Chapter 10: Positive
The emerald velvet of the private tent seemed to swallow the distant engine snarls from the practice runs outside. Inside, the air was charged, thick with a different kind of heat. Rave had Dave pinned against the canvas wall, her mouth savage on his, all the unspoken fear and adrenaline from the near-miss in the garage channeled into this consuming, physical claim.
“Fuck your timing,” she snarled against his lips, her hands fumbling with the belt of his trousers.
His response was a low groan, his own hands sliding from her hips up into her unzipped race suit, finding her breasts bare underneath, her nipples already hard peaks against his palms. He squeezed, not gently, and the sharp gasp she let out was pure victory. She ground herself against the rigid line of his erection, the layers of fabric between them a maddening barrier.
“Twelve missed calls, Rave,” he growled into her neck, his teeth grazing the pulse hammering there. “I thought you were dead in a ditch. Again.”
“I was busy,” she breathed, tearing at his button fly. “Getting dirty. Needing you to come find me.”
His stethoscope, still around his neck, slid cold between her breasts as he yanked her harder against him. The contrast of the clinical instrument against her oil-smudged skin, the bruising pressure of his grip, it unraveled her last thread of control. She got his cock free, her hand wrapping around its hot, silken length, stroking him with a rough, urgent rhythm.
“Here?” Dave rasped, his eyes dark, his own restraint visibly cracking. “Now?”
“Right the fuck now,” Rave insisted, turning them and pushing him back until his thighs hit the edge of a polished marble table laden with untouched champagne flutes. The distant cheers of the crowd were a muted wave against the canvas. She shoved her race suit down to her waist, baring herself completely, and hopped up onto the table, sending a glass tinkling to the plush carpet. “Don’t you dare be careful with me.”
He wasn’t. He stepped between her spread legs, his hands gripping her thighs, pulling her to the very edge. With one brutal, fluid thrust, he was inside her, filling her so completely she saw stars. A raw, guttural cry was torn from her throat, echoing in the spacious tent.
“God, you feel… fucking perfect,” Dave hissed, his brow slick with sweat, his composure gone, replaced by a feral hunger that mirrored her own.
He set a punishing pace, each drive deep and unyielding. Rave clawed at his shoulders, her heels digging into the small of his back, meeting every thrust with a roll of her hips. The table rocked, a forgotten bottle of Dom Pérignon shuddering with their motion. It was pure catharsis, a desperate, physical argument where their bodies spoke the language their words failed to—I’m here, I’m alive, you can’t lose me, I need this, I need you.
The coil of tension in her belly wound tighter, fed by the obscene, wet sound of their joining, the scent of sex and expensive champagne, the sheer illicit thrill of possibly getting caught. Dave’s thumb found her clit, circling with exact, devastating pressure, and her back arched off the cold marble.
“Come for me,” he commanded, his voice ragged. “Let go, Rave.”
She shattered, a silent scream tearing through her as the waves of her orgasm crashed over her, blinding and violent. Her internal muscles clenched around him, milking his own release from him. He buried his face in her neck with a choked groan, his hips stuttering as he emptied himself inside her, his body trembling against hers.
For a long minute, there was only the sound of their ragged breathing and the thunder of her own heartbeat in her ears. The world, with its races and risks and rules, ceased to exist.
Slowly, he softened inside her, but didn’t pull away. He rested his forehead against hers, his eyes closed. The tenderness in that simple gesture, after such furious coupling, threatened to undo her completely. She felt buoyant, invincible, the memory of the garage crash and her own mortality washed away by the endorphin flood.
A grin spread across her face. She cupped his jaw. “Hey.”
He opened his eyes, the kindness returning to them, softened with a profound, sated warmth. “Hey yourself.”
“I love you,” she said, the words bubbling out of her, easy and bright and true, fueled by the adrenaline of the race still to come and the bone-deep satisfaction humming through her veins. She said it fast, a preemptive strike against any hesitation. “Just so you know. Before you… you know.”
Dave’s breath caught. He looked stunned, his brown eyes searching hers. He opened his mouth to respond, but the moment was sliced apart by a sharp rap on the tent pole.
“Rave? Steele?” It was Marco, her engineer, his voice tight with forced calm. “They need you in Race Control. Now. It’s about your… your mandatory screening.”
The spell broke. Dave carefully withdrew, helping her off the table as she hastily pulled up her suit. The real world crashed back in, cold and bureaucratic.
“Probably a paperwork fuck-up,” Rave muttered, zipping herself up, trying to ignore the sudden chill on her skin where he had been. She glanced at Dave, who was swiftly putting himself to rights, his doctor’s mask slipping back into place, though his eyes remained on her, watchful. “They’re always jumpy before Monaco.”
