Chapter Text
The paddock smelled like burnt rubber, espresso, and money.
Eloise Bridgerton stood at the edge of it all, her press badge still stiff from lamination, trying very hard not to look like she’d already reconsidered every life choice that had led her here.
“Say it,” came a voice behind her.
She didn’t turn around. “I will not.”
“Say it,” Colin insisted, far too pleased with himself for someone who had just narrowly avoided clipping a barrier at 300 km/h less than an hour ago.
Eloise finally pivoted, fixing her brother with a flat stare. “Fine. Congratulations, Colin. You’ve successfully dragged me into the most insufferable traveling circus on earth.”
Colin beamed. “You’re welcome.”
She resisted the urge to push him into a stack of Pirelli tires.
The Jones GT Racing garage buzzed around them, mechanics moving with choreographed precision, engineers glued to screens, PR people already scanning for headlines. And there, just a few meters away, stood the second half of her assignment.
Phillip Crane.
He was exactly as described. Tall, composed, and so still amidst the chaos that he looked almost… removed from it. Helmet off, balaclava hanging loose at his neck, he listened to an engineer with quiet focus, nodding once or twice, offering nothing more.
“No interviews?” Eloise asked, crossing her arms.
Colin followed her gaze and groaned. “Don’t start.”
“I’m not starting anything. I’m observing. That man is either incredibly rude or deeply allergic to journalists.”
“Or,” Colin said, lowering his voice, “he just doesn’t like talking to people who ask stupid questions.”
Eloise scoffed. “I do not ask stupid questions.”
“You once asked Benedict if art was ‘just vibes.’”
“That was a valid inquiry!”
Colin snorted. “Try that on Crane. See how far you get.”
Eloise narrowed her eyes, watching as Phillip dismissed the engineer with a quiet word and turned slightly, scanning the garage. For a brief second, his gaze passed over her, cool, unreadable, and then moved on like she wasn’t worth the pause.
Oh.
Oh, she didn’t like that at all.
“Right,” she said, already pulling out her notebook. “I’m going to interview him.”
Colin actually laughed. “No, you’re not.”
“I am.”
“You’ll get one-word answers.”
“You don't know that.”
“I’ve known him for ten years,” Colin shot back. “You’ll be lucky if he gives you three.”
Eloise smiled sweetly. “Then I shall simply ask four questions.”
Before Colin could stop her, she marched across the garage.
Phillip noticed her approach this time. Of course he did. There was nothing inattentive about him, his stillness wasn’t absence, it was control. His eyes settled on her, sharper up close, assessing.
Eloise stopped a polite distance away. “Phillip Crane.”
“Miss Bridgerton,” he replied immediately.
She blinked. “You know who I am.”
“You’re difficult to miss,” he said. “You walked in arguing.”
Colin, somewhere behind her: “I told you.”
Eloise ignored him. “I’m covering the team this season.”
“I’m aware.”
“Then you’re also aware that I’ll need quotes.”
Phillip tilted his head slightly, as if considering how much effort this conversation deserved. “Will you?”
“Yes.”
A pause.
Then, “No.”
Eloise stared at him.
He stared back.
This was infuriating.
“Is that your official statement?” she demanded.
“Yes.”
“That you won’t give statements?”
“Yes.”
She scribbled something aggressively in her notebook. “Fascinating. A driver who refuses to speak. How very… communicative of you.”
For the first time, something flickered in his expression. Not quite a smile but close enough.
“I speak when there’s something worth saying.”
“And you’ve never found that with a journalist?”
“Not yet.”
Eloise snapped her notebook shut. “Well, Mr. Crane, I do hope you enjoy disappointment. I’ll be here all season.”
His gaze didn’t waver. “Yes, I'm beginning to notice.”
There was something in the way he said it that made her pause.
A challenge.
Good.
Eloise Bridgerton had never backed down from one in her life.
“Perfect,” she said crisply. “Then we have plenty of time to fix your communication problem.”
Phillip’s almost-smile returned, quieter this time.
“We’ll see.”
Behind her, Colin made a strangled noise that sounded suspiciously like laughter mixed with impending regret.
And just like that, the season began.
The garage had quieted, but not in the peaceful sort of way.
It was the tense quiet, the kind that hummed beneath the surface, made up of muttered conversations, the sharp tap of keyboards, and the occasional hiss of a radio being switched off a little too firmly.
Eloise sat cross-legged on a spare tire stack, her notebook balanced precariously against her knee as she scribbled down the last of her notes.
