Chapter Text
Isolde
France, Montpellier - 2022
Sud de France Arena
A dancer dies twice. The first is not the day she can no longer dance — but the night she decides, in silence, that she never will again.
Isolde de Winter stood at the center of the ice that night.
Midnight had long since passed in Montpellier.
The arena lights had not been fully turned off, only dimmed to a hesitant half-glow; as though the space itself did not quite understand what this moment was, did not dare to either illuminate it completely or surrender it to darkness.
A pale, brittle light stretched thinly across the ice, rendering it almost unreal — too smooth, too quiet, too… distant.
And she did not move. She did not know how long she had been standing there, when she had stopped skating, or when her thoughts had begun to run so far ahead of her body that she had simply… remained behind.
Only when the silence began to press too closely against her did she realize — it wasn't silence at all.
Her mind had been circling the same inevitable conclusion for weeks, months, perhaps — trapped in that slow, suffocating cycle of denial and resistance… and now, finally, the last place left to arrive; acceptance.
No one had ever told her that acceptance could feel this heavy. Or perhaps they had. And she had never listened.
Because in her world, there had never been such a thing as stopping. Only continuing. Impeccable, seamless, effortless.
Always the next step, the next rotation, the next gold. But for the first time in her life, there was no next.
Tomorrow, there would be the World Championship.
The ice would belong to her...
Her hair would be pulled tight into that unforgiving knot, the black costume would be drawn onto her body like something poured and sealed into place, leaving no space for anything human beneath it.
She would bow to the ice, the music would begin — Time to Say Goodbye.
And for the last time, the applause would rise and break over her like something vast and consuming.
Tomorrow, they would believe she was still here.
But no one knew. No one understood that this night was not a beginning, nor a pause, nor even a moment suspended between two performances — it was a farewell.
Isolde inhaled slowly. Her chest rose, but the breath did not bring relief — it felt as though the air dissolved before it could truly reach her, leaving behind something hollow, something incomplete.
Her gaze drifted across the surface beneath her feet. The ice that had taken everything from her, and to which she had given everything in return.
The first thing she had ever loved. And the first that had ever demanded more than she knew how to survive.
Her fingers moved, steady, almost ceremonial, as she reached for her gloves. She removed them with care. One. Then the other. The cold found her skin instantly.
Honest in a way nothing else had ever been.
She bent her knees slightly. Lowered herself.
She had performed this motion thousands of times before, but never with this weight, never with this finality pressing down through her bones.
Just before her fingers met the ice, she felt it — hands at her waist, the kind that had never been only professional. It almost felt real. It shouldn't have. Not anymore. Whatever it was he had seen in her — was long gone.
She reached up, slower now, as though even this small gesture carried consequence, and slid the headphones down from her ears.
The world didn't just quiet; it surrendered. As the synthetic pulse of the music faded, stark stillness rushed in, more biting and colder than the air itself.
When her fingertips touched the ice, a quiet shiver moved through her. This was not contact. This was goodbye. She did not pull her hand away.
For a moment — just a moment — she allowed herself the fragile illusion that if she stayed like this a little longer, if she delayed the inevitable just a few seconds more… something might give.
It did not. Nothing did.
A single tear slipped free. Silent as it had always been. It traced the line of her cheek, reached her chin, and fell — breaking softly against the ice beneath her.
Her lips parted. Her voice was barely there.
"Thank you."
There was no answer. There never had been. There never will be.
She straightened slowly. This time, she did not hesitate. She did not allow herself to think. Because if she did, she would stay. And if she stayed, she would never leave.
Her first step carved into the ice. The sound was too loud. In all that silence, the thin, cutting scrape of her blades seemed almost violent, echoing sharper than it should have, as though the ice itself refused to let her go quietly.
Each step, the same sound. Then the same fracture. As if it were reminding her — you were here, you were made here, you were this.
She kept moving. No slowing down. No looking back. Because some things, once looked at again, become impossible to leave.
She reached the edge. Her blades left the ice. That familiar resistance disappeared. Everything fell silent.
She could have stopped. Turned. Given herself one final, indulgent glance backward. But she did not.
And right there, in that moment, Isolde de Winter did not leave the ice. The ice let her go.
Max
Saudi Arabia, Jeddah - 2023
Jeddah Corniche Circuit
The noise came back first. Engines, radio... air tearing apart at impossible speed. The kind of sound that filled everything, left no space untouched. It should have been overwhelming. It wasn't.
