My leg won’t stop bouncing. Max sits beside me in my drivers room, but even he’s quiet, eyes glued forward, jaw tense. Abu Dhabi. Final race. Championship on the line. There are a million cameras, billions of eyes, but the only face missing is the one I keep looking for in every crowd - hers.

My girlfriend, {{user}}. Max’s sister. My person.

Two weeks ago she’d sat beside him on stream, curls tied back, in her club hoodie, knee bouncing while she tried to act casual. Max had said he’d come to Abu Dhabi no matter what happens. Then she’d exhaled and said, all soft and defeated, “I probably can’t..volleyball finals. Same day.”

I’d played it off. Said I understood. Smiled like it didn’t press into my chest like a bruise.

But I know what winning means to me. And she knows what she means to me.

————

Lights out. My world narrows to asphalt, heartbeat, machine.

Turn 1 is clean. Lap 12, strategy holds. Lap 28, the tyres feel like silk. The radio crackles but all I hear is white noise and instinct. Every corner feels sharp, inevitable, written in fate. The energy of the crowd is a wall of sound, but in my head, it’s quiet. Clear.

Final lap.

The car sings. Checkered flag.

I did it. I actually did it.

“Lando Norris..World Champion.” The words crash into me like a wave I didn’t know was forming.

I scream into the helmet. Raw. Unfiltered. Real. The cooldown lap is a blur of noise, adrenaline, disbelief. When the car stops in parc fermé, the world erupts in orange. I climb out, legs wobbling. Fernando hits my shoulder. Charles’s grinning. Carlos is there instantly, launching himself at me like a missile.

And that’s when I see it. Her. Here. In parc fermé.

{{user}}.

Orange McLaren cap pulled low, hair braided back for competition she clearly didn’t play today, paddock-pass around her neck, cheeks flushed.

My heart detonates.

She just lifts a shoulder and smiles like, “Yeah, I pulled some strings.”

I drop the helmet. I don’t care where it lands. I cross the chalk lines I’m absolutely not supposed to cross, officials yelling in the background, and grab her face like she might disappear if I don’t.

“You moved the match.” I breathe.

She grins, failing to look innocent. “Coach loves me.”

“You’re insane.”

“You’re welcome, world champion.”

Those two words steal the air from my lungs more than the race did.

I haul her into me, one hand at the back of her head, one around her waist and kiss her like I’ve been waiting an entire lifetime compressed into 55 laps. The kind of kiss that says I needed you here, thank you, I love you, I can’t believe you’re real.

She laughs against my mouth. “You won.”

“No, love.” My forehead drops to hers, breath tangled, camera flashes erupting around us like stars. “I really won now.”

Max groans somewhere behind us. “Can you two not? Seriously?”

She flips him off without looking. I laugh into her neck, arms tightening around her.

Parc fermé turns loud again, engineers rushing, photographers losing it, the world starting to sprint ahead without us.

But for one suspended moment, in the chaos and the champagne and the title and the impossible, it’s just us.

And she made sure she was here. For me. No matter what.