He didn’t look convinced.
Race Control was a sterile, climate-controlled vault of screens and quiet tension, a world away from the sweat and roar of the track. The organizer, Monsieur Lavigne, was a small man with the permanent frown of someone who carried the weight of a multi-billion-franc event on his narrow shoulders. He did not offer her a seat.
“Ms. Steele,” he began, his fingers steepled on the bleached oak desk. “The results from your pre-race anti-doping panel have been expedited.”
Rave leaned against the doorframe, arms crossed, channeling her post-coital, pre-race energy into defiance. “And? Let me guess, too much caffeine? I had three espressos. Sue me.”
“This is not a matter for jokes,” Lavigne said coldly. “The results are clear. You are not cleared to drive.”
All her bravado froze. A slow, cold rage began to thaw it. “What?” The word was a crack in the air. “What the hell are you talking about? I didn’t touch anything. Not a pill, not a powder, nothing. You can test me every hour from now until Sunday, you won’t find a fucking thing.”
Dave, who had followed her silently, stood a pace behind her, a solid, quiet presence she could feel like a wall at her back.
Lavigne lifted a placating hand. “It is not a drug, Ms. Steele.”
“Then what?” she demanded, stepping forward, her hands slapping down on his desk. “What could possibly—”
“You are pregnant.”
The two words landed not like a blow, but like a sudden, absolute vacuum. All sound, all breath, all thought was sucked out of the room. Rave stared at him, certain she had misheard. The frenetic energy that had possessed her moments before in the tent solidified into a block of pure, disbelieving ice in her gut.
“That’s… impossible,” she heard herself say, her voice distant, someone else’s.
“The elevated hCG levels are unambiguous. The FIA medical code is very clear. For your safety and that of the… fetus, you cannot compete in a vehicle of this class. Your license is suspended pending a confirmatory test, but the initial finding is definitive. You are out of the Grand Prix.”
The word fetus echoed, clinical and grotesque. Her mind reeled, a frantic scramble for footing. She was on the shot. The Depo. Her three-month refresher wasn’t for… another ten weeks. She counted backward in a panic. The garage. The hood of her car. Dave, inside her, with no barrier. It had been reckless, passionate, a reclaiming of life after terror. Not a planned risk.
She turned slowly to look at Dave. His face had gone pale, his doctor’s composure shattered into pure, unvarnished shock. His eyes met hers, and she saw the same rapid calculations flickering there—the timeline, the precautions, the stark, staggering reality.
The organizer was still talking, words about protocols and appeals that dissolved into static. All she could hear was the roar of her own blood in her ears, the ghost of an engine scream, and beneath it, a terrifying, profound silence where the future she knew had been seconds before, had simply ceased to exist.
The silence in the control room was absolute, a vacuum where the world had been moments before. Rave stared at Lavigne’s smug, bureaucratic face, then at Dave’s stunned, pale one. The two realities—the frantic coupling on the marble table, the cold pronouncement from the desk—slammed together in her skull.
“No,” she breathed, the word barely audible.
Then she moved.
She turned on her heel and bolted from the room, a streak of neon green racing suit against sterile white corridors. The sound of her boots on the linoleum was a staccato gunshot of retreat. She didn’t look back to see if Dave followed. The only thing that mattered was the exit, the garage, the smell of oil and fuel and things she could control.
Her mind was a scrambled static.Fetus. Suspended.hCG. The clinical terms swirled with the phantom sensation of Dave inside her, the raw, perfect fit of him, the release that had felt like conquering death itself. Now it was a biological trap.A life sentence. The walls of the corridor seemed to press in, air suddenly too thick to breathe.
She hit the heavy garage door shoulder-first, bursting back into the chaotic, familiar gloom. Her car, the Leda, sat under dim work lights, its carbon fiber hull still scarred from the garage crash. It was the only thing that made sense. She grabbed a torque wrench from a nearby cart, her fingers curling around the cold, solid metal, and swung.
The wrench connected with the side pod with a deafening, satisfying CRACK. Carbon fiber splintered. She swung again. And again. Each impact was a word she couldn’t scream.Not. Fair.My.Body. My.Life.
Tears blurred her vision, hot and furious. She was destroying a million euros of engineering, and it felt better than anything had in years.
A hand closed around her wrist on the backswing, stopping the wrench mid-air.Dave. He’d followed. His breathing was ragged from the chase, but his grip was iron. He didn’t try to take the tool. He just held her, his body a solid wall behind hers, his other arm coming around her waist.
“Let go,” she snarled, straining against him.
“Hit it,” he said, his voice low and rough in her ear. “If you need to. But you’re not alone while you do it.”
The fight went out of her all at once. The wrench clattered to the concrete. She spun in his arms, her fists pounding against his chest, not to hurt him, but because the terror had to go somewhere. “You bastard! This is your fault!”
