★

If Lando asked for the moon, Y/N would have learned how to fly.

That was the embarrassing truth of her life.

Not that she loved him. That had become almost ordinary to her, folded into the rhythm of race weekends and late nights and the humiliating little lift in her chest every time he said her name.

No, the embarrassing part was that he knew.

Maybe not every detail of it. Maybe not the nights she lay awake replaying things he hadn’t meant. Maybe not the fact that half her life had started arranging itself around his moods without her permission.

But he knew enough.

Enough to know she would stay.

Enough to know she would fix it.

Enough to know that if he smiled first and asked second, she would say yes before the question had even finished leaving his mouth.

He liked that.

That was the part Y/N hated herself for understanding.

He liked being wanted. Liked being taken care of. Liked the certainty of her, the way she was always there, always soft for him, always ready to make his life easier.

He liked the devotion.

He just didn’t care about the girl attached to it.

“Y/N.”

She looked up too fast.

Lando was leaning against the office doorway, cap in one hand, team quarter zip half undone, still sun-warm from outside. Pretty in the kind of thoughtless way that should have made a person less dangerous and somehow only made him worse.

He smiled the second he saw she was looking.

“There you are.”

Her pulse kicked.

“What do you need?”

His grin widened.

“See? That’s why you’re my favourite.”

Across the room, Mia didn’t even bother hiding her expression.

Y/N looked back down at her laptop. “You say that to get things.”

“Yeah,” Lando said easily, crossing the room. “And it works.”

He dropped into the chair beside her desk and pushed his phone into her hand.

Two schedule blocks. One sponsor appearance. One media stop. Same time.

Y/N closed her eyes for a second. “You said yes to both.”

He leaned back, stretching his legs out. “Probably.”

“Lando.”

“Definitely.”

She started fixing it while he watched her do it, perfectly relaxed now that the problem belonged to someone else.

After a second, he said, quieter, “I knew you’d sort it.”

That voice.

That exact voice.

Warm enough to feel personal. Light enough to deny later.

Y/N kept her eyes on the screen. “You always know I’ll sort it.”

“Because you always do.”

He said it like praise.

It wasn’t.

It was ownership.

She handed the phone back a minute later.

“There. You’ll have to leave the sponsor thing early.”

He looked at it, relieved. “You’re actually unreal.”

Then he looked at her.

Really looked.

And smiled in that lazy, devastating way that made it feel like he had chosen her out of every person in the room.

“Don’t know what I’d do without you.”

Before she could stop herself, she smiled back.

That seemed to satisfy him.

Of course it did.

He reached out, brushed two fingers over her shoulder, and stood.

“Love you.”

Y/N froze.

Mia looked up immediately.

Lando had already made it halfway to the door.

He glanced back when he felt the silence.

“What?”

Y/N’s throat tightened. “What did you just say?”

His mouth curved.

“Relax.” He gave her a look like she was being sensitive on purpose. “You know what I mean.”

And then he left.

Mia waited exactly two seconds.

“He’s evil.”

Y/N let out a thin laugh.

“No,” she said, still staring at the doorway. “That would require effort.”

⁜

He led her on in ways that were hard to explain to people who hadn’t seen it.

Because it was never enough to be undeniable.

That was what made it so effective.

If he had kissed her once and regretted it, she could have hated him.

If he had told her outright that he liked the attention, she could have left.

If he had been careless enough to say I know you love me and I don’t care, at least there would have been honesty in the cruelty.

Instead, he gave her moments.

Little ones.

He would find her in crowded rooms and stand too close.

He would text her past midnight with you awake? and then, after she answered immediately like an idiot, follow it with need a favour x.

He would say things like I only trust you with this and you get me better than anyone here and stay with me for a sec in a tone soft enough to make her forget she was still technically at work.

He never promised.

He never had to.

Hope did all the labor for him.

One night after a sponsor dinner in Abu Dhabi, Y/N was outside by transport trying to reorganize cars when Lando came down the hotel steps with a brunette tucked under his arm.

He saw her and smiled.

“You’re still here.”

It was almost impressive, how he could make that sound intimate when all it really meant was good, the thing I need is where I left it.

“I work here,” Y/N said.

“Right.” He stepped toward her, lowering his voice as if this were something private. “Can you cover for me if anyone asks?”

Her eyes flicked to the brunette waiting by the car.

Then back to him.

“Cover what?”

He gave her that look. The one that said don’t make this difficult while still smiling.

“Just say I left early. Sponsor exhaustion. Whatever sounds official.”

Y/N stared at him.

For one awful second, he looked almost amused.

Then he softened, just a little.

“Please?”

There it was.

The tilt in his voice. The sweetness. The quiet confidence that she’d fold.

Because she always did.

Y/N swallowed. “Fine.”

His smile turned pleased.

“Knew I could count on you.”

Then he turned and walked back to the brunette without another thought, leaving Y/N standing there under the lights with her phone in her hand and her dignity somewhere under his tires.

That night, she lay in bed replaying knew I could count on you until she wanted to scream.

Not because it was kind.

Because it wasn’t.

Because it was certainty.

Because he knew exactly what she was and kept using her for it.

⁜

She asked him out on a Wednesday night.

Later, when everything had already gone wrong, Y/N would keep coming back to that moment and wondering if that had been the last clear warning she ignored.

The office behind hospitality was nearly empty. Most people had gone. The overhead lights were too bright, the air-conditioning too cold, the whole room suspended in that late-night stillness where everything felt more honest than it should.

Lando was sitting across from her desk in a hoodie, elbows on his knees, watching her rebuild the next day’s schedule because he’d changed his mind about three separate things and expected the universe to rearrange itself accordingly.

He looked tired.

Tired Lando was dangerous.

Softer. Slower. More likely to say things that felt true.

“You always take care of me,” he said.

Y/N kept typing because looking at him felt unsafe. “Someone has to.”

He smiled.

“No, but you do.”

She glanced up.

Big mistake.

He was already watching her with that unreadable softness he slipped into sometimes, the one that made her feel chosen and stupid in equal measure.

He tipped his head.

“You like taking care of me.”

It wasn’t a question.

And because she was tired too, because she was so tired of living inside things he could deny, Y/N heard herself say, “What if I do?”

He blinked.

Then smiled a little, like he thought she was being bold in a way that amused him.

“Then I’m very lucky.”

Her heart started racing.

There should have been a fire alarm inside her for moments like this. Some mechanism that said: he is doing it again. He is giving you just enough to keep you standing still.

Instead, there was only that awful bright hope.

She set her laptop aside before she could lose her nerve.

“Do you want to go out with me sometime?”

He frowned slightly.

“Out where?”

Her mouth went dry.

“On a date,” she said, because if she didn’t say it plainly now, she never would.

At that exact second, his phone lit up.

He looked down instantly. Swore under his breath. Grabbed it off the desk.

“Yeah, yeah, one sec...”

He scanned whatever message had come in, half-listening, already leaving her.

Then, distracted, he nodded and said, “Yeah, sure.”

Y/N stared at him.

“Really?”

“Mmhm.”

He was already typing.

She should have heard it then. The vagueness. The inattention. The fact that his yes had not landed on her at all.

She didn’t.

Or maybe she did and hope just drowned it.

“Okay,” she said softly.

“Text me,” he said, still looking at the phone. “Tomorrow’s a mess.”

And somehow she still went home glowing.

That was the pathetic part.

That a half-heard yes from a man who wasn’t even looking at her still felt like being chosen.

⁜

He didn’t show up.

Of course he didn’t.

Y/N sat alone at a restaurant in Monaco for forty-six minutes, checking her phone like each time might produce a different result.

Nothing.

No text.

No call.

No apology.

At minute fifteen, she told herself he was late.

At minute twenty-eight, she told herself something urgent had come up.

At minute thirty-four, she started to understand.

At minute forty-six, she knew.

He had never heard her properly.

Or worse : he had heard enough to answer and cared too little to remember.

The waitress came over with that careful smile people wore when they knew they were witnessing something embarrassing and wanted to pretend they weren’t.

“Would you like another minute?”

Y/N swallowed. “No. Just the bill.”

Her phone buzzed when she was halfway back to the hotel.

It was him.

For one stupid second, her whole body lit up.

Then she opened it.

need you to move tomorrow’s sponsor breakfast

She stopped walking.

That was it.

No sorry. No where are you? No I forgot.

Just need.

Y/N typed back before she could talk herself out of it.

you didn’t come

The reply took less than a minute.

to what?

She stared at the screen so long it dimmed.

That hurt more than anything else could have.

Not because he said no.

Because he didn’t even know what he had failed to show up for.

She typed nothing.

Another message came in.

seriously can you move the breakfast?

Then:

please

Then:

you know i wouldn’t ask if i had another option

Y/N laughed out loud on the sidewalk, the sound sharp enough to make a couple passing by glance at her.

There it was again.

The lie they both participated in.

As if she were the last option.

As if he didn’t come to her first because he knew exactly what she’d do.

She replied:

can’t. it’s mandatory.

He didn’t answer after that.

The next morning, he missed the sponsor breakfast anyway.

