fast your laps are, those people won’t respect you either way. Fuck them. Don’t waste your time trying to win them over. Who you love won’t change your times ”

You let out a sigh, exhaling all of the stress that had been accumulating deep inside your chest for the past two weeks. 

Max watched you for a second, the harshness in his expression softening just a fraction, before he gestured vaguely toward the Mercedes garage. “Besides, he’s been driving awful all week because he’s miserable, and frankly, it’s getting dangerous for the rest of us on the grid. So do everyone a favor and go fix it. I'd like to win the race on Sunday without your boyfriend running me off the track.” 

Max’s words echoed in your head all day, looping like a broken record. He didn’t understand the struggles you faced, the misogyny that affected you on the daily. He had the luxury of being judged based on his race times. He didn’t feel what it was like to have your wins dissected and analyzed until being invalidated by a flimsy excuse. If you let Kimi in, you knew the headlines would only grow worse. 

By the time you were done with strategy meetings and engineering chats, night had already fallen. The frantic daytime rush of the paddock had died down by now, replaced by a quieter atmosphere where only a few hard-workers remained. Your heart hammered against your ribs as you made up your mind, grabbing your team jacket and running to the (mostly) empty Mercedes hospitality unit. 

You stopped outside Kimi’s driver room, taking one sharp, steadying breath before knocking softly.

A moment later, the door swung open, revealing an exhausted Kimi. His curls had that familiar messiness to them, but his eyes now held a new, tired burden to them. They widened slightly as his brain finally caught up and realized who he was looking at. 

“Hi,” you whispered softly, throat tight with all the words you longed to say.

“Hey,” he murmured, his voice incredibly fragile, as if bracing for you to put another barrier up. 

The silence floated heavy in the air, filled with unspoken confessions. Kimi didn’t move, just waited for you to say something, anything. 

“I’m sorry,” you started, voice already cracking on the first syllable. The tears you promised not to shed had betrayed you and began pooling in your waterline. “I just left you there, and I’ve felt sick every day since. I am so, so sorry, Kimi.”

Kimi’s eyes softened immediately as he shook his head. “You don’t have to apologize. I shouldn’t have pushed like that. If I made you feel trapped, or ruined our friendship–”

“You didn’t ruin anything!” you snapped, unable to listen to him take the blame. “It was me, Kimi. It was never you. When– when you said those words to me, it was everything I had ever wanted to hear, but it felt like a trap. I’ve sacrificed everything to be an F1 driver. My friendships, my relationships, my teenage years... everything. Just to be treated like shit by half the reporters out there. And I was so scared that if I let myself have you, it would all fall on me again. I thought they would stop seeing me as a driver. I thought for my career to work out, it couldn’t work out between us.”

You took a ragged breath, a hot tear finally spilling over your lashes.

“But these two weeks without you have been hell. I miss everything, and I miss you the most of all. Not speaking to you hurt worse than any headline ever could. I don’t want to live in fear of what people might say anymore. I don’t want to celebrate a podium if you aren't there with me.”

More tears fell as you took a step closer, your vulnerability spilling out. 

“I love you, Kimi. Ti amo, tanto. And I’m so sorry it took me breaking down like this to finally tell you.”

Kimi didn’t say a single word. He simply closed the remaining gap between you, throwing his arms around you and pulling you tightly against his chest. He held you through every single sob, feeling your chest rise and fall rapidly against his. You could feel his own heartbeat racing wildly against your ribs as his hands ran comfortingly along your back, holding you so deeply it felt like he was trying to erase those two weeks of radio silence in a single moment. 

Slowly, the frantic pace of your breathing began to match his steady, grounding rhythm. Kimi pulled back just enough to look down at you, his thumbs tenderly wiping away the damp tracks on your cheeks as a soft, breathless laugh escaped him. 

“You are the only thing that keeps me sane out here, and no one on this grid could ever erase how incredible you are in that car,” he murmured, his voice thick with relief as his eyes searched yours. “We will handle the media, okay? Side by side. I just need you. Ti amo, tanto.”

As he pulled you back into a tight embrace, the stress of the last few weeks dissipated from your chest. The terrifying noise of the paddock, the fear of the headlines, and the doubts that had kept you awake for weeks all faded into nothing but background noise. You finally let yourself breathe again, knowing that no matter what, you would be okay, because you had Kimi by your side. 

LOUD LAUGHTER ROLLS ACROSS THE SANDY BEACH, carried by the wind and folded into the low crash of waves breaking against the shore. It fills the grey hush of the evening. Fills something in JJ too, something deep in the chest where warmth rarely lives, something that feels dangerously close to home.

The clouds have been gathering all afternoon, stacking themselves like bruises above the water. Now the rain comes harder, colder, slicing through the humid air in sheets, and you, of course, don’t care in the slightest. Your clothes are drenched, the thin white shirt clinging to your skin until the pale yellow of your swimsuit shows through like sunlight behind fog. Your dad’s oversized jacket hangs crookedly off your shoulders. Your hair – soaked, wild, sticking to your cheeks – should make you shiver.

But instead you throw your arms out wide and spin in the sand as if the storm were a stage built just for you, as if every drop of rain were a gift falling straight into your palms.

