Page 104 of Flat Out
I yanked the zipper of my suit up too hard, teeth grinding, the sound tearing through the silence. “You keep smiling, you keep driving, you keep pretending you’re fine.” My sleeves rode up, baring bruises already forming on my wrists. I shoved them back down, tugging too rough, my movements jerky as I tucked braids beneath my balaclava.
Ivy didn’t move. She just stared at me, face pale, her mouth parted like she wanted to speak but couldn’t find words. I had rendered her speechless, apparently.
Her arms slowly lowered from their defensive cross, her hands dangling uselessly at her sides. Wide eyes darted over me as if she didn’t recognize who she was looking at anymore. For a second she looked like she might scream, or run to the engineers, or throw her body across mine to keep me from climbing in that car.
“Aurélie…” her voice was strangled, clogged with something dangerously close to fear.
I barked another laugh, almost choking on it. “And who knows? Maybe I’ll wind up in the wall andpoof—all of it goes away.” The thought should’ve scared me, but all I heard was Callum’s broken voice as he told me about the anxiety I induced in him. That I was the cause after all these years that he, too, was losing it. That even now, he was still trying to be strong for me, and I was too much of a fucking coward to tell him Imightbe pregnant, that I couldn’t give him children in the traditional sense. He kept grounding me, but now… now there was nothing there to catch me if I fell. “Then everyone’s problems are solved.”
The words hung in the air, jagged and ugly, too close to the truth I probably shouldn’t admit right now, but fuck it. The rules apparently didn’t apply to everyone else, so why should I stick to them?
I forced my helmet over my head before she could answer, sealing myself away in fiberglass and silence.
“Don’t you dare crash on me,” Ivy pleaded with red-rimmed eyes. “I just got you in my life.”
But I was too far gone to hear her, spiraling down into a madness that no one could save me from. No one could save me but myself, and I didn’t have the strength anymore to do it.
I stormed off, my steps too fast. If I slowed, I’d break. If I broke, I wouldn’t get in that car. And if I didn’t get in that car, I wasn’t me anymore.
Ivy didn’t chase me. But I felt her eyes on my back the whole way across the garage, burning, frantic, as if she knew she’d just watched me walk off a cliff and couldn’t stop it.
I climbed into the cockpit with arms that could barely support my weight.
The world collapsed into my cold, detached focus and a rain-speckled visor. My body screamed with every motion, but theritual of strapping in forced me to pretend I was still in control. Harness tugged tight across tender ribs, and my gloves were slippery with sweat.
“Green light,” Henric’s voice came through the radio from his spot on the pit wall. Calm. Neutral. Seemingly unaware. “Q1 is live. Two push laps, no heroics.”
No heroics. My lips twisted under the balaclava. Just survival. I was pretty certain I could manage that.
The car jolted forward, and my skull rattled like someone had taken a hammer to it. I gritted my teeth, forcing breath into a rhythm once I got through my out lap. Inhale in Copse, exhale in Maggotts. My hands trembled on the wheel, arms tight, shoulders aflame.
My neck tugged under the HANS device, already feeling raw. The balaclava scraped over the tender welt at my temple, every brush a reminder of Morel slamming me into that wall. My shoulders throbbed with each shift, joints howling like they’d been pulled from their sockets. My stomach churned. My breasts ached every time the car slammed down from porpoising, pain so sharp I bit my lip bloody to stop myself from crying out.
Sector one. Henric stated, “Purple.”
Good. Let them think I wasn’t breaking. Let them think my smile wasn’t hollow.
But every bump, every rumble strip, sent a fresh shockwave through my back. By the final corners my wrists slipped, sweat loosening my grip, and I barely caught the car as it twitched. My heart shot into my throat. If I hadn’t… if I hadn’t?—
“Time’s good. P15, you’re just through.” Relief flickered in Henric’s tone.
Safe. Barely. The lowest rung on the ladder still counted, but it burned that survival was all I had left. My heart pounded against my ribcage almost painfully, and I forced my breath to even out as much as it could.
Back into the garage. Hydrate, they told me. Reset. Like water could wash out the ache, like thirty seconds could reset years of ghosts pushing at the recesses of my mind to break free.
Q2. The drizzle thickened, spitting silver drops across the visor, reducing my visibility more. On a day where my focus needed to be flawless, these were detrimental conditions. The sheen on the track turned corners into death traps.
Out lap. My arms already felt like lead weights. I told myself to loosen my grip, but I couldn’t. My fingers locked tight, knuckles aching, like if I let go even slightly the whole car would slip away.
First push lap. There was a wobble through Becketts, oversteer snapping like a whip. My wrists slid, just a fraction, but enough to jolt the wheel wrong. Tires screamed, my stomach plummeted, the gravel trap yawning too close?—
“Careful, Dubois,” Henric clipped just as I corrected back on the track, narrowly avoiding the wall.
“Copy,” I forced through clenched teeth. Maybe my statement to Ivy was a little too on the nose.
Second run. My shoulders howled through every turn, muscles spasming with effort. Copse loomed, wide and hungry, ready to devour me whole. My chest squeezed like a fist around my heart, breath caught under the belts as I flung her through. Somehow she stuck. SomehowIstuck.
It was a goddamn miracle.