By afternoon, leadership knew.

By two o’clock, HR knew.

By two-ten, Y/N learned exactly what he had told them.

⁜

The conference room was too cold.

That was all Y/N could think at first, sitting across from the woman from HR and two senior staff members while they arranged papers in front of themselves and wore expressions that already had the decision built into them.

This wasn’t a follow-up.

This was a dismissal with good posture.

“There have been concerns,” the HR woman began, “about judgment and professionalism where Driver Norris is concerned.”

Y/N frowned. “What?”

The senior PR lead folded his hands. “Yesterday evening and this morning created a situation that we can’t ignore.”

Her stomach dropped.

“The sponsor breakfast?”

“In part.”

The HR woman looked down at her notes.

“We were informed that there may have been confusion caused by you regarding his evening plans, and that this may have contributed to him failing to attend his mandatory breakfast commitment.”

Y/N went still.

Not metaphorically. Not dramatically.

Literally still.

She stopped breathing for a second.

Then said, carefully, “I’m sorry. Confusion caused by me?”

The PR lead glanced away.

No one answered immediately.

That was answer enough.

Y/N’s voice came out thinner than she wanted. “What exactly did he say?”

The HR woman’s expression stayed neutral.

“That he believed there had been a misunderstanding created by you around a personal outing, and that his schedule may not have been communicated to him clearly enough afterward.”

The room went white at the edges.

There it was.

Not just that he’d missed the breakfast.

Not just that he’d forgotten her.

He had let them pin it on her.

Maybe because it was easier. Maybe because he’d been annoyed. Maybe because he hadn’t even thought through what it would do.

That almost made it worse.

Y/N laughed once.

The sound came out awful.

The HR woman softened slightly. “I understand this is upsetting.”

“No,” Y/N said, before she could stop herself. “You don’t.”

All three of them looked at her.

And because some final piece of her had already cracked open, the truth slipped out.

“He didn’t even know it was a date.”

Silence.

Immediate and complete.

Y/N shut her eyes.

Too late.

When she opened them again, the HR woman had gone very still.

“I see.”

No, Y/N thought. No, you really don’t.

The PR lead cleared his throat. “This only confirms the blurred boundaries we’ve been concerned about.”

Blurred boundaries.

What a clean phrase for something that had ruined her so thoroughly.

By the time they said terminate your contract effective immediately, she was no longer really hearing them.

Badge revoked. Apartment linked to role. Access removed. Pack your desk.

She nodded because her body knew how to perform compliance even while the rest of her was in freefall.

At one point, the HR woman said gently, “Why would you put yourself in this position for him?”

Y/N looked at her.

There were a hundred true answers.

Because he asked. Because he knew. Because he kept asking. Because I loved him and he liked that more than he liked me.

Instead she just said, “I made a mistake.”

It was the smallest lie she had told about him.

⁜

She went to find him immediately.

Not because she thought he would fix it.

Not because she thought he would even be sorry in the right way.

Because she needed him to hear it from her.

Needed him to know that this one, at least, had landed somewhere real.

He was near hospitality, half-dressed for the next obligation, phone in hand, talking to someone from media while two sponsor reps hovered nearby.

He looked up when she said his name.

“Oh...hey.”

Hey.

Y/N almost smiled at that. The ordinariness of it. The complete mismatch between his tone and the fact that her life had just been taken apart because of him.

“I need to talk to you.”

He glanced at the people around him. “Can this wait? I’m about to...”

“No.”

That got his attention, briefly.

He stepped half away from the group, enough to suggest privacy without actually giving it.

“What happened?”

Y/N stared at him.

Then said it plainly.

“I got fired.”

His brows drew together.

“For what?”

She actually laughed.

There it was again. The confusion. The pure, undisturbed confusion of a man who had moved through his day never once imagining that another person’s world might have collapsed under the weight of his convenience.

“For you,” she said.

That made him frown. “What?”

“I got fired because you missed the sponsor breakfast. Because HR thinks I mishandled your schedule. Because apparently you told them I confused you about your evening plans.”

His expression changed.

Not enough.

Just enough to say he understood this might become inconvenient.

“Y/N, I didn’t...”

His phone buzzed.

He looked down.

Actually looked down.

At his phone.

While she was standing there trying not to come apart.

Something inside her went very quiet.

“Sorry,” he muttered. “One sec.”

He typed a reply.

One sec.

That was the line her mind would come back to later. The thing that would hurt in all the empty places long after the rest of it blurred.

Not the firing itself.

Not the date.

Not even the blame.

One sec.

As if devastation could hold.

As if she still existed in his life as something that would wait until he was finished with the important stuff.

Y/N let him finish.

Then, when he looked up again and said, “What were you saying?” with the faint impatience of someone trying to catch up to a conversation he’d half-missed, she just looked at him.

Really looked.

At the charm. At the carelessness. At the almost-boyish confusion that had gotten him forgiven by too many people for too long. At the man who knew she would bleed for him and still found ways to ask for more.

“I said,” she told him quietly, “I got fired.”

He stared.

Then glanced over her shoulder because someone from media had just called his name.

He was already leaving again.

Even now.

Even here.

Y/N felt the last of her hope die so cleanly she almost mistook it for relief.

“That’s insane,” he said absently. “I’ll talk to someone.”

“No, you won’t.”

He frowned, distracted. “Why are you doing this now?”

That almost made her laugh.

Doing this now.

As if heartbreak had scheduling etiquette.

“Because you blamed me.”

“I didn’t blame you.”

“You let them.”

“That’s not...”

“Lando,” the media guy called again, closer now. “Now.”

He turned his head, annoyed.

Then looked back at Y/N.

And in that pause, that tiny split second where he clearly wanted this conversation to be over because he had somewhere else to be, she finally saw him as he was.

Not torn.

Not secretly in love.

Not scared of what she meant.

Just inconvenienced.

By her feelings. By her firing. By the timing of a mess he hadn’t meant to make and didn’t especially want to clean up.

He had always known she’d risk it all for him.

He’d just never thought that might become his problem.

Y/N stepped back.

He said her name, but only because she was moving away.

She smiled then.

Small. Sharp. Done.

“You should go,” she said. “You’ve got media.”

Something flickered across his face.

Guilt, maybe. Or annoyance. Or just the discomfort of being seen too clearly for the first time.

“Y/N...”

But she was already walking.

And the awful, perfect thing was that he let her.

Of course he did.

Because he always thought there would be time later.

⁜

Don't be silent readers guys, i like feedbacks 😞🤭

Hope you liked this story

2019

Formula One was everything to her.

From the moment she first heard the roar of an engine, felt the rumble of the track beneath her feet, she knew she was hooked. There was something indescribable about the thrill of speed, the way time seemed to slow down when a car zipped past at two hundred miles per hour. The adrenaline rush, the smell of burning rubber, the intense focus required, every part of it made her heart race.

As a little girl, she would sit in front of the television, eyes wide with wonder, watching the legends of the sport battle it out on tracks around the world. She idolized them: their skill, their courage, their relentless pursuit of victory. She dreamed of being one of them, of feeling the same exhilaration as they did, of one day earning a place on that starting grid.

Becoming a Formula One driver was more than just a dream for her; it was an obsession. She devoted every waking moment to getting there, training hard, studying the intricacies of the cars, and soaking in every bit of knowledge she could. For years, it felt like an impossible goal, a fantasy that lived in the realm of maybe someday. But she never stopped believing.

And then, finally, the dream came true.

Her determination and skills in Formula 2 had drawn the attention of many Formula One team principals, one of them being Toto Wolff, Mercedes-AMG Petronas Formula One Team’s principal, so when he came to her and offered her a seat, she naturally couldn’t refuse. So in 2019, she became Mercedes’ first and youngest female driver ever to join Formula One, being only eighteen.

On her very first day around the paddock as a Formula One driver, she was walking with her helmet in her hand, trying to fix the inside of it. Since she wasn’t paying attention to her surroundings, she bumped into someone’s back and stumbled a little before looking up, locking eyes with a young driver who seemed around her age.

“I’m so sorry,” she muttered quickly.

“It’s fine,” the boy smiled at her. “You’re a rookie too, right?”

“Yup,” she said, smiling. “I feel like I should know your name.”

“Lando Norris.” He stretched his hand out. “McLaren.”

“Y/N Y/L/N.” She shook it. “Mercedes.”

“You got that right,” he said, pointing at her suit.

She laughed a little. “I’ve got to go, but good luck for quali today, Lando Norris.”

“Thanks,” he said. “You too.”

She smiled once more before walking away.

Lando watched her leave for a second too long.

That was the first time.

Neither of them knew then that they would spend the next seven years orbiting each other like something written badly by fate—too much timing, too little courage.

2020

By 2020, Y/N had learned that Formula One was not kind.

It was glamorous from the outside, maybe. Beautiful in photographs. Elegant in interviews. But inside the paddock, it was ruthless. Every mistake was magnified. Every bad session was a headline. Every decent result from her was treated as surprising, as if she hadn’t dragged herself into this sport with blood in her teeth.

