The paddock is chaos, but you’re used to it. The noise, the heat, the way everyone looks past you to look at him. Your hand is in his, warm, familiar, grounding. It’s the one thing that makes the crowd feel distant, manageable. You walk beside him like you always do, posture perfect, smile effortless. You know how this looks from the outside, power couple, precision, control. A supermodel and an F1 driver, aligned, untouchable.

Then it happens, his fingers loosen, slowly, almost politely. Not like a rejection, like an adjustment. He steps half a pace forward, greeting someone important, and your hand is suddenly empty. Still lifted, still shaped like it belonged to him a second ago. You don’t flinch. You let your arm fall naturally, as if this was always the plan. As if your chest didn’t tighten, as if your throat didn’t close around words you’d never say out loud. Cameras flash. Someone calls your name. You smile, trained, beautiful, unbroken.

You keep walking next to him, close enough to look together, far enough to feel alone. Later, people will compliment your composure, they’ll say you’re classy, independent, strong, they won’t know that you learned to stand like that because reaching for him in public had become a risk, they won’t know you’d already stopped expecting him to stay. That was the moment you realized love wasn’t something he showed, it was something you protected him from having to perform.