For Max Verstappen, it never was. Because none of it stayed. Static, pressure, the moment itself — all of it slipped through him. Everything moved through.
P15. The number sat there, dead and weightless. He offered no surface for frustration to cling to. Just pure motion.
The car responded instantly — alive beneath him, precise in a way that bordered on unnatural.
Every input returned amplified, every correction immediate. The wheel pressed steady against his palms, the vibration constant and grounding.
Brake — hard enough to feel the belts bite into his shoulders. Downshift. Commit. The rear stepped, then caught. Grip returning like something earned. The gap appeared and was instantly claimed. Opportunity met by nothing but reflex.
Lap after lap, the world reduced itself. Not into chaos but into sequence. Each turn a command. Each straight a countdown.
Corners repeating with slight variations. Cars appearing, then disappearing. Information arriving, processed, gone before it could become thought.
"Car ahead is — "
The voice blurred. He didn't need it. He already knew.
P12. P10. P8.
They passed weightless.. Positions didn't accumulate. They didn't build toward anything. They simply… replaced each other. Like frames missing from a sequence that still somehow made sense.
The world existed in a perpetual now. The rearview mirror held no ghosts; the finish line was one itself. All that remained was the vibration in his hands.
Only the next input. The next correction. The calculated movement required to keep everything aligned. Efficiency at its absolute limit. And yet the void endured.
The faster he went, the quieter the world should have become. That was the deal. Speed for silence. But tonight, the bargain felt broken. The roar of the Honda engine was just… noise. Abrasive and demanding.
The misalignment was slight — so small it didn't register as a change. Something wasn't meshing the way it usually did. A sliver of awareness that lingered a second too long.
P5. An outlier. It existed outside the logic of the car. He adjusted.
Instinct outran thought. The next corner taken cleaner. The next braking point sharper. The exit pushed just a fraction harder.
The car held. But the alignment didn't fully return. And still, something remained. It didn't feel like distraction. Or doubt. Or even discomfort. Just an absence.
As if something had been there before — something small, something irrelevant, that been removed without him noticing when.
And now, the space it left behind didn't behave like the rest. It didn't pass through, it stayed.
"Target ahead: Russell."
The name landed and lingered for half a second. Then less — and gone, like everything else. He passed him.
P3. It should have carried impact. A blunt force to break the momentum. Instead, it was just a number, sitting there.
He held every string, every bolt, every vibration. Yet, the control felt brittle. It was complete in its execution, but failed in its purpose. A flawless system with nowhere to put the output.
He kept pushing. Deeper on the brakes. Later on rotation. The car loading under him, mass rolling beneath him, tyres biting into asphalt with that thin edge between grip and loss. He trusted that edge; he waited for the dialogue. This time, it was silent.
He could feel his own heartbeat — too fast, too uneven against the carbon fiber seat. Not a rhythm. Something closer to a jolt. Like the body trying to keep up with something it couldn't control.
The race continued. The gap didn't close; it just drifted. A shadow of a moment, always out of reach.
"Gap to Checo ahead, five seconds."
The number froze there, unyielding. He chased it anyway, driven by nothing but muscle memory.
Everything tightening — the car pushed to a place where speed stopped being tamed and turned into pure force.
Purple sector. A brief spark of perfection.
"No need to push for fastest lap."
Silence.
"Max, we're happy with this. Just bring it home."
The words lingered, filling the space whether they mattered or not.
"…Yeah."
He didn't fully back off, not quite. Just enough to step away from the edge without leaving it.
The emptiness persisted. Speed didn't touch it. Control didn't reach it.
P2 arrived without a pulse. It didn't break the silence; it merged with it. A victory for the car, but a void for the man.
The final laps folded into each other. Corners repeating, lights too bright, walls too close. Nothing changed. He crossed the line. The engine didn't quiet.
"P2, Max. Good recovery. And fastest lap."
"…Okay."
He slowed for the cooldown lap, but the deceleration brought no peace. The speed dropped, but the friction stayed inside.
Every breath burned on the way in. The artificial gold of the floodlights swallowed him whole.
The car rolled into the pits. The engine was dead.
But something inside him still refused to brake — something inside him kept burning, refusing to shut down with the machine.
When the adrenaline finally drained away, it left a single demand behind: the numbing touch of the ice.
Isolde
Monaco
Willa's balcony overlooked the sea in the kind of careless way only the very wealthy could manage, as if horizons were ordinary things and sunsets came included with the lease.