She had expected pressure.

She had not expected loneliness.

And somehow, somewhere between race weekends and media days and endless flights, Lando became the person who made all of it lighter.

It started with stupid conversations. The kind that should not matter but somehow did.

He would find her in the paddock and start talking as if they had known each other for years. He’d complain about engineers, about jet lag, about media obligations, about sandwiches, about absolutely nothing at all. She would act like he annoyed her, even while staying there longer than she meant to.

Then came the texts.

Late-night messages after races. Snarky comments during media days. A constant stream of nonsense that somehow became the part of her day she looked forward to most.

lando: survived today y/n: unfortunately lando: wow y/n: was talking about me lando: sure you were y/n: you’re clingy for someone who swears he’s cool lando: and yet you keep replying

He had a point.

She hated that he had a point.

At Spielberg, she found him sitting on the floor behind the McLaren motorhome, long legs stretched out, head tipped back against the wall.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

He opened one eye. “Avoiding people.”

“In the paddock?”

“I know. Terrible strategy.”

She snorted and sat beside him.

The silence between them was easy. That was the dangerous thing about Lando. Silence with most people felt awkward, like something that had to be filled. Silence with him felt natural.

“You okay?” he asked after a while.

“Tired.”

“Tired how?”

She let out a quiet laugh. “You ask way too many real questions for someone who spends most of his time being an idiot.”

“I can multitask.”

That pulled another laugh from her, but it faded quickly.

“Just tired of feeling like I have to prove I belong here,” she admitted.

He didn’t answer immediately. When she looked over, he was already looking at her.

“You don’t have to prove it to me.”

Something in her chest tightened.

“Or to anyone who actually knows what they’re talking about,” he added softly.

She swallowed. “You know you’re annoying, right?”

His lips twitched. “Why?”

“Because sometimes you’re nice when I’d rather you just be stupid.”

He grinned then, warm and bright. “Don’t worry. I’m still stupid.”

And just like that, the heaviness in her chest eased.

The rest of the season passed in a series of almosts.

Almost confessions. Almost touches. Almost moments that felt too intimate to be friendship and too undefined to be anything else.

At Monza, his hand landed on the small of her back to guide her through a crowd of journalists.

At Mugello, he stole her sunglasses and wore them for half the day just because it irritated her.

At Sochi, they sat on a low wall after sunset, watching the paddock empty around them.

“You ever think about quitting?” she asked suddenly.

He turned to her. “Bit dramatic.”

“I’m serious.”

He looked back toward the track. “No. Not really. You?”

“Never.”

That made him smile.

“Then what’s with the question?”

She shrugged. “Just wondering if everyone feels like this all the time.”

“Like what?”

She took too long to answer.

“Like if they mess up once, everyone’s just waiting to say see? told you she didn’t belong.”

His expression changed immediately. “That’s bullshit.”

“It’s still there.”

He was quiet for a moment.

Then, softer, “You know what I think?”

“Should I be worried?”

“Always.”

She rolled her eyes, and he smiled faintly before going serious again.

“I think you’re one of the strongest people I know,” he said. “And I think most people in this paddock would crack in five minutes if they had to deal with half the shit you do.”

Compliments were easier to accept from anyone else. From him, they always went too deep.

“You say things like that and then act surprised when I tolerate your presence.”

He laughed softly. “Tolerate? That bad?”

“Worse.”

But she was smiling, and he knew it.

That was the year everything became a maybe.

Maybe the way he looked at her meant something. Maybe the way she waited for him after meetings meant something. Maybe the way they always found each other in crowded rooms meant more than friendship.

Neither of them said it.

Neither of them wanted to be the first one to ruin what they had.

So 2020 ended in almosts.

2021

If 2020 had been the year of almosts, 2021 was the year everything got too intense to ignore.

They were no longer rookies trying to find their footing. They had settled into the rhythm of Formula One, into the expectations, the pressure, the repetition of airports and garages and lights-out Sundays. And by then, Lando knew her too well.

He knew the difference between her angry silence and her tired silence. He knew when to make her laugh and when to sit beside her without speaking. He knew how she twisted the rings on her fingers when she was nervous, how she clenched her jaw at the timing screens when she wasn’t happy with herself.

And she knew him too.

She knew when his smiles were real and when they were for cameras. She knew when his jokes were a shield and when they were genuine. She knew the difference between the Lando everyone loved and the version of him he only let a handful of people near.

It was dangerous, knowing someone like that.

Because once you did, there was no going back.

That year, he started getting more attention.

Not that he had never had any. He was Lando—funny, talented, easy to like. But in 2021, something about him shifted. There was still boyishness in him, still softness, still that ridiculous streak that made her laugh when she didn’t want to. But there was confidence now too. Sharpness. More eyes on him than before.

Y/N noticed.

Of course she noticed.

She noticed every girl that lingered a little too close. Every interviewer who flirted. Every stupid fan edit someone shoved in her face as a joke.

At Silverstone, they were standing side by side in hospitality, hidden for once from the worst of the chaos.

“You’re quiet,” Lando said.

“I’m thinking.”

“That’s rare.”

She gave him a flat look. “Do you ever get tired of being annoying?”

He smiled. “No.”

His shoulder brushed hers.

“Thinking about what?”

She should have lied.

Instead she said, “Nothing important.”

“That usually means it’s very important.”

She turned her head and met his eyes.

For one suspended second, she thought maybe he would say it. Maybe this would finally be the moment one of them was brave enough to ruin everything honestly instead of safely.

Then someone called his name from across the room, and the moment shattered.

He looked away first.

She hated how much that hurt.

Still, they kept circling each other.

Monza. Russia. Turkey. Late-night paddock talks. Shared glances. Lingering touches.

Then came the first crack.

A rumor. A passing joke. A paddock whisper that Lando had been seen with a girl more than once.

Y/N laughed it off.

Because that was what she did.

She laughed. She shrugged. She pretended not to care.

But she started noticing things. His phone face-down more often. The distracted look after reading messages he didn’t show her. The way some part of him seemed to have stepped just slightly out of reach.

Their worst argument happened in Austin.

“You’ve been weird,” he said as they walked out of the paddock after media.

She laughed coldly. “Funny. I was going to say the same about you.”

“I’m serious.”

“So am I.”

He stopped walking. “What’s your problem?”

She turned sharply. “Nothing.”

“That’s bullshit.”

She folded her arms across her chest. “You don’t get to act like everything’s normal and then ask me what my problem is.”

His brows furrowed. “What the hell does that mean?”

“It means maybe I’m tired of feeling stupid.”

That was the opening.

The place where she could have said it.

For liking you. For waiting. For thinking this meant something.

But fear won.

Like it always did.

So she just shook her head. “Forget it.”

“No, don’t do that,” he said, frustrated now. “Don’t say things like that and then shut down.”

She laughed bitterly. “Maybe take your own advice.”

His jaw tensed.

For a second he looked like he wanted to say something bigger.

Instead, he just stepped back.

“Fine.”

And that one word felt worse than shouting.

By the end of 2021, he was with someone else.

She did not ask for details. Did not ask when it started. Did not ask if there had ever really been room for her in his life or if she had built an entire universe out of timing and silence and hope.

They spoke alone once before the season ended.

Abu Dhabi. Harsh artificial lights. The weight of another year pressing down on everyone.

“You’ve been avoiding me,” he said quietly.

She kept her eyes ahead. “I’ve been busy.”

He was silent for a moment. “Right.”

When she finally looked at him, he looked tired.

“I didn’t mean for things to get weird,” he said.

“That’s comforting.”

“Y/N...”

“No, it’s fine,” she cut in. “It’s whatever.”

He looked at her like he knew she was lying.

“I still want you in my life,” he said softly.

That hurt more than anything else.

Because it was not what she wanted.

It was not enough.

And the worst part was that she would still have taken it if he asked at the wrong moment.

So she nodded once, because she did not trust herself to say anything else.

He stepped closer, hesitant now in a way he had never been with her before.

“I don’t want to lose you.”

It was the biggest lie she told all year when she forced a smile and said, “You won’t.”

Because by the end of 2021, she already knew something between them had broken.

Not loudly. Not all at once.

But in that slow, terrible way things break when two people keep choosing silence until silence becomes the only thing left.

2022

If 2021 had broken something between them, then 2022 taught her what it felt like to keep living with the pieces.

Now there was someone else.

And this time, it was real.

A real girl. A real relationship. A real place in his life that had never belonged to her.

She found out the way everyone found out—through photos, through social media, through people trying to act casual about something that felt anything but casual.

George walked into the Mercedes garage, saw her, and immediately put his phone face-down.

Y/N looked up. “Why do you look like that?”

“Like what?”

“Like you’ve just committed a crime.”

He sighed. “You should maybe not open Instagram for a few hours.”

Her stomach dropped before her brain had even caught up.

That night, alone in her hotel room, she made the mistake of looking anyway.

Pictures. Comments. People calling them cute. People saying they made sense. People acting like it was simple.

She stared at one photo far too long before throwing her phone onto the bed and pressing both hands over her face.

It wasn’t childish jealousy.

