All Chapters of The Ice King and The Vixen : Chapter 1 - Chapter 10

Laura Jean POV I finally hit send on the article around 11:47p.m. I stared at the sent confirmation for a second, waiting for that feeling, the one that used to hit like a small victory, like cracking a window open after a stuffy room. It came. Barely. More like a flicker than a flame, gone before I could even enjoy it. I leaned back in my chair until it creaked in protest and stared at the ceiling. Three weeks chasing that story. Sources who'd go quiet for days then text me at 2am like that was normal. Fact-checking until the words stopped looking like words. And now it was just… done. Out there. Over. I rubbed the knot at the back of my neck and told myself I was just tired. That was easier than whatever the alternative was. I wandered into the kitchen mostly just to move, poured myself water I didn't really want, and stood there in the dark listening to the fridge hum. Then my phone exploded. Josie's name lit up the screen along with that ridiculous contact photo she'd set

Laura Jean POV The forty-eight hours went fast in the way that stressful things do. Not quickly exactly, just gone before I had finished processing them. By the time dawn came my suitcase was zipped and waiting by the door and I'd slept maybe four hours total. Jannis's warning kept finding me every time I got close to drifting off. Try not to get in my way, Vixen. I had told myself I found it annoying. Mostly I believed that. Tyler showed up while I was still doing my third pass through the apartment, checking things I'd already checked. He brought snacks from the place on my corner and set them on the counter without making a thing of it, then leaned in the doorway watching me debate shoes like it was entertainment. "You sure you've got everything?" "No," I said honestly. He crossed the room and zipped the main compartment for me, hands steady. I watched him do it and felt that familiar warmth and underneath it, quieter. He sat on the edge of the bed. "So how did it actuall

Laura Jean POV Josie's text came through at 6am: Qualifying day. Don't mess it up. Love you. I was already dressed. I had been watching his data long enough to notice when something went wrong. The rear stepped out small, quick, there and gone in the final sector but the engineers around me leaned in simultaneously and I felt it too. That collective intake of breath that meant a tenth of a second had just become a problem. When Jannis climbed out I was already waiting. "That last sector looked loose," I said. "The rear stepped out more than yesterday. Was it the tire compound or the suspension? Because in the data from last race you adjusted the rear wing angle similarly when the track temperature climbed." He stopped, the towel frozen halfway to his face. His eyebrows lifted a fraction before settling again. "You've been studying telemetry." I folded my arms, trying not to smile. “I do my homework. If I’m going to be here for six months, I might as well understand what I’m

Laura Jean POV I knew something was wrong before anyone said a word. It was the looks. The kind where people glance at you and then glance away just a fraction too fast, like they've been caught doing something. I got three of them before I'd made it through the paddock entrance, two from team staff I didn't recognize and one from a junior reporter who'd been perfectly friendly the day before. I kept walking, kept my face neutral, and filed it away. Josie's text came through while I was still outside the garage. Please tell me you've seen it already. Please tell me you're not about to walk into that paddock blind. I stopped walking and texted her back. Seen what? Three dots. Then a link. I opened it. The headline took about half a second to process. "Ice Melting? Sources Say Jannis Laurence's New Journalist Is Getting Very Personal Access" There were photos. Four of them. The rooftop terrace last night, taken from below or from a distance, grainy enough to be deni

Laura Jean POV Race morning in Monaco always looked glamorous on television. From inside the garage, it looked nothing like that. By the time I arrived a little after seven, everyone was already working. I slipped toward the monitors, staying out of everyone's way. It lasted all of twenty minutes. "First race?" Sean didn't look up from his laptop when he asked. "The first one I've watched this close." "It's different from the outside, isn't it?" His fingers moved across the keyboard without hesitation. "You'll feel it in your chest when the lights go out. Everyone does the first time. Doesn't matter if you've been here for one season or twenty." I smiled. "Does it ever get less intense?" That finally made him look up. "No," he said, sounding almost amused. "You just get better at pretending it does." I laughed quietly, but before I could ask anything else, the atmosphere shifted. Jannis had just walked into the garage. I had seen him in plenty of places over the last few