I wipe my mouth, surprised. “Sorry, I wasn’t…”
“It’s okay.” He touches my shoulder as he goes to the door. “I like it.”
When I change into my extremely oversized Vivienne Westwood shirt—a thrift-store find, embellished with the wordsMake history!and a dancing fawn and the house’s trademark Orb—I start to feel like I’ve overstayed my welcome. Faust sleeps in gray sweatpants, a plain white shirt. There are reading glasses folded up on his nightstand. If sex is too intimate for me, why the hell am I here? He’s showing me so many details. He knows what I do, how I hurt people, and here he is. Vulnerable.
I linger by the front of the room, fingers knit together. “I really don’t have to stay.”
He’s already on one side of the bed—his side. Seated, he turns to look at me, wordless as usual.
At first.
“Do you want to stay?” The night’s made his voice deeper, like he’s five minutes from falling asleep.
And I should tell him that this is already more than I’d planned for, and I might kiss him again, and that this side of him is bothexactly like how I’d pictured it and nothing like I’d thought he’d be. And I should say that Ihavepictured him—us—going past this step. That if I were to have sex with any strange rich man, it’d be him. I’d date him. In another world, I could probably love him. And I should say that, the first bit, because he needs to know that I’m incapable of allowing it here, when I have so much work to do.
But he’d asked what I wanted, and I do have a tiny, small want that feels okay. Permissible, in the grand scheme of things.
I want to see him fall asleep.
Ignoring the blush that has to be creeping over my face, I tiptoe to the other side of the bed, lift up the thick white duvet, and slip in. He gets in, too, turning off the bedside lamp, then rolling to face me. There’s space between us, his hand resting on the crisp white sheet. His fingernails are neat, the back of his hand dappled with veins. A brown wave of hair falls in front of his eyes. They’re open for now, lit by the soft glow of a paper nightlight across the room. He looks his age for the first time since we’ve met—since before then, even. I’d never noticed how tensely he holds himself until now, when he isn’t.
If Imogen had paid me to hurt him… would I have done it?
Without a word, I lift my hand to his. Faust lets me trace the lines of his palm for a few minutes—heart line, head line, life line. After that, he spreads his fingers out, making space for me.
I slip my fingers in.
I don’t get what I want that night; I fall asleep before I can watch Faust do just that. The next day, though, I get something better—Faust nabs pole position in Qualifying. That puts him in first placeon the grid for the Japanese Grand Prix. A statistical advantage to win. And Christine’s not far behind him.
Mei sends me an article from the official Formula 1 website, with an eye roll emoji.Idiots + L + let’s make them weep w/ day gala.
The headline reads,Has Faust’s Luck Finally Changed?
I’d asked him about that when we’d woken up. His alarm blaring, the windows dark, my momentary panic before his hand curled around my back and I couldn’t regret any of it. “Remember when they tried to call you ‘Lucky’?”
He’d groaned and shifted me with him as he turned off the alarm. “Yes.”
“Do you think you’re lucky?”
“Now, or then?”
“Hm…” I’d set my chin on his shoulder, calculated ways to keep him from insulting himself. “Now.”
He’d thought about it, then swept my long bangs back behind my ear. “We’ll see.”
Chapter 18BLUNDER
Faust messages me on thechess app that afternoon after Qualifying, presumably once he’s been released from the hell that is the media pit and team debriefs.
Hey.
We’ve only seen each other in passing since he’s been out of the car—I’d thrown him a tacky Stark-Benzin shirt foisted on us from the higher-ups, he’d been ushered into a chat with the team principal. There hasn’t been time to discuss last night or outline the parameters of our working agreement. Which, weirdly, hasn’t freaked me out. We’re both getting something we want out of this. He knows my rules.
And the mental image of him, pacing around some empty hospitality room, trying to figure out what to text me and landing onheymakes me grin at my phone.
Hiiii POLE SITTER
Do you have plans tonight?
