Page 156 of Forgive You

My back quickly changes to steel, unbending and hard as rock.

“It’s also not good enough,” Lennon shoots back.

Okay, so this isn’t my best season. I can admit that. I’ve made a few mistakes. I haven’t completely figured out the car, but I’m still a world champion. I’ve got fucking talent. That hasn’t disappeared overnight. I just need time to get the car to work for me.

Like I fucking did today.

“I’ve been improving.”

“Not enough,” Will argues.

“I’m just not feeling the car yet. It will come.”

There is a clear annoyance in the exhale that escapes his throat, tapping into my slow-boiling frustration, because it’s no secret he wants me gone. He didn’t want me on the team in the first place. His first choice was Franco Garcia, but Franco was smart enough to sign with SRT, one of the three best teams on the grid. I would’ve done the same if I was him; except, I already left them two years before.

“Look, we had high hopes, but Finley is doing better than you and he’s less experienced,” Lennon adds.

I resist the urge to scoff, because I have no grudge against Finley. He’s doing better than expected this season, and I think he has the potential to set records one day. But he hasn’t won a single race in his Formula One career and I’m a world champion. I think that earns me some credit, right? I think that buys me some time, for fuck’s sake.

“I don’t care,” I fire back in a flat tone.

“We do.” I snap my eyes back to Will. “This is a hard business, Tristan. You know that. You’re not performing the way we hoped.”

I snort. Of course I fucking know this. As an F1 driver, you have to perform every single race. There are only twenty seats in this sport, and if you fail, there will be countless new boys dying to take your place. But they gave me a three-year contract because I’d calculated that I needed to get to know the car first. Every F1 car might look the same to most people, but the truth is, each team engineers and manufactures the car by their own design. Becoming part of a new team means starting over. There are new engineers, new people to get to know, and also a brand-new car that you need to figure out how to maneuver to the best place on the grid: in the front. Not to mention how they like to change the rules almost every fucking year, and this season, I got a completely different car then last year.

“It’s a new car this year.”

“We expected more from you last year,” Will argues.

“You’re such an ass.” It slips from my mouth, no longer willing to play polite with the man who wants to see me fail, and I sense Axel’s gaze come my way with a scold, but I don’t care.

My world is slipping from my fingers and I’m not having it.

“And your days on the grid are done.”

“Excuse me?” My exterior grows, but on the inside, it feels like my organs turn into stone while my skin fires up with the anxious need to fight back. Fucking feverish and always killing me.

Axel huffs beside me, taking as much offense as I do. “That’s unnecessary, Will.”

“Just face it, Tristan. You’re just not good enough to play with the big boys.”

He did not just say that. “I’m a fucking world champion.”

“Just because you got lucky one season doesn’t mean you got the talent to do it again. Clearly, you can’t do it in our car.”

“That’s because your car is mediocre asfuck.”

“Tristan.” Axel tries to dim me down, but knowing the guy for eighteen years makes it easy to detect the anger in his tone that matches my own.

“Your seat is taken by the end of the season.”

Will says at the same time the timing of this conversation hits me.

That son of a bitch.

“You’re doing this on a race weekend? Fuck with my head like that? You really want me to fail, don’t you?” I snicker, feeling cynical.

“That’s not true. But we want to give you enough time to find a new team before the end of the season.” Lennon tries to smoothen out the situation, and if Will wasn’t looking at me like he just hit the jackpot on a slot machine, I might have believed them. I might have been able to agree on the fact that we don’t match as a team. That we tried, but we turned out to be a shitty fit. But the truth is, I’m done pretending it’s all rainbows and unicorns like I have for the last eighteen months, when in reality, they never gave me a fair shot. They treated me as a second driver, but told me I’d be first when I signed the ten-million-dollar deal.

---