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On Call | Two of Two

Pairing: Lando Norris x EX!Personal Assistant!Reader

Description: You're Lando Norris's former personal assistant—fired eighteen months ago after he told you he loved you in a Qatar hotel room, then panicked. Now he's a World Champion with a new girlfriend and a mess of an assistant, and he needs you back. Just for two weeks of training, he says. Except Lando's never been good at keeping things professional, and some feelings don't stay buried.

Genre: second chance romance, forced proximity, angst with a happy ending, workplace-adjacent tension, emotional groveling, he's down BAD

WC: 21k

Note: Firstly, I want to apologize for how long this took to put out. I really struggled with finding the ending that felt right. And the paragraphs may feel overwhelming in length—I hit the 1,000 block limit like 40 times and had to condense everything. I proofread, stopped, then proofread again because it didn't feel good enough, and the cycle continued. So, about half is proofread and half isn't, which means there could be errors. Thank you for your patience and your kind words. I want to wish you Happy Holidays if you celebrate, and I'll continue doing my best with this little hobby of mine.

Leaving your job is the best thing that's ever happened to you. That's what you tell yourself, anyway. That's what you've been telling yourself for a year and a half now, and if you say it enough times, eventually it might feel true. The severance package Lando gave you was obscene. Guilt money, obviously, even though you're not calling it that out loud, but that's what it is—guilty money, hush money, please don't sue me for firing you thirty seconds after I came inside you money. Enough that you don't need to work. Enough that you're free.

Free. You're so fucking free that you've tried pottery three times and hated it every single time. You're so free that you've reorganized your closet by color, then by season, then by color again because the first way was better. You're so free that last Tuesday you stood in the shower and counted to three hundred just to see if you could.

The clay fights you. That's what they don't tell you about pottery. Your hands cramp and the instructor keeps saying feel the clay's energy like the clay has energy, like the clay is anything other than wet dirt that collapses the second you think you're getting somewhere. You even tried running. Running is just you and your thoughts for however many miles you can stand. Not ideal. Not even close to ideal. Guitar's gathering dust in the corner. Duolingo sends you passive-aggressive notifications about your streak. You've considered learning Portuguese but that feels pointed, feels like something you shouldn't examine too closely.

Two weeks ago, Lando Norris won the World Championship. You watched it from your apartment because you're a masochist, apparently. You sat on your couch in Monaco and watched him spray champagne and cry and lift the trophy, and you thought, good for him. You thought, I'm happy for him. You thought those things and none of them were true.

Last Friday he went to the FIA Prize Giving ceremony in Rwanda with his beautiful girlfriend to collect his trophy. The photos were everywhere. Every sports website, every F1 account, probably on the fucking news in countries that don't even have racing. His girlfriend, Magui, wore a black dress that made her look like a goddess reincarnated. He wore a tuxedo. They looked like they were attending their own wedding. That's a thought you're not examining. That way lies madness.

You abandon your collapsing bowl. Scrub the clay off your hands—it gets under your fingernails, stays there for hours. The instructor asks if you're signing up for next week. "I'll think about it," you say.

You're not signing up. You already know you're not signing up. Outside, Monaco is cold for December. Your apartment is fifteen minutes away if you walk fast, twelve if you're really moving. You've timed it. You don't go home, and you tell yourself you're just walking. Just getting some air. Just clearing your head after an hour of fighting with clay that had no interest in becoming anything other than a lopsided mess. That's what you tell yourself, and maybe it's even true. Except you're walking toward the harbor instead of toward your apartment, which is the opposite direction, which means you're either lost in your own city or you're lying to yourself. Probably the second one.

And the wonderful thing about Monaco is that it's small. Stupidly small. You can walk from one end to the other in under an hour. Which means you can't really avoid anything, can't really escape anyone, can't really pretend you're not living in the same two square kilometers as—you stop that thought before it finishes.

There's a sports bar on the corner. The kind that has screens covering every available wall, the kind that shows every race, every match, every game that matters. You've walked past it a hundred times. You've never gone in.

Today, you're going in. Just for a drink, you tell yourself. Just for one drink because it's cold outside and your apartment is empty and you're allowed to get a drink at a sports bar without it meaning anything. The bartender is maybe twenty-five, definitely Australian, probably works here because Monaco is where F1 people end up when they're not important enough to actually work in F1. He looks up when you walk in.

"What can I get you?"

"Vodka tonic." He makes it. You don't drink it. Instead, you just hold it and look at the screens because that's what you do in sports bars, you look at the screens. There are eight screens total. Three of them are showing football. Two are showing tennis. One is showing some sport you don't recognize—maybe rugby, maybe something else entirely. And one is showing a replay of the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix. The final lap. Lando crossing the line. The radio message. The celebration. You watch him climb out of the car. Watch him collapse into his team's arms. Watch the whole thing you already watched two weeks ago from your couch, except now you're watching it in a bar in Monaco while a drunk British guy three seats down yells "FUCKING LEGEND" at the screen.

The bartender notices you watching. "You follow F1?"

"Not really," you lie.

"Shame. That race was incredible. Norris finally did it, you know? After all these years."

"Yeah. I heard."

"Best season I've ever seen. Guy's a machine." He's polishing a glass, still talking. "And his girlfriend, mate. You seen her? Absolute smoke show."

You finish your vodka tonic in one go. It burns. "Another?" the bartender asks.

"No. Thanks." You pay and leave. Outside, the cold air hits you like a slap. You start walking. Not toward home. Just walking again. The thing about Lando firing you is that you still don't understand it. You've had a year and a half to make it make sense and it doesn't. It will never make sense.

He'd looked at you. Really looked at you, the way he used to in hotel rooms and empty conference rooms and all those in-between moments when it was just the two of you and nothing else in the world mattered. He'd touched your face. You'd touched his. For one perfect second, you'd thought maybe this is it, maybe this is where everything gets fixed. Then his expression changed and he'd pulled away and gotten dressed like he couldn't stand to be near you anymore.

I fucking love you, he'd said. In that hotel room in Qatar, buried inside your cunt, saying it like it was being torn out of him. Like he couldn't help it. Like he actually meant the fucking words. And then ten minutes later, boom, you're fired.

Just like that. You're fired. Two words that ended everything. You've spent eighteen months trying to figure out how someone tells you they love you and then removes you from their life entirely. How someone can look at you like you're the only person who matters and then just stop. Just move on. Just win a championship and fall in love with someone else and be happy, be so fucking happy that you can see it in every photo, every interview, every goddamn Instagram story.

He touches her differently than he touched you. He touches her casually. His hand on her waist, his fingers interlaced with hers, easy and comfortable and public. Like he's allowed to. Like it's simple. He never touched you like that. He touched you like he was desperate. Like he was trying to memorize the feeling. Like he was afraid—of what, you still don't know. Afraid you'd disappear, maybe? Afraid someone would see? Afraid it meant something.

It did mean something. It meant everything. At least it did to you. You miss him. That's the pathetic truth of it all. You miss him so much that sometimes you can't breathe. You miss his 3 AM phone calls. You miss fixing his disasters. You miss the way he'd look at you when he thought you weren't paying attention, like he was trying to figure out a puzzle he couldn't solve. You miss the feeling of him. His hands, his mouth, the weight of him, the way he'd say your name like it meant something.

You miss all of it and he's moved on and you're walking through Monaco at sunset thinking about someone who fired you eighteen months ago and probably hasn't thought about you since.

Your doorbell rings at 9:16 PM on December 19th. You're not expecting anyone. You consider ignoring it—consider pretending you're not home, consider going back to the book you're not reading. mBut, then, the doorbell rings again.

You should just pretend you're not home. Should pretend a lot of things that aren't walking to the door. You walk to the door anyway. Look through the peephole and your heart stops. Actually fucking stops in your chest. Lando Norris is standing in your hallway. He's wearing a cream Loewe sweatshirt and jeans, one hand shoved in his pocket while the other coddles his phone, and he's looking at it like he has all the time in the world. His hair is also shorter than it was in Qatar.

So, you do the only rational thing, the totally rational thing, and open the door. "Finally." He looks up from his phone. "I was about to use the spare key."

"You don't have a spare key."

"Don't I?" He walks past you into your apartment before you can stop him. "Nice place. Very clean and entirely very sad."

"Excuse me?"

"It looks like no one actually lives here." He's examining your bookshelf now, tilting his head to read the spines. "When did you become this person?"

"What are you doing here, Lando."

"Came to see you, obviously." He picks up a book, flips through it, puts it back in the wrong spot. "How've you been?"

"How have I been? Are you fucking kidding me?"

"Yeah. How are you? What've you been up to? Pottery, I heard. That's cute."

Your stomach drops. "How did you know about pottery."

"I know things." He sits on your couch. Your couch. Like he belongs there. "You quit that too, I assume. Seems to be your pattern lately."

"My pattern."

"Quitting things. Pottery, yoga, that book club." He gestures at your apartment. "Living like a goddamn ghost."

"Get out."

"In a second. I need to talk to you about something first." He leans back, arms spread across the back of your couch. "The new assistant isn't working out."

You stare at him. "Emma. She's trying, I'll give her that. But she's not you. Doesn't think like you. Doesn't anticipate things like you did." He says it so casually. Like he's commenting on the weather. "She's kind of useless, actually."

"And?"

"And I need you to train her."

The audacity. The fucking audacity of Lando Norris. "Are you insane?"

"No. Why would I be insane?"

"You fired me."

"I know. I was there."

"You fired me eighteen months ago and now you're asking me to train your replacement."

"She's not your replacement. That would imply she's anywhere near as competent as you were. Which she's not." He examines his nails. "I'm asking you to train her so she can be at least seventy percent as useful as you were. That's all."

"Get out of my apartment."

"Why are you being so difficult about this? It's a simple request. A few weeks of your time. I'll pay you whatever you want. You're not exactly busy." His eyes flick around your apartment. "Are you."

"That's not the point."

"Then what is the point?"

"The point is you fired me. The point is you told me I was done. The point is you haven't spoken to me in a year and a half and now you show up here like nothing happened."

"Something happened?"

You want to hit him. Want to actually punch the asshole in the face. "Qatar. Something happened in Qatar."

"Oh, that." He waves a hand. "Ancient history. We've both moved on."

"Have we."

"Haven't we? You have your pottery classes. I have my championship." He smiles. That smile. The one that used to make you feel like you were in on a joke and now just makes you want to scream. "We're both doing great."

"Lando."

"What?"

"Get the fuck out."

"I'm at the Fairmont. Room 412." He stands up, stretches. "Think about it. I need an answer by tomorrow morning."

"The answer is no."

"Sure it is." He's walking toward the door. Pauses with his hand on the doorknob. "You look good, by the way. Tired, but good."

He leaves before you can respond. You stand there in your apartment. Your very clean, very empty apartment. Your heart is doing something in your chest and your hands are shaking. Lando Norris showed up after eighteen months and asked you to train his assistant like it was the most reasonable request in the world. Made you feel crazy for being angry. Commented on your home and your pottery classes and the fact that you're living like a ghost. How does he know about the pottery classes. How does he know anything?

You walk to your couch. The cushion where he sat is still slightly compressed and you stare at it. He knows about pottery. About yoga. About the book club you got kicked out of. He's been watching. Or keeping track. Or something. For eighteen months you thought he'd forgotten about you entirely. That you'd been erased from his life as cleanly as you'd been erased from his Instagram captions. And now it turns out he's been aware of you this whole time. Aware enough to know about pottery classes in Monaco. Aware enough to know you quit.

The Fairmont is twelve minutes from here if you walk fast. You're not going to the Fairmont. You're not training Emma. You're not doing any of it. You lasted forty-seven minutes before you grabbed your keys.

When you enter Fairmont hotel, you walk past the front desk without making eye contact with anyone, past the bar where well-dressed people are having well-dressed conversations, past the elevator bank to the one marked for floors three through six.

You press the button. Wait. Watch the numbers descend. Four, three, two, one. The doors open and you step inside before you can change your mind. Fourth floor. Room 412. The elevator is playing jazz, soft and inoffensive, the kind of music designed to make you forget you're in a metal box suspended by cables. You watch the numbers climb. One, two, three, four. The doors open.