It was grief.

Because for two years she had carried this stupid, stubborn hope that one day he would stop hesitating. That one day all their almosts would finally become something real.

And now he had chosen real.

Just not with her.

Still, Lando seemed to think they could slide into friendship without anything breaking. He still found her after sessions. Still texted her at stupid hours.

lando: terrible media day. save me y/n: no lando: wow y/n: ask someone else lando: you’re meaner this year y/n: maybe i’m growing as a person

He sent back a laughing emoji.

She threw her phone onto the bed and hated herself a little for smiling.

Monaco was where her patience nearly snapped.

“You disappeared after dinner last night,” he said.

“I was tired.”

“You could’ve said goodbye.”

She gave him a look. “I didn’t know I had to check out with you.”

He laughed softly. “You know what I mean.”

He said things like that as if they still belonged to each other in some private way. As if she was still the person he expected at the end of his day.

“You had company,” she said before she could stop herself.

His brows pulled together. “What?”

“At dinner. You seemed occupied.”

He studied her face too carefully.

“Are you mad at me?”

Mad was far too simple.

“I’m not mad at you,” she said quietly.

That part, at least, was true.

She dated once that year. Briefly. Someone kind and straightforward and uncomplicated.

It lasted less than two months.

Because every time he touched her, some awful part of her compared the feeling to a kiss she had never even really had, to a fantasy built out of years of longing, and found reality lacking.

By the end of 2022, she and Lando were no longer close the way they had been.

Still familiar. Still capable of slipping into old rhythms for five minutes at a time before reality returned.

But no longer the first person the other one reached for.

And just when she thought maybe that distance would finally save her.

everything changed again.

2023

It started, like most bad ideas did, with hope.

By early 2023, Lando was single again.

Or that was how it looked from the outside.

The paddock was never clean, never simple. Things ended quietly, started messily, overlapped in rumor and speculation and public appearances that meant everything and nothing. But as far as she could tell, that relationship was over.

And for the first time in months, hope came back.

She hated it immediately.

Because hope, where Lando was concerned, had always made her stupid.

There was also something different about him that year.

Not just in the way he looked, though there was that too.

He had always been handsome in an effortless, boyish sort of way. But over the years, he had sharpened. Grown into himself. Less teenager, more man. More confidence. More intention. More people noticing him every time he walked into a room.

She noticed too.

He was different with her again.

Warmer. Closer. Too easy.

He texted more.

lando: guess who just got publicly bullied by his engineer y/n: you probably deserved it lando: wow. no loyalty y/n: never claimed to have any lando: liar lando: you always take my side y/n: don’t make this weird

But it was weird.

That was exactly the problem.

Because one moment he was looking at her like no one else was in the room, and the next he was distant in a way that made her feel insane for imagining anything at all.

Hot and cold.

That was the phrase she used when Alex asked her why she looked like she wanted to throw her phone into the sea.

“One day he’s all over me,” she muttered, “texting, talking, following me around the paddock like it’s 2020 again, and the next day it’s like I imagined the whole thing.”

“Have you considered,” Alex asked carefully, “that maybe you should stop letting him do that?”

She looked at him in disbelief. “What an insane thing to suggest.”

Miami was the first time she thought she might actually have a chance.

The paddock was almost empty. The sky was dark. She had been heading back toward the hotel transport when Lando caught up to her.

“Wait.”

She turned.

“I was looking for you,” he said.

“Why?”

He stopped directly in front of her.

Then, quieter, “Because I wanted to see you.”

Her pulse stuttered.

“Lando...”

“Can we not do the thing where you shut down and I joke and then we both walk away pretending none of this is weird?”

“What do you want me to say?”

“The truth.”

She laughed softly, without humor. “That’s rich coming from you.”

He ran a hand through his hair. “I miss you.”

“You said that last year.”

“I meant it.”

“That didn’t exactly help.”

His expression faltered.

Then, as if dragged out of him against his will, he said, “I think about you all the time.”

It was the kind of sentence she had waited years to hear.

The kind of sentence that should have changed everything.

Instead she only thought, then why does it never mean anything when it should?

“Lando,” she whispered, “you can’t say things like that unless you’re going to do something about it.”

Something shuttered in his face.

He looked away first.

That told her everything.

A week later he was back to texting her at midnight. Back to private smiles. Back to reaching for her like instinct.

And then the rumors started.

Magui.

At first it sounded like paddock nonsense. The kind of speculation that attached itself to drivers because cameras were invasive and people were bored.

Y/N ignored it.

Then she saw them together.

Not enough for certainty.

Enough for understanding.

When she asked him about it—not directly, never directly, because apparently directness would have killed them both—he gave her nothing useful.

“It’s complicated,” he said.

“Of course it is.”

“You act like I’m trying to mess with your head.”

She stared at him. Then said quietly, “Aren’t you?”

That shut him up.

They stood near the back stairs of hospitality while the noise of Singapore carried in waves around them.

“You don’t get to not know forever,” she said. “You can’t keep me in this weird in-between version of your life whenever it suits you.”

“I don’t want to lose you.”

She laughed once, broken and disbelieving. “You keep saying that like it’s enough.”

“It’s not?”

“No.”

Her voice cracked on the word.

By the end of 2023, she was exhausted in a way no race car had ever made her.

Not because she loved him.

Because she was beginning to understand that loving him might not even be the worst part.

The worst part might be that he loved her too, in some fractured, unfinished, selfish way—and that it still wasn’t enough to choose her.

2024

By 2024, she told herself she was done.

Not in the dramatic sense. Not I hate him. Not I never want to see him again.

Just quietly, deeply done.

The kind where you wake up one day and realize that if you keep hoping, it will hollow you out completely.

So she changed.

She stopped waiting for his texts. Stopped looking for him first in crowded rooms. Stopped letting herself be alone with him after race weekends just because he asked with those soft eyes and careful voice.

People noticed.

Especially him.

At Imola, he caught up to her outside the paddock gates.

“You’re avoiding me.”

“I’m busy.”

“You’ve said that like six times this weekend.”

“Maybe I’ve been busy six times.”

“That’s not funny.”

That made her stop.

She turned to face him. “Then why are you almost smiling?”

His mouth flattened immediately.

“What happened?” he asked.

She blinked. “What do you mean?”

“I mean you’ve been weird for months.”

She laughed under her breath. “That is a deeply unfair thing for you to say to me.”

“I’m serious.”

“So am I.”

For a second neither of them moved.

Then she said the thing she should have said a year ago.

“I got tired, Lando.”

He went very still.

“Tired of waiting for you to figure out what you want. Tired of pretending your mixed signals are somehow my fault for reading them wrong. Tired of feeling like I matter to you only in these very specific moments where it’s convenient.”

His face closed off the more she spoke.

“That’s not fair.”

Her jaw tightened. “No?”

“No,” he said, sharper now. “You act like I’ve been manipulating you.”

“Have you not?”

He stared at her.

And there it was again—the silence where truth should have been.

That conversation should have ended things.

Instead, it only changed the shape of the damage.

Because after that, he stopped reaching out as much. Stopped trying to find her alone. Stopped saying the kinds of things that kept her suspended between hope and common sense.

And somehow, that hurt too.

Because maybe she had wanted peace.

But she had not expected peace to feel so much like grief.

That year, she got better on track. Sharper. More consistent. More podiums. More control. The media stopped asking whether she deserved to be there and started asking whether she could become world champion.

She should have been thrilled.

Mostly, she was.

But sometimes she would catch Lando looking at her from across a briefing room with an expression she could never quite name.

Not longing.

Not regret.

Something adjacent to both.

And that was somehow worse.

2025

By 2025, Lando barely looked like the boy she had met in 2019.

He was still there, somewhere.

In rare moments when he laughed too hard and forgot himself. In the softness that slipped out by accident when no one else was watching.

But most of the time, he was someone else now.

Sharper. Colder. More careful with his image. More ruthless with his words. The years had polished him into something almost untouchable, better dressed, more controlled, more aware of exactly how many people were watching him at all times.

He had glow up written all over him.

And this was not just a good year.

This was his year.

He was in the fight for the World Championship, and everyone knew it.

Every point mattered. Every lap mattered. Every mistake mattered.

The pressure around him was suffocating.

And under that pressure, he had changed in all the worst ways.

Y/N noticed it before anyone said it out loud.

The way he stopped apologizing when he snapped. The way his interviews became cleaner and colder. The way everything about him felt optimized for survival, even if that survival came at the cost of tenderness.

Even with her, whatever softness remained had become inconsistent.

He still looked at her sometimes in that old way, like she was something familiar in a life that no longer felt human.

But he never stayed there.

And she still, pathetically, hopelessly, kept hoping the old Lando was somewhere underneath all of it.

That was her mistake.

It happened in Singapore.

A night race. Hot, brutal, claustrophobic. The kind of circuit where one mistake could destroy everything, and everybody knew it before the lights even went out.

Lando had qualified P2.

Y/N was P4.

The title fight was tightening. He could not afford a DNF. He could not afford damage. He could not afford a reckless move.

He knew that.