“…rear degradation worse than expected,” she murmured to herself, underlining the phrase twice. “Track temp higher than simulations, adjustments for FP2…”
A mechanic she’d cornered ten minutes earlier had fled the conversation the moment the session ended, but not before giving her just enough to work with. Tires, she was discovering, were far more dramatic than people gave them credit for. They degraded, they overheated, they complained, just like drivers, really.
Speaking of.
She glanced up.
Colin had just climbed out of the car, helmet off, hair flattened and damp with sweat. He looked… irritated. Not the dramatic, theatrical sort of irritated he usually indulged in, but sharper, quieter.
Phillip, already out of his own car, stood a few feet away speaking to an engineer. Or rather, listening. His arms were crossed, his expression unreadable, but there was a tension in his shoulders that hadn’t been there earlier.
Eloise tapped her pen against the page.
Neither of them were in the top ten.
Oh, she had so many things she could say.
She could stroll over and casually ask Colin if he’d mistaken the track for a scenic drive. She could inquire whether Phillip’s vow of silence extended to the accelerator pedal. She could, very reasonably, point out that for two men who had spent years obsessing over racing, they were currently being outperformed by half the grid.
She pressed her lips together.
No, she valued her access. And, more importantly, she valued not being completely frozen out of the garage by her own brother out of sheer pettiness.
Still. The temptation was immense.
Colin caught sight of her then, as if sensing danger. His eyes narrowed immediately. “Don’t.”
Eloise hadn’t even spoken yet. “Don’t what?”
“Whatever you’re about to say.”
“I’m not going to say anything,” she replied, far too innocently.
“That’s worse,” he muttered, grabbing a towel and dragging it over his hair. “Just say it and get it over with.”
She clicked her pen. “I was simply observing that you’re not currently in the top ten.”
“I know that, Eloise.”
“Do you?”
“Yes.”
“Because I have the times right here, if you’d like—”
“Eloise.”
She sighed dramatically. “Fine. I won’t make fun of you.”
“Thank you.”
“For now.”
Colin pointed the towel at her. “You’re insufferable.”
“And yet, here I am. Embedded in your team. For the entire season.”
He groaned. “I’m going to regret every life decision that led to this.”
“You already are,” she said cheerfully.
A quiet voice cut in.
“Rear balance is off.”
Both of them turned.
Phillip had stepped closer at some point, silent as ever. His gaze flicked briefly to Eloise before settling on Colin.
“The car’s unstable through high-speed corners,” he continued. “You’re overcorrecting.”
Colin frowned, immediately pulled into the analysis. “I’m not overcorrecting—”
“You are,” Phillip said calmly. “You’re fighting it instead of letting it settle.”
Eloise watched the shift happen in real time. The irritation, the frustration, it redirected, sharpened into focus.
Colin exhaled. “Fine. Maybe a little.”
“A lot,” Phillip corrected.
Eloise raised a brow. “Charming. Do you always critique him like this, or only when there’s an audience?”
Phillip glanced at her.
There it was again, that assessing look. Like he was deciding whether she was worth the effort of a response.
“…Only when he’s wrong,” he said.
Colin scoffed. “You critique me constantly.”
“You’re wrong constantly.”
Eloise let out a short laugh before she could stop herself.
Phillip’s gaze flicked back to her, just for a second, but this time, there was something different in it. Not dismissal.
Interest.
Small. Fleeting.
But there.
She straightened slightly, sensing an opening. “So,” she said, flipping to a clean page in her notebook, “rear balance issues, high-speed instability, would you say that’s a setup problem or a driving adaptation problem?”
Colin blinked. “Oh, now you’re being serious?”
“I can be serious,” she said primly.
Phillip studied her for a moment longer.
Then, unexpectedly, he answered.
“Both.”
Eloise’s pen moved instantly. “Elaborate.”
“The setup isn’t helping,” he said. “But it’s predictable. The issue is how you respond to it.”
She nodded slowly, writing it down. “So the car’s difficult, but not impossible.”
“Yes.”
Her eyes flicked up. “And you?”
A pause.
Then, “I’ll adapt.”
Eloise tapped her pen against the paper, watching him.
He wasn’t avoiding her questions, not exactly. He was just… economical. Precise. Like every word had to justify its existence.
Annoying.
“Right,” she said, snapping her notebook shut again. “Well. I suppose I’ll refrain from mocking either of you. For now.”
Colin huffed. “How generous.”
Phillip said nothing, but that almost-smile appeared again, faint and fleeting.
Eloise caught it this time.
And decided, quite firmly, that by the end of the season, she was going to make him say something worth writing down.
*****
The car was absurd.
That was the only word Eloise could find for it as she stood in the dimming Melbourne light, staring at the sleek, low-slung machine like it might personally offend her if she blinked wrong.
“A McLaren,” she said slowly. “You rented a McLaren.”