The hallway is long and carpeted in a pattern that's probably meant to be elegant but just makes you slightly dizzy if you look at it too long. Room 412 is at the end, past eleven other rooms, past the ice machine, past the window that overlooks the harbor. You stand there for a moment. The door is dark wood with a brass handle and a number plaque that's slightly crooked. You can hear voices from one of the other rooms, muffled by walls and distance. Someone's watching television. Someone else is laughing. You knock on Lando's door.

The door opens immediately, like he was standing right there, like he was waiting.

"Took you long enough," Lando says. He's changed. Different sweatshirt, this one grey, same jeans. His hair is still damp like he showered after leaving your apartment, and you can smell his soap from here—clean and you don't recognize it but that fits him anyway, fits this version of him that exists in hotel rooms and galas and Instagram posts with his girlfriend.

"Can I come in or are you going to make me stand in the hallway?"

He steps aside and you walk in. The room is bigger than you expected, bigger than it needs to be for one person. There's a king bed with white sheets, a sitting area with a couch and two chairs, a desk by the window with a view of the harbor that's probably spectacular in daylight but right now just shows darkness and distant lights. His suitcase is open on the floor, clothes spilling out in a way that's chaotic and familiar and makes your fingers itch to organize it. There's a bottle of champagne on the desk. Two glasses next to it.

"You knew I'd come," you say.

"Of course I knew." He closes the door behind you. "You always come." The certainty in his voice makes you want to scream.

"Don't flatter yourself."

"I'm not flattering myself. I'm stating facts." He walks past you to the desk, picks up the champagne bottle, examines the label like it matters. "You lasted, what, an hour?"

"Forty-seven minutes."

"Forty-seven minutes." He looks at you now, really looks at you, and there's something in his expression that you can't read, something that might be satisfaction or might be something else entirely. Either way, you don't entertain the thought. "You counted."

"I count everything now."

"I know you do." He says it so casually, like it's obvious, like of course he knows. And maybe he does know. Maybe he knows about the counting and the pottery and the book club and every other pathetic thing you've been doing for the past eighteen months while he's been winning championships and falling in love.

"How do you know about the pottery classes?" you ask.

"I told you. I know things."

"That's not an answer."

"It's the only answer you're getting." He pours champagne into both glasses even though you haven't said you want any. "Emma will be there on Monday. I need you there by nine."

"I didn't say yes."

"You're here, aren't you?"

He hands you a glass and you take it. You're not sure as to why you take it but you do, and now you're standing in his hotel room holding champagne and trying to remember how you got here, trying to remember the exact sequence of decisions that led from your apartment to this moment. "This is insane," you say.

"Probably."

"You fired me."

"I remember."

"You told me you loved me and then you fired me."

Something flickers across his face. Fast, there and gone before you can identify it. "That was a while ago."

"So?"

"So we've both moved on." He takes a sip of his champagne, watching you over the rim of the glass. "Haven't we?"

"I don't know, have we?"

"You tell me." He sets his glass down on the desk, leans back against it. "You're the one who showed up at my hotel room at ten PM."

"You literally asked me to."

"I asked you to think about training Emma. I didn't ask you to come here." He tilts his head, studying you in that way he used to. "But here you are anyway."

You hate that he's right. Hate that he knew exactly what would happen when he showed up at your apartment. Hate that after eighteen months of nothing, he can still make you do exactly what he wants with barely any effort at all. "Why me?" you ask. "Why not hire someone else to train her? Someone who doesn't have a history with you?"

"Because no one else knows how I work."

"That's not a good enough reason."

"It's the only reason." He crosses his arms. "You know my schedule better than I do. You know what I need before I need it. You know how to fix problems before they become problems. No one else can do that."

"Emma could learn."

"Emma is twenty-three years old and terrified of me. Every time I ask her a question she looks like she's going to cry." He says it without sympathy, just a simple observation, a simple fact. "She's not you."

Your stomach lurches, "Good. She shouldn't be me."

"Why not?"

"Because being me got me fired."

"No." He pushes off from the desk, takes a step closer. "Being you got you promoted from assistant to whatever we were. Getting fired came after."

"After you decided you were done with me."

"I never said I was done with you."

"You fired me. That's pretty definitive."

"Is it?" He's close enough now that you can see the exact color of his eyes in the hotel room lighting—that blue-green that changes depending on what he's wearing, what the weather is, what mood he's in. Right now they're darker, more blue than green, and fixed on you with an intensity that makes your stomach twist. "Because here you are. In my hotel room. Eighteen months later. Doesn't seem very definitive to me."

You should leave. Should put down the champagne glass you're still holding, should walk out of this hotel room, should tell him to train Emma himself or hire someone else or figure it the fuck out on his own. You don't leave.

"Monday," he says. "Nine AM. MTC. I'll have everything ready for you—schedules, systems, all of it. Two weeks. That's all I need."

"And after two weeks?"

"After two weeks you go back to your life. Pottery classes or whatever else you're doing to pass the time." The dismissiveness in his tone makes you want to throw your champagne in his face.

"I want double your normal consulting rate," you say instead.

"Done."

"And I'm not working with you directly. Just Emma."

"Fine."

"And if she's actually incompetent, if she can't learn this, I'm out. I'm not babysitting someone who can't do the job."

"She can learn. She's not stupid, she's just not you." He picks up his champagne glass again. "Anything else?"

"Yeah. What does your girlfriend think about this?" The question comes out before you can stop it. You watch his expression carefully, looking for any sign that it bothers him, that the mention of Magui does something to him the way the thought of her does something to you.

Nothing. His expression doesn't change at all. "Magui doesn't care about my work arrangements," he says.

"You told her you're hiring your ex-assistant as a consultant?"

"I told her I'm getting help training the new hire. She said that's great." He takes another sip. "She's very supportive." Of course Magui is supportive and understanding and completely unthreatened by the fact that her boyfriend is hiring the woman he fired after sleeping with her. Of course she's goddamn utterly perfect.

"Monday," you say. "Nine AM. Two weeks. Then I'm done."

"Deal." He sets his glass down, extends his hand like this is a business transaction, like you're colleagues making an agreement and not two people who destroyed each other eighteen months ago.

You shake his hand. His palm is warm, rough with calluses from the steering wheel, and the touch of it against your skin makes something in your chest crack open. He doesn't let go immediately. Just holds your hand for a beat too long, his thumb brushing once against your knuckles in a gesture that might be accidental or might be completely intentional.

"It's good to see you," he says quietly.

You pull your hand back. "Don't."

"Don't what?"

"Don't do that. Don't make this into something it's not."

"What am I making it into?"

"You know what."

He smiles. That smile. The one that used to make you feel like you were the only person who mattered and now just makes you feel like you're losing a game you didn't know you were playing. "Monday," he says again.

You leave before you can do something stupid like stay. The hallway is the same length it was before—forty-three steps from his door to the elevator. You count them again anyway. Count them and try not to think about the way his hand felt against yours, the way his eyes looked in the hotel lighting, the way he said it's good to see you like he meant it.

The elevator arrives. You step inside and watch the numbers descend. Four, three, two, one. The doors open to the lobby and you walk out past the bar, past the front desk, past all the well-dressed people living their well-dressed lives. The night air hits you when you step outside and it's cold, colder than it was before, or maybe that's just you.

Monday. Nine AM. Two weeks. You just agreed to spend two weeks training Lando Norris's new assistant, in the same building as him, probably seeing him multiple times a day, pretending that Qatar never happened and that the past eighteen months of pottery classes and counting ceiling tiles were a completely normal and healthy way to process getting fired by someone who said they loved you.

This is fine. You're fine. Everything is completely fine. You walk the twelve minutes home and try to convince yourself that you haven't just made a catastrophic mistake.

Monday arrives with the kind of crystalline Monaco morning that makes you hate how beautiful everything surrounding you is. The sky is aggressively blue. You stand outside the MTC building at 8:47 AM because you're not going to be late, not going to give Lando the satisfaction of waiting for you.

The severance money means you don't technically need this. Could've said no. Should've said no. But here you are anyway, in black trousers and a cream cashmere sweater, your hair pulled back, looking professional and composed and like someone who definitely didn't spend three hours last night googling "how to train someone when you're emotionally compromised."

The building looks the same. Glass and steel and McLaren orange accents, you've been here a thousand times. Walked these halls, sat in these conference rooms, fixed Lando's disasters in every possible corner of this building. You take the elevator to the third floor. Lando's offices are on the fourth, but you're meeting Emma in the conference room, neutral territory. The elevator doors open and she's already there.

Emma is standing outside Conference Room B, clutching a tablet to her chest like it's a life preserver. She's twenty-three, with dark hair in a neat ponytail and wide brown eyes that get wider when she sees you. "Oh my god," she says, and her voice is high and nervous and sweet. "You're here. You're actually here. I'm Emma. Obviously. You know that. Lando said you'd be here at nine but I got here at eight-thirty because I didn't want to be late and I've been standing here for—sorry, I'm talking too much. I do that when I'm nervous. I'm Emma."

"You said that already," you say, but you're smiling despite yourself because she's like a puppy, earnest and eager and probably thirty seconds away from peeing on the floor from excitement.

"Right. Yes. Sorry." She clutches the tablet tighter. "Thank you for doing this. Lando said you were the best and he wasn't exaggerating, I've read all your notes, like all of them, the system you set up is incredible and I've been trying to follow it but I keep messing things up and last week I accidentally booked him on a flight to Barcelona instead of Budapest and he didn't even yell, he just looked at me like I'd kicked a puppy and that was somehow worse—"

"Emma."

She stops mid-sentence. "Yeah?"

"Breathe." She takes a breath. Then another one. "Sorry. I'm nervous. You're kind of a legend around here."

"I'm really not."

"You are, though. Everyone talks about how you could predict what Lando needed before he even asked, how you saved the Singapore weekend when his passport got stolen, how you once fixed a PR disaster with seventeen minutes' notice—"

"That was fifteen minutes."

"See?" Emma's face lights up. "That makes it even more impressive."

You can't help it. You laugh. It's been eighteen months since you laughed in this building, maybe longer. "Come on. Let's get started."

Conference Room B hasn't changed. Same long table, same uncomfortable chairs, same view of the parking lot where you can see Lando's cars if you crane your neck. You don't crane your neck. You spend the first hour going through systems. Calendar management, how Lando color-codes everything but never looks at the color-coding so you have to verbally remind him anyway. The specific way he likes his schedule printed—landscape, not portrait, because he's a psychopath. His coffee order, which changes based on what country he's in but follows a pattern if you pay attention.

Emma takes notes on everything. Actual notes, handwritten in a neat script, asking questions that are surprisingly intelligent. "What about when he's being difficult?" she asks around 10:15. "Like when he just doesn't want to do something?"

"Give me an example."

"Last month he had a sponsor call with Tag Heuer and he just didn't show up. Turned his phone off, then I found him at the gym."

You nod. "That's a Marcus problem."

"Marcus?"

"The Tag Heuer exec. Lando hates him. Too corporate, talks in buzzwords, makes Lando feel like he's in a business school presentation." You pull up the calendar on your tablet. "Did you reschedule?"

"I tried. Marcus was pissed."

"Marcus is always pissed. Did Lando at least send him something? Gift basket, signed merch, something to smooth it over?"

Emma's face falls. "I... uhhhhhh, no?"

"Rule one," you say, and you sound exactly like you used to, competent and certain and completely in control. "When Lando fucks up with a sponsor, you fix it before it becomes a problem. Send Marcus a bottle of something expensive with a handwritten note from Lando. I'll show you where we keep the stationary. Lando won't remember doing it but that's fine. That's the point."

"That feels like lying."

"It's not lying. It's managing expectations. Lando's job is to drive fast and look good in photos. Your job is to make sure he can do both without accidentally destroying his entire career." You look at her. "Can you do that?"

She straightens up. "Yes."

"Good." You're explaining the intricacies of Lando's travel preferences—aisle seat but only on long-haul flights, hates flying commercial but won't admit it's because he's claustrophobic, needs noise-canceling headphones or he gets migraines—when the door opens.

You don't have to look up to know it's him. You can feel it, the way the air in the room shifts, the way Emma's posture goes rigid. "Morning," Lando says, and his voice is casual, easy, like this is completely normal. Like he didn't show up at your apartment four days ago asking you to do exactly this.

