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Okay, I may have seriously underestimated how hard it would be to get last year’s championship winner alone.

Testing starts the next morning, and I show up at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya bright and early with the Crosswire team.

I’m determined to work harder than anyone, and learn absolutely everyone’s names and jobs, so I don’t have any free time to

look for Travis until lunch. There’s one moment when I spot a guy in a Harper racing suit in the distance and my heart jumps

into my throat, but then he pulls off his helmet and I realize it’s Matty, not Travis.

At lunch, I eat with the team and force myself to pay attention to what everyone’s saying, but the minute I finish eating

I get to my feet and excuse myself. I’ve only got about ten minutes before I have to get back to work, which is not nearly

enough time to actually talk to Travis, but I still feel compelled to try. I jog toward the Harper motorhome, a monstrous

construction of black and white and gold. My heart is thrumming with nerves. As I grow nearer, my feet slow to a stop.

Fuck.

There he is.

He’s sitting outside at a table with Heather and Matty, eating lunch. Matty’s still got his racing suit on, but Travis hasn’t

done any driving yet. I’ve been watching the time screens obsessively all morning and I haven’t seen his name pop up. He’s

got a white T-shirt on, and black jeans, and he’s laughing at something Matty is saying. He looks so fucking gorgeous and

happy, I could die.

He’s also completely surrounded by press. There’s a camera trained on him and Matty, and a group of people in media gear clearly

setting up for an interview. As I watch, a few of them approach him, blocking him from my view.

I back away before he can see me. I’ll just have to try again later.

And I do, every chance I get, but beyond that first lunchtime sighting, the closest I get to him is watching his lap times

show up on the monitors. Harper folk stream in and out of their motorhome all day and mill around the paddock, but never Travis.

I kind of forgot what a recluse he is at work. I might be able to track him down if I were brave enough to actually go inside

Harper’s garage, but I’m way too chicken to do that. And I don’t want it getting back to Tom Kellen that I was sneaking around

Harper’s turf.

I might be able to track Travis down after work, but every night, someone from Crosswire invites me to join them for dinner.

The first night, it’s the engineers and Sofia, the team principal. The next night, it’s Eric Clayton, one of Crosswire’s current

drivers. He’s a few years older than I am and insanely nice and helpful, and we end up staying out at a restaurant till midnight,

talking about racing.

On Sunday, I manage to make it to the end of the day without getting any dinner invitations, but tracking down Harper’s hotel information turns out to be as impossible as breaking into the White House.

Kelsie tells me to just message Travis on Instagram and ask him, but after I spend about forty minutes drafting a message, I can’t bring myself to hit Send.

I don’t think he’d see it even if I did send it, and anyway, I want to do this in person.

Still, when I wake up on Monday, the last day of testing, I’m feeling a bit desperate.

The team works furiously all day—our car has some flaws, but it’s still looking really good, definitely the best in the field—and

I don’t end up getting more than five minutes to bolt down lunch. By three p.m., all the driving is long done, and the team

is packing up everything to leave. When Clayton and Mahoney head out at four thirty, I start to panic. Travis is probably

going to be leaving soon, too. Flying back to London on some private plane.

Still, I can’t just leave. I have to look like a team player. I help pack things up until Sofia touches me on the shoulder.

“You should get to the airport,” she says. “Aren’t you booked on an eight o’clock flight?”

I nod. I swear, Sofia is a genius just like Tom. She remembers absolutely everything . I heard her tell an engineer earlier not to forget to call his son to see how his orthodontist appointment went, and then

when we were talking about last year’s testing, she didn’t just remember the order of the drivers, she remembered their exact lap times . All twenty of them.

Crazy.

“Go on and head out,” she says. “The team’s got it from here.”

I thank her, shout a goodbye to the others, and then all but sprint out of there. I brought all my stuff from my hotel already,

so I can just head to the airport straight from here. It’s five fifty-seven p.m., which means I have at best an hour before

I have to leave.

The paddock is quieter now, with only a few people milling around. It was warm earlier today, but it’s cooled down quite a bit. I’m shivering slightly in only a T-shirt as I hurry toward the Harper motorhome.

A guy with a Harper T-shirt on is coming out as I approach.

“Hey, man,” I say, trying to sound as normal and non-spy-ish as I can, “do you know if Travis Keeping has left yet?”

“Not sure, sorry,” he says.

