My Hearts Apex

"I got the job!"

My voice cracks the afternoon open like a starting pistol, and I don't care who hears it. I'm standing in the middle of the sidewalk, phone clutched to my chest, the confirmation email still glowing behind the cracked glass of my screen. People weave around us, annoyed, but I can't stop.

I worked four years for this. Four years of all-nighters and grease under my nails and professors who told me the paddock wasn't built for girls like me.

"You— wait, you actually—" Natalie grabs my shoulders, her eyes huge behind her glasses, and then she screams too, loud and unhinged and completely unlike her. "Oh my God, Gem, you GOT IT!"

"I got it!" I scream back, and we're jumping, gripping each other's arms, spinning in a clumsy circle while a man in a suit mutters something about blocking the path.

"You deserve this." Natalie pulls back, breathless, pressing her palms to her cheeks like she's holding her own face together. "You know that, right? You clawed your way here. Top of your class, all those internships nobody paid you for, and now— a Formula 1 team, Gemma. The thing you've wanted since you were nine."

"Since I was eight," I correct her, laughing, my throat tight with something between joy and tears. "Since Dad let me stay up to watch Monaco."

"Since you were eight." She wipes at her eye, sniffling. "We have to celebrate. Tonight. A real one."

I groan, the high faltering. "Nat, you know I don't do the whole—"

"The whole fun thing?" She crosses her arms, fixing me with a look that is somehow stern despite her being the shyest person I know. "You've been a hermit with a wrench for four years. One night. One drink. You earned this, and I refuse to let you spend it reorganizing your toolbox."

"I do not reorganize my—"

"You alphabetized your sockets last week."

I open my mouth. Close it. She has me, and the smug little arch of her brow tells me she knows it.

"Fine," I huff, dragging the word out like it physically pains me. "One drink."

She squeals and loops her arm through mine, dragging me down the street before I can change my mind.

The club is everything I hate. Too loud, too dark, the bass thudding up through the soles of my shoes and into my teeth. Bodies press in from every side, a churning mass of perfume and sweat and spilled liquor, lights slashing red and violet across the ceiling.

"This was a mistake!" I shout into Natalie's ear.

"Give it ten minutes!" she shouts back, though she's gone rigid beside me, shoulders hunched, doing that thing where she tries to fold herself smaller. The crowd terrifies her more than it does me. So I grab both her hands, tugging her toward the floor.

"Come on," I yell over the music, grinning. "If I have to suffer, you suffer with me."

"Gemma—"

"Dance, Williams."

And she does, awkward and stiff at first, all elbows, until she isn't. Until we're both laughing, throwing our arms up like idiots, the knot in my chest finally loosening. Someone hands me a shot. I don't know who. It burns going down, sweet and sharp, and Natalie cheers.

"To the dream!" she howls.

"To the dream!"

One becomes two. Two becomes something I stop counting. The room turns warm and golden and forgiving, and for the first time in years I'm not thinking about anything—not lap times, not the male engineers who'll question every word out of my mouth, not the proving I'll have to do tomorrow. Just the music. Just the heat.

There’s a man. I think there’s a man. He’s laughing at something I said, and I’m laughing too, his warm hand steady at the small of my back while everything else has gone liquid. A smile that should come with a warning label.

He leans in, voice low and rough against my ear, and the words slide straight between my thighs. I say something back that makes him laugh again, and we’re no longer dancing—we’re grinding, bodies locked tight, his thigh pressing between mine, the lights smearing into long ribbons of color.

“You’re trouble,” he murmurs—or maybe I breathe it against his mouth. The words lose their owners.

After that it’s fragments, but sharper now, hotter.

A dim hallway. His mouth on my throat, teeth scraping, tongue soothing the sting as I arch into him. The door swings shut behind us, muffling the bass into a low, throbbing heartbeat that matches the pulse between my legs. His hands are impatient at my zipper, shoving my dress down my hips while my fingers fumble with his shirt buttons, then give up and yank. Fabric tears. Skin meets skin.

He spins me, pressing me against the cool wall. One big hand cups my breast, thumb circling my nipple until it’s tight and aching. The other slides down, fingers slipping under lace, finding me already slick and swollen. I moan into his mouth as he strokes me—slow, then faster—two thick fingers pushing inside while his thumb works my cl*t in tight, perfect circles. My hips rock against his hand, chasing the pressure, the wet sounds obscene in the quiet room.

Then the bed. He drops me onto it and follows, shedding the last of his clothes. His c*ck is heavy and hot against my thigh before he fits himself between my legs. One thrust and he’s buried deep, stretching me open, filling me so completely I cry out.

He fucks me hard—deep, rolling strokes that hit every sensitive spot inside me. My nails rake down his back. He grips my hips, angling me so he can grind against my cl*t with every thrust, driving me higher.

“F*ck, you feel so good,” he growls against my neck, voice wrecked.

I come first—shattering around him, clenching tight as pleasure crashes through me in bright, electric waves. He follows right after, hips stuttering, a low groan tearing from his throat as he spills inside me, pulsing hot and deep.

It’s good—God, it’s good, blinding and electric in a way that should scare me—but it’s still smoke. Barely even a memory, just flashes of sensation with no thread to hold them together.

Then nothing.

With the morning light, I surface slowly, the way you do when something is wrong before you know what.

My head is a war zone. The light through the curtains hurts, and my mouth tastes like a recycling bin. I groan, dragging a hand across my face, trying to piece together where the ceiling above me went so unfamiliar.

This isn't my apartment. This isn't Natalie's couch.

The sheets are too soft. There's an arm—heavy, warm, draped over my bare waist. My bare waist.

I freeze, ice flooding every vein at once.

Slowly, dread coiling in my stomach, I turn my head.

A man lies beside me, asleep, dark hair tangled across the pillow, one arm slung possessively over my body. Naked. Both of us, naked. And I have absolutely no idea who he is.

I don't breathe.

For one full, suspended second I lie there, the stranger's arm a dead weight across my bare stomach, and my mind simply refuses to function. Then it crashes back all at once, a tidal slam of oh God, oh God, what did I do. I slept with someone.

I slept with someone whose name I don't know, whose face I'm only now seeing in the gray morning light, and I remember almost none of it. Just heat. Just hands. Just smoke.

He sleeps on, infuriatingly peaceful. Dark lashes against sharp cheekbones, lips slightly parted, one arm thrown over me like he has every right. He looks like he belongs in a magazine. He looks like the kind of trouble I spent four years avoiding so I'd never become a cautionary tale in some paddock locker room.

Move, Gemma.

I slide out from under his arm by degrees, holding my breath each time the mattress shifts, my heart slamming so hard I'm certain it'll wake him. My clothes are a disaster t