You look up. He's in McLaren team gear, black joggers and a papaya polo, his hair still damp from a shower. He looks good. He always looks good. You hate that you still notice. "We're in the middle of something," you say.

"I know. Just wanted to check in. See how it's going." He leans against the doorframe, arms crossed, and his eyes are on you. Just on you. Not on Emma, not on the conference room, just you. "How's she doing?"

"She's sitting right here," Emma says, and there's a tiny bit of spine in it that makes you like her more.

"Right. Sorry." But he doesn't look at Emma. Still looking at you. "How's she doing?"

"Fine. We're going through travel protocols."

"Riveting." He pushes off the doorframe, walks into the room like he owns it. Which, technically, he does. He owns this whole building, or at least McLaren does and he's their golden boy so it's basically the same thing. He stops at the head of the table, one hand braced on the back of a chair. "Mind if I sit in?"

"Yes," you say, at the same time Emma says "No, of course not."

Lando smiles. That smile. "Majority rules." He sits down across from you. Emma looks between you like she's watching a tennis match and can't figure out who's winning.

"Continue," Lando says, gesturing at you like a professor encouraging a student. "Don't let me interrupt."

"You're already interrupting."

"Am I?" He leans back in his chair, arms behind his head. "I'm just sitting here. Very quietly. Being super helpful."

You want to throw your tablet at his head. "Emma, where were we?"

"Um." Emma's looking at her notes but you can see her hands are shaking slightly. "Travel preferences?"

"Right. So Lando needs—"

"I need a lot of things," Lando interrupts. "Very high maintenance. Must be exhausting to keep track of."

You ignore him. "Lando needs at least seven hours of sleep before a race. Which means you're coordinating with his trainer and his PR team to make sure he's not scheduled for anything after nine PM on Saturday nights."

"Unless it's important," Lando adds.

"Nothing is more important than you not crashing the car because you're tired."

"I would never crash because I'm tired. I'd crash because someone else did something stupid."

"Abu Dhabi 2023."

He sits up straighter. "That was different."

"You were exhausted. You'd done press until eleven the night before and you missed the apex on lap forty-three because you were too tired to focus."

"I missed the apex because Ocon was being a dick."

"Lando." You level him with a look. "Are you going to let me train Emma or are you going to argue with me about things that happened two years ago?" Something flickers across his face. Something that might be hurt or might be anger or might be something else entirely. "Fine. Continue."

You continue. Emma asks about race weekend protocols. You explain the specific way Lando likes his debriefs, bullet points, not paragraphs, because he won't read paragraphs. The way he gets quiet before qualifying, needs space, don't try to cheer him up or pump him up just let him be.

"He's a headphone person," you explain. "If he's wearing them, don't bother him unless the building is on fire."

"What if it's actually important?" Emma asks.

"Then text me first— sorry, text whoever his performance coach is and they'll handle it."

"You mean text you," Lando says quietly.

You don't look at him. "Text whoever is listed as his primary contact."

"That's you."

"I'm not his primary contact anymore."

"Yes, you are." He says it with complete certainty. "Never changed it. It's still you."

The room goes very quiet. Emma is looking at her tablet very intently, like she's trying to disappear into it. "We should take a break," you say, standing up. "Emma, fifteen minutes?"

"Yeah. Yes. Absolutely." She practically bolts from the room.

You start gathering your things. Lando stays seated. "You're still my primary contact," he says again.

"Change it."

"Why?"

"Because I don't work for you anymore."

"You're working for me right now."

"I'm consulting. It's temporary."

"Right." He stands up, walks around the table. He's too close now, close enough that you can smell his cologne and your head spins. "Two weeks."

"That's what we agreed."

"Then what?"

"Then I go back to my life and you figure out how to not destroy Emma's will to live."

"C'monnnn, I'm not that bad." You finally look at him. Really look at him. There's a small scar on his left eyebrow that wasn't there before—probably from a crash you didn't see, didn't hear about, weren't there for. He's broader in the shoulders. More defined. Like he's been training harder, pushing himself harder.

"You called her useless," you say quietly. "Emma. You told me she was useless."

"I said she wasn't you."

"Same thing."

"It's really not." He takes another step closer. "You were terrifying. Efficient and cold and you knew exactly what I needed before I needed it. Emma's trying but she's not—"

"She's twenty-three years old and you make her cry."

"I don't make her cry."

"You make her feel like she's failing even when she's doing everything right. That's worse than making her cry."

His jaw tightens. "That's not what I'm doing."

"Isn't it?" You cross your arms. "She accidentally booked you to Barcelona instead of Budapest and you looked at her like she'd killed your dog."

"It was a stupid mistake."

"It was an honest mistake. A mistake I made three times in my first six months working for you and you just laughed and fixed it."

"That was different."

"Why? Because you were fucking me?"

The words hang in the air between you. Lando's expression shutters closed, that thing he does when he doesn't want you to know what he's thinking. "That's not fair," he says finally.

"Nothing about this is fair." You grab your tablet. "I need air."

"Wait—" But you're already leaving, walking out of Conference Room B, past Emma who's hovering in the hallway pretending to look at her phone, toward the elevator. You hit the button. Wait. The doors open.

Lando catches them before they close.

"Move," you say.

"No."

"Lando, I swear to fucking god."

He steps into the elevator. The doors close behind him. It's just the two of you in this small space, and he's looking at you with an intensity that makes your stomach flip. "You're right," he says.

"About what?"

"About Emma. About me being too hard on her." The elevator starts moving down. "I don't mean to. I just—"

"You're comparing her to me."

"Yeah."

"Then stop."

"I can't." His voice is quiet now, raw. "You set an impossible standard and now everyone else just feels wrong."

"That's not my problem."

"Isn't it?" He moves closer. "You're here, aren't you? Training her. Which means some part of you still cares."

"I care about her. Not about you."

"Liar." The elevator dings. Ground floor. The doors open to the lobby and you walk out without looking back. You can feel him following you, his presence like a heat at your back. Outside, the Monaco sun is aggressive and bright. You walk toward the parking lot, no destination in mind, just moving because if you stop moving you might do something stupid like turn around.

"Where are you going?" Lando calls after you.

"Away from you."

"Your car's the other direction." You stop and turn around. He's standing there in the middle of the parking lot, hands in his pockets, looking at you like this is all some game and he's already won.

"What do you want from me?" you ask.

"I want," he stops. Runs a hand through his hair. "I don't know."

"Yes, you do."

"Fine. I want you to stop looking at me like I'm the villain in your story."

"Then stop acting like one."

"I fired you because," He stops again, and this time he looks genuinely frustrated, like the words won't come. "It was getting complicated."

"You said you loved me and then you fired me. That's not complicated. That's just fucking cruel, Lando."

"It wasn't— I wasn't trying to be cruel."

"Then what were you trying to be?" He doesn't answer. Just stands there in the parking lot while people walk past, employees and engineers and team members who definitely recognize both of you and are definitely going to talk about this later.

"Two weeks," you say finally. "I'm going to train Emma for two weeks and then I'm done. I don't want to have this conversation again. I don't want to analyze what happened in Qatar. I don't want closure or explanations or whatever it is you think you need to give me."

"What if I want those things?"

"Then you should've thought about that eighteen months ago." You walk back to the building, back to Conference Room B where Emma is probably still trying to make herself invisible. Lando doesn't follow you this time.

When you get back upstairs, Emma looks up nervously. "Everything okay?"

"Fine," you lie. "Let's talk about how to handle media obligations." You make it through the rest of the morning. Make it through lunch—salads in the cafeteria, Emma chattering nervously about her girlfriend and her apartment in Nice and how she got this job. Make it through the afternoon session on crisis management.

At 4:47 PM, your phone buzzes.

You stare at the messages. Emma is explaining something about how she organized his sponsor contacts but you're not listening anymore. "I need to take care of something," you tell her. "Can you review the crisis management protocols we just covered? I'll quiz you when I get back."

"Yeah, of course." She's already pulling up the documents, eager and focused.

You take the elevator to the fourth floor. Lando's office is at the end of the hall, corner office with windows overlooking the harbor. The door is half-open. You knock anyway.

"Come in," he says. His office is exactly how you remember it. Sleek brown desk, nice chair, shelves lined with trophies and helmets and racing memorabilia. There's a new addition—a photo from Abu Dhabi, him holding the championship trophy, surrounded by his team. You're not in it. Obviously.

Lando is standing by the window, back to you, still in his team gear. "Close the door," he says without turning around.

You close the door. Stay by it. Keep your hand on the handle. "What."

"I owe you an explanation." He turns around finally. His face is serious, none of that cocky confidence from this morning. "About Qatar."

"I don't want a fucking explanation."

"I know you don't want to hear it. I'm telling you anyway." He leans back against the window ledge. "I fired you because I was in love with you and I didn't know what the fuck to do about it."

You stare at him. At Lando Norris standing in his corner office with the nice windows and a championship trophy on his shelf, telling you he fired you because he loved you like that makes any fucking sense at all.

"No," you say.

"No?"

"No. You don't get to do this." You take a step forward, then another, until you're in the middle of his office and your hands are clenched into fists at your sides. "You don't get to rewrite this to make yourself feel better."

"I'm not rewriting anything. I'm telling you what happened."

"What happened is you fucked me and then you panicked and then you got rid of me. Don't dress it up as some grand romantic gesture."

"It wasn't—" He pushes off from the window, agitated now. "I wasn't trying to get rid of you. I was trying to protect you."

"From what?"

"From me. From this." He gestures around the office, at the trophies, at everything. "From being the person everyone whispers about. 'Oh, she's only here because she's sleeping with Lando Norris.' From having everything you accomplished reduced to who you were fucking."

You laugh. It comes out sharp and bitter. "How noble of you. Firing me to protect my reputation."

"It wasn't just about reputation."

"Then what was it about, Lando? Because from where I'm standing, it looks like you got scared. You said something you didn't mean in the heat of the moment and then you couldn't take it back so you just removed the problem entirely."

"I meant it." He takes a step closer. "I meant every fucking word."

"Then why—"

"Because I couldn't keep you and race at the same time!" His voice rises, echoing off the glass walls. "Because every time I got in the car I was thinking about you instead of the track. Because in Suzuka I nearly crashed in turn seven because I was wondering if you were watching. Because I was so gone for you that it was making me dangerous."

You open your mouth. Close it and try to find words that make sense. "You don't get to blame me for your driving," you say finally.

"I'm not blaming you. I'm explaining."

"You're making excuses."

"Jesus Christ." He runs both hands through his hair, messing it up completely. "Why are you being so difficult about this?"

"Difficult?" Your voice is rising now too. "You fired me, Lando. You looked me in the eye and told me I was done and then you disappeared from my life for months. You moved on for fucks sake! You found someone else. You won a fucking championship. And now you want me to what? Thank you for protecting me?"

"No, I want you to understand!"

"I understand perfectly. You wanted me gone so you could focus on your career. Mission accomplished. You got everything you wanted. Congratu-fucking-lations!"

"Everything except you."

The words hit you like a physical blow and you take a step back. Lando closes the distance. He's too close now, close enough that you can see the flecks of gold in his blue-green eyes, close enough that you're breathing the same air.

"You think I moved on?" His voice is lower now, dangerous. "You think I just forgot about you?"

"You're with Magui—"

"Magui is—" He stops. His jaw works. "Magui is uncomplicated. Easy. She doesn't make me feel like I'm losing my fucking mind."

"How nice for you both."

"You're not listening to what I'm saying."

"I'm listening. I just don't believe you."

"Why not?"

"Because if you actually loved me, you would've fought for it. You would've figured it out. You wouldn't have just thrown me away like I was—like I was disposable."

"You were never disposable." His hands come up like he's going to touch you, then drop. "You were the opposite. You were so important it fucking terrified me."

"Past tense."

"What?"

"Were. You keep saying were." You're shaking now, with anger or something else you refuse to name. "Past tense, Lando. Because whatever you felt, it's over now. You made sure of that."

"Is it?" He moves even closer, so close now that his chest is almost touching yours. "Because you came to my hotel room. You agreed to train Emma. You're standing in my office right now when you could've said no to all of it."

"I came because you manipulated me—"

"I asked. You chose."

"Fuck you."

"Yeah?" His voice drops even lower, rough and intimate and infuriating. "Is that what you want?"

Your breath catches. "Don't."

