Paddock Warfare

Laura Jean POV

The paddock on race weekend was nothing like I'd imagined and exactly like I'd imagined at the same time.

I had seen the footage, read the profiles, written about Formula 1 from a comfortable desk with a laptop and a search engine and the kind of distance that makes everything look glamorous. Standing inside it was different.

The engine noise hit first from the practice sessions vibrating through the ground and up into my chest, mechanics moving around the cars with that specific focused urgency of people who measured mistakes in milliseconds.

I had my notebook, my microphone, had the press credential around my neck and absolutely no idea where to stand without being in someone's way.

I followed Jannis like a shadow anyway.

On the track he was something else entirely.

I stood in the garage and watched him push through practice laps completely in control, like the car was an extension of something he was thinking rather than a machine he was operating. The engineers tracked data on screens I couldn't read. Nobody talked much. The whole garage had the focused quiet of people who knew exactly what they were doing and didn't need to announce it.

But the second he climbed out and saw me waiting, the mask came back like a switch had been flipped.

"Practice went well?" I asked, as he pulled off his helmet, hair damp with sweat. "Any thoughts on the balance for qualifying tomorrow? Even one sentence. Fans love the technical side."

He wiped his face with a towel one of the mechanics handed him without looking at me. "It's fine. Car is fine. That's your content."

"Come on." I kept my tone light even though the dismissal stung. "One sentence about the setup changes from last race. Something real."

He stopped. Looked at me, eyes flat. "People love drama. You're not getting it from me. Do your job and stay out of the way when it matters."

I opened my mouth to push back.

"Well, well."

The voice came from behind me, easy and confident, and when I turned there was a man about Jannis's height with a helmet under his arm and a grin that knew exactly what it was doing.

Stephen Cole.

Jannis's biggest rival this season. I recognized him immediately.

He looked at me with open appreciation that he made absolutely no effort to disguise. "You picked the wrong garage if you're hoping for conversation. The Ice King is not exactly known for his hospitality." That grin widened. "You're welcome to borrow mine anytime."

"LJ," I said. "And I'm here to work."

"Shame." He stepped slightly closer. "Offer stands, beautiful. Don't let the statue freeze you out completely."

He was obvious and he knew it and somehow that made it funnier than it should have.

I felt a smile pull at my mouth before I could stop it.

And then I felt something else, that specific awareness of being watched.

I glanced sideways. Jannis was watching Stephen without blinking, the towel in his hand twisted tight in his grip.

I filed that away and didn't examine it too closely.

Stephen left with a wink.

Jannis said nothing for a long moment, and then, quieter than I expected: "Stay away from Cole."

"Excuse me?"

"He's using you to get under my skin," he said, eyes turned away from me. "He does this. Creates problems."

"So you're warning me," I answered. "Out of the goodness of your heart."

"Out of practicality." He walked away before I could respond.

I stood there for a second, pulse doing something annoying, and then pulled out my notebook and got back to work.

The day wore on in that push and pull rhythm I was already starting to recognize as ours.

He stonewalled my questions. I found other angles, the thousand small decisions happening in real time around the car that told their own story even when the driver refused to.

By afternoon I had enough candid footage and genuine paddock atmosphere to build something real. Not what I'd hoped for. But real.

During a break I leaned against a tool chest and called Josie.

She answered on the first ring, voice already buzzing. "Tell me everything."

"I told her about what went on today. His rival showed up and flirted with me in front of him and I'm pretty sure Jannis nearly fractured his own jaw trying not to react."

Josie made a noise that was somewhere between a shriek and a laugh. "You're already trending. Half the comments think you hate each other. The other half thinks you're already in love. What did you post?"

"Just paddock footage. Behind the scenes stuff."

"LJ. They are feral for this. Keep going."

"And be honest with me. How are you actually doing?"

I looked across the garage to where Jannis was talking to someone, head bent over a tablet, completely absorbed.

"I'm fine," I said. "It's a lot. But I'm fine."

"Tyler texted me asking if you landed safe," Josie said, carefully. "I told him you did."

Guilt, quiet and unwelcome, showed up right on cue.

Tyler, who had zipped my suitcase and brought me snacks and kissed me goodbye and said things don't have to change that much. Who was probably ordering sad takeout right now in his apartment.

"I'll call him tonight," I said.

"Yeah," Josie said. Just that. No follow up.

I hung up and stood there for a second with the garage noise around me, thinking about the fact that I'd gone most of the day without thinking about Tyler at all.

That the first time he'd surfaced was because Josie mentioned him. I didn't know what to do with that information so I opened my notebook and wrote something down that had nothing to do with it.

I didn't call Tyler that night.

I told myself I was too tired, which was true. I told myself the time difference was awkward, which was less true.

I typed three different versions of a text and deleted all of them and finally sent a voice note that was forty seconds of me saying I'd landed safe and the paddock was incredible and I missed him, and then I put my phone face down and stared at the ceiling of the hotel room.

Everything here was very nice. The kind of nice that reminded you it existed to impress people.

I was still staring at it when I finally gave up and went to find the ice machine down the hall.

That's when I heard his door.

I turned and Jannis was in the hallway, fresh from the shower by the look of it, hair still slightly damp, in a t-shirt and dark trousers. He stopped when he saw me.

We looked at each other across about six feet of very quiet corridor.

"Ice machine," I said, holding up the bucket like it needed explanation.

He looked at the bucket. Then back at me.

"Stay out of my personal life." His voice was low, quieter than his usual clipped tone. Like something he'd been carrying around since the paddock and was only now setting down. "The track is the story. That's all."

"I know that," I said.

"Cole will say things. The cameras catch everything here. I need you to understand that what happens in the paddock—"

"Jannis."

It was the first time I'd used his actual name. And something about it made him stop mid-sentence. "I know how to do my job."

The hallway was very quiet. He was close enough that I could see the tension in his jaw had eased slightly, which for him was practically a smile.

He looked at me for a long moment in that way he had, like he was deciding something. Like I was a variable he kept arriving at different answers for.

"Goodnight, Vixen," he said finally.

"Goodnight, Mr Laurence."

He went back into his room. The door clicked shut. I stood in the hallway with my ice bucket for a moment, the hum of the hotel around me, and thought about how he had said my name, or not my name, the name he'd given me, in a way that didn't feel like a dismissal anymore.

I thought about Tyler's voice note sitting unlistened to on my phone.

I got my ice and went back to my room and didn't think about the hallway for the rest of the night.

I mostly succeeded.