[Nico’s POV]
After another race two weeks later, the gala in Las Vegas transforms drivers into props. Race suits exchanged for tailored tuxedos, champagne flutes replacing water bottles, sponsors circulating with the particular warmth of people who want something.
The ballroom is marble and ambient lighting, designed to make obscene wealth look tasteful. I stand near the far wall with Leo, my manager, and two of Apex's senior engineers, discussing rear-axle geometry.
Leo is mid-sentence about sponsor negotiations when a hand settles on my shoulder.
"Almeida." Julien appears at my side, tuxedo jacket unbuttoned, bow tie already loosened. "I've been looking for you. Mind if I steal him?"
He directs this at Leo with a smile so disarming it borders on criminal.
Leo glances at me until I give him a fractional nod, and the group disperses with the practised ease of people who understand social choreography.
"You were hiding from me. That’s unfair," Julien says, guiding me toward the bar with a hand on my elbow.
The contact is easy in a way that catches me off guard—no calculation behind it, no agenda beyond wanting to be near.
"Just observing," I correct. "Different skill set."
"Observing what?"
He signals the bartender, orders two glasses of something French without consulting me. His body angles toward mine—open, direct, the posture of someone who has nothing to hide and sees no reason to pretend otherwise.
"People performing versions of themselves. It's an occupational hazard at these things."
"And which version of Nico Almeida am I getting tonight?"
His eyes hold mine with a directness that's different from Soren's—no defensive edge, no antagonism masquerading as interest.
Julien flirts the way he drives: committed, visible, unapologetic.
"The one who showed up. That's all I've got."
He laughs—bright and genuine—and leans against the bar beside me, close enough that his sleeve brushes my arm. "I've been watching you drive all season, you know. Not just the last few races. Since the beginning."
"Scouting the competition?"
"Appreciating it." His voice drops half a register as his fingers finding my forearm with casual confidence. "What I see now is someone finally unleashed. That thing you do through high-speed corners where you just refuse to lift—it's extraordinary. You were always fast, Nico. Now you're dangerous."
He holds my gaze with warm intensity for a few seconds before saying, "It suits you."
The compliment lands differently coming from him.
No subtext to decode, no years of wreckage to navigate. Julien is attractive in the uncomplicated way of a man who knows what he wants and doesn't punish himself for wanting it.
"Tell me about the rear instability," I say. "Sector three—you're losing two-tenths through the slow corners."
"Three-tenths, actually. The car oversteers on entry and then snaps to understeer mid-corner. My engineers think it's a differential issue. I think they're wrong."
He shifts closer, his hand migrating to my lower back as we reposition at the bar.
"But I didn't come here to talk about my problems. How's your father? Same old?"
"He's still working with the junior teams in São Paulo. Still underneath cars at fifty-eight.” I shrug. “My mother says he'll die with grease under his nails."
"There are worse ways to go." His thumb traces an absent circle against my spine. "My family has a vineyard in Provence. My grandfather says he'll die between the vines. I think he means it literally."
"Some people are built for the thing they love."
"Some people." His eyes don't leave mine. "And some people take longer to figure out what that thing is."
His fingers trace the nape of my neck—light, deliberate, and unmistakable.
The touch sends a pleasant shiver down my spine, and I find I don't mind it. Don't need to catalogue it or question it or brace for the moment it becomes a weapon. Julien carries no baggage.
No letters, no locker rooms, no decade of damage.
No complicated signs or feelings or memories of hatred.
"You're different off-track," he says, tilting his head. "Warmer than the press gives you credit for."
"The press doesn't buy me wine first."
His grin sharpens with delight. "If I'd known that was the key, I'd have started a vineyard sponsorship years ago."
With Julien, I don't have to be a symbol or a weapon or a cautionary tale. I can just be a driver he finds interesting, a man he finds appealing.
The simplicity of it is almost disorienting.
Across the ballroom, I see Soren holding court with his usual entourage. Two models flank him, a PR coordinator hovering nearby, his smile wide and magnetic and aimed at anyone within range.
The golden boy performing golden-boy things, every gesture calibrated for maximum charm. Except his eyes keep finding me.
I catch it approximately ten times in the last twenty minutes—the quick flick of his gaze across the room, landing on me and Julien with an intensity that contradicts every casual word leaving his mouth.
Each time, his smile loses structural integrity.
The first glance tightens his jaw. The next ones makes his hand grip his champagne glass harder. The last one empties his expression of everything except something dark and volatile that he covers immediately, turning back to the model on his left with redoubled enthusiasm.
He's watching almost all evening.
Has been watching since Julien pulled me away from Leo, tracking us with the focused attention he usually reserves for a rival's qualifying lap.
Something reckless and precise unfolds in my chest as I lean into Julien's space, let my shoulder press against his, let the proximity look like exactly what it is.
Julien responds instinctively, his arm sliding fully around my waist, his mouth close to my ear as he shares something about a disastrous Monaco qualifying that I half-hear because my attention has split.
Across the room, Soren's expression goes dark. Dangerous.
The charm drops for a full second—replaced by something raw and possessive that he has no right to feel and no ability to hide. Then the mask reconstructs, but the damage is done.
I saw it. And he knows I saw it.
I turn back to Julien, who is oblivious to the silent detonation happening forty feet away, and let myself enjoy the warmth of a man who wants me without conditions.
As the evening winds toward its end, guests thin and the music softens, Julien's hand stays warm against my hip as we finish our third glass.
"Come to my suite tonight," he says, an offer delivered with the confidence of a man who doesn't fear the answer. "I have a bottle of something better than this, and I'm not ready for this conversation to end."
I consider it. The calculation is brief, honest. Julien is attractive, available, and uncomplicated. He wants me without requiring me to excavate a decade of pain to justify the wanting.
And somewhere in the back of my mind—quieter than I'd like, more strategic than I'd admit—is the knowledge that Soren is still watching.
"Tudo bem." I set down my glass. "Lead the way."
We cross the ballroom together, Julien's hand resting on my lower back, and I feel it before I confirm it—the specific, searing weight of Soren's gaze tracking us from across the room.
I don't turn around. Don't need to. The heat of it burns between my shoulder blades all the way to the door, constant as a following headlight, impossible to outrun.