"Don't what? Don't point out that you're still here? That you haven't left even though you could? That you're looking at me right now like you want to hit me or kiss me and you can't decide which?"

"I want to hit you."

"Liar." He reaches up slowly, giving you time to move away. You don't. His fingers brush your jaw, the same way they did in that hotel room in Qatar, and your traitorous body remembers. Remembers everything. "You're still the worst liar I've ever met."

"And you're still an asshole."

"Yeah." His thumb traces along your bottom lip. "But you liked that about me."

"Past tense."

"Sure." He's smiling now, that devastating smile that means he thinks he's winning. "Keep telling yourself that."

You should leave. Should push him away, walk out of this office, text Emma that she's on her own, block Lando's number, and get on the first flight to literally anywhere else. You don't leave. "You're with someone else," you say, but your voice comes out breathy, unconvincing.

"Am I?"

"Magui—"

"Isn't here." His other hand comes up to cup your face, tilting it up toward him. "Hasn't been here. Not in any way that matters."

"That's not—you can't just—"

"I know." His forehead drops to yours. "I know it's fucked up. I know I have no right to any of this. I know I'm the villain in your story and I probably deserve it. But I can't," His voice cracks slightly. "I can't keep pretending I don't still feel it. Can't keep watching you in that conference room teaching Emma things you used to do for me and act like it doesn't make me want to flip the fucking table."

"Lando."

"Tell me you don't feel it too." His eyes search yours. "Tell me Qatar meant nothing. Tell me you don't think about it. Tell me you're over it and I'll back off. I'll let you train Emma and I'll stay away and I'll never bring this up again."

It would be so easy to lie. To say the words he's asking for and walk out and go back to your empty apartment and your pottery classes and your carefully constructed life without him. "I can't," you whisper.

"Can't what?"

"Can't tell you that."

His grip on your face tightens. "Why not?"

"Because it's not true." The admission feels like it's being torn out of you. "I think about it every day. I think about you every day. And I hate it. I hate that you still have this much power over me. I hate that you fired me and moved on and I'm still—I'm still stuck in that hotel room in Qatar waiting for you to explain why you ruined everything."

"I'm explaining now."

"It's too late."

"Is it?" He's so close now his lips are almost touching yours. "Tell me it's too late. Mean it. Make me believe it."

"Lando, don't."

"Don't what? Don't tell you I haven't stopped thinking about you? Don't admit that Magui was supposed to help me move on and it didn't work? Don't say that I've been keeping track of every pottery class and yoga session and book club meeting because I couldn't stop myself?"

"That's creepy."

"I know." He laughs, but it sounds broken. "I know it is. I know I'm fucked up about this. About you. But I can't."

You kiss him before you can talk yourself out of it. It's not soft. It's not sweet. It's eighteen months of anger and hurt and want colliding all at once. Your hands fist in his shirt, pulling him closer, and he makes a sound low in his throat that you remember, that you've heard in dreams and hated yourself for missing. His hands slide from your face to your hair, tilting your head to deepen the kiss, and it's exactly like Qatar and nothing like Qatar at all. In Qatar, it was desperate and finite, both of you knowing it was ending even as it was happening. This feels different. More dangerous.

This feels like a beginning. He walks you backward until your back hits his desk, and his hands are on your waist, lifting you onto it like you weigh nothing. Your legs wrap around him automatically, muscle memory from all those times before, and he's between your thighs and you're both breathing hard. "Fuck," he mutters against your mouth. "Fuck, I missed this."

"Shut up." You pull him back in, kissing him harder, meaner, putting all your anger into it. He takes it, gives it back, his teeth catching your bottom lip hard enough to sting.

His hands slide under your sweater, palms hot against your ribs, and you arch into the touch. You've been so cold for eighteen months and now you're burning up. "We can't," you gasp when he moves to your neck, biting down on that spot below your ear that makes you see stars. "Lando, we can't."

"Why not?" His voice is muffled against your skin, and his hands are still moving, thumbs brushing the underside of your breasts through your bra.

"Because—because Emma is downstairs, because this is your office, because you have a girlfriend."

"I'll break up with her." He says it so casually, like it's already decided. "I'll call her right now."

"Don't be stupid."

"I'm not being stupid. I'm being honest." He pulls back to look at you, and his eyes are dark, pupils blown wide. "I don't want her. I want you. I've always wanted you."

"You fired me."

"Worst decision I've ever made." His hands frame your face again, forcing you to look at him. "And I've made a lot of bad decisions, so that's saying something."

You want to laugh. Want to cry. Want to pull him back in and forget everything that happened between Qatar and now. "This is insane," you say.

"Probably."

"We'll ruin everything. Again."

"Maybe." His thumb brushes across your cheekbone. "Or maybe we'll figure it out this time."

"You don't know that."

"No." He leans in, presses a soft kiss to your forehead, then your nose, then the corner of your mouth. "But I'm willing to risk it if you are."

Your phone buzzes in your pocket. You both freeze. "Don't," Lando says.

"It might be Emma—"

"It can wait." But the spell is broken. Reality is seeping back in through the cracks—the fact that you're sitting on his desk with your sweater rucked up and your lipstick definitely smeared. The fact that Emma is downstairs waiting for you. The fact that Magui exists, whether Lando wants to acknowledge it or not. You slide off the desk, putting distance between you. Your hands are shaking as you pull your sweater back down, try to smooth your hair.

"This was a mistake," you say.

"Don't do that."

"Do what?"

"Pretend it didn't mean anything. You're shit at it." He's watching you with an intensity that makes your skin prickle. "Always have been."

"It meant something in Qatar too. Look how that turned out."

"This is different."

"Is it?" You find your tablet where you dropped it on the floor, clutch it to your chest like Emma did this morning. "Or are you going to fire me again in two weeks when you remember why this is a bad idea?"

"That's not going to happen."

"You don't know that."

"I do, actually." He takes a step toward you. You take a step back. His jaw tightens. "Don't run."

"I'm not running. I'm leaving. There's a difference."

"Is there?" You open the door. Emma is definitely going to know something happened—your face is probably flushed, your lips probably swollen. But you can't stay here. Can't keep looking at him without wanting to touch him again. "Two weeks," you say without turning around. "I'm training Emma for two weeks. That's all this is."

"If that's what you need to tell yourself."

You walk out. Down the hallway, into the elevator, down to the third floor. Emma looks up when you walk in, takes one look at your face, and wisely says nothing. "Sorry," you manage. "That took longer than expected."

"It's fine." She's studying you though, those wide brown eyes taking in everything. "Everything okay?"

"Fine. Let's go over crisis management one more time." You make it through the rest of the day. Make it through Emma's questions and the review session and the walk to your car. Make it all the way home before you finally let yourself fall apart. Your apartment is exactly as empty as you left it. Clean and sad and full of the ghost of pottery classes and yoga sessions you quit.

Your phone buzzes and you brace yourself.

You throw your phone onto the couch. Pour yourself a glass of wine you don't drink. Stand in your living room and touch your lips where they're still tender from his teeth. This is going to end badly. You can see the car crash coming from a mile away and you're walking toward it anyway. Monday down. Thirteen days to go, and you are so undeniably fucked.

Tuesday passes in a blur of Emma and schedules and carefully avoiding the fourth floor. You arrive at 8:45 AM, earlier than necessary, because if you're early then you're in control. Emma is already there—of course she is, eager puppy that she is—with coffee for both of you and questions written neatly in her notebook.

"I was thinking about what you said yesterday," she starts, and you're grateful she doesn't mention the fact that you came back from Lando's office looking like you'd been thoroughly kissed. "About anticipating his needs before he asks?"

"Yeah?"

"How do you do that? Like, how do you know what he's going to want before he knows?" You think about all the times you just knew. Knew he needed silence before quali. Knew he needed distraction after a bad race. Knew he was spiraling before he even realized it himself. "You pay attention," you say finally. "To patterns. To mood shifts. To the things he doesn't say."

"That sounds exhausting."

"It is."

You spend the morning going through his sponsorship portfolio. Emma takes notes on everything—which sponsors require more hand-holding, which ones Lando actually likes, which ones are just obligatory. "Tag Heuer," she says, reading from her tablet. "You mentioned Marcus yesterday. What's the deal there?"

"Marcus is—" You stop, because Lando's walking past the conference room. You can see him through the glass wall, talking to someone from engineering. He doesn't look at you. Doesn't even glance in your direction.

Good. That's good. "Marcus is old-school corporate," you continue, dragging your attention back to Emma. "Thinks racing should be serious and professional. Doesn't understand that half of Lando's appeal is that he's not those things."

"So Lando hates him."

"Lando tolerates him because Tag Heuer pays extremely well."

Emma makes a note. "Got it. Tolerate with expensive gifts."

"Exactly."

Lando walks past again twenty minutes later. Still doesn't look. Wednesday is worse because Lando isn't there at all. "He had to fly to London," Emma explains when you arrive at 9 AM to an empty building. "McLaren board meeting. Won't be back until late."

"Oh." You hate the disappointment that floods through you. Hate that some part of you was expecting him to show up, to push, to do something. "Okay. Good. We can focus without distractions."

Emma gives you a look that suggests she's not as oblivious as you thought. You spend Wednesday going through worst-case scenarios. PR disasters, contract disputes, the time Lando accidentally liked a tweet criticizing the team principal and you had to do damage control for six hours straight.

"The key," you tell Emma, "is to fix it before it becomes a story. Lando's going to fuck up. That's not the question. The question is whether you can contain it before it explodes."

"That's kind of dark."

"Welcome to Formula 1." Your phone stays silent all day. No texts from Lando. No calls. Nothing. Which is fine. Which is what you wanted. You definitely don't check it seventeen times. Wednesday evening you're back in your apartment, staring at your laptop without seeing it, when Charlotte, your close friend finally calls.

"You're avoiding me," she says without preamble.

"I'm not avoiding you. I'm busy."

"Busy doing what? I thought you were living your best unemployed life."

"I'm consulting."

There's a pause. "Consulting for who?"

"It's temporary."

"Babe. Consulting for who?"

You close your eyes. "Lando."

Charlotte makes a noise that's somewhere between a laugh and a groan. "You're kidding."

"I'm training his new assistant. Two weeks. That's it."

"Two weeks of seeing your ex-boss who you were definitely in love with and who fired you after fucking you? That Lando?"

"I wasn't in love with him."

"You counted ceiling tiles for four months after he fired you."

"That's not—that's different."

"Babe." Charlotte's voice goes soft. "What are you doing?"

"I'm helping someone who needs help. Emma's sweet and she's trying and Lando's going to destroy her confidence if someone doesn't teach her how to handle him."

"Very altruistic."

"It is altruistic."

"So nothing's happened?" You think about Monday. About his office and his hands and the way he kissed you like he was drowning.

"Nothing's happened," you lie.

"You're such a bad liar." But Charlotte doesn't push. "Just be careful, okay? I don't want to watch you fall apart again."

"I'm not going to fall apart."

"Promise me."

"I promise." You hang up and immediately check your phone. Still nothing from Lando, which is good. Which is what you need. Right? Right? You make it to 11 PM before you break and text him.

You stare at that last message for longer than you should. Beautiful. He used to call you that, in hotel rooms and early mornings and moments when he thought you weren't paying attention. You plug your phone in across the room so you won't be tempted to respond. It doesn't help. You lie awake until 2 AM thinking about his hands and his mouth and the way he said I'll break up with her like it was simple.

Thursday morning Emma is vibrating with excitement when you arrive. "Okay so I have a question about the simulator sessions," she says before you've even sat down. "How often does he do them and do I need to coordinate with the engineers or does that happen automatically and—"

"Emma. Breathe."

"Right. Sorry. I'm just," She pauses. "He texted me last night."

Your stomach drops. "Lando texted you?"

"Yeah. Just to say I'm doing a good job and he appreciates me being patient while I learn." She's beaming. "That was nice, right? That he took the time to do that?"

"Very nice." Your voice sounds strange even to your own ears.

"He's not as scary as I thought he'd be. I mean, he's still intense, but you can tell he cares about getting things right."

You think about Monday, about the way he looked at you in his office, the way his voice cracked when he said I can't keep pretending. "Yeah," you manage. "He cares about getting things right."

