Page 14 of Drive Me Wild (Drive Me #2)
FOURTEEN
JOSIE
“Welcome to Le Mans, princess,” Theo says as we touch down in my birth city.
A smile brings up the corners of my mouth and stays there for the duration of the day. The first thing I notice as we make our way to the hotel is how alive the city is. The sidewalks are packed with pedestrians as police officers guide them through crosswalks because the street closures have caused a buildup of traffic. Colorful street vendors park along the curbs, selling food and specialty items, while cafes leave their doors open to welcome in the influx of tourists. My eyes try to take in everything at once. I unroll the cab window and stick my head out like I’m a dog, enjoying the fresh air on my face as we barrel down an alleyway tucked between tall brick buildings.
“Can we go there?” I ask Theo as we pass a tiny restaurant with decorative lights strung up. Before he can answer, I’m pointing at something else with equal excitement. “Oh! Or what about there? That looks like a cute store.”
“We have time, Jos,” Theo reminds me with a chuckle. “We can go anywhere you want.”
Rather than explore, our first two days in Le Mans are spent in our safe space: a motorsport circuit. My fake tickets had been for general admission, which naturally, Theo balked at. That’s why he had Martin secure us two VIP tickets—which, according to the website, cost about six months’ worth of rent for me, and were also sold out and have been for a while.
Not only do we have our own private suite with panoramic views, but we have a dedicated service member to bring us premium catering and drinks from the open bar, and the option to do a helicopter ride over the track. A goddamn helicopter! Like this is the ancient ruins of Greece or something.
We spend time watching practices, meeting some drivers, and getting a tour of the paddock. Unlike the Formula 1 Grand Prix, which are fixed-distance races where the driver with the fastest time wins, the 24 Heures du Mans’ winner is determined by the distance driven in twenty-four hours. The kicker? Racing teams must balance the demands of speed as well as the car’s ability to run for that long without any mechanical issues. It tests man and machine to their absolute breaking points.
I’ve never watched a race with Theo. Hell, I’ve never watched a race that Theo wasn’t racing in. The 24 Heures du Le Mans is a new experience in more ways than one because of that. He becomes my personal commentator, telling me about how they’ve changed the circuit over fourteen times, the four types of engine classifications these cars must have, how the debris from the roads effect the driver. The world sees Formula 1 drivers as insanely fast men who are talented at maneuvering their cars, but people forget just how much they know about the mechanics and engineering behind it, too.
Since this race is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for me, I insist on staying for all twenty-four hours of it. In usual Theo manner, he whines a bit, but doesn’t put up too much of a fight. I doze off a few times in our suite but manage to catch most of the race. It makes me appreciate the two-hour time limit on the Formula 1 Grand Prix.
Getting a cab to take us back to our hotel proves impossible, so we decide to hoof it. My feet drag across the sidewalk, accidentally kicking stray trash that people have littered. We’re halfway back when I stop dead in my tracks. No fucking way.
“Theo.” I tug on his sleeve to get his attention since he’s half asleep and acting like a zombie. “We have to go in here.”
He peers in through the glass window of children’s toy shop in front of us. “I guess I could get something for Rosalie’s birthday.”
Theo spoils the living hell out of his goddaughter. For her first birthday, he got her the cutest mini-Chanel bag I’ve ever seen in my life.
We walk in and are immediately surrounded by shelves lined with colorful board games, new innovative toys, and the latest and greatest in children’s literature. It’s every kid’s dream and every parent’s nightmare. I walk past it all, zoning in on the small shelf lined with fuzzy farm animals.
Standing on my tiptoes so I can reach, I carefully pull down a light pink piggy. It’s not a large stuffed animal, fitting perfectly in my palm. Two beady eyes stare at me while a snout and a smile hover just underneath. I’ve never seen these stuffed animals anywhere in London—and yes, I’ve looked. My own childhood stuffed animal, Mademoiselle, used to be fuzzy and soft like this, but years of cuddles and washing machine trips have left her rather rugged looking. The plushie in my hand looks exactly like Mademoiselle did in the baby photos my parents have hanging around the house.
Theo places his calloused hand on the back of my neck, gently kneading out the tension that’s sitting there. “Hey,” he says softly. “You good?”
“Hmm?” I lift my head, meeting his piercing blue eyes. His forehead is etched with worry lines as he studies me. I’m sure I look like a proper idiot standing there with tears in my eyes, looking at a damn stuffed animal meant for those “ages 3+.”