By the time dinner was set out, the sky had begun its slow surrender. Gold thinned into amber, amber into rose, and the water below caught each color without loyalty, breaking them apart into restless shards that moved with the tide.
The harbor glittered farther out, white hulls lined in neat rows like a string of heirloom pearls.
A small speaker rested near the open doors, playing something low in French — a woman's voice threaded through piano and soft percussion, intimate enough to feel as though she were singing to the candles rather than the room.
The candles approved of the attention.
Their flames leaned and straightened, bending each time the wind wandered through the apartment and out again. It lifted the sheer curtains in gentle swells, brushed the nape of Isolde's neck, moved across the table carrying salt, citrus, and the faint perfume of Willa's jasmine plant in the corner.
Below them, Monaco continued being itself.
Engines rose and fell somewhere along the roads beneath the cliffside buildings — not the harsh violence of a circuit, but polished machines clearing their throats for no reason other than vanity.
A city that announced itself even while dressed for dinner.
Bella had made herself immediately comfortable in Isolde's lap.
A silver-shaded cat with pale smoke along her back and dark-lined eyes that gave her a permanently unimpressed expression.
Glossy and self-satisfied, she had circled twice against the linen of Isolde's dress before collapsing into boneless contentment, one paw draped over her wrist as though claiming territory.
Isolde had been forced to leave her with Willa during the chaos of moving in, sparing her the indignity of boxes, strangers, and doors that never seemed to stay shut.
She had spent the week hidden here instead, suspicious of every suitcase and rearranged corner, and now purred with the serene confidence of someone convinced the disruption had happened exclusively to her.
Isolde stroked a hand along Bella's spine.
"You could have pretended to miss me."
"I told you," Willa said, setting down a plate of grilled sea bass scattered with herbs and charred lemon.
She moved with a dancer's unconscious command of space, tall and loose-limbed, every gesture clean without effort.
Her hair — naturally blonde in the expensive, improbable way people usually paid to imitate — fell in a gleaming blunt cut just above her shoulders, catching the candlelight in warm flashes of gold.
A trace of bronze lived in her skin year-round, as though the sun trusted her more than other people, and her pale blue eyes held the cool clarity of ice without ever feeling cold. "She prefers stability. She gets that from me."
"She gets arrogance from you."
"She gets beauty from me too."
Isolde's laugh came readily. It surprised her enough that she took a sip of wine to cover it.
The wine was cold, mineral, effortlessly expensive. Willa always chose bottles the way other women chose allies — carefully and with long-term confidence.
They ate slowly. The fish was delicate and bright with citrus, the vegetables dressed in olive oil so good it barely needed explanation.
She had missed meals like this more than she realized.
Meals eaten sitting down. Food that arrived warm and stayed warm.
Conversations that wandered where they pleased instead of being cut into portions between sessions, interviews, flights, recovery, expectation.
Willa watched her over the rim of her glass. "You look less haunted."
"That's rude."
"It's observational."
Isolde glanced toward the sea. "I was never haunted."
"No?" Willa leaned back in her chair. "Then what was that expression you wore in London? Because it looked remarkably like a Victorian widow with excellent posture."
Isolde smiled despite herself. "You're insufferable."
"And yet, indispensable."
That, unfortunately, was true.
She had chosen Monaco before she ever packed a box, though the choice had never belonged entirely to her. Willa had planted the idea months earlier — gently at first, then with the persistence of someone who knew resistance was often only delayed agreement.
A country polished enough to mind its own business. Quiet luxury wrapped around old money and sea air.
Isolde had not believed any city could offer reinvention, but she had been willing to borrow the illusion for a while.
It had taken a week to move in properly, though even now the apartment seemed more settled than she was.
She had arrived in Monaco on Monday with eight suitcases, four boxes, one cat, and no particular sense of permanence.
Spent Tuesday inside the dressing room and emerged sometime after dark with less patience than she had entered with.
Walked the harbor alone on Wednesday and disliked how visible sunlight made her feel.
Ignored six calls from her mother by Thursday.
Finished the kitchen on Friday and hated how satisfying it was.
Visited Willa's studio on Saturday. Regretted it almost immediately.
Spent Sunday shopping for things she needed and most of them she absolutely did not.
Willa claimed this was progress. Isolde suspected it was a warning sign.
"You need structure," Willa said now, proving she had once again climbed directly into her thoughts without permission. "Come by the studio next week. Ten minutes. You can hate it and leave."
Isolde shook her head. "No."