Thunder growls somewhere in the distance, a low warning crawling across the horizon and you only laugh harder. A laugh that sends something bright and reckless skidding through JJ’s ribs. Your appearance, your voice, your entire presence breaks over him like the tide. You’ve always been a siren to him, calling him closer without trying, without even knowing. He looks at you the way a drowning man looks at the surface – with a kind of desperate reverence. As if you’re the only air left in this entire world.

“Don’t look at me like that, Maybank.” 

Your voice is soft, almost teased through a smile, and though the sky is dark, your eyes catch the thin slice of moonlight between clouds, turning them into something he’d swear he could sail by. Something that glows like a galaxy trying to fit itself into human shape.

At the sound of your voice, everything in him curls tight – not with fear, not like it used to when his father opened his mouth, but with a fierce, treacherous wanting that makes him feel unsteady. Dependent. Starved for a warmth he never believed he could have.

Damn. Damn. Damn.

Enchanted. Captivated. Spellbound. The word doesn’t matter – the truth does. Every breath he draws now has a purpose. You. And somehow that purpose both destroys him and makes him feel more alive than he has ever been.

“Come here, Jay,” you whisper or maybe he only thinks you do. 

The rain is too loud to be sure of anything. But then you reach out your hand, palm open, fingers trembling with cold and something tender, and that’s all it takes. JJ catches your wrist and pulls you into him with one sure, instinctive movement.

Your bodies collide with a sound that’s almost a gasp. He wraps his arms around your waist, drawing you in until your chest is pressed to his and there’s barely enough space left between you for breath to exist. Your forehead touches his shoulder, damp hair clinging to his throat, and he drops his head against yours like he’s finally found the place he was meant to fit. Heat surges through him the moment your skin brushes his – warm, bright, expanding in every direction like sunlight trapped under his ribs.

The rain hammers against the sand, against the jacket sliding off your shoulders, against his back. You raise your head, and he looks down into your eyes – and there it is again, that impossible infinity he always finds in them, the one that makes him feel small and huge at the same time.

Your lips brush along his jaw, feather-light, and his entire body lights up like someone struck a match along his spine. The world shrinks until it’s only you, only this moment, only the sound of rain and breath and his heart stumbling in his chest. He’s ready to spill every secret he’s ever held, even the ones you already know. Even the ones he’s afraid of. Because when you look at him like this – like he’s worth something, like you see him – he feels anchored. Chosen. Home.

“I love you,” he murmurs, barely more than breath, leaning in to press a soft kiss to the corner of your lips. A small, reverent thing.

You smile. Soft, luminous even in the storm and nudge your wet nose against his cheek.

“Wait for me,” you whisper.

And then everything falls apart.

The dream shatters in an instant. Not gently, not like glass, but like something heavier, something that takes the breath with it when it breaks. Peace evaporates. Tranquillity is gone before he can even reach for it. All that remains is the darkness of JJ’s small room in John B’s house, swallowing him whole with its familiar cold and the kind of loneliness that tastes metallic on the tongue.

For a few seconds he can’t move. His eyes hang open in the pitch-black, unadjusted, useless. Cold sweat beads at his spine and slides down in thin, uncomfortable lines, soaking the waistband of his boxers. His chest heaves as if he’s been sprinting through a nightmare instead of sleeping in one.

“Fuck,” JJ whispers into the suffocating silence. 

His hand drags over his face, fingers pushing into his messy hair. It’s gotten long again. Even too long. He tugs at the ends just to feel something that isn’t the hollow ache gnawing its way through his ribs. But it barely cuts through the emptiness.

Your laughter is still there, echoing off the inside of his skull like it never left. The memory of your smile, the storm-drenched glow of your eyes, the warmth of your skin pressed to his – all of it spills through him in a dizzying rush of déjà vu so vivid it hurts. He can almost smell your perfume in the room’s stale air, still clinging to fabric and corners despite the fact that Sarah’s the only reason the window ever gets cracked open.

JJ shakes his head hard, as if he can rattle the memories loose. As if shaking off thoughts of you has ever worked. But every moment you spend together replays behind his eyelids like a film he doesn’t know how to turn off. The images stutter and repeat and loop until he’s breathless from wanting something that isn’t there anymore.

He swings his legs off the mattress, misjudges his footing, and his heel crashes into a half-drunk beer bottle. The glass clatters across the wooden floor, spilling warm, sticky liquid that spreads across the boards. JJ barely looks at it.

He needs air. He needs out. He needs to escape the hell he built himself when he lost you.

His hand reaches for the hoodie draped over the back of the chair, the one he’s been wearing like a second skin lately, the one heavy with old bonfire smoke and bad decisions. It slides over his shoulders in one practiced motion. In the pocket, his fingers brush a crumpled pack of cigarettes, then his skin is touched by the cold kiss of metal – the lighter. His jaw tightens.

Nicotine. That’s all he has now.

He quit smoking weed for you or maybe because of you. He thought he could climb out of the swamp he grew up in, that he could cut chains and be someone different, someone better, someone warm in the way you made him feel. He used to joke that you were like the sunlight he carried in his pockets. 

