Page 69 of Knot So Fast
Formula One needs Omegas, and here I am—an Omega with apparent racing history, currently lying on the couch of the sport's most successful active driver, listening to him choose retirement over betraying whatever bond we once shared.
If this isn't fate giving me a cosmic kick in the ass, I don't know what is.
Lachlan's still moving around the kitchen, unaware that I'm awake and have heard everything. I should probably let himknow I'm conscious, join him for breakfast, have the awkward morning-after conversation that our activities last night warrant.
But not yet.
For now, I need to process what I've learned, to figure out how I feel about these revelations, to decide what I'm going to do with this information.
Because one thing is becoming increasingly clear:everyone in my life has been making decisions about what's best for me without my input.
My parents, my friends, the men who apparently loved me—they've all decided I'm too fragile to handle the truth about my own life.
Maybe they're right.
Learning everything at once would break something inside me that's still healing.
But it's time I got a say in my own story.
The thought is terrifying and exhilarating in equal measure, like standing at the starting line waiting for the lights to go out, knowing that in seconds everything will be speed and instinct and the razor's edge between victory and disaster.
I think about that ticket still hidden in my apartment, the mysterious invitation to prove myself. About the way my body remembers things my mind can't access—how to take the perfect racing line, how to kiss Lachlan like I'm drowning and he's air, how to be more than the carefully controlled Omega everyone seems to want me to be.
The morning sun is climbing higher, painting patterns across the sheets through the massive windows.
Somewhere in the city below, people are starting their normal days with their normal problems and their normal lives.
But up here in this house that feels like home despite being strange, lying on the couch of a man who loves a version of me I can't remember being, nothing feels normal anymore.
And maybe that's exactly what I need.
Surely normal was never meant to be my story anyway.
The thought brings a small smile to my lips as I finally stretch and prepare to "wake up." Time to face whatever this day brings, armed with more knowledge than anyone thinks I have.
Time to stop being a passenger in my own life and start taking control of the wheel.
After all, if there's one thing I'm starting to remember about myself, it's that I've always been better at driving than riding along.
And Formula One is about to need drivers more than ever.
Including me.
COMMENTARY AND CONSEQUENCES
~DEX~
I takeanother long pull from my water bottle, the cool liquid doing little to ease the dryness in my throat that has nothing to do with talking for hours and everything to do with the absolute clusterfuck this day has become.
The commentary booth overlooks the track from a perfect vantage point, all glass and steel and state-of-the-art equipment that makes me feel more like a caged animal than the professional broadcaster I'm supposed to be.
Three years.
Three years since I traded my racing suit for a microphone, since I went from calculating perfect pit strategies to analyzing them for millions of viewers who don't know that every word out of my mouth tastes like ash and broken dreams.
"Thirty seconds," the producer's voice crackles through my earpiece, and I straighten in my chair, pulling on the mask of Dex Ryder, Formula One commentator extraordinaire.
My commentary partner, Marcus Chen, is already bouncing in his seat with the kind of energy that only comes from toomuch caffeine and not enough sense. He's good at his job—knows how to work a crowd, how to build tension, how to make even the most technical aspects of racing sound exciting to casual viewers. He's also a gossip-mongering asshole who'd sell his grandmother for a ratings boost, but that's practically a job requirement in this business.