Which was why what happened next made it so much worse.

The race had already been tense for thirty laps, strategy windows opening and closing, tyres fading, gaps shrinking under the lights. Y/N had better pace in the second stint and was closing fast.

“Lando ahead. Gap six tenths. Better traction out of Turn 5. He’s struggling.”

She was.

And she knew him well enough to know he knew it too.

On lap thirty-seven, she got close enough to show the nose into Turn 7.

Not a divebomb.

Not desperate.

Just enough to make him defend.

He moved late.

Too late.

She backed out before contact.

“Jesus,” she muttered.

The next lap, she tried again.

This time she got the better exit, pulled alongside on the straight, and for half a second it looked clean—tight, aggressive, but clean.

Then he turned in.

Not fully. Not enough to look deliberate at first glance. Just enough to squeeze her harder than he should have, as if he believed she would disappear if he forced the space small enough.

But there was no room.

Her front wing clipped his rear tyre.

His car snapped sideways.

Hers jolted violently left.

Carbon fibre exploded across the track.

The sound over the radio was sickening.

By the time both cars slid out of the corner, the damage was done.

Lando hit the barriers first.

Y/N spun and stopped half-sideways, front wing destroyed, one tyre punctured, the steering gone heavy in her hands.

“Fuck... fuck...”

Her engineer was already talking in her ear.

“Box, box, box. Damage. Are you okay?”

She couldn’t answer for a second.

Because on the giant screen opposite, she could see Lando climbing out of the car.

The title contender.

The man everyone had pinned their season on.

Out.

Because of an accident involving her.

Her stomach dropped so hard she thought she might be sick inside the helmet.

“No,” she whispered, even as she limped the car back toward the pits. “No, no, no…”

By the time she got to the garage, her hands were shaking.

Not because she thought it had been her fault.

Because she already knew what this would become.

The first replay came up on the monitor.

Front-on. Then overhead. Then from Lando’s onboard.

She watched him move across on her.

Watched the space disappear.

Watched herself back out as much as physically possible without putting herself in the wall.

Watched the moment contact became unavoidable.

Her chest hurt.

Because it was his fault.

Not malicious. Not intentional.

But his.

A late, panicked, overaggressive defense under title pressure.

And still, dread crawled colder down her spine.

Because she knew him.

And she knew what being in a championship fight did to people.

She found out what he’d said before she even saw him.

One of the Mercedes press officers walked in looking pale and furious.

Y/N looked up. “What?”

The woman hesitated.

That was enough to make Y/N stand up.

“What did he say?”

Another pause.

Then: “He told Sky you came in too aggressively and that you should’ve known he was defending.”

For a second, the room tilted.

“No,” she said.

The woman’s expression didn’t change.

“That’s not what happened.”

“I know.”

The pity in her voice nearly made Y/N throw up.

Because one thing was the media spinning it.

One thing was pundits choosing sides.

But Lando?

Lando knew.

He knew exactly what had happened.

He had been there. He had felt it. He had made the move.

And he still blamed her.

Publicly.

“Where is he?”

She found him outside the McLaren hospitality, half-surrounded by PR people and engineers.

He looked up when he saw her.

For one tiny, awful second, she thought maybe he would look guilty.

Maybe horrified.

Maybe human.

He didn’t.

He just looked tense. Defensive. Tired.

“Can we talk?” she asked.

Her voice was so controlled it didn’t even sound like hers.

His PR manager stepped in immediately. “Now’s not a good time—”

“Yes,” Y/N said, eyes still on Lando. “It is.”

They moved far enough away that no microphones could catch them clearly.

The second they were alone, she said, “What the hell was that?”

His jaw tightened. “I told them what happened.”

“No, you didn’t.”

“From my car, you came in too late.”

She actually laughed.

A small, disbelieving, broken sound.

“Are you serious?”

“Y/N...”

“No, answer me. Are you actually serious right now?”

His face hardened. “I’m in the middle of a championship fight.”

The words hit her like a slap.

Not because they were loud.

Because they told her everything.

Everything.

“You think that makes this okay?”

“I think it means every point matters.”

“And so you throw me under the bus?”

His expression flickered : guilt, maybe, but it vanished fast.

“I didn’t throw you under the bus.”

“You blamed me for your mistake.”

His voice sharpened instantly. “It wasn’t all on me.”

She stared at him.

That was somehow worse than the interview.

Because in front of cameras, maybe he could hide inside instinct, inside PR, inside pressure.

But here, in front of her, with no one else listening, he was still doing it.

Still choosing the lie.

“You know what happened,” she said quietly.

He exhaled hard, running a hand through his hair. “I know it was tight.”

“Tight?”

“Don’t do that.”

“Do what?”

“Act like you were completely innocent.”

Her mouth actually fell open.

For a second she couldn’t speak.

Not because the accusation hurt.

Because she had never felt so suddenly, so completely foolish.

All those years. All that history. All the versions of him she had loved and defended and waited for.

And this was the man standing in front of her now.

A man so desperate to protect his title fight, his image, his season, that he would look her in the face and rewrite reality.

“You really mean this,” she whispered.

His face changed then. Just slightly. Enough for her to know some part of him heard how devastated she sounded.

But he still didn’t take it back.

And that was it.

That was the moment she lost him.

Not romantically. Not hopefully. Not tragically.

Completely.

“You know what?” she said, voice shaking now despite all her effort. “I think the worst part is that I actually came here expecting you to tell me the truth.”

“Y/N...”

“No.”

She stepped back.

“I protected you in my head for years. Even when you hurt me, I always had some excuse for you. You were confused, or scared, or under pressure, or not ready, or whatever the fuck else I needed to tell myself so I didn’t have to admit you just… didn’t choose me.”

His face went pale.

“But this?” Her eyes burned. “This is a choice.”

“I’m not doing this with you right now.”

That finished her.

Because of course.

Of course he would say that.

Like she was the unreasonable one.

Like she was asking too much by wanting him to own what he had done.

A laugh tore out of her, wet and ugly and humiliated.

“You already did it,” she said. “You did it the second you opened your mouth.”

Then she turned and walked away before he could see her cry.

The fallout was immediate.

The stewards called it a racing incident with shared responsibility.

The media did not.

The media split exactly how the paddock always split when a famous man in a title fight collided with a woman who already had to prove she belonged.

Half said it was hard racing.

Half said she had been too ambitious, too emotional, too reckless.

She heard every version.

Too aggressive. Too impatient. Should have known better. Should have backed out. Should have remembered what was at stake.

As if what was at stake belonged only to him.

As if her race, her points, her career, her right to fight for position meant less because he was the one with a championship on the line.

As if she was supposed to disappear to protect the narrative.

And the worst part—the truly unbearable part—was that a piece of her started believing it.

By Monday morning, her phone was unusable.

Mentions flooded. Headlines everywhere. Clips of the crash cut to look worse from her angle. Ex-drivers speaking confidently about what she should have done. Fans calling her every name they could think of.

And underneath all of that noise was one devastating thought she could not silence:

Lando could have stopped this.

One honest sentence.

That was all it would have taken.

He didn’t give it.

The next race weekend was the worst of her life.

Not because of the car. Not because of the track.

Because for the first time since she was a little girl, Formula One stopped feeling like the place she had fought her whole life to reach.

It felt hostile. Alien. Like a room she had accidentally walked into and still had not earned the right to stay inside.

She felt it in the garage. In the press conference. In the loaded wording of every question.

And worst of all, she felt it in herself.

Her confidence was gone.

Not all at once.

Just enough that every braking point felt uncertain. Every overtake looked riskier. Every decision suddenly came with the fear that if she got it wrong, everyone would say there, see? told you she didn’t belong here.

She stopped sleeping properly.

Started replaying the crash from angles she had never even seen.

Started wondering if maybe she should have backed out earlier, made herself smaller, safer, easier to forgive.

She hated herself for thinking like that.

And she hated him for putting those thoughts in her head.

Lewis found her alone in the Mercedes hospitality on a Thursday evening, sitting on the floor in full kit, staring at nothing.

He sat beside her without asking.

For a while, he said nothing.

Then: “This isn’t yours.”

She let out a hollow laugh. “Feels like it.”

“It’s not.”

She kept staring ahead. “He said it was.”

Lewis went very still.

“He knows better.”

Her throat tightened so hard it hurt.

“That’s the problem.”

Because Lando did know better.

That was what made it unforgivable.

Not the crash. Not even the blame.

The fact that it came from someone who knew exactly how much harder this sport already was for her, and chose to make it harder anyway.

They did not speak for six weeks.

No text. No apology. No late-night message trying to soften what had happened.

Nothing.

And that silence told her more than any fight ever could.

When he finally approached her again late in the season, it was already too late.

“Can we talk?” he asked.

She looked at him for a long moment.

This time, there was no ache.

Just exhaustion.

“About what?”

“About Singapore.”

She laughed once.

He flinched at the sound.

“No,” she said.

“Y/N...”

“No. You don’t get to do this now.”

He took a step closer. “I was under pressure.”

She stared at him.

Then said, very softly, “And I was under your car.”