Now every day without you feels colder. Dimmer. Colourless.

He traded one addiction for another, and he knows it. Knows exactly what he’s becoming with every cigarette. Knows the resemblance creeping into his reflection – the shadow of a man he swore he’d never be. The shadow of Luke Maybank. The thought alone chills him deeper than the dawn air.

Outside, the world is just beginning to wake. Birds murmur hesitantly from the trees. The horizon blushes with pink and gold, the kind of quiet sunrise that used to seem beautiful when you stood beside him. JJ steps onto the porch and sinks onto the old, scuffed couch, its springs groaning under his weight.

His body moves without thought  – cigarette between lips, lighter flick, small flame caught between trembling fingers. The tip glows, then softens into smoke. The first inhale loosens something tight and painful in his chest. It always does. Relief, thin and temporary, seeps through him as he exhales toward the sky, watching the smoke dissipate and vanish into the cool morning air like a ghost.

Four years have passed since the night he tore his own world apart on this very porch. Four years since he last held you in his arms, last breathed warmth into the cold corners of his body, last felt you pressed to him like the only thing keeping him from falling clean through the earth. 

Four years – a lifetime for some people. But for JJ Maybank, it’s the blink of an eye. The nightmare he hasn’t been able to run from. The memory, tearing down his very existence, leaving rent free in his head.

He just turned twenty, grown in all the wrong ways and none of the right ones, yet somehow still standing in front of you like the same boy who used to swear the sun rose only because it wanted to light your face. He stands there, fists buried so deep into the pockets of his shorts that the knuckles ache. He stands there biting back the desperate, wild urge to gather you into his arms and never let you go, to seal you against his chest and pretend you were something he could still keep.

But he doesn’t move.

He just stands and watches as tears slip down your cheeks in trembling rivers – the kind of tears he used to wipe away with his thumb, whispering promises he meant with his whole heart. Your hands reach for his wrists, fingers trembling as you try to pull him back into sense, back into the boy you still loved. But he only shakes his head, jaw clenched so tightly the muscles quiver. He pretends his heart isn’t splitting in two, pretends your touch doesn’t make him want to crumble at your feet.

“Jay, don’t do this to me,” you breathe, your voice so soft it feels like a bruise on the night air.

You search his eyes for even a flash of the love you always found there, but all you meet is the cold mask he’d practiced in the mirror for hours before this moment. “I- I… love you.”

Three words. A flame. A spark. A prayer. A surrender.

Three words and inside him something collapses with a violent, silent snap. But on the outside he doesn’t move. Doesn’t even flinch.

He stands there, frozen in the kind of pain you’d never recognize, because he’s learned how to bury it. He knows he’ll hate himself more if he lets you stay. Hates himself already for making you love him enough to leave your dreams behind last year. Hates himself when he imagines you in a few years, sitting at a kitchen table you don’t like, telling your children that your biggest mistake was staying in North Carolina. That your biggest mistake was loving a Maybank who never managed to become more than the life he came from.

So whatever he had to do to make you leave… he did. Whatever lies he had to spit, he spat. Whatever cruelty he had to pretend he felt, he forced into his voice.

Because you’d already given up too much for him.

A whole year stolen from you. A year you should’ve spent at university with your friends, dragging each other out of bed for early lectures, sharing notes and inside jokes, studying in libraries until dawn, dancing at student parties, living the life you’d whispered about since you were a kid dreaming of something bigger than this island.

He wasn’t stupid. He saw the way you watched your friends’ Instagram stories with that small, aching smile – the kind that tried to be happy for them but never quite made it. He saw the university acceptance letter you shoved under the bed, wrinkled from how many times you’d read it, a painful ghost of the future you hid because you didn’t want him to see. He saw how your face lit up when you talked about your friends’ classes, their professors, their stupid campus gossip and the way your voice dimmed right after, as if you suddenly remembered where you weren’t.

He saw all of it. And he hated himself for being the reason you weren’t there.

That’s why he ended it. Not because he stopped loving you but because he loved you enough to let you go. Or at least that’s the lie he tells himself at three in the morning, chain-smoking on this same porch where he broke both of your hearts.

Ending things was supposed to be easier. It wasn’t. Not for a single second since.

JJ let out a long, exhausted sigh and tipped his head back, staring up at the fading stars scattered across the dawn-pale sky. They were barely visible, dim fireflights drowning under the early glow of sunrise, but he stared at them anyway because that was the last thing he remembered doing the night you left.

Back then, he’d believed he’d spoken to you for the last time on that old porch of John B’s house. He’d believed that walking away would save you, even as his heart cracked under the weight of it. And he’d been right: a week later, after days of being ghosted by the boy you loved, after every text was left on read and every call went to voicemail, you’d finally lost hope. 

You packed your life into your father’s car and left the island.

That morning, JJ found himself on your street before he even understood why his feet had carried him there. He made it as far as the old oak tree across from your house, the one with the crooked trunk and the roots pushing through the sidewalk, and that was where everything inside him just… stopped. His courage, his breath, his whole stupid heart. He stayed hidden in the shadow of the tree, fingers digging into the rough bark as if he could anchor himself to it. He didn’t dare step out, didn’t dare let you see him. All he could do was watch.

