The first thing I notice is her laugh.

I hear it before I see her, familiar enough that my feet just stop. I’m in the hotel lobby after media, cap low, hoodie up, trying to slide through unnoticed, but that sound - her sound - cuts through the noise.

She’s by the bar, talking to a staff member. Her hair is shorter. She’s wearing that leather jacket I bought her in Milan. My chest tightens.

She turns. Our eyes meet.

For a heartbeat I think I’m imagining her again, some trick of a tired brain. But she don’t vanish when I blink. She’s here.

“Hey,” I say, too rough.

“Hi,” she answers, giving me a small, careful smile.

I walk over before I can talk myself out of it. “Didn’t know you were here this weekend.”

“Friend had a spare pass.” She lifts her lanyard. “Didn’t think I’d actually see you.”

We both know better. Our world is too small. Same tracks, same hotels. We were always going to collide again, two planets stuck in the same orbit.

“Do you have a minute?” I ask. “Somewhere quieter?”

She hesitates, then nod. “Yeah. Okay.”

We end up on a terrace behind the hotel. Cool air, city lights, traffic humming below.

“I watched the race,” she says. “You were good.”

I huff a laugh. “Crashed quali yesterday. Thought you’d enjoy that.”

“I did,” she admits, lips twitching. “But I still wanted you to win.”

That’s us. We broke up because the pressure was too much - my schedule, the travel, the cameras, the feeling that your life had been swallowed by mine. Ending it was logical. It just never stopped feeling wrong.

“When I’m with you,” I say slowly, “it’s the only time I feel..real. Like I’m actually me, not just the version everyone recognises.”

She closes her eyes. “Don’t.”

“Why?”

“Because it doesn’t change anything.” Her voice wavers. “I lost myself trying to fit around your life. I can’t do that again.”

“I know.” I swallow hard. “I don’t want you to. I just..never stopped loving you. Not once. No matter how far I went or how long it’s been.”

She looks up quickly, eyes bright.

“I tried to move on,” she whispers. “I dated, travelled, changed everything I could. Told everyone I was fine. But any time I imagined being alone with you again, even for a second, it felt like I could finally breathe.”

My chest aches. “It’s the only time I feel at home,” I admit. “Everywhere else is just places I pass through.”

She lets out a short, broken laugh. “You can’t say things like that, Lando.”

“Why not? They’re true.”

“Because loving you already hurt enough.”

“Losing you hurts more.” The words come out raw. “I sit in rooms full of people and still feel like something’s missing. Then I see you for thirty seconds in a lobby and everything drops back into place. How is that fair?”

“It isn’t.” She looks away. “We can’t go back. We’d make the same mistakes.”

“Probably,” I say. “But even if we never try again, even if this is it - us on a cold terrace after a race - I need you to know you’re it for me.” I hold her gaze. “You’re the one person I will love for the rest of my life.”

Silence falls, thin and fragile.

Her hand lifts, falls again, like she’s fighting herself. Then she steps closer and rests her forehead against my chest. My arms are around her before I can think.

Just like that, something in me clicks back into place.

“I hate you,” she mumbles into my hoodie. “I hate that you still feel like safety.”

“I know,” I breathe, my cheek against her hair. “I hate that you’re the only place I’ve ever felt whole.”

We stand there, hanging on too tightly while the world keeps moving - cars, flights, cameras - but up here time softens around us.

Maybe we’ll figure it out one day. Maybe we won’t. Maybe we’ll stay like this: separate lives, same orbit, running into each other in paddocks and lobbies, pretending it’s coincidence.

But as long as we share the same sky, I think, I’ll keep loving her.

I don’t know how to do anything else.