Page 66 of Tipping Point

Her eyes rove my face, and she gives me a deep look of pity and sympathy and draws me close, hugging me tight.

“Everything is okay,” she whispers, her arms fierce as she holds me close. “Today, everything is okay. Now, let it go.” She draws back and looks at me with clear blue eyes. “Let it go now, and never think of it again.”

I laugh. It has a hysteric edge to it.

“If you don’t,” she says slowly and softly, “you will resent him for the rest of your life.”

“You can’t have a family and be a race car driver,” I say. And I know that it’s true.

Lotte shakes her head. “If that’s true for you, walk away now.”

It’s only when I fell down onto my hotel bed and wept that I realised I had never asked her why it wasn’t true for her.

* * *

FINN

It takes me back to Texas like it always does. Texas circuit, fifteen years ago. That day I was loose, easy. All the excitement and energy exhausted, I had fucked a girl the night before, went three rounds and hardly any sleep.

I can’t remember her face, but I can remember that she had liked my accent.

Qualifying the day before went well, and I was P four on the grid that day, and roaring for a first position finish. I passed Rheese on the way to the car and flipped him off. He was furious.

I grinned.

We started grand, and I overtook the two cars ahead of me easily. Back in those days, Velocity was still an up-and-coming brand, and it suited me just fine. They were throwing money at their problems with reckless abandon, and I was raking it in.

“Easy,” Felix had cautioned over comms. “We’re only just halfway.”

I had already lapped most of the drivers and up ahead was Stanley Everton.

My fucking hero.

Taking him on was surreal. It was making my blood rush through my head. Felix was cautioning me again.

“Cool, calm and collected,” he admonished me.

He was right. I was pushing it.

I gave a deep breath in, blew it out slowly and loosened my white knuckles on the steering wheel. But I was already too fast.

Later, they determined it was a tyre failure or debris on the track. Either way, when I took the corner, I lost control of the car. It went into a skid. Intuitively, I fought it, counter-steering and opening the throttle to gain traction.

All it was, was a second, that felt like a lifetime.

The car slid clean off the asphalt and barrelled over the runoff area. I had pulled on the steering wheel, hard, to get the car sideways, because it’s better to hit the barriers like that, rather than nose first.

Safer.

I managed, but when the wheels caught the curb, it vaulted me ten feet into the air and clean through the link fence like it was nothing.

Another second. Another lifetime.

The car was still spinning. It did three full revolutions before it plowed into the crowd of spectators.

People. The sickening crunch of hitting human bodies.

When I went through the fence, it tore through my fuel lines. Fuel sprayed through the air. It ignited almost instantly.

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