He watched you hug the Pogues goodbye, arms wrapped tight around them as if you were holding yourself together. Watched you smile – a soft, brave little smile that didn’t reach your eyes. Watched your father lift your bags into the car with shaky hands. Watched the door slam shut, closing away the last piece of home he ever really had.

And then he watched the car pull away. Watched it shrink down the street. Watched until the taillights disappeared and the silence rushed in like a wave.

You drove off, and he stayed rooted to the spot, standing among all the things he didn’t say, all the things he wished he’d told you, all the pieces of himself he never managed to show you before it was too late.

The next day, his phone lit up with a single text from you. Just two words.

Wait for me.

JJ stared at the screen through the blur of a hangover and leftover tears. Maybe it was the alcohol still running through his blood. Maybe it was hope. Or maybe it was the part of him that only ever beat for you but he typed back one word he shouldn’t have sent.

Promise.

Then your number went dead. Disconnected, deleted, gone. And so were you.

Time didn’t heal anything for him. It just kept going, dragging him forward while everything else around him crumbled piece by piece. His father vanished again, slipping away from the cops like he always did, and left JJ with the familiar wreckage: debts he never made, threats he didn’t deserve, promises that never meant anything, an empty house that echoed when he walked through it, and a hundred things that needed fixing because no one else would.

He started working long days at the old garage, letting the smell of oil settle into his skin and letting the endless hours numb whatever hurt too much. Nights ended the same way: bars with sticky counters, cheap drinks, loud music, or in the spare room John B kept for him, where he’d knock himself out with enough alcohol to guarantee dreamless sleep. Four years slipped past like that. Heavy. Flat. The same every day.

And all that time, you were living a life on the other side of the country.

He saw pieces of it on social media. The green campus lawns, faces he didn’t know, the world you were building without him. He studied every photo like it had answers hidden in the corners. Were you happier? Colder? Did you forget him? Did you still smile the same way?

But the worst part was that you hadn’t changed in the ways he feared. You still had that quiet warmth, that soft confidence that always pulled people in, the same bright spark in your eyes. You kept growing, blooming even, while he stayed stuck exactly where you left him. Still the same boy you once held onto in the rain.

The dreams were the hardest part, especially at the start. For two whole years, you came to him almost every night. Sometimes you were laughing, sometimes your eyes were wet, sometimes you slipped your hand into his like you used to whenever the day had been too long. He’d wake up gasping, heart pounding, crushed between the sweetness of seeing you and the pain of realizing it wasn’t real.

But eventually the dreams became less sharp. Less frequent. He still remembered your face, but parts of it began to blur. The exact way your smile tilted, the constellation of tiny moles on your skin, the soft smell of your perfume when you leaned into him. Even your laugh, once so clear it could stop him in his tracks, faded into something softer, distant.

He hated forgetting. Hated how memories slipped away no matter how tightly he held them. But when the dreams finally stopped altogether… life got easier. Quieter. A little colder, maybe but bearable. A kind of emptiness he could at least breathe inside.

And then everything he’d built around you – every wall, every layer of numbness, every bit of denial – collapsed the moment he saw you again last week.

He was only passing by The Wreck to drop off Kie’s forgotten sweatshirt, half-asleep and thinking about nothing, when he glanced through the big front window… and froze. 

You were there. Right there.

Sitting at a table with your family, sunlight catching in your hair. Your head was thrown back as you laughed, that soft open laugh that always made other people look up, that filled the whole café like it belonged there. You looked older in a way that didn’t push him away, older in the way time makes someone settle deeper into themselves. Brighter. Softer. Beautiful in the kind of way that made his chest hurt. 

You didn’t see him, but JJ felt the world tilt under his feet anyway. Felt something punch the breath straight out of him. Felt all those feelings he’d buried years ago clawed their way up like they’d been waiting for the smallest crack to break through.

By the time he made it back to the chateau, his pulse was still racing. And then he saw them, Kie and Sarah, sitting on the porch with their drinks, eyes wide and too-bright, studying him like he was a puzzle finally starting to solve itself. That’s when it clicked. Of course they knew. Of course they’d planned it.

They’d kept in touch with you all these years: visiting your campus on long weekends, calling you, laughing with you, carrying pieces of you back to the island. Pope too, whenever he was home from his university near you, always dropping stories about you when he thought JJ wasn’t listening. But JJ heard every single one. He cherished them like secret treasures – tiny sparks of warmth inside a cold cage he’d grown too comfortable living in.

And John B… John B was the only one who stayed on JJ’s side in his own way. The only one who didn’t bring up your name, not because you weren’t speaking anymore, but because he’d seen what it did to JJ every time someone did. He’d seen the way JJ crumpled at the sound of your laugh floating from a phone speaker. He’d seen the spiral, the breakdowns, the nights filled with nothing but guilt and missing you. So he never pushed. He just stayed, always ready to catch him, always the brother who didn’t need blood to be family.

