the race started in conditions that were deteriorating. itβd been raining throughout the morning, but by the time he gets into the car the circuit is wet. visibility is terrible behind other cars, standing water is collecting in sections, & everyone knows grip is going to change from lap to lap. itβs uncomfortable, but not unusual for him to question racing.
@kingprix & beau are racing each other when it happened. they knew each other well from years spent racing in overlapping circles, & beau knew exactly what kind of driver landon was. landonβs aggressive, confident, & willing to fight for every inch of track heβs given. beau knows heβll defend the position. neither of them did anything inherently wrong; they were just racing in conditions where the margin for correcting a mistake became dangerously small.
the two go side-by-side into one of the faster sections of the circuit. visibility was poor, the track is soaked, & beau loses enough grip that the car began to move somewhere he didnβt intend for it to go. everything happened quickly enough that there wasnβt time to think through options. landonβs car is immediately beside him. the concrete barrier is on the other side. he had seconds, if that, to react.
he chose the wall. he doesnβt have enough time to think *iβd rather hit the wall than hurt landon.* another car is there, & every instinct heβd developed over years of racing told him not to correct directly into it. he takes the only open space he sees.
the impact is severe, but heβs initially conscious. the car hit the barrier hard before coming to rest. he was hurt & disoriented, running mostly on adrenaline, but still able to respond when his engineer comes over the radio. from inside the garage, cos can hear the communication like she had hundreds of times before.
when his engineer asked what happened, he managed to explain it. whether he was defending the decision or trying to make sense of the accident, his answer is simple: βit was landon or the cement wall.β his engineer acknowledged & told him to stay where he was because medical was already coming to him.
itβs the last thing she ever hears him say. at the time, the sound of his voice is reassuring. he was talking. he was coherent. he was able to explain what happened. cos watched him crash before & watched him climb out afterward annoyed about the car, the race, or whatever mistake put him there. as far as she was concerned, this was going to be another terrifying story theyβll tell someday.
she kept repeating heβs talking. when people around her began reacting differently than normally, thatβs what she held onto. *heβs talking. i heard him. heβs okay.* she didnβt understand that the injuries he sustained were worse than his ability to speak immediately after suggests.
his condition deteriorated rapidly. the force involved in the accident caused catastrophic internal injuries. he lost consciousness while the medical team worked to stabilize & extract him, & he never regains it. the race is red-flagged as medical crews surrounded the car, & eventually screens are put up around the scene. cos spent enough time in paddocks to know exactly what those things meant, even while desperately trying to convince herself they didnβt mean it this time.
someone from his team eventually came to get her. this became one of the experiences that later shaped how she believes families should be treated following serious accidents. everyone around her was trying to help, but information came from too many directions. someone said he was conscious. someone else didnβt know his current condition. her phone began exploding with messages from people who saw the crash on tv. journalists were already asking questions. somewhere nearby, a screen was replaying the accident all while she still didnβt know whether her fiancΓ© was going to live.
he was airlifted to a nearby trauma center. cos & his family follow. the hours afterward became something she remembers mostly in fragments: fluorescent hospital lights, someone handing her coffee she never drank, her phone dying, signing paperwork she barely remembers reading, & realizing hours later that she was still wearing her paddock credentials.
for a while, there was hope. the doctors made it clear that his injuries were catastrophic, but he was alive & they were operating. she latched onto the word alive. beau spent most of his life doing things other people couldnβt do. some irrational part of her decided surviving this would be another one.
he died later that day without ever regaining consciousness. thereβs no final conversation. no carefully delivered goodbye. no last i love you for her to hold onto. three months before their wedding, the person sheβd known since she was seven & loved for nearly her entire life was gone.
the last thing she ever heard him say was about landon mcqueen. it was landon or the cement wall. for a long time, she didnβt know what to do with that. she didnβt blame landon. logically, she understood exactly what happened. beau lost control in terrible conditions & made an instinctive decision rather than correcting into another car. landon didnβt force him to sacrifice himself, & beau didnβt choose his own death over landonβs. it happened in seconds.
the official investigation eventually reinforces that. there were conversations about the conditions, visibility, barriers, race control, & whether the race shouldβve been allowed to continue as long as it did, but she refused to let grief manufacture blame where it didnβt belong. she especially refused to participate when fans & media inevitably started looking for someone they could turn into a villain.
she became particularly protective of landon during the aftermath, even if she barely understood why. when people begin blaming him, she refused to encourage it. if she was ever asked publicly, she made it clear that beau made a split-second decision in a racing accident & that turning another driver into a target wasnβt going to bring him back. privately, she wasnβt ready to speak to landon after her initial check in, but she didnβt allow other people to weaponize her grief against him.
three months later, their wedding date arrived. the venue was booked. her dress existed. invitations had gone out. people made travel arrangements. an entire day had been constructed around the assumption that he would be alive. cos didnβt turn it into a public memorial & didnβt allow anyone to make it another motorsport event. she spent the day privately with the people who loved him.
for months, she canβt watch racing. she didnβt hate it. she missed it. she missed engines, paddocks, garages, race mornings, & the strange jolt that existed before lights out. but every time she tried to watch, she found herself waiting for another car to hit a wall. racing had entered her life through beau so young that she canβt tell where his love for it ends & hers begins.
