Page 106 of Flat Out
Tears burned at the corners of my eyes. At first I blinked them back, but then—fuck it. Visibility was shit anyway, so I let them fall. My vision was already a smear of rain and streaked blinking red lights. Nobody could see me crying under the visor.
I sobbed once, the sound guttural. Then another. The pain, the bruises, the betrayal of my team—it all blurred into the same vicious noise. What the hell was I even doing this for anymore? Proving myself to men who wanted me gone? To fans whocheered when I failed? To a sport that had taken my body, my peace, and nearly the man I loved?
I’d compartmentalized my whole life. Box after box, locked tight, stacked high. But the walls had cracked, the dam was breaking, and now everything poured through me at once—the hate, the threats, the comments, the headlines, my family resenting me for standing on my own two feet. Santino, Morel, Callum’s crash. Every insult ever spat my way, every whisper that I was too weak, too reckless, too female to survive here.
Whore.
Slut.
Fraser’s cum-dump.
Open your legs, close your mouth.
She’s fucked half the paddock to get here.
Ugly without the helmet.
Pathetic little girl.
A liability.
Crash out already, bitch.
And of course, my body. Of fucking courseIwould be the one thing standing in my way from happiness, from a conventional future.
Each turn, each chicane came at me hard and fast. Abbey. Farm. My lines blurred with my tears. My chest convulsed with sobs, hands shaking on the wheel.
I really was the problem.
Copse.
My enemy. Always fucking Copse.
You’re nothing.
You’ll never be enough.
Fraser’s downfall.
Grid princess.
Pussy in a cockpit.
The tires hit standing water, slipping under me. I heard every cruel word I’d ever endured, echoing in my skull, drowning out the engine. My name twisted into slurs. My face plastered on headlines. My body reduced to whispers about sex and weakness. My career, a complete mockery.
I was still in my head when the rear snapped.
The twitch became a sway. The sway became a spin. My arms reacted too late, sluggish from exhaustion, from bruises, from rage that had finally curdled into despair.
Hydroplaning. Skating sideways across rivers. No grip. No chance.
“Correction, correction, correction—” Henric’s voice was frantic, too far away to matter.
The barrier loomed ahead, white and gray in the storm, and time fractured into stuttering frames.
The sobs choked me.
The steering wheel twisted out of my grip, and I let it, doing what no driver should ever do: let go.