That night, the dreams slipped back into JJ’s mind like they’d never left. Except now they were painfully sharp. Your voice brushing his ear, your fingers threading through his, your breath warm against his skin as you whispered his name the way only you used to.

You were close enough to feel real again. Close enough to reach. But still somehow impossibly far. And that distance… That endless, aching space between who you were in his memories and who you were now, felt like it was ripping him open from the inside out.

JJ took one last slow drag, letting the smoke burn right down to the filter before tapping the cigarette into the ashtray overflowing with old buds. Sarah was definitely going to yell at him to clean it. She always did. But right now he didn’t have it in him to care.

He ran a hand through his hair, brushing the damp strands off his forehead, and sighed. He really needed a haircut. Something simple – a trim from Kiara or maybe even a buzzcut just to start over entirely. You used to hate that idea. You loved running your fingers through his hair, scratching lightly at his scalp, catching little knots just to make him complain and then laugh. You always said cutting it short would be a crime, that his hair was one of the few things in the universe that actually listened.

Maybe that was why he never did it. Even after you left. Even when it got heavy and messy and made him look like someone he barely recognized. A version of himself that existed mostly because you’d once loved how soft he was beneath all the rough edges.

He let out a quiet, almost tired laugh. He’d give anything to find that version again, the one with the spark in his eyes, the one who actually looked forward to mornings, but he felt buried deep somewhere he couldn’t reach anymore.

The sand under his feet was cool and steady when he stepped off the porch, grounding him more than the cigarette ever could. He walked toward the shoreline, the early air hitting his face sharp and salty. The sky was opening into a soft blue, clean and new, but he didn’t feel new at all. Still, he kept walking. Each step carried him farther from the chateau and a little closer to breathing normally again. The waves rolled in and out steadily, loosening the tightness in his chest.

But the memories followed, gentle at first, then stronger.

Your hand slipping into his as naturally as breathing. Your laughter bouncing across the beach when he chased you through the sand. The way your eyes lit up when you spotted the ice cream truck and how somehow his wallet always ended up in your hands. The scent of your perfume trapped in his sheets long after you left. Lazy mornings tangled under blankets, whispering about futures you couldn’t fully imagine but wanted anyway. Your surf lessons, mostly you wiping out, mostly him pretending not to laugh. And the things etched deepest into him: your body pressed warm against his, lips tasting like summer and salt, your breath on his neck, the way you looked at him when passion made your eyes glow like sunrise.

He kept all of it. Held it carefully, terrified he’d forget and hating that he remembered so well.

JJ’s steps slowed as he climbed over the little ridge of rocks, dropping down onto the hidden stretch of sand that had once been yours. Yours. A place that felt like a secret you both guarded. He hadn’t come here once since the breakup; the beach always felt off-limits, like crossing into it would split him open again. Being here used to feel like choosing to bleed.

But this morning – quiet, half-lit, the world still sleepy – the place didn’t hurt him. Not like before. For the first time in four years, it felt soft again. Familiar. Like the beach remembered him just as much as he remembered it. Like something inside him shifted, settling into a shape he had forgotten he once fit into. This place was the one golden chapter he hadn’t managed to destroy.

He sank into the sand near the waterline and let the silence sit with him. The sea barely moved, a slow breath against the shore, and the horizon melted into pale blue and gold. JJ leaned back, letting the cool sand hold him, and closed his eyes. For the first time in a long while, breathing didn’t feel like work.

He remembered the day he knew, really knew, that this was where he wanted to propose to you. The idea had burst through him so bold and certain it almost knocked the wind out of his chest. After that, he replayed it over and over in his mind, like a memory from a life he never got to live.

He pictured the two of you spending the whole day here, warm and sun-dazed, the world narrowed down to your laughter and the steady thump of the waves. You’d be sitting on a blanket after swimming, drops of water sliding down your skin, your hair sticking to your cheeks. He’d wrap you in a towel, drag you onto his lap, and kiss you too many times while you squirmed and complained with a smile you couldn’t hide.

Later, when the sky turned hazy and golden, he’d build a small fire and open a bottle of wine he’d saved up for. Or maybe he’d steal something from your dad’s cellar and pretend he didn’t. You’d laugh at him for that, teasing him until his ears turned pink. You’d share pizza straight from the box and talk about everything and nothing, the pointless little things that always made him feel like the world wasn’t so heavy.

And when the sun finally dipped low and the moon took its place, he’d play your favorite song, that slow one you always put on before bed, and hold out his hands. You’d pretend to roll your eyes but you’d still walk into his arms, letting him sway with you in the uneven sand. He’d whisper that he loved you more than anything he’d ever known. And just when you relaxed into him, he’d drop to one knee.

He could still see it: his fingers reaching into the ripped pocket of his old shorts, pulling out the small gold ring he’d found in his dad’s closet when he was just a kid. He’d kept it all these years, hidden away like a promise he was never brave enough to speak out loud. Knowing his luck, the ring would probably fall through a hole in the pocket or slip from his shaking hands. You’d laugh so hard you’d cry, calling him an idiot and kissing his forehead while he tried to keep his heart from exploding.

