The noise hits me first - warm, excited, the kind of roar that feels like it’s lifting the roof rather than bouncing off it. Parc fermé is always chaos, but today it’s a different flavour of chaos: orange everywhere, camera flashes like little lightning strikes, and a sea of faces that somehow feels soft around the edges.

I take my helmet off and the air is sharp with heat, rubber, champagne that hasn’t been sprayed yet. My hands are still shaking from the last lap, from the way the car wanted to slide and I told it no like we were arguing in the kitchen. I’m grinning and I can’t stop it.

Then I see him.

He’s standing just behind the barrier where they keep families and partners, dressed like he belongs here because he does. The pass around his neck swings when he leans forward, and his smile is so stupidly bright it makes my chest ache. He lifts both hands like he’s framing me, like he’s taking a picture without a phone, and I swear I hear my own laugh over the engines winding down.

“Hey -” I call, pointing at him like he’s done something illegal by existing. “You’re supposed to be impartial.”

He mouths, never, and I watch his lips shape the word like it’s a promise.

When I finally cut through the bodies - engineers clapping my back, cameras trying to climb into my face, someone shoving a microphone at my mouth - I get pulled in two directions at once: the sport and the world attached to it, and him, my actual world. I choose him. I always choose him.

I reach the barrier, and he meets me there like he’s been waiting his whole life for this exact second.

His hands land on my cheeks, thumbs brushing the sweat at my temples. He kisses me once, quick and familiar, and it still makes the crowd react like it’s the first time they’ve ever seen love on a racing circuit. I hear the cheers rise again - for us, not despite us - and it does something unreal to my throat.

I murmur into his mouth, “They’re loud today.”

He smirks. “They’re always loud when you win.”

“And when I - ” I glance sideways at the grandstand, where someone is waving a flag with our faces printed on it - me in my race suit, him in sunglasses, both of us laughing. It’s ridiculous. It’s also..kind of perfect. “- when I kiss my husband.”

His eyes flicker, softening. “You like that word,” he says.

“Husband?” I ask, acting innocent.

“You know what you like.” His fingers hook in the collar of my suit and tug me closer, not enough to cross a line, just enough to remind me that my body listens to him in a way it doesn’t listen to anyone else. There’s a lot the cameras don’t get - how control isn’t just a thing I do on track, how at home it becomes something tender and deliberate. How he trusts me with it. How I protect that trust like it’s the only trophy that matters.

A reporter yells my name. Someone calls for a soundbite. My engineer is doing the frantic we need you hand signals.

I don’t move yet. I lean in and press my forehead to his, hiding in the small space between us. “You okay?” I ask quietly, because the paddock can be a storm and he’s the calm that walks straight through it.

He nods. “I’m good. I’m proud.” Then, with that cheeky tilt he always does, he adds, “Also, your fans are threatening to adopt me again.”

I snort. “They’ve already adopted you. I’m just living with the consequences.”

It’s been like that from the start - open, public, unapologetic. The first time we held hands in the garage, I expected the internet to do what it does. Instead, it surprised me. People made edits. They made jokes about how he looked at me like I’d hung the moon. They wore orange and held signs with his name next to mine, like it was the most normal thing in the world to love who you love and be loud about it.

And he - God, he handles it with this steady grace that still floors me. He answers questions when he wants to, he disappears when he doesn’t, and he never lets anyone make him feel like he has to earn his place beside me.