You're midway through explaining the intricacies of coordinating with his performance coach when the door opens. Lando walks in with two coffees and that fucking smile. "Morning," he says, like this is casual, like he didn't disappear for two days. He sets one coffee in front of Emma. "Vanilla latte, right?"

Emma lights up. "You remembered!"

"Course." Then he turns to you and sets the second coffee down. "Oat milk cappuccino. Extra shot."

You stare at the cup. It's from the specific café three blocks away that you used to make him stop at every morning when you worked for him. The one with the good oat milk, not the shit oat milk. "I didn't ask for this," you say.

"I know." He sits down at the table, directly across from you. "But it's 9:30 AM and you've been here since 8:45 and you haven't had your second coffee yet. You get mean after 9:15 if you don't have caffeine."

"I'm not mean," you say.

"You're terrifying." But he says it like it's a compliment. "So. What are we covering today?"

"We?"

"I'm sitting in again. Making sure Emma's getting the full picture." He leans back in his chair, arms crossed. He's in team gear again—black joggers, papaya polo. His hair is messy like he didn't bother styling it. "That okay?"

"Do I have a choice?"

"Not really."

You want to throw the coffee at him. You take a sip instead. It's perfect. Exactly how you like it. The bastard remembers everything. "Fine. We're covering travel coordination. Emma, pull up Lando's schedule for Japan."

The next hour is torture. Lando sits there asking questions, making comments, watching you explain things to Emma with an intensity that makes your skin prickle. Every time you look at him he's already looking at you. "So when we're coordinating flights," you say, pulling up a calendar, "you need to account for jet lag. Lando needs at least two days in-country before a race weekend if it's long-haul."

"What if there's not two days?" Emma asks.

"Then you make it work. But he'll be pissy about it."

"I don't get pissy," Lando interjects.

You level him with a look. "Singapore 2024. You had one day in-country and you snapped at everyone for three days straight."

"That was different."

"How?"

"I had food poisoning."

"You were jet-lagged."

"I was dyyyyying."

"You had a very mild stomachache." Emma is trying very hard not to laugh. Lando is glaring at you, but there's something else in his expression. Something that looks almost like fondness.

"Anyway," you continue, turning back to Emma. "Two days minimum. Schedule accordingly."

At 11 AM, Lando's phone rings. He glances at the screen and his expression shutters. You make it through another twenty minutes before Lando comes back. His expression is carefully neutral, but you can see the tension in his jaw.

"All good?" Emma asks brightly.

"Fine." He sits back down. "Where were we?"

"Simulator sessions," you say. "Emma needs to know how to coordinate."

"Actually," Lando interrupts, "I need to talk to you about something. Work thing. Won't take long."

Emma looks between you. "I can step out—"

"No need." Lando is already standing. "Conference room down the hall. Five minutes."

He walks out. You have no choice but to follow. The conference room is smaller than the one you've been using, no windows, just a table and six chairs and fluorescent lighting that makes everything look slightly sickly. Lando closes the door behind you.

"What's the work thing?" you ask.

"There is no work thing."

"Then why—"

"I needed to see you alone." He's standing too close again, crowding into your space. "Needed to know if Monday was real or if I imagined the whole thing."

"Lando—"

"Did you think about it?" His voice is low, urgent. "The past two days. Did you think about it?"

"That's not, we can't do this here."

"I texted Emma. Told her she's doing a good job. Did she tell you?"

"Yes."

"I did it so you wouldn't think I was only here for you. So you wouldn't accuse me of using this as an excuse." He takes another step closer. "But I am here for you. I'm always here for you."

"You were in London."

"McLaren board meeting. Had to present the championship review. Couldn't get out of it." His hand comes up to your face but doesn't quite touch. "Thought about you the entire time. Especially during the part where they asked about my personal life."

Your breath catches. "What did you say?"

"Said it was complicated." His thumb brushes your cheekbone, so light you might be imagining it. "Said I was working on fixing something I broke."

"Did they ask about Magui?"

Something flickers across his face. "Yeah."

"And?"

"And I told them we were taking a break."

The world tilts. "You what?"

"Called her last night. Told her I needed space to figure some things out." His eyes search yours. "She was surprisingly understanding about it."

"Lando, you can't just do this."

"Can't what? Can't be honest? Can't admit that I've been in a relationship with someone I don't love because I was too fucked up over you to be alone?"

"That's not fair to her."

"I know. Which is why I ended it." His hand is fully cupping your face now. "I'm not doing this halfway. I'm not sneaking around or lying. If we're doing this, I'm all in."

"We're not doing anything—"

"Liar." He's so close now you can count his eyelashes. "You're still the worst liar I've ever met."

"You're being crazy."

"Probably." His lips brush against yours, barely a kiss, more a promise. "But I'm done pretending I don't want this. Want you."

You should push him away. Should remind him that Emma is down the hall, that this is insane, that he broke your heart eighteen months ago and you're not giving him the chance to do it again. You kiss him instead. It's different from Monday. Slower, deeper, less angry and more inevitable. Like you're both finally admitting something you've been avoiding. His hands slide into your hair and you press closer, your back hitting the wall, and he makes that sound again, the one that's half-groan and half-surrender.

"We have to stop," you gasp against his mouth.

"Why?"

"Because Emma is waiting. Because we're in an office building. Because—"

"Because you're scared."

"I'm not scared."

"You're terrified." His forehead rests against yours. "But that's okay. So am I."

"Then why are you pushing this?"

"Because eighteen months without you was worse than being scared." His eyes meet yours. "Because I'd rather risk everything than spend another year and a half counting how long it's been since I touched you." You're saved from responding by your phone buzzing in your pocket. You pull it out, grateful for the interruption.

"Shit." You step back, putting distance between you. "We need to go back."

"In a second." He catches your hand. "Tonight. Come over."

"Lando."

"Not to my place. Neutral ground. There's that restaurant you like on Avenue Princess Grace. The one with the good risotto."

"I know the one."

"Seven PM. Just dinner. Just talking."

"And if I say no?"

"Then I'll respect it." His thumb traces circles on your palm. "But you won't say no."

"You're very sure of yourself."

"I'm sure of you." He lifts your hand to his lips, presses a kiss to your knuckles. "Seven PM."

He leaves before you can argue. You stand there in the conference room, heart racing, lips tingling, completely and utterly fucked. When you get back to the main conference room, Emma takes one look at your face and mercifully says nothing. You make it through the rest of the day. Make it through explaining simulator protocols and race weekend logistics and all the things Emma needs to know.

Lando doesn't come back. At 6 PM, Emma starts packing up. "Same time tomorrow?"

"Yeah. Tomorrow's our last day of basics, then we'll start shadowing some actual events."

"Sounds good." She hesitates. "Can I ask you something?"

"Sure."

"You and Lando. You have history, right?"

You should lie. Should definitely keep it professional. "Yeah," you say instead. "We have history."

"I figured." Emma adjusts her bag. "For what it's worth, I think he's different around you. Lighter. Like he can actually breathe."

She leaves before you can respond. You sit in the empty conference room staring at your phone. At the time. 6:03 PM. You could go home. Pour wine. Pretend tonight isn't happening. Instead, at 6:47 PM, you're standing outside La Maison du Caviar in a black dress you haven't worn in two years, watching Lando get out of his car.

He's in dark jeans and a white button-down, no tie, sleeves rolled up. He looks unfairly good. "You came," he says, and he sounds surprised.

"Don't gloat."

"Wouldn't dream of it." He offers his arm. "Shall we?" Day three. Tension officially at breaking point. This is going to end in flames.

"Wine?" Lando asks once you're seated.

"I can order my own wine."

"I know you can. I'm asking if you want wine."

You do. You desperately do. "Red."

He orders a bottle of something French and expensive without looking at the menu. The sommelier practically bows before walking away. "So," Lando says, leaning back in his chair. "How am I doing?"

"At what?"

"At this. Dinner. Normal human interaction."

"It's been five minutes."

"And?"

"And you're doing fine. Very restrained."

He smiles. That dangerous smile that means trouble. "Just wait."

The wine arrives. It's good. Too good. The kind of good that makes you forget you're supposed to be maintaining boundaries. "Emma's doing well," you say, because work is safe. Work is neutral territory.

"She is. Thanks to you."

"She's a fast learner. She actually listens."

"Unlike me?"

"You listen. You just choose to ignore half of what people tell you."

"Not true. I listened when you told me I needed to be nicer to Emma."

"You texted her once."

"And I brought her coffee this morning. And I'm letting her leave at reasonable hours instead of texting her at midnight about random shit." He takes a sip of wine. "See? Growth."

"Impressive. Want a gold star?"

"I want you to admit I'm trying."

"You're trying," you concede. "Doesn't mean it's working."

"Ouch." The waiter comes to take your order. You get the risotto because Lando was right, it is good here. He gets something with fish that you know he'll eat half of before getting distracted. Once the waiter leaves, Lando leans forward. "So. Eighteen months."

"We're not doing this."

"Doing what?"

"The post-mortem. The 'where did we go wrong' conversation."

"Why not?"

"Because I already know where we went wrong. You fired me."

"Before that. You're skipping the part where we were in love."

Your grip tightens on your wine glass. "We weren't in love."

"I was."

"Don't."

"Don't what? Don't tell you the truth?" He stops, frustrated. "Why are you being so difficult about this?"

"Difficult?" Your voice rises slightly. An older couple two tables over glances your way. You lower it. "You think I'm being difficult?"

"I think you're refusing to have an actual conversation because you're scared of what might happen if you do."

"I'm not scared of anything."

"Bullshit. You're terrified. You've been terrified since Monday when I kissed you and you kissed me back and realized that maybe you're not as over this as you want to be."

"You're so fucking arrogant."

"And you're deflecting."

"I'm being realistic. You broke my heart, Lando. You don't get to just decide we're doing this again because you're bored of your girlfriend."

His jaw tightens. "That's not what this is."

"Then what is it?"

"It's me finally having the balls to fix the worst mistake I ever made."

"By taking me to dinner? By kissing me in conference rooms? That's your plan?"

"My plan is to show you that I'm serious. That this isn't just—" He gestures vaguely. "—nostalgia or whatever you think it is."

"It's been two days."

"It's been eighteen months. Two days is just how long it took me to get you in the same room as me." He refills your wine glass even though you haven't asked. "And before you say it—yes, I know I'm the one who caused those eighteen months. I know I fucked up. I know I hurt you. But I'm here now and I'm trying and you won't even give me a chance to explain. I've had eighteen months to figure out exactly how miserable I am without you." His voice drops. "Because I've tried to move on and I can't. Because every time I get in that fucking car I still think about you in Qatar watching me in FP2 and smiling like you were proud of me."

Your chest aches. "Don't."

"Don't what?"

"Don't say things like that."

"Why not? It's true."

"Because it's not fair." You set your wine glass down too hard. "You don't get to fire me and disappear and show up eighteen months later with pretty words and expect me to just—"

"Just what?"

"Just forget. Just forgive. Just let you back in like you didn't completely destroy me."

The silence that follows is sharp enough to cut. "I know," Lando says finally, quietly. "I know I destroyed you. You think I don't know that? You think I didn't see what I did to you?"

"Clearly not, since you still did it."

"I did it because I was fucking terrified. Because I'd never felt that way about anyone and it was making me insane. Because every time I looked at you I wanted things I didn't know how to want." His hands are clenched on the table. "And I know that's not an excuse. I know it doesn't make it better. But I'm trying to explain—"

"I don't want an explanation. I want you to leave me alone."

"Liar."

"Stop calling me that."

"Then stop lying." He leans forward. "You want me to leave you alone? Fine. Tell me Monday meant nothing. Tell me you felt nothing when I kissed you. Tell me you're not sitting here right now wishing we were anywhere else so you could do it again."

"You're delusional."

"Am I? Because your pupils are dilated and your breathing is uneven and you've been staring at my mouth for the past thirty seconds." Fuck. He's right. You have been.

"That's—I'm not—"

"You're a terrible liar," he says again, and there's something almost gentle in it now. "Always have been. It's one of my favorite things about you."

"I need to use the bathroom." You stand up before he can respond. Navigate through the restaurant on unsteady legs—from the wine or from him, you're not sure. The bathroom is in the back, single-stall, the kind with a heavy wooden door and a lock that actually works.

