“Are you drunk, dear?” Miriam asks.
“Soda water,” he snaps, then looks back at me. Bites his lip. Then says in a rush of words, “If that’s the case, okay. I said that you couldn’t get me to stop talking about what I feel about you so—I did lie to you. That day on the plane, to England. I lied when I said I didn’t think about you enough to hate you. Even then—I already knew. It was like sinking, meeting you, but it was like breaking out of a cage, too. And I lied in that bed-and-breakfast, when I said that to me, we were dating. It’s more than that. And I was trying to wait until you saw it, or felt the same, because I didn’t want to be the thing that scares you off. Me loving you couldn’t be the reason you left us.”
“Arthur—”
He shakes his head, on a roll. “The problem is, I can’tstopthinking about you. I think about making you laugh. I think about showing you the world, and how much you deserve every beautiful thing in it, and how I can be the person who gives them to you. I think about buying you a house in every country I race in, so you can always grow tomatoes and I can always watch you smile. I think about how I need to stop thinking and start saying all of this out loud, because I think about you enough to… to—fuck.”
I stand as quickly as I can in the long dress.“Arthur.”
“No, please—ah, hell—I love you, Graywood,” he says, desperate. “I’ve been in love with you. So tell me how to make this right. Show me how to be brave like you are. Make your film about me, and help me pick which offer to accept for next year, and hold my hand as I march over to Bob right now, tonight, and tell him about Holmes. I can do it, I want to do it, because I see forever in you. I see a year from now and winning more, and five years and startinga family, and ten, and all the way until the end. I don’t even just seeyouwhen I look at you.” His voice cracks, and he laughs beneath his breath. “I see you and wonder if we’ll have a child with your eyes, your mind, yourfire. God, Lilah, it’s you. My future is all over your face. So don’t go. Stay. Let me catch up to you this time, please.”
That’s it. That’s everything I’ve ever wanted to hear, but he needs to shut up for five seconds. I grab both of his ridiculous shoulders, ignoring Miriam and every other person in here, and hiss, “Arthur, I love you.”
He stops.
Looks at my hands.
Then says, “What?”
“I love you,” I repeat, and I don’t know why this overwhelming crush of emotions didn’t occur to me sooner than this week, because saying them to his shocked face is the best rush I’ve ever had. “I didn’t know until I watched the footage. And I didn’t know you’d bought it until Miriam told me. I got locked out of my inbox again.”
“You love me,” he repeats, stunned.
“I do,” I say. Then I’m grabbing my boxing gloves, lacing up my cleats, and taking off my glasses, metaphorically speaking. “But I was never mad at you because I didn’t want you. I wantyouto pick you. I need that. And if you really want what you said—and it’s a huge, brave, scary fucking thing to stand up for yourself publicly—then I’m here. I promise.”
If anger is bedrock, solid ground to build your life on, then Arthur’s anger toward me and our fight is fissuring down the middle. Like an earthquake, the plates shift, long-dried dirt breaking as he blinks and runs his hand up his chest. It makes my heart twist in place, how just being told once that I want him, I pick him, cracks him right open.
“After you left, I met with the teams. The moment I walked into Leone’s garage…” He bows his head, and I step closer to him. Miriam is gone, but I want to shield him from anyone who might see him this vulnerable. “I’m sorry I ever thought going back there was what I wanted. It isn’t. It’s… it’s time for me to fight back. Not on the track tomorrow, driving for him, but the right way.”
He’s whispering, looking over my shoulder, looking around us. Just like that, I understand why he’d waited for me to come to him, even if we lost so much time. All those moments I’d let things slip, shown how much I liked him before I was ready to act on it, Arthur had been monitoring who was around us and how we’d been perceived, if he thought I was ready to be seen.
A lump forms in my throat as I imagine the little blond boy that grew up into this outwardly charismatic, inwardly careful man. He’d been raised in the spotlight, and has probably been burned by its harsh glare more often than he’ll admit. When I take his hand, I can practically feel the marks singed into his skin from so much attention without any understanding.
“You’ve already started fighting,” I tell him softly. “You bought us Holmes’s confession. It’s in the files.”
Shock ripples over his face. “For the movie?”
“For whatever you want,” I say. “However we do this, we’re deciding on it together. I’m only making a film if that’s whatwewant to do.”
“What’s changed?” he asks quietly.
For me, emotions move at glacial speed. It takes me ages to feel things through, to process, and Arthur knows that. But as I look at him, it hits me at two hundred miles per hour that I have gotten one thing wrong. This whole time. “I used to think that documentaries were movies about other people’s stories. That I controlled the narrative from an arm’s length away. But Arthur—any movieabout you is a movie about me,” I whisper. “You changed me. You showed me a world outside my camera, a world where I want to be.” Slow enough that he could stop me, I run my thumb over his. “In Italy.” Over his knuckles. “In the Netherlands.” His wrist, my favorite place; where his heart beats. “Belgium, Hungary, Monaco, England. You give me air.”
My throat tightens as Arthur searches my face, looking for the wrong turn he doesn’t see coming, a fear I’ve felt a thousand times. Waiting for someone to leave, loving without being loved back.
This time, there’s no wrong turn. There’s just his Adam’s apple bobbing as his jaw sets, and his glassy eyes sweeping mine, and all the love Arthur has in his heart reflected back to him from me. I get to be the person who loves him back.
Lucky me.
I already know his next question. “And are you sure that you really…”
“Love you? Yes.” I cup his face, not caring who sees us touch or what they’ll think. Our friends, the team, all these rich people and their opinions. “I love your mind. I love your optimism. I love… Ilovehow you don’t let anything go.” Tears line my eyelashes, making it hard to speak. “That future you see in me… I see mine in you. I think I can only see it with you.”Like a camera, I think.To work, cameras need light.But I need him more than that—more human than that. And that’s why I ask, “Can I kiss you?”
A surprised breath leaves his mouth, and he looks around again. “We have company.”
I look, too. The wedding photographer has a camera pointed our way. She has curly bangs, glasses, that blush we camerapeople get when we’re at the right place at the right time.
My heart pounds. “I’m ready,” I say. “Are you?”