That shut him up.

For the first time since the accident, he looked fully ashamed.

It changed nothing.

“I spent years thinking losing you would be the worst thing that could happen to me,” she said. “But it wasn’t losing you.”

His face tightened.

“It was finding out who you become when something matters more to you than I do.”

He looked like she had hit him.

Maybe she had.

Good.

Because she had been carrying the wreckage of him for years.

He could carry one sentence.

She stepped around him before he could answer.

This time, he did not stop her.

That was the fallout.

Not one screaming match.

A crash. A lie. A public betrayal.

And then the slow death of everything that had once made her believe he was the safest place in the paddock.

For the rest of 2025, she drove like someone trying to remember who she had been before she let a boy with soft eyes and terrible timing become the center of her emotional life.

Sometimes she managed it.

Sometimes she didn’t.

But one thing never stopped being true:

Singapore was the moment she lost more than him.

She lost the version of herself that had believed love could survive being chosen second.

And for a while, for the worst stretch of her life, she lost her place in the sport too.

2026

By February 2026, the paddock had started whispering again.

He and Magui were over.

Or maybe off again.

Or maybe just not speaking.

No one ever knew anything for certain, only enough to construct stories out of fragments.

Y/N heard about it the same way she heard everything now—secondhand, half-true, dangerously easy to build hope around.

She told herself she wouldn’t.

She really did.

But hope had never cared much about her promises.

Because if there was one thing more pathetic than loving him for years, it was the small, traitorous part of her that still believed timing had been the real villain all along.

Maybe now, she thought.

Maybe now, older and more bruised and finally forced to look at what they had become, maybe now he would be honest.

He was softer with her again that spring.

More deliberate. Less careless. As if he knew he had no right to ask for easy closeness anymore and was trying, for once, to earn it.

It worked.

Of course it worked.

At Melbourne, they sat on the steps behind hospitality at nearly midnight, sharing terrible vending machine coffee and talking about anything except the years between them.

At Jeddah, he walked her back to her car after a late debrief and lingered long enough that her pulse did embarrassing things.

At Imola, his hand brushed hers on a table between them and neither of them moved away for a full three seconds.

It was not much.

To anyone else, it was nothing.

To her, it was history repeating itself in a softer voice.

And somehow that was even more dangerous.

The breaking point came in Monaco.

Of course it did.

Monaco, where everything looked cinematic and therefore felt crueler.

She had just finished a sponsor event and escaped onto one of the quieter terraces behind the paddock building, heels in one hand, irritation buzzing beneath her skin. She needed five minutes without cameras, without people, without anyone asking if she was excited for qualifying tomorrow.

Instead, she found Lando already there.

He was leaning against the railing, sunset catching on the edge of his profile, jacket undone, looking tired in the sort of beautiful way that would have made her furious once.

Now it just made her tired too.

“Of course you’re here,” she said.

He glanced over, smiled a little. “You say that like it’s a bad thing.”

“Depends.”

“On?”

“You.”

That actually made him laugh.

She moved to stand beside him, close enough to be familiar, not close enough to be intimate.

For a while, neither of them spoke.

Then he said, “I miss this.”

Her heart gave one awful thud.

“This,” she repeated carefully.

“Us. Talking without it turning into a fight.”

She stared out at the harbor lights. “That implies we ever figured out how to do the rest of it.”

He exhaled through his nose, almost a laugh. “Fair.”

Silence again.

Then, quietly, “I’ve been thinking.”

She nearly told him to stop right there.

Nearly said don’t do this unless you mean it.

Instead she asked, “Dangerous.”

He turned toward her fully.

And there was that look again.

That open, searching look that had once made her believe love could survive indecision.

“I was an idiot,” he said.

She let out a soft, humorless laugh. “That’s not exactly breaking news.”

“No, I know.” His mouth twitched briefly, then fell. “I mean with you.”

Every nerve in her body went taut.

He kept going before she could stop him.

“I think I spent years assuming you’d always be there. That no matter how badly I handled things, no matter how long I took to figure myself out, some part of you would still…” He broke off, jaw tightening. “Still care.”

She swallowed hard.

“That’s a hell of a thing to admit.”

“I know.”

He looked wrecked. Earnest. Older than she had ever seen him.

And some stupid, treacherous part of her leaned toward him anyway.

“So what are you saying?” she asked.

The question hung between them.

He looked at her like the answer was simple.

Like honesty, at last, might save them.

“I’m saying I don’t want to keep getting this wrong.”

Her chest hurt.

That was not enough.

That was not clear.

That was not I choose you.

And yet it was more than he had given her in years.

She hated how close she came to accepting crumbs.

“Lando,” she said carefully, “what do you actually want?”

He opened his mouth.

Closed it.

Looked away.

And there it was.

Again.

Always.

That silence.

The same silence that had eaten them alive since 2020.

She stepped back before he could try to fill it with something vague and beautiful and useless.

“No.”

His head snapped up. “What?”

“No,” she repeated, firmer now. “I’m not doing this version of us anymore.”

His expression hardened into confusion. “I’m trying.”

“Trying what?”

“That’s not fair.”

She laughed then, but it came out broken. “You keep saying that every time reality catches up to you.”

He took a step closer. “I’m here, aren’t I?”

The words landed like a slap.

Because yes, he was here.

Now.

After years of being almost brave, almost honest, almost hers.

And maybe once, that would have been enough to make her fall apart in relief.

Now it only made her angry.

“You don’t get credit for showing up late,” she said.

He flinched.

Good.

“You had years,” she went on, voice shaking now despite her best efforts. “Years of me standing there practically loving you in plain sight, and every single time it mattered, you hesitated. You chose someone else, or no one, or confusion, or timing, or whatever excuse made it easier than just telling me the truth.”

His face had gone pale under the terrace lights.

“I was scared.”

That nearly undid her.

Because it was probably true.

Because it was the first truly honest thing he had said in the entire conversation.

She nodded once, tears stinging hot behind her eyes. “I know.”

He looked at her then like that should fix something.

Like being understood had always been the closest thing to absolution he knew how to ask for.

It didn’t.

“And I was patient,” she said softly. “For way too long.”

He said her name like a plea.

She shook her head.

“No. Listen to me this time.”

He went quiet.

“I loved you,” she said.

The past tense shattered something visible in him.

“And maybe some part of me always will. But whatever this is now—whatever you think you’re offering me—it’s not enough. It was not enough in 2023, it wasn’t enough after Singapore, and it’s definitely not enough now.”

His eyes were glassy.

She had never seen him look so completely unguarded.

“You’re really done.”

It was not a question.

She looked at him, really looked at him.

At the boy she had met in 2019.

At the man he had become.

At all the versions of him she had loved and waited for and mourned while he was still standing right in front of her.

And then she did the hardest thing she had ever done in her life.

“Yes.”

He shut his eyes briefly, like the word had physical weight.

When he opened them again, he looked wrecked.

Not dramatic. Not cinematic.

Just a man arriving too late to the life he should have chosen.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

And that, more than anything, made her want to cry.

Because she believed him.

Finally, completely, uselessly believed him.

“I know,” she whispered.

For a moment, neither of them moved.

Then he gave a small nod, the kind people give when they understand they have lost something by their own hand.

“Okay.”

It was such a simple word.

So unbearably gentle.

She hated it.

He stepped back first this time.

Not because he wanted to.

Because he finally understood he had to.

“Goodbye, Y/N.”

Her heart broke so quietly she was almost impressed by it.

“Goodbye, Lando.”

And that was it.

No grand final kiss.

No dramatic chase.

No miraculous timing.

Just two people who had loved each other for too long and never well enough at the right moment.

She saw him after that, of course.

Formula One was too small, too relentless, too incapable of mercy for anything else.

She saw him across garages and briefing rooms and podium celebrations that belonged to one of them but never both. She saw him in interviews, in the corner of photographs, in the machinery of a sport that never stopped long enough to let anyone grieve properly.

And each time, it hurt a little less.

Not because he mattered less.

Because she was finally learning how to matter to herself more.

By the end of 2026, people still asked questions sometimes.

Fans. Journalists. Paddock staff who thought they were subtle and absolutely were not.

Had something ever happened between them?

Were they ever really as close as people thought?

Did she ever think about what might have been?

She always answered with the same small smile.

“We were young,” she would say.

Which was true.

And not the whole truth.

Because the whole truth was this:

They had loved each other in the wrong tense.

Always almost.

Always eventually.

Always someday.

And someday, it turned out, was not a real place.

The end.

“Hey, it’s been awhile.” His voice was so familiar but of course it was.

“Yeah. That it has.” Your response barely audible given your surprise to see his face so suddenly. 

He gestured for you to come in, the warmth of his apartment embracing you once again. The smell of citrus and cherry filled your nose as you took a deep breath. He led you down a hallway and into the dining room. It didn’t have much, these Monaco apartments never do. Across the room from the hallway’s archway resided a rounded, wooden table and its two chairs, those of which were already pulled out. The lighting was dim, overhead and warm. A couple of mugs sat on the table, steam escaping them. 