“I know,” he said, taking the blows, his hands coming up to frame her face. His thumbs swept under her eyes, smearing grease and tears. “Look at me.Rave. Look at me.”
She did. The kindness in his eyes was gone, replaced by a stark, shared devastation. And a terrifying, resolute clarity.
“The Depo fails,” he said, his doctor’s voice steady despite the chaos. “It’s point-oh-three percent. But it fails.”
“We’re point-oh-three percent,” she whispered, the statistic a death knell.
He nodded, pulling her closer until her forehead rested against his sternum. She could feel his heart hammering. Or was it hers? They stood there in the wreckage, holding onto each other as the world ended.
Then his mouth found hers. This kiss wasn’t like the one in the tent. It wasn’t fiery reclaiming. It was deep, searching, and desperate. A silent question in the dark. What do we do now? Her answer was to claw at the zipper of his trousers, her hands frantic. His was to lift her, turning and bracing her against the cold, pristine flank of the Leda, right next to the damage she’d just inflicted.There were no words. He freed himself, his cock already hard and eager in her hand. She hooked her legs around his hips, her racing suit pushed down to her thighs. He entered her in one long, deep thrust that made her cry out, a sound of anguish and raw need. It was different. The knowledge was inside them both, a third presence in the union. This wasn’t just fucking. It was a claiming, a grounding, a way to touch something real when reality had become a nightmare.
He moved in her with a fierce, driven rhythm, his hips pistoning against hers. The car shook with their force. “This changes nothing,” he grunted against her throat, each word a thrust. “Nothing about you. About this.”
She could only nod, her nails digging into the back of his neck, her heels locking at the small of his back. The pleasure was sharp, almost painful, a bright wire of sensation in the void. She came violently, a silent scream against his shoulder, her body convulsing around his. He followed seconds after, his own release a hot, pulsing flood inside her, a tangible reminder of the consequence they now shared.
He stayed buried in her, both of them breathing heavily, sweating in the cool garage air. The distant sound of a hospitality band playing a waltz floated in absurdly.
“I don’t know how to be a mother,” she whispered into the skin of his neck, the confession her greatest terror. “I only know how to be this.”
He pulled back just enough to look at her. “Then we’ll learn,” he said, simply. “Together.”
He helped her dress, his touch now tender, wiping the smudges from her cheeks with his thumbs. He took her hand. “Come on.”
“Where?”
“Away from here.”
HE FOLLOWS HER. But now, it was side-by-side. He led her not to the glittering world of the paddock, but out a side exit, through a service alley that stank of garbage and diesel, to where his own practical, unremarkable sedan was parked. He opened the passenger door for her. She slid in, the leather seats unfamiliar and quiet. He got in, started the engine, and pulled away from the circuit, from the lights, from the life she had known.
He drove in silence, one hand on the wheel, the other resting on her thigh. She watched the Monaco skyline, a jewelled fantasy, recede in the side mirror. She was leaving it all behind. The identity, the speed, the only purpose she’d ever fashioned for herself. In its place was a terrifying, blank road, and the man beside her, whose child she now carried. The future was a dark, open highway. For the first time, she wasn’t in the driver’s seat.
The city lights melted into a blur of streaks, like rain on the visor of a helmet going 200 kilometers an hour. The only sound was the hum of the sedan’s engine and the ragged syncopation of their breathing slowly returning to normal. Dave’s hand was still on her thigh, a warm, heavy anchor.
“Where are we going?” Rave asked again, her voice hoarse.
“Anywhere,” he said. “Just away.”
She watched his profile in the dashboard glow, the tense set of his jaw. The man who stitched people back together was coming apart at the seams, and he was doing it silently, driving them into the night. She reached over, her fingers tracing the line of his neck, down to where his shirt was still unbuttoned from their frantic coupling against the car. He flinched, then sighed, leaning slightly into her touch.
“Pull over,” she said, not a question.
He glanced at her, then signaled, taking the next exit off the autoroute. He found a quiet service road, lined with plane trees, and killed the engine. Darkness swallowed them whole. For a moment, there was only the ticking of the cooling engine.
Then her seatbelt unclicked. She climbed over the center console, into his lap, straddling him in the driver’s seat. The space was tight, confining. He groaned as she settled her weight onto him, his already-spent body responding instantly, painfully to her presence. She didn’t kiss him. She found his wrists and pinned them to the headrest behind him, leaning in so her lips were at his ear.
“Tell me you’re not sorry,” she whispered, a raw command.
He struggled for a second, not to get free, but to find the words. “I’m terrified,” he breathed out. “I’m so fucking terrified, Rave.”