But in the end, he knew you would’ve said yes. He believed that in the deepest part of himself. And in the life he once imagined that simple yes would’ve been the start of everything. 

You and him. Walking off this beach and into a whole future together. One that lasted a lifetime. In that world, you didn’t leave. And he never had to learn what it meant to lose the future he’d already imagined down to the smallest detail.

“Um… can I join you?”

For a moment JJ honestly thought he made the voice up – just another ghost his mind liked to throw at him when mornings got too quiet. He’d imagined you so many times that hearing you now didn’t feel real. But then the breeze carried your voice again, soft and careful, and something inside him jolted awake.

He pushed himself up so fast the world tilted. You were standing just a few steps away.

The rising sun framed you in gold, like it was pulling you out of the past and setting you gently into the present, right onto the small patch of sand he’d been hiding on. Your hair was tangled from the wind, strands sticking to your cheeks. A faint blush warmed your skin, like the walk had taken something from you, or maybe speaking had.

You were swallowed by a worn blue hoodie with the emblem of your university, sleeves pulled all the way over your hands, as if you needed something to hold onto. Your denim shorts were dusted with sand, legs bare, knees lightly scraped like you’d wandered through the rocks instead of choosing an easier path. You looked older, softer around the edges, but still so painfully familiar it made him feel seventeen again.

JJ’s throat closed up. All he managed was a stiff nod, and even that felt like too much. He turned his head toward the horizon as if the morning sky suddenly demanded all his attention. He felt the sand shift under your steps. Then the soft weight of you settling down beside him.

Your perfume drifted over to him. The same one he used to breathe in against your neck, while leaving soft kisses first thing in the morning. It hit him so hard his eyes nearly closed on their own. For one dizzy second he was back in old summers, when everything felt easy, when you’d stolen his hoodie and laughed into his chest, when life didn’t feel like a battlefield.

You let out a quiet breath and pulled your knees up, fingers brushing through the sand between you. He noticed your hands first. He always did. Your nails were painted that clean white you’d never given up, and there, on your wrist were the tiny scar from the cooking incident with Sarah. He remembered kissing that spot once, just to make you stop crying.

That little detail, untouched by time, cracked something deep in him.

“Thank you,” you said softly.

JJ went still. The word hit him wrong: too gentle, too unexpected. He stared ahead, every sense sharp like he might be dreaming again.

You cleared your throat. Your fingers kept moving through the sand, sifting it like you needed something to do with your hands. Your voice trembled even though your expression stayed steady.

“Thank you for letting me go four years ago.”

The knot rose in his throat so fast it hurt. You didn’t look at him, maybe you couldn’t. But JJ saw the shimmer in your eyes from the corner of his vision. He knew you were holding back tears. You’d always hated crying in front of anyone, even him, even when your walls slipped and he held you through it. And hearing you thank him – for something that felt like losing the only good thing he’d ever had – felt like the sharpest cut of all.

“I was crushed,” you said, and the way your voice trembled under that small, almost apologetic smile made JJ’s chest twist. It wasn’t an accusation. Somehow that made it worse. “I didn’t know how to breathe without you. Back then… I loved you so much I didn’t leave room for anything else. I forgot myself. My own life. My own plans. I thought being with you was the whole world. I thought it was enough.”

You swallowed hard, blinking fast, your lashes catching the early light like they were trying to hide what was gathering behind them.

“And maybe that’s why I needed you to end it,” you whispered, and something in your voice thinned out, like a loose thread pulling from a sweater. “Because if you hadn’t… I never would’ve walked away. I never would’ve learned anything about who I am now.”

Your fingers curled into the sand as if you could hold onto something solid. The grains clung to your skin, catching in the faint tremble of your knuckles. JJ watched your hand, remembering all the times it had rested on his chest, in his hair, on his cheek. Now it was holding nothing.

“And for a long time,” you breathed, “I hated you for it.” 

The confession came out small, honest. “But now… I don’t. Now I think it saved me.”

You drew a slow breath, letting the ocean fill your lungs. The morning air carried that sharp, salty bite you’d almost forgotten – the same one that soaked into every hoodie of his you smuggled off to university. The ones you kept buried at the back of your closet. The ones you clung to on lonely nights when you still didn’t know how to sleep without him. You used to press your face into the old cotton and pretend the steady thud you imagined beneath your ear was real. But when you opened your eyes, there was only empty light and quiet ceilings and a version of you trying to rebuild from scratch.

“And then you let me go,” you murmured, your breath ghosting across your knees. “You made it easy to leave. Or maybe you made it impossible to stay. And everything fell apart… but then it came back together.”

A small, wry smile tugged at your mouth, so fragile it barely held shape. JJ didn’t move. He didn’t trust himself to. His silence stretched between you – warm enough to say he heard every word, cold enough to remind him none of this erased the past.

“So thank you,” you said, barely louder than the waves. “Thank you, JJ.”

The moment his name slipped from your lips, a wave of emotion coursed through him, leaving him momentarily breathless. You sat so close he could see the fine trembling in your shoulders, the way the oversized hoodie swallowed you but couldn’t protect you from the truth you were spilling out. Your nails dug small half-moons into the sand. Your lashes trembled against your flushed cheeks, revealing the emotional toll of the morning.

