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Chapter Forty-Four

Shantal

D arien stands atop his car, raising his right arm and pointing to it with his left as if to yell, ‘WHAT NOW,’ followed by what we believe is a famous Brazilian goal celebration dance that sends the crowd roaring. He finally clambers down after his moment of fame, the fool, and jumps right over the fence to embrace the team.

The second I’m close enough to him, I grip his helmet and meet his eyes through the visor. They’re full of nothing but love for the race, and I couldn’t be prouder.

‘You just did that!’ I almost scream over the frenzied fans.

And although it’s faint, I make out every word Darien laughs through when he replies, ‘ We just did that.’

The next couple of races are amazing. Darien drives like his tyres are on fire. He sweeps his other ‘home’ race in America, the United States Grand Prix in Austin, with another P1 directly after his Spa performance. He struggles and ends up with a P5 in Azerbaijan’s difficult street circuit, which I can tell severely hurts him, but he’s back fast in Monza, where he steals P3, and heads into Zandvoort to take a P2. By the time we reach the Jaipur Grand Prix, the hottest and most treacherous race on the grid, as well as the last hurdle remaining before we go on summer break, there’s nothing but determination on his face.

Jaipur, in the two years it has been run, has been Diana’s race. In both 2022 and 2023, I find out, she had got pole, with a podium in 2022 and a P1 in 2023; both years, Darien has struggled here. This only bolsters his motivation to break the streak before Diana makes it three podiums.

And he does. He just barely gets the edge on the third-to-last lap, overtaking Diana to steal P3 and nudge his way onto the podium, not only taking his place among the likes of Peter and – this is a shock – Alex Romilly, but doing so with quite some flair, flair that keeps him in the top spot for the World Championship. I’m on my feet screaming with happiness on the pit wall the second it happens, jumping up and down with the ecstatic engineers. No one can believe it. Darien Cardoso-Magalh?es is weaving magic.

I click on the lighter till I get a fierce enough flame that I can light the first candle, and then the next, and then the next. I make it to twenty-six before I give up.

‘Why are we Stone Age-ing this again?’ asks Darien with a yawn from the hotel room bed.

I just roll my eyes with a little laugh. After several – countless – nights together after Silverstone, I’ve discovered his deepest, darkest secret: his post-sex slump is dramatic; he turns from a cutthroat Formula 1 pilot to a cuddly, sleepy menace. It’s like having an extremely large, extremely tired dog in your bed.

‘Load-shedding.’ I hum, pulling the thin curtains that separate the room from the outside air open so the breeze can filter in. This entire room, with the open design and balcony, the gilded architecture of the hotel, feels like something out of a palace, which is one of the things I’m finding I love about this city. ‘No lights, no air conditioning, at least for the next couple of hours. Your race has used up all the power for the day.’

A gentle wind flutters my shirt (Darien’s, technically) as I make my way back over to him and crouch to plant a kiss on his forehead, taming his curls with my fingers.

‘No AC?’ he almost whines.

‘You’ll live.’

‘I guess.’ A lazy grin lights up his face. ‘Maybe it’s kind of romantic, right?’

‘I did just light twenty-six candles, so you might as well take something away from it.’

Darien glances longingly at the thermostat with its dormant display, and then back at me. ‘Yeah, good takeaway. Come here.’

I match his smile and clamber straight into the bed, and he wraps his arms around me, the best big spoon in the history of big spoons, one of his strong legs draped across mine. His nose tickles my cheek as his lips find the heavenly place between my jaw and my neck. His touch creeps lower, lower, until he reaches the hem of the shirt, and when his right hand finally finds the heat between my thighs, I can’t help but shiver and let out a contented little noise.

‘There’s no AC,’ he whispers against my skin. ‘Don’t tell me you’re cold, it’s about a million degrees.’

‘Oh, you stop playing with me, Darien.’

‘Only if you. Stop. First.’ He punctuates every word with a poke of my ribs, and the effect is immediate. The giggles rush out of me as I curl up to save myself from any more torture.

‘Fine, I’m stopping! I’m stopping.’ I take his hands and position them right back around me. ‘I am not cold, I am in fact comfortably warm, and it’s probably because you’re generating enough body heat to melt an igloo right now.’

‘ Hey! ’

‘How is a person so warm , Darien?’

‘What do you mean, how? Load-shedding, remember?’

‘It shouldn’t possibly make you this warm. Not when all the blood in your body is certainly not evenly distributed right now.’

‘Bro, yes, Shanni, I admit it,’ he bursts out laughing, face buried in my hair.

I roll over to face Darien, with his messy bed hair and his eyes screwed shut in amusement, and I take his face in both of my hands. ‘Okay, you … you heated blanket of a human being – go on, will you?’

I can’t even get words out between laughs that threaten to burst my lungs and kisses woven with smiles, and there’s something beautiful about that. Yes, we’re being babies, but I find that beautiful, too. To be at my happiest like this, it’s difficult. It hadn’t happened for a long time, until I met Darien, and suddenly, I get to be happy every day. I get to laugh over load-shedding and Dar being needy and horny and dramatic, and never once in all this laughter is there space for sadness. I forget about the pain that wrenches at my chest when I think about stepping out of this dream and dealing with reality.

If only for a moment.