You close yourself inside and immediately brace your hands on the sink. Your reflection looks back at you—flushed cheeks, bright eyes, lips slightly parted. You look like someone who's losing an argument. Worse, you look like someone who wants to lose. Deep breath. You can do this. You can go back out there, finish dinner like a professional, go home, and forget this ever—

The door opens and Lando steps inside and locks it behind him. "What are you doing?" Your voice comes out breathy, unconvincing.

"What do you think I'm doing?" He's crossing the space between you in two strides, and then his hands are on your waist and he's lifting you onto the sink.

"Someone could—"

"Let them." His mouth finds your neck, that spot below your ear that makes you gasp. "I'm done pretending. Done watching you try to convince yourself you don't want this."

"Lando."

"Tell me to stop." His hands slide up your thighs, pushing your dress higher. "Tell me you don't want this and I'll walk out right now. I'll finish dinner, take you home, never bring it up again."

You should. You should absolutely tell him to stop. "I hate you," you say instead.

"I know." His mouth moves to yours, kissing you hard enough to bruise. "Hate me louder."

Your hands fist in his shirt, pulling him closer even as you're trying to push him away. It's all contradiction—your mouth saying one thing while your body says another, and he can read every single signal.

"This is insane," you gasp when he bites down on your lower lip.

"Probably." His hands are everywhere now—in your hair, on your waist, sliding up your ribs. "Don't care."

"We're in a restaurant bathroom."

"I know." He pulls back just enough to look at you, and his eyes are dark, dangerous. "You want me to stop?"

"Yes."

"Liar." His hand slides higher, fingers tracing the edge of your underwear. "Try again."

"I—fuck—" Your head drops back against the mirror as his fingers slip beneath the fabric, teasing. "This doesn't change anything."

"Doesn't it?" He's watching your face, cataloging every reaction. "Because you're shaking. And your breathing's gone all uneven. And you're so wet I can feel it through your underwear."

"That's not—" You gasp as he presses exactly where you need him. "—not fair."

"Nothing about this is fair." His mouth is on your neck again, biting, sucking, definitely leaving marks. "Been thinking about this for eighteen months. Eighteen months of wondering if you tasted the same, if you'd make those same sounds, if you'd still fall apart the same way."

His fingers slide inside you and you bite your lip to keep from making noise. "Don't." He uses his free hand to pull your lip from between your teeth. "Want to hear you. Want everyone in this fucking restaurant to know what I'm doing to you."

"You're insane."

"And you love it." He adds another finger, curling them just right, and your hips buck against his hand. "There she is. There's my girl."

"Not your girl."

"No?" He slows his movements, teasing. "Then whose girl are you?"

"I'm not—I don't belong to—fuck, don't stop—"

"Say it." His thumb finds your clit and you actually whimper. "Say you're mine."

"Go to hell."

He laughs, and it's dark and possessive and makes you clench around his fingers. "We're already there, beautiful. Might as well enjoy it." He works you with devastating precision—eighteen months and he still remembers exactly what you need. The pressure, the angle, the rhythm that makes your thighs shake. You're gripping his shoulders, nails digging in through his shirt, and he's muttering against your neck in a voice gone rough and desperate.

"So fucking perfect. Missed this. Missed you. Missed making you fall apart on my fingers like you're mine, like you've always been mine—"

"Lando—" You're close, embarrassingly close, everything building sharp and inevitable.

"I know. I can feel it. Can feel you getting tighter." His mouth finds yours, kissing you through it. "Come on, beautiful. Show me. Show me you still want this as much as I do."

You come with his name on your lips and your hands fisted in his hair, and he works you through it, drawing it out until you're shaking and oversensitive and pushing his hand away. "Fuck," you breathe.

"Yeah." He's breathing hard too, forehead pressed against yours, and you can feel how hard he is against your thigh. "So that happened."

Reality comes crashing back. You're in a restaurant bathroom with your dress rucked up and Lando's fingers still inside you and at least twenty people on the other side of the door who definitely heard something. "Oh my god." You push at his chest. "Oh my god, we just—in a public bathroom—"

"Technically a private bathroom." But he's pulling back, giving you space. "No one's going to say anything."

"Everyone's going to say something." You slide off the sink on shaky legs, trying to pull your dress down with trembling hands. "They're going to see us walk out and they're going to know—"

"So what if they know?" He's watching you in the mirror, his reflection overlapping with yours. "I told you. I'm done pretending."

"That's easy for you to say. You're Lando Norris. You can do whatever you want."

"And what are you?"

"I'm the girl who got fired for sleeping with her boss and now everyone's going to think I'm pathetic for coming back."

"No." He steps behind you, hands on your hips, meeting your eyes in the mirror. "You're the girl I've been in love with for two years who I was too much of a coward to keep. And if anyone says anything about you being pathetic, I'll personally destroy them."

You want to argue. Want to list all the reasons this is a terrible idea. Want to protect yourself before he has the chance to hurt you again. Instead you turn around and kiss him. Slower this time, softer, and when you pull back his eyes are closed like he's savoring it.

"This doesn't mean I forgive you," you whisper.

"I know."

"And it doesn't mean we're back together."

"Okay."

"And I still think you're an asshole."

"Fair." He opens his eyes. "But you're here. You came to dinner. You let me—" He gestures vaguely at the sink. "—do that. So maybe we're not as hopeless as you think."

"We're absolutely hopeless."

"Probably." He tucks a strand of hair behind your ear. "But I'm willing to risk it if you are."

You should say no. Should walk out, go home, block his number, and never look back.

"One chance," you hear yourself say. "You get one chance, Lando. You fuck this up, I'm gone. For real this time."

"I won't fuck it up."

"You don't know that."

"Yes, I do." He kisses you again, quick and sure. "Because I'm not losing you twice."

You fix your makeup as best you can. Lando runs his fingers through his hair, trying to make it look less like you've had your hands in it. You both look thoroughly fucked and there's nothing to be done about it.

"Ready?" he asks.

"No."

"Me neither." He unlocks the door. "Let's go anyway."

The meal continues in a strange sort of limbo. Lando orders dessert—some chocolate thing that's probably obscenely expensive—and insists you try it even though you say you're not hungry. He feeds you a bite from his fork and you let him, and somewhere in the back of your mind you're aware that this is a turning point, that you're crossing a line you swore you wouldn't cross.

"Good?" he asks.

"It's fine."

"Just fine?" He takes another bite, considering. "I think it's better than fine."

"You think everything here is better than fine. You probably have stock in this place."

"I don't have stock in this place." He pauses. "I know the owner, though. Nice guy. Makes excellent risotto."

"Of course you do." By the time the check comes, it's nearly 10 PM. The restaurant has thinned out—just a few tables left, couples lingering over wine, the staff starting their closing routines. Lando pays without looking at the total, leaves a tip that's probably more than your entire meal cost.

"Ready?" he asks, standing and offering his hand. You look at it for a moment. At his palm, open and waiting. At the decision you're about to make. You take his hand. Outside, Monaco is cold and beautiful. The kind of night where the Mediterranean is dark glass reflecting city lights, where everything feels suspended and possible. Lando's car is waiting where the valet brought it around—matte black Porsche,

"I can walk," you say, even though you're not letting go of his hand.

"It's cold."

"It's twelve minutes."

"It's twelve minutes in heels." He opens the passenger door. "Let me drive you. Please." There's something in the please that gets you. Something vulnerable and honest that wasn't there before. You get in the car. Lando slides into the driver's seat and the engine purrs to life. He doesn't immediately drive. Just sits there with his hands on the steering wheel, staring out at the street.

"You okay?" you ask.

"Yeah." He glances at you. "Just thinking."

"About?"

"About how I'm going to convince you to let me come upstairs."

Your stomach flips. "Lando."

"I know, I know. You said one chance. I'm not fucking it up." He pulls out into traffic, smooth and controlled. "But I also know that if I drop you off and drive away, you're going to spend the entire night convincing yourself this was a mistake."

"It might be a mistake."

"Or it might not be." He takes the turn toward your apartment, like he's made this drive a thousand times. Maybe he has, in his head. "Either way, I'd rather find out tonight than spend another eighteen months wondering."

You don't respond. Just watch the city slide past through the window, trying to organize your thoughts into something coherent. Trying to figure out when exactly you decided to let this happen. Your apartment building appears too quickly. Lando pulls into a spot on the street—not in front, not obvious, but close enough. He kills the engine and the sudden silence is deafening.

"So," he says.

"So."

"This is the part where you invite me up for coffee that we both know we're not going to drink."

"Is it?"

"Or—" He shifts to face you properly. "—this is the part where you tell me to leave and I respect that and go home alone and hate myself for approximately six hours before texting you something stupid at 4 AM."

"Those are my only two options?"

"Probably not. But they're the most likely ones." His hand finds yours in the dark. "For what it's worth, I'm hoping for the coffee."

You should tell him to leave. Should protect yourself, keep the boundary you've barely managed to maintain. Should remember that this is Lando Norris, who broke your heart eighteen months ago and has given you no real proof that he won't do it again.

"Do you actually want coffee?" you ask instead.

His smile is slow and dangerous. "Not even a little bit."

"Then why did you offer?"

"Because you need the plausible deniability. Need to tell yourself we're just having coffee, just talking, just two adults having a completely professional and appropriate conversation at 10 PM in your apartment." He brings your hand to his lips, kisses your knuckles. "And I'll play along. I'll make coffee and sit on your couch and keep my hands to myself until you give me permission to do otherwise."

"You're very confident I'm going to give you permission."

"I'm not confident about anything right now except that I want you. Have wanted you for two years. Will probably want you for the rest of my life." His eyes meet yours in the dim light. "But I can wait. I'm good at waiting now. Eighteen months taught me patience."

Your heart is doing something complicated in your chest. "One coffee."

"One coffee," he agrees.

You get out of the car before you can change your mind. Lando follows, keeping a careful distance as you walk to your building's entrance. You're aware of his presence behind you—not crowding, not pushing, just there. Patient in a way he never was before. The elevator ride is silent. You're both watching the numbers climb—three, four, five, six, seven. Your floor. The doors open and you lead him down the hallway to your apartment.

Your hands shake slightly as you unlock the door. Lando notices but doesn't comment. Inside, your apartment looks exactly the same as it did when he was here four days ago. Clean and empty and sad. You see it through his eyes again—the bookshelf organized by color, the lack of personal photos, the overall sense that no one actually lives here.

"Coffee," you say, moving toward the kitchen. "How do you take it?"

"However you're making it." He's still standing by the door, hands in his pockets. Not moving. Not presuming. "Nice place."

"You said it was sad last time you were here."

"I said it looked like no one lives here. Different thing." He finally moves, but only to the living room, sitting on the edge of your couch like he's not sure he's allowed. "Do you actually live here or do you just exist in it?"

"That's a very philosophical question for 10 PM."

"I'm a very philosophical guy."

"Since when?"

"Since I spent eighteen months thinking about what I did wrong." He watches you move around the kitchen, getting mugs and grounds and trying to remember how your coffee maker works. "Lots of time to think when you're alone."

"You weren't alone. You had Magui."

"I told you. That was—"

"Uncomplicated. I remember." You measure out coffee with more precision than necessary. "How is she taking the break?"

"She said she saw it coming."

You turn to look at him. "She did?"

"Yeah." He runs a hand through his hair. "Apparently I talk about you. A lot. Even when I'm trying not to."

"That's—" You don't know how to finish that sentence. "—unfortunate for her."

"She's already seeing someone else. Some photographer. They've been friends for a while." He says it casually, like it doesn't bother him at all. "She's happy."

"And you're here."

"I'm here," he confirms.

The coffee maker gurgles to life. You lean against the counter, arms crossed, watching him watch you.

"Why did you really come to Monaco?" you ask. "Not the story about Emma being useless. The real reason."

He's quiet for a moment. "You want the truth?"

"That would be nice."

"I came because I couldn't stay away anymore. Because I won the championship and the first person I wanted to tell was you and you weren't there. Because I went to the Prize Giving with Magui and spent the entire night wishing it was you in that dress." He stands up, finally, moving toward the kitchen. Not quite entering it, just leaning in the doorway. "Because I've been tracking your pottery classes and your yoga sessions and every other thing you've tried to distract yourself with, and I realized I was being a creepy stalker instead of just coming here and saying what I should've said eighteen months ago."

"Which is?"