And JJ wanted – God, he wanted – to reach across the small space between you. To drag you into him the way he used to, to press your head under his chin, to hold you until the world finally gave you both a break. But that wasn’t his place anymore. That wasn’t his right.

So he stayed absolutely still and sat beside you like a shadow. He let the silence lie between you, accepting the past without trying to change it. He didn’t even let himself breathe too loudly, terrified that one wrong move might shatter the fragile peace you were both trying so hard to keep standing.

Seconds dissolved into minutes, and neither of you shifted even an inch. Time moved the way it always had between you – soft around the edges, stretched thin, slowing itself just enough to make the moment feel like a fragile bubble suspended between breaths.

“I couldn’t live with the idea of you hating me,” he finally said, his voice barely louder than the push of the tide. “Not for chasing your dreams. Not for… everything I ruined.”

The last part cracked in his throat. He looked away quickly, the muscles in his jaw tightening until it almost hurt to watch.

Overwhelmed by the weight of unspoken words, a sudden flash of frustration broke through him – a sharp, reckless thing – and he snatched a stone from the sand and hurled it into the water. The splash split the calm surface with a harsh, ugly sound. You startled at the noise, shoulders jumping, and he closed his eyes as if punishing himself for it.

“I could never hate you, JJ,” you said, your head snapping toward him before you even realized you’d moved. “Never.”

Your voice shook with urgency, as if the truth had been building behind your ribs for years and finally found a crack to escape through. It was the first time you truly looked at him since you’d walked up to the beach, and when your eyes met his, something familiar and dangerous unfurled in the air – the same spark that had always existed between you, refusing to die no matter how hard life tried to change it.

He had changed. His hair was longer now, brushing the nape of his neck in soft curls you had to force yourself not to reach for. There was a roughness to him you didn’t remember. Harder angles, a sharpness that came from long nights, long losses. His smile lines had faded, replaced by faint creases along his brow, as if worry had become a habit. He stared stubbornly at the horizon, holding himself still like one wrong glance might break him in half.

And then, as if he heard the pulse of your heartbeat begging him to look at you, he finally turned.

His eyes caught yours. Blue, soft, familiar. And everything inside you stopped.

Because beneath all the grit and exhaustion, the warmth you’d once fallen into was still there, the quiet sincerity that he never showed anyone but you. It flickered to life like an old flame catching air again. Your chest tightened, your breath tangled in your throat. Seeing him like this – older, bruised by life, but still him – made something inside you cry out, a feeling that was too big to swallow and too dangerous to say.

“I’ve… loved you too much for too long,” you confessed before your mind could stop your mouth. The words trembled into the space between you and stayed there, glowing like a lit match.

JJ stilled. Love. Not past tense. Not a memory. Your voice hadn’t carried distance or closure; it carried the weight of the present moment. He stared at you as if the world had tilted, as if everything he thought he’d buried suddenly clawed its way to the surface. His breath caught in his chest, refusing to move. The sand beneath him might as well have dropped away, leaving him hanging between disbelief and hope so sharp it almost hurt.

You still… what? After four years? After university, after new friends, after every guy who had tried to replace him and failed? After he had broken the version of you that once loved him with every piece you had? 

No. It couldn’t be real. It felt too much like one of the dreams that used to torture him, the ones where you whispered his name in the dark and reached for him just before he woke up alone again. This was impossible. It had to be.

Any second now, he expected the whole scene to rip at the seams, the colors to bleed out, the sand to dissolve, the air to thin until he woke in that dim, claustrophobic bedroom at the chateau, the sour taste of last night’s beer still on his tongue. That was how it always ended. Every dream of you collapsed the same way: darkness swallowing light, hope folding back into emptiness, your voice fading just as he reached for it.

But the minutes ticked by. One. Two. And you didn’t vanish. You stayed right there – knees tucked close, sleeves pulled over your hands, eyes fixed on him with a steadiness that felt unreal. You didn’t fade. You didn’t blur. You didn’t run.

You waited. Waited for him to speak, or breathe, or fall apart. Waited for him to choose you or walk away. Waited like you had every right to sit inside the ruins of his morning and ask for the truth.

“Don’t do that,” he whispered at last, the words scraping out of him like they’d been trapped too long. “Don’t… don’t stay. Live your life. Forget this place. Forget me.”

His voice cracked, and before he could hold himself still, he shook his head hard, as if he could shake you out of this moment, and surged to his feet. The sand slid under him, but he pushed forward anyway, desperate to outrun the pressure building behind his ribs. His hands shook. His breath came uneven, ragged. Every step felt wrong, too heavy, like the whole world was leaning on him from behind, shoving him toward a future he never wanted.

The sky dipped. The shoreline tilted. He felt himself breaking all over again, like he had four years ago when he watched your car drive away and couldn’t force his legs to move.

The next second he felt a small, sharp pull. Your hand on his wrist.

The sand clinging to your palm scratched his skin, but he didn’t even notice. Your touch hit him like diving into ice water – shocking, electric, mercilessly alive. His whole body locked in place, breath trapped in his throat as if time had snapped its fingers and commanded him to be still.