Both you and Oscar approached the table, taking your seats. His hands clasped just behind his mug, playing a thumb war while yours rested in your lap. There was no need to reach for the mug, even though you knew the second stepping into his apartment, he had remembered your favorite tea. After what felt like the longest stretch of time, he finally glanced back up from staring into the mug he set out for himself and your eyes pierced into his at once.

“What did you really think of our ‘relationship’?” You questioned, tilting your head and finally breaking the silence.

“That’s…a loaded question, isn’t it?” He scoffed with no malice behind it. “I saw it as my team’s way of fixing an issue that was never going to fix itself. But as time went on, my opinion changed, considerably at that. You know that.” He scratched the back of his neck and gestured as if it was always this easy to get an answer out of him.

“Did it, Oscar? How much?” you pressed him.

“Enough that sometimes I still feel like I’m tryna figure you out. I always liked doing that.”

“So much so that we had to break things off because even the media could see how much you ‘liked’ me those last few months of the season. Is that right, Oscar?” You scoffed and shook your head, the same old disappointment firing up as you crossed your arms over your chest. “It was all fake, wasn’t it? Every moment last summer and winter was just my imagination.”

“No- no. None of it was, I’d never waste your time like that. Honestly, I’m not that good of an actor.” He leaned forward, a hand on his own chest now.

“At the time though, I thought so.” A sharp roll of your eyes almost sent them back permanently. 

“And now what do you think?”

“I think I fell in love with you.” 

Complete and utterly uncomfortable silence wrapped around both of you like a thick blanket you cannot let loose from. He was so desperate to know as if it wasn’t obvious. As if you hadn’t spent the last year thinking it was the same for him.

“That’s, uhm, a lot to take in.” His eyes flickered down to his mug once again as he wrapped a hand around it. “I don’t even know what to say.”

In a second, you pressed your palms into the edge of the table and pushed yourself up, tears already welling up. You stepped into the hallway but Oscar was after you in less than a second and grabbing your wrist, your head whipping back towards him.

“Don’t go. Please. I just needed a minute.” His pleading sent a wave of confusion through your entire body and your eyebrows furrowing up at him.

“What’s there to process, Oscar? I loved you and you don’t feel the same.” Tears were stinging the inner corners of your eyes and helplessly rolled down your cheeks as you tried to fight them.

“You’re telling me for the last couple years, everything we’ve done… you meant it and it wasn’t just for show?” The words felt unreal for a second, like he couldn’t believe it.

“Of course I did, Oscar. But you didn’t even care towards the end and treated me like an inconvenience to your stupid fucking championship battle.” You yanked your wrist free of his hand and tilted your head back on a wall behind you, his hands returning to his side.

“I thought I was giving you space. The championship wasn’t the only thing on my mind, I swear.” He claimed.

“Then why’d it feel like it? Why did the last four months of the year only ever consist of debriefs from hell, barely any calls, and you cancelling dinner last minute for meetings with Zak?”

“Because… I’m a bloody idiot.” He sighed and hung his head for a second before his eyes were back on you. “I let the pressure get to me trying to win; trying to be what everyone expected of me. I lost you in the process and I hate myself for it.”

“Yeah, well, I hate that I fell in love with someone who put his job above everything that wasn’t a race or that damn car.”

His hands twitched at his sides then came to cup cradle your face gently, thumbs wiping your tears and pressing into the soft skin of your cheeks. “Please love, don’t say that. Please, please, I know I messed up but I never stopped caring about you. God, I just always want to be near you. I never stopped loving you and I can’t remember a time when I didn’t.”

I never stopped loving you.

The words rang and echoed in your ears while something twisted in your stomach. You fixed your mouth to reply but it was useless, you truly had no words.

All the late nights on the phone, the weeks in between races spent in this very apartment, and the mornings you woke up to his forearm draped over your waist came rushing back at once. It wasn’t always easy to enter his space, not at first, but after a few real conversations on fake dates set up by his management for a paparazzi appearance, he had let you in. What you loved was getting to know the real Oscar, the one unknown by the cameras and the fans, the one beyond the ‘stone cold’ rumors. He was soft and sweet and deliberate. 

He hadn’t been as he appeared in the paddock. Sure, he was certainly a lot calmer in disagreements than other guys you’d been involved with, but he was tender. If you had a long day, busy doing your own work while accompanying him to the paddock, he’d stroke your hair with you laid out on the couch, your head in his lap as you complained. He never interrupted, he just let you vent. He’d listen and you knew he was doing so when he’d respond with actual solutions. But then…he stopped. The quiet man became too quiet one day. There was no exact day it happened or that you realised it, but it happened at some point when the race to the championship finish line drew close. The days of ‘accidentally’ falling asleep in each other’s hotel rooms and going out just cause you both felt like it, ebbed and ended.

“You remember Austria right? They pranked me with that silly trophy at first, it had all those twisted and contorted metal tubes, like some kinda optical illusion.” He huffed out a small but melodic laugh. “I was so confused and kept my poker face for as long as I could until I imagined your laugh at the TV and suddenly I couldn’t hold mine in anymore. I almost took it with me just to show you when I got back to Monaco.”

“I would’ve loved it. I just- fuck, wish I knew all this back then, Osc.”, you muttered into the space between you two as you gazed into his deep, brown eyes. 

His eyes softened impossibly more after the nickname slipped from your lips which his eyes flickered down to. You noticed immediately and tried to turn your head to the side, his hands holding on for dear life as your neck strained.

“And Silverstone? I remember it like it was yesterday. Your dress, yeah? It was some kind of light blue, it matched your shoes and you wore your hair out, I thought you looked so pretty like that. You always do though. I couldn’t stop kissing your hair, I didn’t wanna mess up your sunscreen.” He huffed out a small laugh. “Then I binned it in quali. God, I remember thinking I had disappointed you.”

“You didn’t disappoint me, at least not then.” 

“I should’ve said something, anything. Knowing you were hurting like this hurts me and I know that’s not what you wanna hear but I need you to.” A small murmur of his broke the silence. 

“What I really need is to know why you pushed me away just as things were settling into place for us. I know what this sport does to people, I’ve seen it firsthand, trust me. But I have always let you know how much I’m here for you…how much you could lean on me.” You professed. “We had something real, something that wasn’t perfect but it was ours.”

“It still is. It still can be.”

“Don’t do that. Don’t make promises you can’t keep, Oscar.” A small pout curved into your lips.

When he was remorseful, you always knew it was real, you could always count on it. But when he disappeared from your relationship, you had needed to convince yourself that this is how it was always supposed to go. You weren’t supposed to actually like each other behind the scenes, it was never a requirement set by his management, it just needed to look like it and they were satisfied.

As he continued to hold your face, his grip became firm and he leaned in, just as he did for the first time almost two years ago. He was in no rush as his lips pressed into yours; soft and supple as always. Both his hands slid down to your waist just as your own had gripped onto his upper arms. You weren’t pushing him away, no, you were pulling him in and in no time were wrapped around his neck. If it weren’t for your heart hammering in your chest and echoing in your ears, you’d hear the soft and desperate sounds coming out of Oscar. The kiss deepened. He bit your lip, stealing forgotten words right out of your mouth. He was attached to you in a way you never wanted to let go of. His hands snaked their way up into your hoodie, thumbs brushing over your ribs on either side and giving you a reason to make your own soft noises before his lips halted and broke apart from yours.

He rested his forehead against your own and he sighed so deep you could see it when his chest expanded.

“I’ll do better. I want you, I need you; all of you.” A promise you had heard more often than his anthem at a Grand Prix. “I never want to lose you again.”

The world erupts in noise.

It arrives like a wave you cannot duck under, like the entire pit lane has decided to inhale at once and then scream out the same breath. Champagne pops somewhere to your left. A radio crackles to life and dies again. Someone is laughing so hard it turns into a sob. Someone is shouting Lando’s name like saying it loud enough will make the truth stick.

Your ears ring from it.

Your chest aches.

Joy is supposed to feel light, but this one has weight. It presses into your ribs, into the back of your throat, into the tender space behind your eyes. You taste metal and champagne and fireworks, like your body is trying to memorize every molecule of this moment before the world steals it.

You barely see him at first.

There are too many people between you and the pit wall, too many arms thrown up in the air, too many bodies surging forward like the moment itself has gravity. A blur of papaya. A flash of a helmet. The sharp bite of smoke in the air. A hard squeeze of your own hands because you do not know what to do with them.

Then you see him.

Helmet coming off. Hair flattened and damp with sweat. Face flushed and stunned and split wide with a grin that looks like it might crack him open. His eyes are red at the edges, and he is blinking like he cannot quite make the world come into focus.

Champion.

The word does not feel real yet. It feels like something you once whispered into his shoulder on the bad weekends just to make him laugh. It feels like something you promised him when he was angry and hurting and convinced the world would never give him what he deserved.

He turns, scanning.

For half a second you think you will lose him to the tide. Someone grabs him by the shoulders and shakes him. Someone shouts in his face. Cameras swarm like insects. A headset is pushed toward him. He is tugged, spun, directed.

