Read Chapter 33: Championship High

The noise hit Elise like a wall of sound the moment Julien’s car crossed the line. A thousand voices melted into one sustained roar, and the air above the pit wall shimmered with confetti and champagne spray. She stood frozen at the edge of the garage, her hands pressed flat against the carbon fiber of the monitor station, watching the replay loop—Julien’s rear wheel kissing the white line, the rival’s front wing missing his sidepod by centimeters, the checkered flag whipping past.

He’d done it.

*They’d* done it.

Someone shoved a bottle of something into her hand. The team principal was shouting in her ear, but the words dissolved into static. All she could see was the red-and-white car slowing on the cool-down lap, Julien’s gloved fist punching the air through the open cockpit.

She didn’t remember walking to the pit lane. She only registered the transition from air-conditioned chill to furnace heat, the smell of hot rubber and burning oil flooding her senses. The barriers were lined three deep with photographers, their lenses like a wall of black eyes. Security parted the crowd as Julien’s car rolled to a stop in Parc Fermé.

He was out of the cockpit before the car fully settled, helmet off, that wild grin splitting his face. He looked twenty years younger. He looked like the kid who’d first climbed into a kart at age six, before the politics, before the pressure, before the doubt.

His eyes found hers across the chaos. The crowd seemed to thin, the noise dimming to a low hum.

He crossed the distance in four long strides and pulled her into his arms, lifting her off the ground. His voice was hoarse against her ear, barely audible over the roar. “You did this.”

She shook her head, her cheek pressed to his fireproof suit, tasting smoke and sweat. “We did this.”

He set her down but didn’t let go. His hands stayed on her shoulders, his grip firm, his eyes serious beneath the triumph. The cameras were still flashing, the team still screaming, but he was looking at her like they were the only two people on earth.

“Elise. I need to say something.” He swallowed, and she saw the vulnerability flicker behind his eyes—the same look he’d worn in the Texas diner, when he’d promised to wait. “The day I questioned you in front of the press… before the season started.” He shook his head. “That was the biggest mistake of my career. Not because I lost races. Because I lost *you*. For months, I blamed you for things you never did. And you still saved me. You saved this whole team.”

Her throat tightened. The memory of that press conference—his clipped words, her burning humiliation—surfaced like a bruise. She’d replayed it a hundred times in the dark of hotel rooms, wondering if she’d ever scrub the stain of it from her name.

“I was scared,” he continued. “Scared that trusting someone meant losing control. Scared that if I let you in, I’d have to face how much I needed you.” He laughed, a short, breathless sound. “And then you went and proved me wrong every single race. Every single goddamn lap.”

She opened her mouth, but no words came. The noise of the crowd surged back in—someone was screaming Julien’s name, someone else was dousing the team in cheap sparkling wine—but she couldn’t look away from him.

“Be my engineer,” he said. “Not just for the next race. Not just for next season. Permanently. I don’t want to race for anyone else. I don’t trust anyone else with my life at three hundred kilometers an hour.”

Her heart stuttered. This was the moment she’d dreamed of since she was a girl in her father’s garage, tracing suspension geometry by flashlight. Not the championship. Not the podium. This: a driver looking at her not with pity or skepticism, but with absolute, unwavering faith.

“Yes,” she said. The word came out soft, almost lost.

He heard it anyway. His grin returned, brighter than the desert sun, and he pulled her into another embrace. The cameras went wild. She felt the flash of a hundred photos burn against her closed eyelids.

When he finally released her, the team had mobbed them. Pierre was there, his arm around a grinning mechanic, his eyes wet. The team principal was shouting something about a party in the hospitality suite. Someone shoved a winner’s cap onto Elise’s head, and she laughed, letting the chaos pull her forward.

Later—hours later, after the podium, after the national anthem, after the endless rounds of interviews and the champagne-soaked debrief—she found herself on the rooftop of the team’s motorhome, looking out at the Abu Dhabi skyline. The track lights had dimmed to a soft glow, and the city glittered beyond the circuit like scattered diamonds.

She heard footsteps behind her and didn’t turn. Julien came to stand beside her, his jacket slung over one shoulder, his shirt still damp from the celebration.

“Couldn’t sleep?” she asked.

