[Nico’s POV]
I've been waiting for this. Forty minutes of sitting in this chair, running through contingencies like pre-race strategy, and now the door opens and I watch it happen in real time—Soren clocking the ambush the instant he steps inside.
His jaw tightens, shoulders square, and that practiced casual smile slides on like armour. The one he wears for cameras and sponsors and every situation where the truth might cost him something.
The transformation takes less than two seconds.
Impressive, if it weren't so pathetic.
He doesn't sit and leans against the kitchenette counter instead, arms crossed, maintaining the illusion of control by choosing his own position.
I let him have it. The geography of the room doesn't change what's coming.
"So." I watch his face with the same attention I give telemetry data—every micro-expression is a data point. "Are you satisfied with the results of your little experiment? Did the scientific hypothesis live up to expectations?"
The reaction is immediate. His jaw clenches harder, that smile sharpening into something brittle. "I don't know what you're talking about."
"No?"
"I was blackout drunk, I barely remember anything."
He reaches for the champagne bottle still on the counter—the wrong-floor Dom Pérignon—and examines the label like it contains vital information.
"Whatever happened was just... alcohol and bad decisions."
The lie is so transparent it's almost insulting. I've seen Soren Lindqvist lie to journalists, to team principals, to women whose names he forgets before checkout. He's good at it.
But not with me.
Never with me, even when we were seventeen and he was trying to convince himself that cruelty was survival.
"So you don't remember," I repeat, keeping my voice level, clinical. "You don't remember the sounds you made. The way you stopped fighting halfway through." I pause, letting the silence do the work. "The way you moaned my name."
The champagne bottle hits the counter too hard when Soren's composure detonates—I watch the mask crack along fault lines that have been forming for weeks.
The careful construction of ‘I don't care and it meant nothing’ collapsing under the weight of what his body already admitted last night.
"That's… You're making shit up."
He's on his feet now, moving away from the counter, and the restless energy in his stride tells me everything his words won't.
"I was wasted. People do stupid things when they're drunk. It doesn't mean…"
"Doesn't mean what?" I stand and the room contracts.
"It doesn't mean anything." His voice rises, cracking the composure further. "You took advantage of a situation. I was drunk, you were drunk, and you…"
"I took advantage?"
The anger surfaces before I can contain it—cold, precise, the kind that freezes rather than burns.
"You spent the entire evening begging for it. In the elevator, in this room, on that couch.” I recount everything with brutal precision. “You couldn't stop running your mouth about theories and hypotheses and practical applications. And when I gave you an out—when I stopped and asked if you wanted to leave—you stayed."
We're circling each other now, the old hostility surging back with a familiarity that's almost comforting. The space between us charges with the same electricity from the gym, from the photo shoot, from every moment of proximity neither of us knows how to defuse.
"You don't get to rewrite this," I tell him, voice dropping low. "Not with me."
Soren's hands flex at his sides and for a moment it feels like we're going to come to blows—his body coiled with the same desperate violence from the simulator room eleven years ago, when fists were easier than feelings.
I brace for it. Almost welcome it.
Then he stops and the tension shifts. I watch his expression rearrange itself from fury into something more calculated, more controlled—the analytical mask clicking into place like a visor before a race start.
"Fine." He runs a hand through his hair, forces his breathing to slow. "Fine. You want to talk about it? Let's talk about it like adults."
He starts pacing, voice taking on that pseudo-scientific confidence he uses when he's constructing a narrative he can live with.
"Physical release reduces cortisol. Endorphin reset improves cognitive function. That's why we drove better. Basic physiology—any sports psychologist would confirm it."
He gestures between us with clinical detachment.
"It has nothing to do with... specifics. Could have been anyone. The mechanism is biological, not…" He catches himself probably before the word personal. "Not relevant to the individual."
I let him talk. Let him build his careful fortress of rationalization, brick by pseudo-scientific brick, watching with the patience I've perfected over years of enduring people who refuse to see what's directly in front of them.
He's convincing himself as much as me.
And the performance would be admirable if it weren't so transparently desperate.
"Could have been anyone," I repeat when he finally runs out of justifications.
He nods, relieved, thinking he's won. "Exactly. Basic stress response. Cortisol regulation. Nothing more complicated than that."
"Tudo bem." Fine. I let the silence stretch for three beats. "If it's just science, then let's treat it like science."
Soren blinks. "What?"
"You want a controlled experiment? I'll give you parameters." I sit back down, deliberately calm, and watch confusion replace his relief.
He expected a fight. He prepared for anger, for accusations, for the kind of emotional confrontation he could deflect with charm or cruelty.
He did not prepare for this.
"Sex only before race weekends," I begin, ticking conditions off with the same precision I use in engineering debriefs. "No feelings. No acknowledgment—not in the garage, not at events, not in front of the team. Absolute secrecy. Either of us can end it at any time, no questions asked."
The room goes very still as Soren stares at me like I've just presented a race strategy in a language he doesn't speak—comprehension arriving in fragments, each one landing with visible impact.
"You're... organizing this." His voice is flat with disbelief. "Like a race calendar."
"You wanted methodology. I'm providing structure." I hold his gaze without wavering. "Unless you'd prefer to keep pretending last night was a champagne hallucination."
He opens his mouth. Closes it. The internal war plays across his features—relief battling with something deeper, something that looks suspiciously like disappointment that I'm offering rules instead of demands.
Structure instead of whatever terrifying thing was building between us in that bedroom.
"Those are the terms," he says slowly, testing each word.
"Those are the terms."
"And this stays between us. Nobody knows."
"Ninguém. Nobody."
He agrees too quickly—the word fine leaving his mouth before the sentence fully forms, his whole body sagging with the relief of someone who's been handed a framework that lets him keep lying to himself.
But beneath the relief, I catch it—the flicker of unease, the recognition that he's just ceded control of an arrangement he didn't even know he was entering.
I hold the reins now, and he knows it.
I stand, heading toward my bedroom, and pause at the doorway.
"The next race is in two weeks." I glance back, letting my expression carry nothing but professional assessment. "Will you be ready? Or do you need more time to practice your amnesia?"
His jaw tightens and no answer comes before I close the door without waiting for one.