"That I love you. That firing you was the worst decision I've ever made. That I'm sorry." His voice cracks slightly on the sorry. "That I don't expect you to forgive me but I'm asking anyway."

The coffee maker beeps. You don't move.

"How were you tracking my pottery classes?"

"Really? That's your question?"

"It's a relevant question."

He sighs. "Charlotte."

"Charlotte?" Your voice rises. "Charlotte's been spying on me for you?"

"Not spying. Updating. She thought I should know you were okay."

"I'm going to kill her."

"She was trying to help."

"By reporting my activities to my ex-boss like I'm under surveillance?"

"When you put it that way it sounds bad—"

"It is bad, Lando!" You're fully yelling now, and some part of you knows you're not actually angry about Charlotte, you're angry about everything else—the eighteen months and the pottery classes and the fact that he's standing in your kitchen looking unfairly good and you want him so badly you can barely breathe. "You can't just—you can't track me and show up and expect me to just—"

"To just what?" He moves into the kitchen properly now, crowding into your space. "To just admit you still feel it too? To just let yourself want something instead of punishing yourself for wanting it?"

"I'm not punishing myself—"

"You're living like a ghost. Like you're waiting for permission to actually be alive again." His hands find your waist, not pulling, just holding. "Let me give you permission."

"I don't need your permission."

"Then take it anyway." His forehead drops to yours. "Take what you want. For once, just take it."

You're gripping his shirt. You don't remember reaching for him but you're holding on like he's the only solid thing in the room.

"This is going to end badly," you whisper.

"Probably."

"You're going to break my heart again."

"I'm going to try really hard not to."

"That's not good enough."

"I know." His lips brush yours, barely a kiss. "But it's all I've got."

You kiss him properly this time. Slower than in the restaurant bathroom, less desperate, more like you're both admitting something you've been avoiding. His hands slide up your back and you press closer, and the coffee sits forgotten on the counter, getting cold.

"Bedroom," you breathe against his mouth.

"You sure?"

"If you ask me one more time if I'm sure, I'm changing my mind."

He lifts you like you weigh nothing, your legs wrapping around his waist automatically. He carries you down the hallway, kissing you the whole way, only fumbling slightly when he has to navigate your bedroom door. Your bed is exactly where beds go, and he sets you down on it with a gentleness that makes your chest ache.

"Hi," he says, hovering over you.

"Hi yourself."

"Just so we're clear—this isn't just sex."

"Lando."

"I need you to know that. This isn't me trying to get laid. This is me trying to—" He stops, searching for words. "—to show you I'm serious. That I'm all in."

"You're going to show me you're serious by sleeping with me?"

"I'm going to show you I'm serious by staying." His hand cups your face. "By waking up here tomorrow. By making you actual coffee in the morning. By not running away when it gets complicated."

"It's already complicated."

"Then I guess I'm not going anywhere." He kisses you again, and this time there's a promise in it. A commitment you're not sure either of you are ready for but are making anyway. Your hands find the buttons of his shirt. Start working them open one by one. He watches your face the whole time, like he's memorizing this, like he's afraid if he blinks you'll disappear.

"Still with me?" you ask when his shirt is open, hands spread on his chest.

"Always." His hand slides into your hair. "Even when you don't want me to be."

"Annoyingly persistent."

"One of my best qualities." He pulls your dress over your head in one smooth motion, and then you're both just staring at each other in the dim light from the hallway. "Fuck. I forgot how beautiful you are."

"You saw me three days ago."

"Wasn't close enough." His hands map your body like he's relearning it—ribs, waist, hips, thighs. "Wasn't touching you like this."

You pull him down, tired of talking, tired of thinking, tired of all the reasons this is a terrible idea. His weight settles over you and everything else falls away—the eighteen months, the fear, the certainty that this will end in disaster. Right now, there's just this. Just him. Just the feeling of finally, finally being exactly where you want to be.

Even if it's temporary. Even if it's going to hurt later. Right now, though, it's enough.

Days four through fourteen pass in a blur of Emma and schedules and Lando showing up at your apartment every single night like he lives there. He doesn't live there. You've been very clear about that.

"I'm just here a lot," he says on day seven, making coffee in your kitchen at 6 AM like he belongs there. Like it's normal, like this is normal. "That's different from living here."

"You have a toothbrush in my bathroom."

"Emergency toothbrush."

"You have clothes in my closet."

"Just in case."

"Lando."

"What?" He's grinning now, that insufferable grin that makes you want to hit him and kiss him in equal measure. "I'm respecting boundaries. You said I couldn't move in. I'm not moving in. I'm just visiting. A lot."

"You stayed here six nights in a row."

"And I went home on the seventh. See? Not living here."

You throw a dish towel at his head. He catches it, still grinning. The thing is—it's good. Terrifyingly good. He makes you coffee in the morning and you pretend to be annoyed about it. He stays up too late watching old race footage and you fall asleep on his chest listening to his heartbeat. He fucks you against your kitchen counter on day nine and you return the favor in your shower on day eleven and somewhere in between all of that, you stop counting days.

Emma is thriving. That's the word everyone keeps using—thriving. She's confident now, anticipating Lando's needs before he asks, managing his schedule like she's been doing it for years instead of two weeks. "You're amazing," she tells you on day twelve, over coffee in the MTC cafeteria. "Seriously. I don't know how you did this job for so long."

"Practice. Lots of practice."

"And patience. God, so much patience." She stirs her latte. "He's different lately though, have you noticed?"

Your stomach flips. "Different how?"

"Happier? Less stressed? I don't know, he just seems lighter." She smiles. "Whatever you said to him about being nicer to me, it worked. He actually asked about my Christmas plans yesterday. Like, genuine interest. It was weird."

"Good weird?"

"The best weird." She leans forward. "Can I ask you something personal?"

"That depends on the question."

"You and Lando. Are you... I mean, it seems like—" She stops, cheeks flushing. "Sorry. That's none of my business."

"It's complicated."

"That's what everyone says when they're together but don't want to admit it." She's still smiling, not judging, just observing.

Day fourteen arrives with the weight of finality. Your last day training Emma. Your last day having an excuse to be at MTC every morning. Your last day before everything becomes real or falls apart or some combination of both. Emma brings you flowers. Actual flowers—a bouquet of peonies tied with a ribbon.

"Thank you," she says, and her eyes are suspiciously shiny. "For everything. For being patient with me. For not making me feel stupid when I messed up. For teaching me how to do this job without losing my mind."

"You're going to be great," you tell her, and you mean it. "Better than great. You're going to be exactly what he needs."

"I hope so." She hugs you, quick and tight. "Will you still answer if I text you with questions?"

"Of course."

"Even stupid questions?"

"Especially stupid questions."

Lando doesn't show up all day. You tell yourself it's fine, that he's busy, that he's giving you and Emma space to wrap things up properly. You tell yourself a lot of things that aren't quite true. At 5 PM, Emma leaves. You pack up your things—tablet, the notes you've accumulated, the coffee mug you've been using that technically belongs to McLaren. You're stalling. You know you're stalling when your phone buzzes.

You take the elevator to the fourth floor for what might be the last time. Lando's office door is open. He's standing by the window, still in team gear, and he turns when you walk in. "Hey," he says.

"Hey."

"So. Two weeks."

"Two weeks," you confirm.

"Emma's going to be fine."

"She is."

"Thanks to you." He moves toward you, hands in his pockets. "I, uh. I got you something. To say thank you. For the training."

"Lando, you don't have to—"

"I wanted to." He pulls an envelope from his desk drawer. "It's not much. Just a little something." You open it. It's a check. A very large check. More than double what you agreed on.

"This is too much."

"It's not enough." His voice is quiet. "You came back when I asked. You trained Emma. You gave me two weeks when you could've told me to fuck off."

"I did tell you to fuck off."

"And then you came anyway." He's smiling now, that soft smile that's just for you. "Thank you."

"You're welcome." You fold the check, tuck it into your bag. "So I guess this is it."

"Is it?"

"The two weeks are up. I'm done. You and Emma are set."

"What about us?"

There it is. The question you've been avoiding for fourteen days.

"I don't know," you admit. "What about us?"

"I don't want this to end." He says it simply, honestly. "The two weeks are up but I'm not ready to stop seeing you every day. Coming to your apartment. Waking up next to you. All of it."

"Lando."

"I know it's fast. I know we're still figuring things out. But I'm all in. I told you that. I meant it." He takes your hands. "Move in with me."

You stare at him. "What?"

"Move in with me. My place. I have space. A lot of space. You could—"

"No."

"No?"

"We've been doing this for two weeks. That's not enough time to—"

"It's been two years," he interrupts. "Two weeks is just how long it took us to stop being idiots about it."

"That's not how this works."

"Then how does it work?" He's frustrated now, you can see it in the set of his jaw. "Tell me. Tell me what I need to do to prove I'm serious."

"I don't know! I don't have a checklist of requirements. I just," You pull your hands back. "I need time. I need to know this isn't going to fall apart the second things get hard."

"Things are already hard. We're still here."

"Two weeks isn't hard, Lando. Two weeks is the easy part. The hard part is six months from now when you're traveling and I'm here and we haven't seen each other in weeks. The hard part is when I do something that pisses you off and you remember why you fired me in the first place."

"That's not going to happen."

"You don't know that."

He opens his mouth. Closes it. "You're right. I don't know that. But I know I want to try. I know that two weeks with you has been better than eighteen months without you. I know that I'm in love with you and I don't want to waste any more time pretending I'm not."

Your chest aches. "I need to go."

"Where?"

"Home. My home. I need space to think."

"Okay." He doesn't try to stop you. "Will I see you tonight?"

"I don't know."

"Tomorrow?"

"Lando."

"I'm just asking. I'm not pushing." But you can see it in his eyes—the fear that this is it, that you're walking out and not coming back.

"I'll text you," you say finally.

"Promise?"

"Promise."

You leave before you can change your mind. Drive home in a daze, your apartment appearing too quickly. Inside, it's exactly as you left it this morning—coffee mugs in the sink from breakfast with Lando, his shirt draped over your chair, evidence of him everywhere. You sink onto your couch and try to figure out what the fuck you're doing.

Christmas comes three days later and you spend it alone. Lando's in the UK—family obligations, his mum's house in Somerset, the kind of traditional British Christmas that involves too much food and badly wrapped presents and everyone arguing about charades. He invited you. Asked you three times, actually, each time more hopeful than the last.

You said no.

"I don't want to meet your family," you'd told him. "Not yet. It's too much."

"They'd love you."

"That's not the point."

"Then what is the point?"

"The point is I need space. I need to figure out if this is real or if it's just us getting caught up in each other again."

He'd looked like you'd slapped him. "Right. Space. Okay."

He texted you on Christmas morning, then a hour later, and the hour after that. Charlotte called twice asking if you're spending Christmas alone, you lied, she definitely didn't believe you.

The day after Christmas, you're sitting in your apartment in pajamas and the same book you've been pretending to read for three days when your doorbell rings at 2:47 PM. Lando is standing in your hallway in a Christmas sweater—an actual, honest-to-god Christmas sweater with reindeer on it. He's holding a small gift bag, silver with white tissue paper, and he looks nervous.

"Hi," he says.

"Hi."

"Can I come in?"

You step aside. He walks in, setting the gift bag on your coffee table like it might explode. "You didn't have to get me anything," you say.

"I know. I wanted to." He shoves his hands in his pockets. "How was your Christmas?"

"Fine. Quiet."

"Mine was loud. Too loud. Kept thinking about how you'd hate it—all the noise and the people and my mum asking a million questions."

"She asked about me?"

"Yeah. She wanted to know why I invited someone and then showed up alone. Gave me a whole lecture about not screwing things up." He smiles, but it's strained. "She's very wise."

You gesture to the couch. He sits. You sit on the opposite end, keeping distance between you. "The training finished well," he says, like this is a business meeting. "Emma's doing great."

"I know. She texted me."

"Right. Of course." He's fidgeting now, picking at a loose thread on the couch. "I, uh. I missed you. At Christmas. Kept looking around like you might show up even though I knew you wouldn't."

"Lando."

"I know you need space. I'm trying to give you space. But it's been three days and I'm going insane." He looks at you finally. "I don't know how to do this. Don't know how to prove I'm serious without being overwhelming. Don't know how to give you time without feeling like I'm losing you."

"You're not losing me."