The door swings closed behind him and he heads off. I lurch forward and pull on the handle, but it’s already locked. There’s

a keypad that beeps angrily at me when I press Open.

I spin around, but the guy’s already vanished. I could go in through the main doors, where their cafeteria is, but when I

passed it just now, their team principal was sitting outside talking with one of their engineers. I can’t exactly sneak by

in my very obvious Crosswire T-shirt.

“Fuck,” I mutter under my breath.

Someone clears their throat behind me. “Can I help you?”

I turn. Heather is standing there, watching me. She’s got a black Harper shirt on, and her long, dark brown hair falls in

loose curls over her shoulder. Her expression isn’t unpleasant, exactly, but I think this must be how a mouse feels when it

runs into a snake.

I’m also almost completely sure she knows about me and Travis. Like, not just that we dated, but that I dumped him and was

mostly a total bastard.

I swallow hard. “I was just... wondering if Travis left already.”

Her eyes narrow slightly. “Oh.”

She doesn’t say anything else. I clear my throat awkwardly. “Do you... know if he has?”

“Yes.”

Another silence. “Yes, he’s left?” I say. “Or yes, you know if he has or not?”

I think she’s not going to answer me, but finally she says, “He’s still here.”

A rush of relief runs through me. “Oh. Well—can I talk to him?”

She tilts her head. “Depends. Are you going to be a dick?”

Yeah, she definitely knows everything.

And damn it, I really like her.

“No,” I say honestly. “I’m not.”

She scrutinizes my face for another minute and then nods. “Alright, then.” She leans past me and punches in the keycode. The

door clicks open. “His room’s at the very end of the hall, on the left.”

“Thank you.” I shoot her a thin smile and head inside. She doesn’t follow me in, which I’m grateful for. Inside, there’s a

long narrow hallway lined with doors. I pause for a moment to rub my palms against my shirt and try to slow my racing heart.

I’m about to start walking again when a door clicks open and Matty steps out into the hall.

He does a double take when he sees me standing there, and then something shifts in his usually cheerful face. And seriously,

does everyone know about me and Travis? Because Matty definitely does. He looks me up and down and then gives me this really sharp, predatory

smile. I wait for him to speak, but he just leans against the wall with his arms crossed, staring at me.

The tips of my ears are on fire. I clear my throat and move to step around him. “Excuse me—”

“Oh, I’m sorry,” he says, holding up his hands. “Was I making you uncomfortable? Because if I’d known I was making you feel

bad, I would’ve realized it and stopped.”

Okay, that felt pointed.

“It’s fine,” I mutter awkwardly.

“No, really,” he says. “If I’d realized I was being a huge asshole, and making someone feel really badly for months and months and months, I would’ve thought to myself, Hey, maybe I shouldn’t be such an asshole—”

“Yeah, I got it,” I say, walking past him.

“What do I know, though?” he calls after me. “I’m just a dumb ol’ racing driver, only got two brain cells to rub together—”

“I said I got it!” I snap.

I hear him laughing as he heads the other way. What an ass.

I mean, he’s totally right, and that was kind of funny. But he’s still an ass.

I reach the end of the hall, and then it’s just me alone, standing in front of a closed door labeled “T. KEEPING.”

Fuck. Here we go.

I knock loudly, in case he’s got headphones on or something, then I stand there freaking out until the door swings open. And

then I’m just standing there in front of him, suddenly feeling like I might burst into tears.

For one second, he looks completely shocked to see me, then whatever emotions he’s feeling vanish under a blank mask.

“Hey,” I blurt out.

Too loud. That was too loud.

I clear my throat and try again. “I mean, hey. Can I come in?”

His throat moves as he swallows. God, I’d like to put my mouth there. “Uh... yeah,” he says. “Sure.”

He moves aside, and I step past him. I swear I can feel the warmth radiating off his skin, and I can definitely smell his

soap, a faint peppermint scent.

I clear my throat and turn to face him. With the door closed behind him, there’s not much room for two people.

It’s a small space, with a closet for his racing stuff, a padded bench, and a desk with a chair.

I stand a few feet away from him, shifting from one foot to the other.

I don’t know what to do with my arms. He’s looking right at me, but he’s got his media face on, completely unreadable.

I clear my throat again. “Congratulations on the championship,” I say. “I watched the last race the other week. I mean, I

watched it before then, too. Or—well, not the whole thing, actually. I mean, I saw the end of it, so I knew you won, but I