Page 107 of Flat Out
The belts dug into my chest as the nose veered.
The disloyalty of the only place I’d ever felt like I belonged.
Thenimpact.
The world detonated.
Metal screamed, carbon fiber splintered into shards, and the belts dug deep into my shoulders as the car stopped dead. All that force funneled through me until my teeth clacked together hard enough to rattle my skull. My lungs emptied in a violent rush, the cockpit shaking like a goddamn earthquake.
And then there was silence.
It was worse than the noise, because it let me hear the ragged sobs still tearing out of me. It let me hear the hissing of hot metal cooling in the rain. It let me hear the marshals shouting in the distance, muffled, like I wasn’t really here anymore.
Pinned. My body was trembling, arms screaming, legs heavy as stone. The steering wheel blurred in my vision, my hands in my lap because I’d let go, let whatever divine intervention interfere with my fate.
“Dubois, respond please,” Henric said. “Are you okay?”
I swallowed through my gasps, my throat sandpaper as I lifted a hand to push the radio button on my wheel. “I’m… I’m here.” My voice was barely a rasp, broken and raw. “Pinned. Need… marshals.”
I didn’t know if that was true. I just didn’t have the energy to move.
Rain hammered the silence that followed, heavy as judgment.
Somehow, I’d survived. But right then, it didn’t feel like surviving.
The rain came down sideways,blurring everything into a smear of gray and red. Normally, this was my weather. Scotland had raised me in storms like this, and I’d made a career of dancing on water while the rest of the grid tiptoed. But not today.
My car was fine—better than fine, actually. The rebuild and upgrade kit after Tobias’s crash last week had the car feeling sharp and extremely responsive, exactly the way I liked it.
That wasn’t the problem. It was the pain ricocheting in my skull. It was the pressure in my chest as my straps pressed against my nearly-healed bruises. It was the sudden fear that if I passed another driver on an out lap, they’d push me wide and I’d be flipping the car.
Fuck.
I’ve always believed you can’t strap yourself in with fear. Once you do, the car owns you, not the other way around.If I started flinching from ghosts now, from shadows of past crashes, then I didn’t deserve to sit in this seat.
Maybe Aurélie was right. Perhaps I wasn’t ready to get back in the car yet, and not all of that was due to my injuries. Because I couldn’t drive in Formula 1 with fear whispering in my ear. I’d spent my entire life learning how to shut that voice up. Yet here I was, going against everything I had ever stood for.
I sucked in a deep breath. No need to doubt myself yet. I was keeping it steady. No risks. No flashy moves to impress the crowd and set records just because I could. Right now, I needed to focus on pushing just enough to stay alive on the board.
“Yellow, sector two,” Dom’s voice told me through the comms. I tightened my grip on the wheel, squinting through the spray.
Yellow wasn’t unusual in this weather. Someone off, someone spun. Alright, whatever. I needed to keep holding my line. I had just exited sector two, entering sector three with all the confidence of a four-time champion.
At least, that’s what the world saw.
But really, I was drowning.
“Red. Same sector. Car forty-seven in the barrier.” Dom sounded so calm as he delivered the message.
Forty-seven.
Auri’s number. Her car was in the barrier. She had crashed, and it was a red flag.A red flag.
Oh God.
My body reacted before my brain could. Every muscle seized, my shoulders bunching so hard the belts cut deeper, pressing into my chest, suffocating me. All the breath left my lungs. My hands slipped on the wheel, my arms locked up, my heart pounded so hard it hurt.
I couldn’t breathe. Oh God, I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think, couldn’t move. I just kept hearing her number echo over andover in my skull, matching the pattering of the rain on my helmet.