“Yeah,” I say, giving him a small smile. “I’m good. Don’t know what came over me.”
Theo rubs the pad of his thumb against my cheek, wiping away a stray tear I didn’t know was there. “You’re crying.”
“Tearing up,” I correct him. My eyes get puffier than a bao bun when I cry. “Very different.”
He narrows his eyes at me. “I don’t like it.”
“Well, I apologize.” I laugh and wipe the skin underneath my eyes to get rid of any emotional evidence. “I used to have a stuffed animal just like this when I was a kid.”
Under no circumstances am I revealing that Mademoiselle is still a permanent fixture in my life. I don’t travel with her, but she’s sitting on my stark white duvet, waiting for me to return from France.
“Yeah?” Theo picks up a stuffed elephant from the shelf, turning it around in his hands. “It’s cute. From your parents?”
I shake my head. “Birth mum. I had her with me when my parents adopted me.”
Theo squeezes the back of my neck in a comforting motion before putting the elephant back. I follow his lead and place Mademoiselle’s twin back on the shelf in between a cow and squirrel.
“We can go now,” I announce. “I just wanted to see that. It caught my eye.”
I start walking toward the door before realizing Theo’s not at my side. Turning back to look at him, he’s holding up some sort of princess doll.
“Uh, Theo.” I laugh. “You good?”
Theo stares at me as if I should already know the answer. “I haven’t picked out anything for Rosalie’s birthday yet.”
“Oh, I forgot,” I admit sheepishly. “Sorry.”
Turning to the shop owner, he asks if they have a doll that has the hair color of the one in his right hand, but wearing the dress of the one in his left hand. As he tries to juggle a third doll in his hand, he says, “You can head outside if you need some air, eh? I’ll only be a minute.”
In the past few days, Theo’s done more for me than he’ll ever realize. He’s given me happy memories of a place that I’ve always kept in a shadowed part of my mind, too scared to bring it out into the light. If he wants to decide which princess doll to buy his goddaughter, he can take all the damn time in the world.
We both sleep—in our separate rooms—for ten hours straight once we got back to the hotel after the race. Theo wakes up crabby and hangry, so we head to a nearby restaurant the hotel manager recommends, and the host leads us to a booth positioned against the window.
“There’s got to be some joke about an Englishwoman and an Australian walking into a French restaurant,” Theo says with a grin as we slide into the cushioned benches.
“If there’s not, I’m sure you can think of something perfectly crude and inappropriate,” I reassure him. My eyes light up as I scan the menu. “We should get escargot.”
I feel Theo’s eyes gaze at me from over the top of his oversized menu. “You want to eat snails?”
Rolling my eyes, I correct him. “It’s not snail, it’s escargot.”
“Giving something a fancy name doesn’t change what it is,” Theo argues. “It’s still a slimy land creature.”
“Fortunately for us,” I shake my head, “slimy land creature was too many words to fit on the menu.”
“You’ll eat that, but not bananas?”
I’ve always claimed I don’t like the fruit because of the texture, so I see where his confusion lies. But I’m not admitting I’ve seen too many bananas covered in condoms to ever view them as edible. I flick up my left brow. “Says the guy who refuses to eat the left side of Twix bar.”
He sticks his tongue out at me before disappearing back behind his menu. A well-dressed server approaches us to take our drink orders and, in a surprising turn of events, Theo agrees to split a bottle of wine with me.
“To a successful trip to Le Mans,” he says, tapping his glass against mine.
“Agreed.” I pray he can’t see my cheeks flushing in the dim lighting. “Thank you for bringing me.”
Theo nods before readjusting the silverware in front of him. “Can I ask you something personal?”
I nearly choke on my drink. Theo’s never prefaced any sort of question with permission. He usually just asks me with no warning, leaving me stunned silent or clutching my stomach as I laugh. “Sure?”
He wiggles in his seat nervously. “Why’d you break up with Andrew?”
I’m surprised it’s taken him this long to ask, given his propensity to play twenty-questions at any given moment.
“Why do you think I ended things?” I’m the one who panicked while seeing him at Blake’s party. If I were Theo, I’d think Andrew broke up with me, not vice versa.
“Any bloke lucky enough to have you would be an absolute idiot to let you go.”
A delicious warmth spreads through my body. His sweet words are the key that unlocks the details of my breakup. “When Andrew said he was ready to take the next step in our relationship and move in together, I was initially on board… but then we started talking about what I should bring.”
