I laugh under my breath. “You’re imagining things.”
“Am I?” he says, sing-song.
Yes. No. I don’t bloody know.
All I know is that for forty-eight hours, Kip and I weren’t PA and pit crew. We weren’t roles. We weren’t routine.
We were something else.
And standing here in the thick of the LaRue machinery, with everyone watching and everything expected of us, I have no idea what comes next.
But whatever it is, it’s not over. Not if I have anything to say about it.
And if he wants out, he’s going to have to tell me to my face.
CHAPTER 18
Kip
Days later, we’re both too busy to breathe. At least, that’s what I tell myself every time I spot Hutch’s bold handwriting scrawled next to his name on the garage sign-in sheet. Media day rolls straight into simulator sessions, which domino into sponsor briefings, and by the time evening hits, I’m so wrung out I fool myself into thinking the quiet is what I want.
I’ve made an art of avoiding him. Easy enough when I’m supposed to be in three places at once. Easier still when I keep replaying that night in the motel and convincing myself it was nothing. Heat-of-the-moment madness we both misunderstood.
Except Hutch keeps turning up.
Not in obvious ways. Not dramatic. Just popping into the PR office with a perfectly reasonable, incredibly annoying excuse.
“Hey, Kip, do you still have that spare batch of media schedules? Ben spilled coffee on his.”
Or, “Has communications updated the sponsor talking points? Mason wants to run through them with the pit crew.”
Or, “Have you seen the new helmet mock-ups? I swear someone said they were in here.”
Turns out there are a thousand tiny, plausible reasons to swing by PR if you really want to. And Hutch apparently really wants to.
I look up from my laptop as he appears in the doorway again. Three days in a row now, no matter how “busy” we both are. My pulse reacts before my brain can tamp it down.
He’s holding a folder this time. New tactic.
“Carmichael,” he says as if this isn’t the fourth flimsy pretext he’s used this week.
And all I can think is if I’m really trying to avoid him, I’m doing a spectacularly terrible job.
He steps into the office, jaw stubbled, hair damp from the garage, looking so good it’s honestly rude, and pulls a stack of laminated cards from the folder. “Got the press room passes. Someone said PR needed them.”
“Someone?”
He blushes, and it’s too fucking adorable. “I may or may not have overheard Elodie and volunteered to bring them upstairs.”
“Media control handles those, not PR.”
“Right,” he says, shoving the cards back into the folder.
We hover in too-long silence.
“So why bring them here?” I ask finally.
“Maybe I wanted to check on you.”