"You answered too quickly."
"That's because the answer was available immediately."
Willa tore off a piece of bread. "You miss movement."
"I walk."
"You pace."
Isolde hated that Willa was right.
"I stretch."
"You can. But does any of it make you feel better?"
Isolde gave her a look.
"I read. Reading makes me happy."
Willa smiled and buttered her bread with unbearable calm. "You have lines in your body that don't belong to stillness. Ballet would be good for you."
"I retired from one impossible discipline. It would be embarrassing to begin another."
"You already know how to suffer beautifully. Half the work is done."
Isolde looked down at Bella, who had rolled onto her back and exposed her stomach with reckless faith. "I hate that you make terrible ideas sound persuasive."
"That's one of my best qualities."
The song changed. Something older now, strings and brushed drums, rich with the kind of nostalgia that made no promises.
Candlelight dancing across Willa's face as she reached for her glass. "And if dance fails, there are other reasons to stay."
Isolde narrowed her eyes slightly. "Such as?"
Willa gestured vaguely at the city beyond them. "Romance. Disaster. A financially irresponsible situationship. The classics."
A short, sharp laugh escaped Isolde before she could stop it.
"In this place?" she said. "Please. Monaco is the size of a decorative rug. You couldn't have a situationship here. You'd trip over him buying a croissant."
Willa grinned. "So you admit there would be a him."
"I admit nothing. Least of all poor judgment."
"Mm. That sounded defensive."
"That sounded accurate."
Willa reached for her wine. "Have you even met your neighbors yet?"
Isolde blinked. "I'm trying to keep standards."
"I'm serious. Didn't the concierge mention the man across the hall? Some athlete who's never home."
"How thrilling," Isolde said dryly.
Willa lifted one shoulder. "You say that now."
Isolde was not naïve enough to think geography could repair a life. Cities did not heal people. Scenery did not rewrite grief. The Mediterranean light did not untangle memory.
But there were worse places to begin again than a balcony above the sea, with a full glass, a warm cat, and someone who knew exactly when to stop asking questions.
Willa stood up, brushing a loose strand of hair behind her ear. She paused for a heartbeat, as if the thought had only just caught up with her. "Oh, I almost forgot. Stay right there. Don't move."
Isolde didn't even look up from Bella's silver fur. "I don't have anywhere else to be, Willa."
"Good," Willa murmured, a cryptic smile playing on her lips as she disappeared inside the apartment.
The wind stirred, lifting the corner of the tablecloth, carrying the scent of candle wax across the glassware.
A few minutes passed in a kind of suspended quiet that did not ask anything of her.
Then Willa returned.
She carried a cream-colored box tied with a black ribbon, the kind of packaging that made no attempt to hide its own intention. She set it down on the table beside Isolde with the ease of someone placing something far less consequential.
"Before you say anything," Willa said, settling back into her chair, "it's not negotiable."
Isolde glanced at her. "That sounds like something people say when it's absolutely negotiable."
Willa ignored her, reaching for her wine. "Welcome to Monaco."
Isolde looked at the box, then at Willa again, a softer expression catching her off guard. "You really didn't have to do this."
"Nevertheless," Willa replied, "I did."
Bella lifted her head.
The ribbon came loose the moment the box was opened.
Inside were black Louboutins — the red soles catching candlelight like something almost dangerous.
A small breath left her before she could hide it. They were beautiful.
Her fingers brushed lightly over the leather, careful in the absent way people touched things they already wanted.
"Willa…"
It came out quieter than intended.
"They're perfect," Willa said, reaching for her glass.
Bella climbed into the box without hesitation, as if it had been chosen for her first. Isolde glanced down Bella, then back at Willa. A faint smile touched her mouth. "Of course she approves."
Willa lifted her glass. "She has taste."
By the time Isolde returned to her apartment, the building had settled into its late-night hush.
Monaco was rarely quiet in any true sense. Even now, with the hour leaning toward eleven, sound still drifted upward from the streets below — the muted pulse of a city unwilling to sleep simply because other places did.
But inside the apartment, it seeped in softened by glass and height, translated into something almost decorative.
Bella had not shared that serenity.
The cat had spent the first twenty minutes inspecting every room with visible suspicion, tail held low, pausing at thresholds as though each doorway might conceal personal betrayal.
She had sniffed every corner of the living room, recoiled from her own reflection in a mirrored panel, then disappeared beneath the console table only to re-emerge minutes later with renewed distrust.
