Page 142 of Knot So Fast
"My father used to bring me out here," I find myself saying, the words coming easier in the darkness. "When I was young. Before—" I stop, but she doesn't push. Just reaches over and rests her hand on my thigh, a silent acknowledgment that some sentences don't need finishing.
The sun is just starting to hint at the horizon when I turn off the main road onto something that barely qualifies as a path. Weeds crack through ancient asphalt, and the trees have grown wild, creating a tunnel of green overhead. She sits up straighter, curiosity evident in every line of her body.
"Caspian, where?—"
And then we emerge into a clearing, and she goes silent.
The circuit spreads out before us like a secret—three and a half kilometers of cracked tarmac that haven't seen an official race in thirty-five years. The barriers are still there, faded and rust-spotted, with the ghosts of old sponsorship logos barely visible. Marlboro. John Player Special. Brands from an era when racing was more about courage than computers.
"What is this place?" she breathes, and I can hear the awe in her voice.
"Circuit de l'Espérance," I tell her, parking near what used to be the pit lane. "Built in 1979, abandoned by 1989. Now it's just... here."
I get out, and she follows, her boots crunching on gravel that probably hasn't been disturbed in months. The morning air is cool, carrying the scent of wild thyme and motor oil—somehow, after all these years, the place still smells like racing.
"This is where I learned," I tell her, walking toward the pit wall. "Really learned, I mean. Not the corporate-approved biography version where I was discovered at a karting track at age seven. This." I gesture at the abandoned buildings, the cracked track surface, the weeds growing through everything. "This is where I figured out who I was."
She's watching me with those distinctive eyes of hers—that unusual blue-green that shifts depending on the light, made even more striking by the early morning sun. "Tell me," she says simply.
So I do.
I tell her about stealing my father's tools when I was twelve, biking out here in the pre-dawn darkness just like today. About finding an old Renault that someone had abandoned, spending six months getting it to run with parts scavenged from junkyards and knowledge gleaned from library books because YouTube didn't exist yet and I couldn't ask anyone for help without revealing what I was doing.
"My father was an engineer," I explain, running my hand along the pit wall where layers of paint have peeled away to reveal decades of history. "Not for racing—industrial stuff. Bridges, mostly. But he understood how things worked. How to see a problem and take it apart in your mind until you found the elegant solution."
I can still remember his hands, scarred from years of work, showing me how to hold a wrench properly. The weight of his attention when he'd look at something I'd built, really look at it, and nod his approval.
"He died when I was fourteen," I continue, the words coming easier than they usually do. Maybe it's the place, or maybe it's her. "Heart attack at his desk, working on calculations for a suspension bridge in Normandy. They found him the next morning, pencil still in his hand."
She doesn't say she's sorry, doesn't offer platitudes. Just moves closer, her presence a comfort without being a intrusion.
"After that, I came here every day. Skipped school, lied to my mother, did whatever I had to do to be here with the machines. It was like..." I pause, trying to find the words. "It was like if I could fix enough broken things, maybe I could fix the thing that mattered. Maybe I could save something, even if I couldn't save him."
"You talk about racing like it's medicine," she observes, and there's no judgment in it, just understanding.
"Maybe it is," I admit. "Every race, every perfect lap, every championship—it's all just elaborate life support. We're all out there trying to outrun something. The only difference is, I do it at three hundred kilometers per hour."
She laughs at that, soft and genuine, and the sound echoes off the abandoned grandstands. "So this is where Caspian Thorne learned to be Caspian Thorne."
"This is where a angry kid learned to channel his rage into something useful," I correct. "Come on, I'll show you."
I lead her to a section of the pit wall where the concrete is scarred with decades of graffiti. Most of it is illegible now, worn away by weather and time, but I know exactly where to look. There, carved deep enough to survive the years: C.T. 2007.
She kneels in the dust without hesitation, designer jeans be damned, and traces the letters with her fingertips. "You were seventeen."
"And absolutely convinced I was going to die before I turned twenty," I confirm. "Turns out I was wrong about that, but right about everything else. Three years later, I was in F1."
"From here to there," she murmurs, still touching my initials like they're something precious. "That's quite a journey."
"Every journey starts somewhere," I say, then have to look away from the expression on her face because it's too much, too early in the morning, too everything.
That's when she spots it—the shape under the tarp in what used to be a garage bay. "What's that?"
I can't help but grin. "Want to find out?"
The Lotus Exige underneath is older than our combined ages, more rust than paint, but the engine is solid. I spent three days last month making sure of that, though I'm not about to admit I planned this that far in advance.
"It runs?" she asks, skeptical.
