Chapter 131

[ 1,120 words ]

Katia’s POV

The VIP allocation mixup was Sam’s fault.

She told me this herself, with the specific expression she wore when she was confessing to something she was not entirely sorry about. “The WEG hospitality team sent the revised terrace assignments this morning. I may have requested an adjustment p>

I looked at her.

“You may have p>

“The view is better from the east terrace,” she said. “Objectively p>

“Sam p>

“You said you wanted to watch the race properly p>

“I did say that p>

“Then the east terrace is correct.” She picked up her tablet. “Julian’s team is also on the east terrace. That is a coincidence p>

I looked at her for a long moment. She looked back with complete innocence.

“You’re fired,” I said.

“You’ve said that eleven times,” she said. “I’ll be at the hospitality desk if you need anything p>

She said and then left.

The east terrace had the best view of the circuit. Sam had not been wrong about that. The back straight was fully visible, the chicane sequence clear, and the final corner — the one I had taken the night before at full commitment — laid out below like a diagram of itself in daylight.

Julian arrived eight minutes after I did.

He saw me and did not stop. He simply walked to the railing beside me with the ease of a man who had decided where he was going and was not going to make it awkward by acknowledging that it might be. He ordered a coffee from the hospitality staff and looked at the circuit.

“East terrace,” he said.

“Better view,” I said.

“Mm.” He sipped his coffee. “Sam p>

“Sam,” I confirmed.

He almost smiled. The almost version — the one that arrived at the corner of his mouth and decided not to commit fully. I had catalogued that one too. I had a lot of cataloguing to do with this man, and I was starting to think it was a problem.

We watched the race.

The Dubai 24 Hour Race was endurance racing in its truest form — not the sprint of underground circuits but the long, grinding mathematics of keeping a car competitive for a full day and night. Strategy and timing and the management of resources across twenty-four hours. It required a different kind of thinking than what I did at one AM on decommissioned asphalt, and I respected it completely.

Julian knew it. That was the thing.

We talked about the race the way people talked about it when they actually understood what they were watching. The tyre management on lap forty-three. The call to pit early on the lead car — right decision, wrong timing. The driver in P4 who was managing his fuel load with a precision that was either genius or luck, and he wouldn’t know which until the final two hours.

Julian had opinions. Specific, informed, occasionally wrong, and always argued correctly. I disagreed with him about the P4 fuel strategy and said so, and he disagreed back, and we went three exchanges deep into it before the car in question pitted and proved us both partially right, which was the most satisfying outcome possible.

“You know racing,” he said. It was not quite a question.

“I told you. I follow it p>

He looked at me sideways. I looked at the circuit. Neither of us said anything else about it.

Four hours went by the way good hours do — without being counted, without being managed, just happening. The race moved through its middle stages. The crowd in the grandstand below shifted and buzzed with each development. The Dubai afternoon light changed as the hours passed, the shadows lengthening, the specific gold of late afternoon beginning its approach.

We stood side by side at the railing.

At some point our arms were touching. Not deliberately — the railing was a fixed width, and we were both leaning on it, and at some point the space between us had reduced to contact without either of us deciding that. Neither of us moved away.

Then it happened.

The car in P2 came out of the chicane on lap ninety-seven, pushing harder than the tyre compound could support. I saw it before it happened — the rear stepping out earlier than it should, the driver’s correction a fraction too late. The back end went.

The car spun.

Full rotation. High speed. The barriers on the left coming up fast.

My hand shot out.

It gripped Julian’s forearm — hard, with both hands, the pure reflex of someone who had watched cars go wrong at speed for eight years and whose body responded before her brain could intervene. The kind of grip that came from somewhere below thought.

The car hit the barrier.

Not hard — the driver had done enough to scrub most of the speed. The car was damaged, but the driver was fine. The safety car was deployed within thirty seconds. The crowd exhaled.

I released Julian’s forearm.

I looked at the circuit.

The silence between us had a specific quality now. Not uncomfortable — charged. The kind of silence that happened when something had occurred that both parties had noticed and neither was going to mention.

I had gripped his arm with both hands like it was the only solid thing in the world.

He had not moved. Not flinched, not pulled back, not said anything. He had stood completely still while I held on and watched the car hit the barrier and kept holding on for two seconds after it was clearly fine.

I looked at the track.

He looked at my hands.

I became aware that I was looking at the track very hard, with the focused attention of someone who was absolutely not thinking about the fact that they had just gripped a man’s forearm with both hands in public and he had not moved his arm away.

He had not moved his arm away.

I moved very slightly. Not back — just a fractional adjustment. He did not move at all.

We watched the safety car period in the specific silence of two people who had agreed without speaking to leave something exactly where it had landed.

The race restarted.

We watched it for another forty minutes.

At five PM Julian said, “Monday p>

“Monday,” I agreed.

He left the terrace.

I stayed for another ten minutes and watched the race and thought about the warmth of a forearm under both my hands and the fact that he had not moved it and what that meant, and then I told myself firmly to stop thinking about it.

I thought about it the entire way back to the hotel.

Some things you just couldn’t control.

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