“I don’t care,” she said, grinding down onto the hard ridge of his renewed erection. “Tell me you’re not sorry.”
“I’m not sorry.” The words were a gasp. “God help me, I’m not.”
She released his wrists and her hands went to his belt, her movements jerky in the dark. He helped her, shoving his trousers and briefs down just enough. She wasn’t gentle, lifting herself and guiding him inside with a blunt, unceremonious push. He was huge, stretching her, a familiar burn that cut through the numbness. She sank all the way down, taking him to the hilt, and they both froze, consumed by the sheer, overwhelming fact of it. He was inside her. A part of him was literally inside her, and now, irrevocably, a part of him was growing in her.
She began to move, a slow, deep roll of her hips. It wasn’t for pleasure, not really. It was a reclamation. A re-mapping. His hands came up to grip her waist, his thumbs digging into the muscle there as he matched her rhythm.
“This is yours,” she panted, riding him with a deliberate, grinding intensity. “You feel that? That’s you. You put it there. Now you live with it.”
“I know,” he choked out, his head thrown back. “Fuck, I know.”
She rode him harder, the car seat creaking in protest. The windows began to fog. She was chasing something, not an orgasm, but an affirmation. His hands slid up under her torn race suit, over her ribs, to cup her breasts. He squeezed, his fingers finding her nipples, pinching and rolling them until she cried out.
“And this is mine,” he growled, his composure fracturing. “This is all mine. The attitude, the risk, this incredible, impossible body. And what’s inside it now. Mine to worry about. Mine to protect. Mine.”
The possessiveness in his voice, so unlike his usual calm, sent a shockwave through her. She came suddenly, a clenching, internal convulsion that ripped through her with a silent scream. He followed, his hips bucking up off the seat, driving into her as he emptied himself with a ragged groan, painting her inner walls with another impossible, hot claim.
They stayed locked together, sweating, shuddering. The fog on the windows sealed them in a private, humid universe.
Slowly, reality seeped back in. The awkward angle.The stickiness. The future, vast and unknown, waiting outside the glass.
She slid off him, collapsing into the passenger seat, pulling her suit back up. He cleaned himself up with a tissue from the console, his movements methodical. A doctor’s movements. The silence stretched, but it was different now. Softer.
“We can’t go back to my flat,” she finally said, staring out at the dark trees. “The press will be all over it by morning. ‘Disgraced Driver in Doping Scandal.’ They’ll call it doping.”
“I know,” Dave said, starting the car. The interior light felt harsh. “We’ll go to mine. It’s… functional. A doctor’s place. Not really set up for…”
“For a baby,” she finished, the word hanging in the air like a grenade with the pin pulled.
“No,” he admitted quietly. “Not for a baby.”
He drove back onto the highway, heading north, away from the coast. The miles unspooled. An hour passed, the tension slowly transmuting into a weary, shared exhaustion.
“We’ll need a new place,” he said, his voice calm again, practical. “Somewhere with more space. Ground floor, maybe. A garden.”
Rave snorted, a tired, broken sound. “A garden.Right. Because I’m just bursting with maternal instincts to plant petunias.”
“Not for you,” he said, glancing at her. “For a dog. Kids need dogs. And for you… a big garage. Soundproofed. Where you can tinker, or scream, or whatever you need to do.”
She looked at him, really looked at him in the passing glow of streetlights. He was planning. He was already building a world around this chaos.
“I can’t race,” she said, the truth of it a physical ache.
“Not this year,” he agreed. “Maybe not next. But you’ll find your way back to speed.A different kind. Maybe you design them. Maybe you coach. But you don’t just stop being who you are.” He reached over, his hand finding hers on the seat. His palm was warm, steady. “And I don’t stop being who I am. I’m a worrier. I’m going to drive you insane asking if you’ve eaten, if you’re tired, if you need to put your feet up.”
“I’ll hate it,” she whispered, lacing her fingers with his.“I know. And I’ll still do it.” He brought their joined hands to his lips, kissing her knuckles. “We’ll find a flat. We’ll fill it with awful, practical furniture. We’ll fight about names. We’ll be terrified every single day.”
She was crying then, silent tears cutting paths through the grime and sweat on her cheeks. Not from sadness, but from the sheer, terrifying magnitude of it all. From the fact that he was in it. That he wasn’t running.
“I love you,” he said, the words simple and solid, threading through the moving car like a lifeline. “And that’s the only part of this that isn’t complicated. That’s the foundation. Everything else—the flat, the kid, the chaos—we build on top of that.”
She couldn’t speak. She just held his hand tighter, pressing it against her stomach, where their impossible, point-oh-three-percent future was just beginning to divide its cells. They drove on into the dark, no longer running away, but heading, uncertainly, tremulously, toward.