Isolde had unpacked her things around this performance.
Bowls in the kitchen. Litter tray in the laundry room. Favorite blanket at the foot of the bed. Toys arranged in optimistic little clusters Bella ignored on principle.
She had spoken to her throughout in the calm, measured tone once reserved for nerves before competition.
"You're being theatrical."
Bella had stared from beneath a dining chair.
"You need to calm down."
A slow blink.
"I am not apologizing for the temporary relocation."
Silence.
Isolde had nearly laughed.
Now, an hour later, Bella had wedged herself behind a tall ceramic vase near the entryway, only the silver blur of her tail occasionally visible when she reconsidered her own hiding place.
Isolde crouched once, peered around the vase, and was met with the expression of someone deeply disappointed in management.
"Fine," she said, straightening. "Have it your way."
She had changed into an oversized white T-shirt that fell to mid-thigh, her hair rested loosely against her back in soft waves, imperfect from the long day and all the better for it.
The day had finally begun to settle over her bones. She wanted water, sleep, and eight uninterrupted hours in which nobody expected anything.
She crossed toward the bedroom, then stopped.
The Louboutins.
Still outside.
She could see the cream shopping bag through the narrow strip of glass beside the door, abandoned where Willa had laughingly insisted she leave it "for dramatic effect" while juggling Bella, keys, and a bottle of wine.
Isolde turned back.
"Stay there," she told the room, as though Bella had ever respected instruction.
She opened the door just wide enough to lean through and reach for the handles.
Something silver shot past her bare ankle.
"Oh, for — Bella."
The cat flew into the corridor with the velocity of long-planned rebellion.
Isolde dropped the bag and followed immediately, pulling the door behind her before instinct could decide otherwise.
"Bella."
No panic. Panic made animals faster.
The corridor stretched elegant and absurdly expensive in both directions, all muted lighting and thick carpet that likely cost more than most people's rent.
Bella skidded once on the polished edge near the wall, regained herself, then darted farther down the hall with the confidence of someone escaping a minor dictatorship.
"Come here."
Bella did not.
Isolde moved after her, quick but measured, one hand keeping the hem of the shirt in place more from habit than modesty.
"You have had a difficult week," she said through her teeth. "That does not entitle you to criminal behavior."
Bella paused near the elevator doors.
Isolde slowed, lowering herself slightly.
"Yes. Good girl. Excellent choice. Stay exactly there."
The cat glanced back at her with unreadable eyes.
Then the elevator chimed. The doors slid apart.
A man stepped out just as Bella launched forward.
He reacted before surprise had time to register. One clean movement, fast enough to seem prearranged.
His hand dropped, closed gently around the middle of her body, and lifted her against his chest with the ease of someone catching objects in motion as a matter of routine.
Bella, traitor that she was, offered offered no fight.
Isolde stopped three paces away.
The man looked down at the cat in his arms, then up at her.
Tall. Blonde. Broad-shouldered in a dark T-shirt and athletic trousers. Travel still clung to him in small ways — the fatigue around the eyes, the slight roughness of someone returned late and not yet fully back inside himself. His face struck some distant place in memory. Familiar, but not personally.
His brow drew together by a fraction.
She had the distinct sense he was thinking the same thing.
Neither of them spoke.
Bella purred.
The sound broke whatever had formed inside the silence.
"She seems committed to leaving," he said.
His voice settled it.
Isolde knew exactly where she had heard it before.
Not in person. Visits to her grandparent's house in Holland meant that face was always flickering across the television, just as her father would occasionally be drawn in on a Sunday.
A familiar, inescapable fixture — entirely disconnected from her own life until now. A face from another world of timing, pressure, and national expectation.
The name hovered just out of reach.
"She enjoys resistance," Isolde said, stepping closer. "Thank you."
He shifted Bella easily into one arm and offered her back.
When Isolde reached for the cat, her fingers brushed the inside of his wrist — brief contact, warm skin, steady pulse.
Bella transferred between them with less concern than either human seemed to possess.
The man glanced once toward her apartment door, still standing ajar at the far end of the corridor.
"You're the new neighbor."
"I am."
His mouth moved in something too restrained to be called a smile.
"Welcome to the building."
Isolde adjusted Bella against her shoulder. "A dramatic welcome."
His eyes dropped to the abandoned shopping bag near her doorway, then returned to her face.
"Try not to lose her again."
There it was — dry enough to pass for politeness, close enough to teasing to be dangerous.
Isolde felt, against all reason, the beginning of a laugh.