"Aren't I?" His voice cracks slightly. "You spent Christmas alone. You won't move in with me. You barely text me back. What am I supposed to think?"

"That I'm scared." The admission comes out quiet. "That I'm terrified this is going to fall apart and I don't know if I'll survive it a second time."

"So don't let it fall apart." He moves closer. "Stay. Fight for this. Give us an actual chance."

"I am giving us a chance."

"Are you? Because from where I'm sitting, it looks like you're preparing for the end before we've even really started." His hand finds yours. "I'm not going anywhere. I don't know how many times I need to say it. I'm not firing you. I'm not leaving. I'm not changing my mind."

"You can't promise that."

"Yes, I can." He reaches for the gift bag, holds it out to you. "Open it."

"Lando."

"Please. Just open it."

You take the bag. Pull out the tissue paper. Inside is a small box, velvet, the kind that makes your heart stop. "It's not what you think," he says quickly. "I mean—just open it."

You open it and it's a key. A single key on a keyring, simple and silver.

You stare at it. "It's to my place," Lando says, words tumbling out fast now. "I know you said you won't move in. I heard you. But I want you to have it anyway. So you can come over whenever. So you know you're always welcome. So you can—" He stops. Takes a breath. "So you can stop thinking of my place as mine and start thinking of it as ours."

Your vision blurs. "Lando."

"I know it's not a grand gesture. I know it's just a key. But I don't know how else to show you I mean it. That I want you in my space, in my life, in everything." His thumb brushes your knuckles. "You said I needed to prove I'm serious. This is me proving it. Take the key. Use it or don't use it. But know it's there. Know you have a place with me whenever you're ready."

You're crying now. Properly crying. And Lando looks panicked.

"Shit. I'm sorry. I didn't mean to make you cry. If it's too much—"

You kiss him. Hard and desperate and with your hands fisted in his ridiculous Christmas sweater. "It's perfect," you whisper against his mouth. "You're perfect."

"I'm really not."

"Shut up and let me have this."

He laughs, and it sounds like relief. "Okay."

You pull back, wiping your eyes. The key sits in the box, catching the light.

"I'm still scared," you admit.

"Me too."

"But I want this. I want us."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah." You pick up the key, test its weight in your palm. "I'm not ready to move in yet. But maybe—maybe I could stay over more? Start keeping more things there?"

"Yes. Absolutely. Whatever you want." He's grinning now, that full devastating smile. "You can reorganize my entire closet if you want. Color-code my kitchen. Do that thing you do where you arrange everything by frequency of use."

"You make me sound like a psychopath."

"You are a psychopath. It's one of my favorite things about you." He pulls you into his lap, arms wrapping around you. "Merry Christmas."

"Merry Christmas." You press your face into his neck, breathing him in. "For the record, I missed you too."

"Yeah?"

"So much I almost got on a plane to Somerset."

"You should've."

"Your mum would've hated me. Strange woman showing up on Christmas."

"My mum would've loved you. She already does, actually. Based entirely on my descriptions." He pulls back to look at you. "Fair warning—she's going to want to meet you. Properly. Probably at Easter or something equally family-oriented and terrifying."

"Easter's months away."

"So we have time to prepare." His hand cups your face. "You'll be ready by then. I know you will."

"How are you so sure?"

"Because you're here. Because you're crying over a key. Because you're scared but you're doing it anyway." He kisses your forehead. "That's the bravest thing I know."

You stay like that for a long time—curled up on your couch with Lando, the key in your hand, the future stretching out uncertain and terrifying and full of possibility. It's not perfect. You're still scared. He's still Lando Norris with all the complications that entails. But it's real. And maybe that's enough. Maybe that's everything.

Eight Months Later

The private jet levels off somewhere over Europe. You're curled up in the leather seat across from Lando, watching him pretend to read the same page of his book for the fifth time. You've been living together for six months now—his place became your place became our place somewhere around month three when you finally stopped keeping a drawer at your apartment "just in case." You sold that apartment four months ago. Haven't regretted it once.

"Nervous?" you ask.

"About what?" He sets the book down, reaches for your hand. The promise ring sits on your right hand, exactly where it's been for eight months. You've gotten used to the weight of it. Used to the way Lando looks at it sometimes, like he's planning something.

"You've read the same page five times."

He laughs, caught. "Fine. Maybe a little nervous." He stands up, walks to his bag. "Actually, I have something for you."

"Lando—"

"Close your eyes. Trust me."

You close your eyes. Feel silk brush against your face—a blindfold. He ties it carefully at the back of your head. "What are you doing?"

"Surprising you." He takes your hand. "Just trust me. We'll land soon."

"We're supposed to be going to Belgium."

"We are. Eventually." You can hear the smile in his voice. "But first—a detour." Twenty minutes of torture. You can hear everything but see nothing—the engine, the change in air pressure as you descend, Lando's thumb tracing circles on your palm like he's the one who needs reassurance. The plane touches down. Smooth landing. Lando helps you stand, guides you down the stairs carefully, his hand firm on your waist. The air is different here—warmer than Monaco, with a breeze that smells like salt and something floral you can't quite place.

"Are we at the beach?"

"Maybe. Keep walking." He guides you across tarmac, then pavement, then sand. Definitely sand. You can hear waves now, the rhythmic crash of water against shore. The sand gives way to wood—a deck, maybe a dock. The sound of the waves is louder here. Then he stops. His hands on your shoulders.

"Okay," he says, and his voice is different now. Nervous. "You can take it off."

You untie the blindfold, let it fall.

You're standing on a dock. The sun is setting over crystal-clear water that stretches to the horizon. There's a villa behind you, white stone and huge windows, the kind of place that's definitely not in Belgium. Palm trees. Bougainvillea climbing the walls. The most beautiful sunset you've ever seen painting everything gold and pink.

"Where are we?" you breathe.

"Greece." Lando's voice comes from behind you. "Santorini, specifically."

You turn around and Lando Norris is on one knee. Your heart stops. Actually fucking stops because he's holding a box—a different box than the one from eight months ago. This one is smaller, more delicate, and when he opens it there's a ring inside that catches the sunset and throws light everywhere.

"I know this is fast," he starts, and his voice is shaking. "I know eight months isn't very long in the grand scheme of things. But I've been in love with you for two years. I wasted eighteen months of that being an idiot. And the last eight months have been everything. Coming home to you. Waking up next to you. Fighting about whose turn it is to do dishes and making terrible pasta at midnight and watching you reorganize my closet for the third time." He takes a shaky breath. "I don't want to waste any more time. I don't want to wait until it's been a year or two years or whatever arbitrary timeline is supposed to make this acceptable. I know what I want. I've known since Qatar. I've known since before Qatar."

You're crying already. God, what is happening?

"You make me better. You make everything better. You call me on my shit and you're there at 3 AM when I can't sleep and you make Emma text you updates because you're worried about her even though you don't work for me anymore. I love you. I love you so much it's stupid. And I want to marry you. I want to marry you and fight about coffee orders and have you reorganize our entire life and grow old and—"

"Yes," you interrupt.

He blinks. "What?"

"Yes. I'll marry you. Obviously I'll marry you, you idiot."

"I had a whole speech prepared—"

"I don't care about the speech." You're pulling him up off his knees, laughing and crying at the same time. "Ask me. Properly."

He laughs, stands up, takes the ring out of the box with shaking hands. "Will you marry me?"

"Yes. A thousand times yes."

He slides the ring onto your left hand—your actual left hand, the important one. It sits there catching the light, real and perfect and terrifying. "I can't believe you did this," you say, and you're in his arms now, held tight against his chest. "Greece. A sunset. What about Spa? The race?"

"Fuck Spa." He's grinning against your hair. "We'll get there Sunday. I told Zak I needed a couple days. Told him it was important. Everyone knows—McLaren, Emma, Charlotte. They're all in on it. I've been planning this for three months." He pulls back to look at you, and his eyes are shiny. "I'm yours. For as long as you'll have me."

"Forever, then."

"Forever." He kisses you as the sun sets over Santorini, soft and deep and perfect. When he pulls back, he's still grinning. "No take backs."

Lando pushes the door open to the bedroom and you see champagne on ice, rose petals scattered across the bed, the whole romantic setup that he definitely planned down to the last detail. "You're very sure of yourself," you say, even as he's walking you backward toward the bed. "What if I'd said no?"

"You didn't." His hands find your waist, slide under your shirt. "And even if you had, I would've asked again tomorrow. And the next day. And the day after that until you said yes."

"That's insane."

"That's commitment." He pulls your shirt over your head, tosses it somewhere behind him. "Now stop talking and let me worship my fiancée." The word makes you clench. Fiancée. You're his fiancée now. The ring on your finger catches the candlelight as you reach for him, pulling him closer.

"I love you," you whisper against his mouth.

"I love you too." His hands are everywhere now—in your hair, on your skin, working open the button of your jeans. "And I'm going to spend the rest of the night proving it." He pushes you down onto the bed and follows you, covering your body with his. His mouth finds your neck, biting down just hard enough to make you gasp, and you arch into him. "Shh." He's working his way down, kissing and biting and marking you as he goes. "Let me take care of you. Let me show you what it means to be mine." He makes quick work of the rest of your clothes, and then his mouth is between your thighs and you're fisting your hands in the expensive sheets, gasping his name. He takes his time, licking and sucking and bringing you right to the edge before pulling back.

"Not yet," he says, grinning up at you with his mouth wet and obscene. "Want you desperate for it. Want you begging."

"I hate you."

"No, you don't." He slides two fingers inside you, curling them just right. "You love me. You're going to marry me. And right now, you're going to come for me." He lowers his mouth again and you shatter, coming hard with his name on your lips and your hands in his hair. He works you through it, drawing it out until you're shaking and pushing him away.

"Too much," you gasp.

"Not nearly enough." He's pulling off his own clothes now, and when he's finally naked he settles between your thighs, the head of his cock brushing against you. "Ready?"

"God, yes." He slides in slowly, so slowly, and you can feel every inch. When he's fully seated he stops, just breathing hard against your neck.

"Fuck," he groans. "Feel so good. Always feel so good. My perfect girl. My fiancée. Mine."

"Yours," you agree, wrapping your legs around his waist. "Always yours."

He starts moving then—slow at first, then harder, faster, until the bed is slamming against the wall and you're both gasping. His hand slides between your bodies to find your clit and you're coming again, clenching around him as he fucks you through it. "That's it," he growls. "That's my girl. Come on my cock. Let me feel it, baby."

You're barely down from the second orgasm when you feel the third building. Lando shifts the angle and hits something inside you that makes you sob.

"Right there?" he asks, doing it again. "That the spot?"

"Yes—fuck—yes, don't stop—"

"Never stopping. Never letting you go. You're mine now. Forever." His rhythm is getting erratic, his grip on your hips tightening. "Gonna come inside you. Fill you up. You want that?"

"Yes—please—Lando—"

"Mine," he says fiercely, and then he's kissing you as you both come, him spilling inside you as you clench around him, both of you shaking and completely wrecked. He collapses on top of you, breathing hard. You can feel his heart racing against your chest, matching your own.

"Holy shit," you manage eventually.

"Yeah." He lifts his head to look at you, and he's grinning. "So. Still want to marry me?"

"After that? Absolutely." You trace his jaw with your finger. "Though I'm going to need you to do that again. You know, to make sure."

"Fiancée has demands." He's already hardening inside you again. "I think I can work with that." He does it again. And then again. By the time you finally collapse in a tangle of sweaty limbs and expensive sheets, the moon is high and you can barely move. "Can't believe you're mine," Lando murmurs against your hair, his hand finding yours to trace the ring there.

"Can't believe you proposed on a dock."

"Romantic as fuck."

"Insane as fuck."

"Same thing." He kisses your temple. "Get some sleep. We have Spa on Sunday and I need you well-rested."

"Why?"

"Because I'm going to win that race for you. For my fiancée." He says the word like he's testing it out, like he can't quite believe it's real. "And then I'm going to take you back to Monaco and fuck you in our bed as a race winner and your future husband."

"Very confident."

"Very in love." He pulls you closer. "Now sleep. I'll wake you up properly in a few hours." You fall asleep like that—engaged, thoroughly fucked, in Greece with Lando already planning tomorrow. It's him. It's always been him. And finally, you're both brave enough to admit it.

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