THE F1 CAPTAIN'S FORBIDDEN TUTOR

Lilian

I did not want to be here.

The party stretched across the top floor of a glass building that overlooked the city, all soft gold light and clinking glasses, and every single person in the room looked like they belonged on a magazine cover. I stood near the window with a drink I had not touched, wearing a dress Anne had forced on me an hour ago, tugging at the hem every few minutes because it felt one size too small for the version of me that existed these days. I felt like an intruder in my own skin.

"You look like you are about to bolt," Anne said, appearing beside me with two glasses of something pink and sparkling.

"I am about to bolt."

"You are not. You promised me one hour." She pressed a glass into my hand and studied my face the way she had been studying it for three weeks now, careful, watching for cracks. "One hour of pretending you are a person who goes outside and has fun."

I almost laughed. Almost. Three weeks ago my ex had stood in the middle of the music hall, in front of half my program, and told everyone exactly why he had cheated on me, loud enough that even the professors heard every word. I had not fully recovered from the humiliation, and Anne knew it, which was why she had dragged me here instead of letting me spend another Friday night alone with my violin and the curtains drawn.

"Fine," I said. "One hour. Then I am going home to practice."

"You are always going home to practice." She looped her arm through mine anyway, smiling like she had already won. "One day I will get you to actually enjoy yourself."

"Tonight is definitely that day."

"That is the spirit." She laughed and then her gaze slid past my shoulder, and her whole face changed. "Oh. Oh, look who just walked in."

I turned before I could stop myself.

A wave moved through the crowd the way it does when someone important enters a room, heads turning, voices dropping, phones lifting halfway before people remembered to look casual about it. And there he was. Drake. I knew the name before I ever cared to learn it, because it was plastered across billboards and the side of race cars and the mouths of every sports commentator in the country. He walked in like the room already belonged to him, sponsors trailing at his shoulders, a woman from some network trying to get a word in edgeways, cameras flashing at the edges of the crowd.

He was not smiling. He looked bored, almost annoyed, like the whole party was an obligation he intended to survive rather than enjoy.

And then he looked at me.

I don't know why. There were at least two hundred people in that room and somehow his eyes landed on me and stayed there, across the whole width of the floor, long enough that my skin started to prickle. I expected him to look away first. People like him always looked away first, once they had confirmed you were not worth the attention.

He did not.

"Lilian." Anne's voice came from very far away. "Lilian, he is staring at you."

"I noticed," I muttered, and finally broke the stare myself, turning back toward the window like the city view had suddenly become the most interesting thing in the world.

"Do you know who that is?"

"Everyone knows who that is."

"He never looks at anyone like that." Anne leaned closer, lowering her voice like she was sharing a secret. "I have been to three of these things with Michael and Drake barely says two words to a single person who is not on his team. But he was looking at you like you had said something insulting to him and he was still trying to decide if he should be offended."

"Maybe I have that effect on arrogant men," I said. "It is a gift."

She laughed, and for a moment I let myself believe the night might actually be survivable.

It was not.

An hour later, weaving through the crowd toward the bathroom, I had my head down, texting Anne to tell her I was ready to leave, when I walked straight into a wall of a man and felt cold liquid soak through the front of my dress.

"Watch where you are going," a low voice said, more irritated than apologetic.

I looked up and my stomach dropped. It was him. Drake. This close, he was worse: a sharper jaw, colder eyes, the kind of face that made you angry just for being that good-looking without even trying.

"Me?" I said, snatching a napkin off a nearby table and pressing it against the ruined fabric. "You are the one who was not looking where you were going."

"I was standing still. You walked into me."

"I was walking in a straight line. You are the one who does not know how to give people space."

Something flickered across his face, surprise maybe, like nobody had spoken to him that way in a long time. His jaw tightened.

"You should be more careful," he said, his voice flat and final, like he was ending a conversation with an employee rather than a person.

That flatness did something to me. It cracked something open that had already been cracked three weeks ago in front of a room full of people who had laughed at me. My throat tightened and I hated it, hated that his indifference could reach the same bruise my ex had left there.

"You should try being less of yourself," I snapped, "for even five minutes. It might do the world some good."

He did not answer right away, and for a second I thought I saw something shift behind his eyes, but I did not wait to find out what it was. I turned and walked away, weaving through the crowd with my ruined dress and my burning face, and I did not look back once. I found Anne by the elevators and told her I was leaving, and she did not argue, she just grabbed her coat and followed me out without a single question.

We were almost at the doors when I saw him.

Not Drake. Someone else. A guy near the far wall, sketchbook tucked under one arm even here, dark curls falling over his forehead as he laughed at something one of his friends said. Noah. I had spent an entire semester finding excuses to walk past the art studio just to catch a glimpse of him bent over a canvas, I had memorized the exact way he held a pencil between two fingers, had never once worked up the nerve to say more than three words to him. He did not look up as I passed. He did not know I existed, not really, not the way I existed for him in my head every single day.

I pushed through the doors into the cool night air and did not stop walking until we reached the car.

Anne slid into the passenger seat beside me, quiet for a moment, and then she glanced back toward the building through the window.

"Lilian," she said slowly. "Drake just walked outside. He is standing by the entrance and he is watching you get into this car right now."