Colin looked deeply pleased with himself. “It felt appropriate.”
“For what?” Eloise demanded. “Commuting? Buying groceries? Making a point to the general public that you are, in fact, insufferable?”
“It’s a perfectly reasonable vehicle,” he said, already reaching for the passenger door.
“Oh no,” Eloise cut in, stepping forward. “Absolutely not.”
Colin froze. “What do you mean ‘absolutely not’?”
“I mean,” she said, already opening the door and sliding into the front seat, “that I am sitting here.”
“You cannot just—Eloise—”
“I get carsick.”
“You do not get carsick.”
“I do when I’m not in the front.”
“That is wildly convenient.”
“Move.”
Colin stared at her. Then at Phillip, who had already circled to the driver’s side and, traitorously, said nothing.
“Phillip,” Colin tried, “you’re not going to let her—”
“She’ll be quieter in the front,” Phillip said, starting the car.
Eloise turned, triumphant. “You see? He understands me.”
“I understand self-preservation,” Phillip replied.
Colin made a deeply offended noise but, with no allies left, shoved himself into the backseat with all the dignity of a disgruntled aristocrat.
“This is humiliating,” he muttered.
“You’ll survive,” Eloise said, settling comfortably as the engine purred to life. “You drive at reckless speeds for a living. Consider this character building.”
As they pulled away, the city lights beginning to flicker on around them, Colin leaned forward between the seats.
“You know,” he began, in the tone of someone about to be unbearable, “you would never survive in the conditions we drive in.”
Eloise didn’t even turn her head. “Mm.”
“I’m serious. The G-forces alone—”
“Mm.”
“The heat, the pressure, the—are you even listening to me?”
“Not particularly,” she said.
Phillip’s hand tightened, just slightly, on the steering wheel.
Colin huffed and fell back into his seat. “Unbelievable.”
Eloise smiled faintly to herself and looked out the window.
This, this she liked.
The low hum of the engine, the smooth glide of the car through unfamiliar streets, the world passing by in streaks of light and shadow. No expectations. No need to perform. Just… movement.
She had always liked this sort of thing. Sitting beside motion, not controlling it. Letting someone else take the wheel while she observed, thought, existed in the in-between.
Complicated, her family would say.
Eloise preferred particular.
Her gaze flicked briefly to Phillip.
He drove like he did everything else, controlled, precise, no wasted movement. One hand steady on the wheel, eyes forward, entirely focused. Not a word unless necessary.
Strange man. Interesting man. Annoying man.
By the time they reached the hotel, the sky had deepened into that rich blue just before full dark. The car slid to a stop with effortless grace, and Colin was out of the backseat before the engine had fully cut.
“I’m never sitting back there again,” he declared.
“You say that as if you have a choice,” Eloise replied, stepping out.
“I will simply refuse to get in the car.”
“Then you’ll be left behind.”
Phillip closed his door, glancing between them. “Tempting.”
Colin pointed at him. “You’re both awful.”
“And yet,” Eloise said, already heading toward the entrance, “we are the company you keep.”
*****
An hour later, Eloise was halfway through unpacking when there was a knock at her door.
She opened it to find Colin leaning against the frame.
“There’s a dinner,” he said.
She blinked. “A dinner.”
“Yes. Start of the season. We usually all go.”
“We?”
“Drivers,” he repeated. “Occasionally other team people. It’s a thing.”
Eloise crossed her arms. “And why, exactly, are you telling me this?”
He shrugged. “Thought you might want to come.”
She opened her mouth to refuse on instinct.
Then paused.
Other drivers. Other teams. Other people who might actually answer her questions with more than one-word responses and thinly veiled indifference.
Her mind flicked, unbidden, to her editor.
Agatha hadn’t told her she couldn’t interview anyone else.
And if what Colin and Phillip had given her so far was any indication…
Well.
She might need it.
Eloise tilted her head. “Will they speak?”
Colin frowned. “Who?”
“The other drivers. Will they speak actual sentences, or is that a rare trait in your profession?”
He rolled his eyes. “Yes, Eloise, most of them speak.”
“How novel.”
“So are you coming or not?”
She pretended to consider it, though her decision had already been made.
“Fine,” she said. “But only for professional reasons.”
“Of course,” Colin said dryly. “Nothing to do with your desperation for better material.”
She smiled sweetly. “Careful. I might still write about you.”
“Please don’t.”
“No promises.”
As he turned to leave, she added, almost casually, “Is Phillip coming?”
Colin glanced back. “He always does.”
Eloise hummed, closing the door.
Good.
If nothing else, she would have a full evening to observe him in a different setting.
And perhaps, just perhaps, get him to say something worth printing.