I’m just about to leave when he says, “Have you changed your mind?”
My breath catches. “About what?”
He thinks for another second, a forever second, an end-of-a-race second, then practically grits out, “If two people can dislike each other and still be attracted to one another.”
Sparks scatter across my rib cage, glittery and bright. That’s what he’d told me back in Texas. What I’d laughed at. What I’d assumed he was only saying to educate me on the finer points of heterosexuality and team gossip. He… isn’t implying that he’d wanted methen, back when we could barely tolerate being in the same room. This is Arthur, and he moves fast, and he flirts brazenly, and there are so many reasons we shouldn’t do this that a new wave of stress fizzes in my throat.
If we only had three months together, why would he wait for me to figure him out?
“I… I…” I take a breath.
Slowly, so slowly, Arthur reaches over and traces his fingertips up my bare arm. Centimeter by centimeter, like I’m skittish, like herefuses to frighten me off. “It’s okay. You can say it. Nothing needs to happen.”
And there’s my answer: He’s wanted to wait for me. I feel the ghost of all of his past touches, too, his ankle against mine at David Bowie Night, his fingers studying my scar on the plane. Sunblock, the clinic, waking up against him. We haven’t spoken about any of it, and I’ve been convinced it was because he didn’t care, that he’d be the type to chase someone recklessly. Now I see the other side of the story—a man who’s patient, quiet, and more careful than anyone knows. If I hide from the world because I can’t handle being seen, then Arthur hideswhohe is.
But I know him now, I know him too well, and that’s why I say, “I think I feel differently now.”
Despite how good he is and how deeply I believe he’d let me act like this never happened, Arthur’s eyes widen. “You think you could be attracted to me?”
“No. I think I don’t dislike you.”
“Lilah,” he says, pained. It’s a punched-out, desperate version of my name.Li-lah.It makes me feel insane, or very, very sane, and both options are terrifying.
“But we can’t do anything about that, right? We shouldn’t. It’s almost September. I’m making a documentary about you.” A breath. “The movie is going to end, one way or another.”
“It doesn’t have to.”
“But it does. This only works if we don’t cross this line. Because the second the team finds out about us, or thinks they do, this explodes and—and then you have to go to Italy and I’ll go to D.C. and we don’t see each other again and that’s good, because we’re catastrophic enough to cost F1 millions when we’re only pretending so… it’s good.”
He lets out an almost silent sigh. “You don’t have to go.”
“But—”
“Don’tgo,” Arthur says, firm. “Stay with me. Let me show you what good looks like.”
I’m shivering, plunged into cold water. “But you said you don’t date.”
“I’m dating you.”
“No, you aren’t.”
“Yes, I am. To me? I am.” His face is fire, starved for oxygen, running toward the open air. “Can I show you?”
I blink. “What?”
“Can I kiss you?” he asks softly.
“Can you,” I repeat, shocked.
“May I,” he corrects, desperate enough to take my accidental grammar lesson in stride. “Just say yes. And I will.”
When I squeeze my eyes closed, I imagine the five lights atop the racetrack, and how each one falls to the dark at the same time in melodramatic surrender. And why shouldn’t they? It feels good to watch those bright red lights go out, to be a part of something meticulously cinematic. Humans love knowing the moment something is happening. Not after the fact, right then.Here is the start of something big, those five lights say.Don’t blink. Don’t even breathe. This is it.
“Yes,” I say. “You can—”
Arthur doesn’t let me finish the sentence because then, he kisses me. Deeply, like he’s getting to know the shape of my mouth. The angles, the curves and straight shots of the track, plunging me into a future I can’t control or see or edit. I’m here, right now. This is it.
And all those kisses I’ve had before? Those feel like trial runs for whatever this is. I trace the slit of his mouth with my tongue, and Arthur’s chest stiffens with surprise beneath my palms, his rumbling groan vibrating between us as he deepens the kiss. Hetastes like toothpaste and sunshine and something else entirely, primal and stomach-twisting. Promising.