“Couldn’t stop thinking.” He glanced at her, a hint of a smile playing at his lips. “You haven’t touched your phone in two hours. That’s a record.”

She looked down at the dark screen. She’d silenced it hours ago. Somewhere in the silence, there was probably a flood of messages—congratulations, job offers, perhaps more threats. She didn’t want to see them. Not yet.

“I keep waiting for it to feel real,” she admitted. “The championship. The vindication. It’s like I’m afraid to breathe, in case it all evaporates.”

He was quiet for a long moment. When he spoke, his voice was low, carrying the weight of shared history. “I know that feeling. I’ve had it every season. You win, you celebrate, and then you wake up the next morning and the doubts creep back in. What if it was luck? What if you can’t do it again?”

She turned to face him. The city lights reflected in his eyes, softening the sharp lines of his face.

“But this time feels different,” he said. “Because I’m not carrying it alone. For the first time in years, I looked across the pit wall and I saw someone who believed in me. Completely. Unconditionally. And that changed everything.”

Her chest ached with the truth of it. “You believed in me too. Even when you didn’t know how to say it.”

He reached out and took her hand, his calloused fingers threading through hers. The gesture was simple, intimate, a quiet confirmation of everything that had shifted between them over the past months.

“So what happens now?” she asked. “We’ve won the championship. You’ve got a trophy. I’ve got a permanent contract. The world is watching.”

“Now,” he said, squeezing her hand, “we get to write our own story. No more sabotage. No more secrets. Just us and the road ahead.”

The word *secrets* landed softly between them. She felt the familiar weight of the ones she still carried—the sister, the crash, the cover-up. The Austin ultimatum still sat unresolved in her back pocket, a ticking clock she hadn’t told him about.

But tonight, she didn’t want to think about that. Tonight, she wanted to stand on this rooftop with him and believe that the future could be bright.

“There’s something else,” he said, his tone shifting. “Something I’ve been thinking about all season.”

“What?”

He hesitated, then reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a folded piece of paper. It was worn at the edges, creased from being carried. He handed it to her.

She unfolded it carefully. It was a blueprint sketch—hand-drawn, rough, but unmistakable. A race car. Sleek and aggressive, with notes scrawled in the margins. *Airflow optimization. Rear suspension redesign. Driver seat angle.*

“It’s a concept,” he said. “For a new team. Our own team. I’ve been working on it in secret for months, ever since I realized I couldn’t imagine racing without you.” He gestured at the sketch. “You’d be head of engineering. I’d drive. We’d build everything from the ground up—no legacy politics, no hidden agendas. Just the best people and the best technology.”

She stared at the paper, her fingers tracing the lines. It was rough, impractical, the dream of someone who’d never been trained in engineering. But beneath the amateurish strokes, she could see the vision. The potential.

“It’s beautiful,” she murmured.

“It’s just a sketch,” he said, a hint of nervousness creeping into his voice. “But if you wanted to make it real—if you wanted to take on the challenge—I’d be all in.”

She looked up at him, the blueprint held between them like a covenant. Uncertainty and hope warred in his eyes, vulnerable in a way she rarely saw him.

“Julien,” she said softly, “you just asked me to trust you with a championship. I think I can trust you with a dream.”

His breath caught. “That’s a yes?”

“That’s a maybe.” She smiled, teasing. “But a very enthusiastic maybe. Let’s get through the winter. Let’s see where the season lands. And then we’ll talk about building something new.”

He laughed, pulling her close. The blueprint crumpled slightly between their bodies, but neither of them moved to fix it.

“I love you,” he said against her hair. “I don’t think I’ve said it clearly enough. But I do.”

She closed her eyes, letting the words sink in. The night air was warm, the city lights distant, the roar of the race still echoing somewhere in her bones.

“I know,” she whispered. “I love you too.”

They stood together in the quiet, watching the lights of Abu Dhabi flicker and fade. For the first time in months, Elise felt the weight on her shoulders lighten. The secrets remained, buried beneath the surface, but they were distant—a storm on the horizon, not yet ready to break.

Tomorrow, there would be press conferences and negotiations, debriefs and strategy sessions. The rival performance director’s threat still hung in the background, and the Austin deadline hadn’t vanished. But tonight, she let herself have this.

Tonight, she was standing on a rooftop with the man she loved, holding the dream of a future they’d built together.

It was enough.