“You promised to wait,” you whispered.

The words trembled, fragile as sea glass, but they cut through him all the same. He turned just enough to see your face, tears catching the early light, turning your lashes into tiny drops of gold. And suddenly it struck him: He had waited.

Every single day. Every empty morning. Every sleepless night when he lit cigarette after cigarette just to keep the silence from swallowing him. Every shift at the garage, every drink, every dream, every stupid hope he tried to drown. He had waited like something in him had been tethered to you, stretched thin but unbroken, refusing to snap even when everything else inside him did.

And now you are here. Real. Solid. Holding on to him like you still knew his pulse by heart.

JJ swallowed hard, chest tightening until it almost hurt to breathe. For the first time in years, he realized that waiting had never been the curse he thought it was. It had been a promise. A quiet one. A stubborn one. A living one.

“I’m waiting,” he breathed.

The words fell out of him shattered and raw. The truth of four years compressed into three small syllables. He turned toward you fully, letting himself give in just a little, letting the wall he’d built crack where your fingers touched him. His hand rose slowly, hesitantly, as if frightened the world might break if he moved too fast. His fingertips brushed your cheek, trembling as they found familiar skin. Your eyes fluttered closed at the contact – soft, trusting, like you’d been holding that breath for years.

And when he felt you lean into his palm, something inside him split wide open, flooding him with a warmth he hadn’t felt since the day he lost you.

He didn’t say anything else. He didn’t need to. The moment said everything.

Everything else – the sand, the horizon, even the hush of wind moving across the water – slipped out of focus. There was only you. Only this fragile, impossible now that he had carried inside him for four years. Every sleepless night, every lonely morning, every ache he had tried to bury seemed to settle right here, in the space between your breaths. He would have given up anything to stay in this moment. He would’ve handed over his whole life if it meant he could keep you this close.

“I’m still waiting,” he whispered again, the words brushing the space between your mouths, frayed and aching. It wasn’t even a confession, it was the truth he had lived inside for years.

Tears streaked down your cheeks, warm and unrelenting, and JJ lifted his hands to your face, brushing them gently against your skin as if he could somehow carry the weight of them for you. The storm wasn’t in the sky. It was here, in you, spilling into his hands, into his chest, into the hollow space he had carried for years. It brought a rush of hope and fear and longing so fierce his knees wobbled, his ribs pressed tight against the breath he couldn’t fully pull in.

But he held himself up. He had to. Because you were here, trembling as you clung to the fabric of his T-shirt like it was the only thing keeping you steady. Your lashes glittered with tears, your breath hitched, and when you looked at him it was with the kind of raw devotion that could break a man clean open.

In that gaze, he remembered how to exist again.

“Take everything,” he murmured, voice thick and warm and a little broken. “Everything I’ve got… it’s yours. It’s always been yours.”

He pulled you closer until you were tucked against his chest, the crown of your head under his chin. The first sob shook through you, quiet and tight, and then another followed, heavier. You cried like a dam finally giving way, like you’d been holding the whole ocean inside your chest for years. JJ wrapped his arms around you and held you through all of it, letting your tears sink into his skin, into his heart, into the years he had lost without you.

“Take everything,” he whispered again, breath trembling against your hair. “Just… don’t leave me this time. Please.”

It wasn’t desperate, not really. It was honest. Painfully, beautifully honest. Every word carried the weight of the nights he’d lain awake imagining your face, the mornings he’d opened his eyes to an empty pillow, the long stretches of time where he’d tried to forget you and failed.

You clung tighter, sliding your arms around his waist as if you were trying to fold yourself into him, to fit into every space you used to fill. And he held you like you belonged there, like you had never left.

JJ lowered his forehead to your hair, breathing in the scent he’d never been able to replace. Your sobs softened slowly, turning into shaky breaths, and he let each one settle into him like a heartbeat. When he finally lifted his eyes, the sea was calm again, stretching out in a long, quiet line. The sunrise slipped over the water, pouring soft gold into the waves until everything glowed – the sky, the sand, the two of you tangled together as if the world had built this morning just for you.

He pressed a small kiss to the top of your head – gentle, steady, a promise spoken without words – and wrapped his arms around you, refusing to let even an inch of distance return.

You stayed there with him, curled against his chest, feeling the warmth of his breath and the solid beat of his heart. And in that fragile, glowing moment, every broken piece of the past seemed to ease just a little. The years fell away. The hurt loosened its grip.

You were here. You were real. And finally you were in his arms again.

thankx for reading <3

i don’t think this is my best work. something feels a little off, like it’s missing something, but i can’t quite put my finger on it. maybe it’s just been a long time since i sat down and wrote something for you. lately, i’ve mostly been writing just for myself. i might share some of those pieces later, but this time i won’t make any promises about publishing soon, because every time i do, i hit a block and can’t even edit my drafts.

i’d love to hear your thoughts on this one, though. lately, i’ve been feeling low on motivation, and maybe your feedback or even just your remarks could be the spark i need to write something new.

so, I’d really appreciate feedback — whether in the comments or my inbox! :3

  – your santi 🪐