"I'll do my best."
She turned before either of them could improve on the exchange.
By the time she reached her door, she could still feel him standing where she had left him, quiet and watchful in the corridor behind her.
Her pulse had not yet chosen a sensible rhythm.
Bella twisted once, unimpressed by human complications, and dropped lightly to the floor.
Isolde stood there a second too long.
The face. The voice. The fraction of a frown that had seemed less irritation than recognition withheld.
Then the name arrived.
Max Verstappen.
Max
The apartment received him the way it always did — with silence, clean lines, and two cats who considered his return a minor administrative matter.
Jimmy reached him first, winding once around his ankle before moving away with the confidence of someone certain he would be followed.
Sassy remained on the back of the sofa, tail flicking in slow judgment, green eyes narrowed as if to ask why he smelled of airports again.
Max dropped his keys into the tray by the door and stood still longer than usual.
The corridor clung to him.
Not the corridor itself — polished stone, expensive carpet, discreet lighting arranged to flatter wealth.
Her.
The faint trace of perfume that had lifted when she moved past him. Something clean beneath something warmer. Skin after heat. Hair not fully dry. The sort of scent that felt accidental and therefore more dangerous.
He pulled off his T-shirt and threw it toward the chair.
Jimmy was on it before it landed, pressing his face into the fabric with immediate professional interest.
"Of course," Max muttered.
Sassy jumped down more slowly, crossed the room, and joined the investigation.
He went to the kitchen, opened the fridge, took out a bottle of water, drank half of it in one pull, then stood with the cold glass against his mouth while the room settled around him.
Usually, coming home required nothing. Body in the door. Mind already gone quiet.
Tonight, the quiet had edges.
She reappeared in his mind with irritating clarity: bare legs against hotel-grade carpet, an oversized white shirt slipping over one shoulder, dark hair falling in to her waist. Color high in her cheeks from chasing the cat. Eyes direct, unembarrassed, and entirely uninterested in performing gratitude.
Most people did something when they recognized him.
A double take. A flicker of recognition. A straightening. Some small rearrangement of themselves.
She had taken her cat and left.
Max set the bottle down harder than necessary.
Maybe she had not recognized him.
The thought lasted only until he remembered the pause in her face. She had known there was something to place. She simply hadn't cared enough to stay and solve it in front of him.
That was new.
What bothered him more was that the feeling ran both ways.
He knew her face.
Somewhere people appeared polished and overexposed. Interviews played without sound. Headlines glanced past in airports. A screen in the background of a hotel gym.
She belonged to that category of recognizable strangers the world produced in excess — except this one refused to remain abstract.
He tried placing her where memory usually kept such people. Actress. Model. Heiress. Someone from Monaco's endless supply of expensive daughters. None of it fit.
There had been something measured about her, even while chasing a runaway cat — a stillness that didn't belong to panic, and a kind of composure most people lost the moment things went wrong.
He should have known it. He didn't. That annoyed him almost as much as the rest.
He showered in water hot enough to steam the mirrors blind.
Jeddah came back in fragments while he stood there — floodlights over asphalt, radio chatter, the flat taste of second place, the strange emptiness that had followed every overtake as if achievement had been routed somewhere else before reaching him.
He had spent two hours at impossible speed and felt less than he had in a corridor holding someone else's cat.
Annoying.
He dried off, pulled on sleep shorts, and returned to the bedroom with Jimmy already occupying the center of the bed like inherited property. Sassy had taken the pillow nearest the headboard.
"You two don't pay rent."
No reaction.
He slid in beside them and switched off the lamp.
Darkness changed the room but not his mind.
Whoever she was, she would likely correct the mystery soon enough. Monaco was small, the building smaller, and people were rarely content to let proximity go unused.
He would see her again in the elevator, by the entrance, somewhere near the mailboxes or the garage. There would be another cat-related disaster, an apology, a proper introduction.
That was how these things tended to work.
He pictured her turning back toward her door without trying to extend the conversation.
The certainty weakened.
Max stared into the dark, listening to one cat purr and the other breathe through a permanently offended nose.
He should have been thinking about Melbourne. Setup options. Tyre windows. The fourteen days between races. Sleep.
Instead, he found himself replaying the brush of her fingers at his wrist, the cool steadiness of her voice, the flush still warm across her face.
Somewhere within the repetition, fatigue finally reached him.
He fell asleep trying to decide whether he wanted to see her again or simply disliked not knowing who she was.