Theo gasps. “And he told you not to bring your absurd amount of Tupperware?”
I take a long sip of my wine to buy myself some time. According to the sommelier who picked it out for us, there should be notes of vanilla and ginger. I’m getting notes of wood chips after a rainstorm.
Theo leans back in his seat. “Shit. I was messing with you, Jos. Did he really say that?”
“Not exactly.” I sigh. “But when I was deciding what to keep and what to sell before the move, Andrew told me there was no need for me to bring anything .”
Not my brightly colored floral plates I bought at a flea market with my mum. Not the mismatched mugs I’ve collected over the years traveling the world with McAllister. Not my cloud-like couch that’s permanently dented from where I sit in the same place every time I binge-watch MasterChef . Why bring it when Andrew already has perfectly good dishes and a couch?
“It hit me that I was moving into his place, with his stuff, in his favorite neighborhood. Nothing would ever feel like mine, you know?”
I toy with the stem of my wineglass, twirling it between my pointer finger and thumb. Theo separates my hand from my new distraction and rubs his thumb against the soft inside of my palm. My tightly coiled muscles instantly relax at his touch. “I went full quarter-life crisis mode because it hit me that, if we moved in together, I’d lose myself even more,” I admit. “I spent so much time prioritizing him instead of myself that I already felt lost. If we started living together, it’d just perpetuate the cycle of my life revolving around his. It made me realize I have no idea who I am when I’m not in a relationship. When it’s just me, myself, and I.”
Theo nods briefly before grinning at me with boyish charm. I don’t miss the way the corners of his mouth twist up with mischief. “I can easily tell you who you are, princess.”
“I’m not going to lie, I’m extremely nervous to hear your answer.”
“Besides having the best arse and tit combination I’ve ever encountered,” Theo says while leaning forward, “you’re extremely self-aware, frighteningly so. You like music so much because it’s a way to express how you’re feeling when you can’t find the right words yourself. You have a sweet smile with an even sweeter tooth, but you’re sassy as hell when you feel comfortable with someone. You’re also brilliant at your job, although I think you’d be damn good at any job. And despite what you think, you know yourself better than anyone.”
I inhale deeply to anchor myself in this moment, right here and now. “I know about you, too.”
Theo flicks up an eyebrow before flashing me a smile that could make any woman swoon. And this time, I am the woman who swoons at said smile. “Oi?”
“Mm-hmm.” I nod slowly, now stroking the inside of his palm with my thumb. “You have an insane ability to make anyone feel instantly comfortable. You like to know things, not only because you’re nosy, but because you want to understand people—what makes them tick; why they are the way they are. It’s why you’re so open. You’re also extremely competitive, but whether you realize it or not, McAllister is more than just a team for you. It’s a way for you to stay close to your dad and honor his memory.”
The restaurant could set on fire and I don’t think either of us would so much as flinch. The noise of side conversations, dishes clanking, servers listing specials—all of it fades away so the only thing I can hear is Theo’s shallow breathing and my heart pumping against my ribs.
“I’m sorry you felt like you didn’t know who you were,” he says, breaking the silence. “But I can’t say I’m sorry that it led to the end of your relationship.”
I snort and try to pull my hand back, but Theo tightens his grasp.
“No, I mean, you deserve someone who makes you feel like you’re the most gorgeous woman in the world, inside and out. Someone who worships the ground you walk on like it’s their religion. Someone who makes you a better version of yourself and doesn’t just support you, but challenges you, too. And if it took you a quarter-life crisis to figure that out… well, I'm not terribly disappointed about it, Jos. Andrew may be a decent guy, but you deserve way more than decent. You deserve the world.”
Um. Shakespeare called, he’d like his soliloquy back.
I don’t get a chance to respond before he chuckles and breaks the spell, saying, “Anything else you know about me, Dr. Freud?”
Leaning back into the seat, my hand slips from his grasp. “I also know you’re going to let me order slimy land creatures.”
“And how do you know that, Miss Bancroft?”
“Because that’s how well I know you .”
I also know that convincing myself I don’t want him is equivalent to thinking One Direction was the same once Zayn left—it’s just not true. I can tell myself that any desperation I feel for him is just a temporary emotional lapse, but I want more benefits than my health insurance and credit card combined can provide. Sleeping with Theo may be playing with fire, but I'm ready to burn, baby, burn.