He swerves anyway.

Straight toward you.

You do not know how he spots you so fast, but suddenly he is there, hands on your face like he has to check you are real, forehead pressed to yours, breath shaking and laughing at the same time.

“I did it,” he says, voice breaking on the word. “I actually did it.”

I.

It is the smallest word, and it carries years inside it. Early mornings and late nights. Airports and delays. His stubborn hope and steady hands. The way he stayed anchored when the world wanted him shiny and untouchable.

You laugh, half-sob, half-gasp, and nod because if you try to speak you will lose it completely. Your fingers dig into his jaw like you are holding him here.

“I’m so proud of you,” you manage. “I’m so… Lando, I’m so proud of you.”

He kisses you like the world might disappear if he does not.

Quick and messy and all adrenaline, like he needs something solid to keep him from floating away. Cameras flash immediately. You barely notice the heat of them. In this moment, the pit lane could be empty, the world could be quiet, and it would still feel like everything.

For a heartbeat, it is just the two of you.

Then the moment gets stolen.

A hand on his shoulder. Another. Someone urgent, someone important. A microphone appears. A camera is suddenly right in his face. His name is called again and again like he is a bell people cannot stop ringing.

You step back automatically, already trained in the choreography of his world. You make space. You always have.

You watch him answer questions, laugh, swear, wipe at his face with the back of his hand like he does not realize there are tears there. He looks electric. Alive in a way you have never seen before, like he has been struck by lightning and decided to keep it.

And still, every few minutes, he looks back for you.

Like a tether.

When the chaos settles into something more organized, he finds you again, breathless and glowing, wrapping an arm around your shoulders like he is claiming you as much as the trophy.

“This is insane,” he says, shaking his head. “This is actually insane.”

You smile up at him, the pride in your chest so warm it is almost painful. “You did it.”

“I know,” he says, laughing. “I actually…” He stops, grin widening, disbelief returning like a fresh wave. “I actually did it.”

There is champagne again. More photos. More noise. His name chanted by people who do not know him at all and somehow know him completely.

It feels surreal. Like a dream that keeps shifting every time you try to focus on it.

That night blurs into celebration.

A team dinner that turns into drinks that turn into something louder and brighter and more public than you are used to. The restaurant is all warm light and polished glass, faces flushed with joy, hands slapped on backs. The air smells like citrus and bubbles and expensive cologne. Every time you turn your head, someone new is reaching for him.

A handshake.

A photo.

A story.

A moment.

Lando eats it up.

Not cruelly. Not arrogantly. Just fully. Like he has been holding his breath for years and finally gets to exhale.

You stay close, but not glued. You know when to step back. You always have.

At one point, you catch his eye across the room. He lifts his glass toward you, eyebrows raised, grin cocky and boyish.

Champion.

You grin back, warmth blooming in your chest.

Later, when the crowd thins just enough, you slip up beside him and lean close so only he can hear you.

“Hey,” you say softly. “You okay?”

He laughs. “I’ve never been better.”

“I figured,” you tease, pressing your shoulder lightly into his arm. “I just wanted a minute. With you.”

He nods, distracted but smiling. “Yeah, yeah. Just give me a sec, okay?”

A hand lands on his shoulder again. Someone with a suit and a badge and a congratulatory tone that sounds like opportunity.

“Just a sec,” he repeats, already turning away.

You wait.

And wait.

The room keeps moving around you. Glasses clink. People cheer. Someone toasts him again, and it feels like they are toasting a version of him that is growing taller by the second.

By the time he comes back, he is flushed again, eyes bright, energy buzzing under his skin.

“Sorry,” he says quickly. “That was… wow. You should’ve heard what they were saying.”

You smile, even though something small in your chest tightens. “Sounds big.”

“It is,” he says, breathless. “Everything is. I feel like…” He stops, laughs, shakes his head. “I don’t know. I feel unstoppable.”

The word lands a little heavier than it should.

You lean into him anyway, resting your head briefly against his shoulder. “You don’t have to be unstoppable right now,” you murmur. “You can just be you.”

He laughs again, louder this time, like you have said something cute and slightly naïve.

“I know,” he says easily. “I am me.”

Then someone calls his name, and he answers without hesitation, already halfway gone.

You watch him go, pride still warm in your chest, love still steady and real.

But somewhere underneath it all, a quieter thought slips in.

This is new.

And you’re not sure yet what it’s going to cost.

The first night, you tell yourself it’s just adrenaline.

The second, you realize the adrenaline never really leaves. It just changes shape, settling into something constant and humming beneath everything, like the volume knob on his life has been snapped clean off.

You wake up to the glow of his phone lighting the room, the soft buzz of notifications arriving like tiny insects that will not stop tapping at the window.

He is still in bed next to you, but his attention is already elsewhere.

His thumb flicks. Flicks again. A grin tugs at the corner of his mouth like he is trying not to look too pleased with himself.

“Look,” he whispers, shoving the screen toward you like a kid showing off a new toy.

It is a video. The kiss. The champagne. The moment that belonged to you for a heartbeat and then belonged to everyone.

You smile because you do. Because you love him. Because you are proud.

But there is something strange about seeing it like this, flattened into pixels and views and comments, strangers writing things about him like they know him.

He scrolls through them anyway.

He scrolls like he is hungry.

The days after the championship feel unreal in a different way.

Not loud and chaotic like the win itself, but relentless. Interviews blur into sponsor appearances. Congratulations stack on top of each other until they stop sounding like words and start sounding like a soundtrack you cannot turn off.

Lando is everywhere.

His face on screens. His name trending. His phone buzzing nonstop on every surface he sets it down on. He barely lets it out of his hand anymore, like if he looks away for too long, this version of his life might vanish.

You tell yourself not to take it personally.

You tell yourself this is temporary. That this is what happens when someone reaches the top. That he deserves to soak it in, because God knows he worked for it.

You tell yourself all of this while sitting beside him at dinners where he does not introduce you by name.

“This is my girl,” he says into rooms full of people who lean closer when he speaks, who laugh a half-second too loudly like they are afraid not laughing might cost them something.

My.

The word hits oddly, possessive in a way that would have been playful on any other day. But now it is said like a claim, like a label.

You smile anyway.

At first, it feels like pride.

You watch him light up when people recognize him, when strangers lean in a little too close, when compliments stack so high he almost trips over them. You laugh when he laughs. You nod when he recounts stories about the race like you were not there, like you did not see the same thing from three feet away.

You start noticing the way people look at you now.

Not unfriendly. Not always.

Just curious. Measuring.

Like you are part of the package.

Someone asks you what it is like, being with a champion.

You open your mouth to answer.

Lando cuts in smoothly. “She’s good,” he says. “She can handle it. She's been around long enough.”

He does not look at you when he says it.

The person laughs like it is charming.

You laugh too, a second late.

You tell yourself you are being sensitive.

Then it happens again.

A different dinner. Different faces. Same warm lights and expensive wine and the constant sense that you are sitting too straight because you do not want to be the one who ruins the vibe.

Someone turns to you, bright-eyed and kind. “You must be so proud,” she says.

You open your mouth.

Before you can answer, Lando does.

“She keeps me sane,” he says lightly, tipping his head toward you without looking. “Really good at keeping things grounded. Great at staying out of the chaos.”

It sounds like a compliment.

It even earns a laugh.

You feel yourself go still.

Staying out of the way has always been the skill you built to survive this world. You learned how to step back when the cameras appeared. How to swallow irritation when plans changed last minute. How to become small so his life could be big.

But hearing him say it like that, like it is your best feature, scratches something raw.

Later, when you mention it quietly in the hallway, he barely slows his stride.

“It wasn’t that deep,” he says. “You know I was joking.”

“Okay,” you say, because what else can you say.

He reaches for your hand like that should fix it. His grip is warm. Familiar.

His eyes are already on his phone.

You let it go.

You let a lot of things go.

Because you are proud of him. Because you do not want to be the person who makes this harder. Because every time you start to feel small, you remind yourself that this is not about you.

But it starts to add up.

Conversations trail off because his attention drifts to whoever just walked into the room. Meals pass where he is technically sitting across from you but answering messages under the table. Plans shift last minute because someone important suddenly wants his time.

You start learning the shape of his new fame by the way it takes him away.

Not with malice.

With momentum.

He is pulled constantly. He lets himself be pulled.

And you, who have always been good at making room, start to feel like you have become the empty space that makes all of it possible.

You adapt. You always do.

When he comes back buzzing with energy, recounting who he talked to and what they said and what doors might open now, you listen. You smile. You tell him how incredible it is.

And it is.

But sometimes you catch yourself wondering when he will ask how you are.

One night, a few days in, you are sitting together on the hotel bed, legs tucked under you, his trophy resting on the table across the room like a quiet third presence. The room smells faintly of detergent and city rain, that clean hotel scent that never quite feels like home.

Lando is stretched out beside you, scrolling through his phone, grin lazy and satisfied.

“Did you see this one?” he asks, holding the screen out toward you.

It is another clip. Another angle. Another reminder of a moment you were physically present for and somehow already feel excluded from.

“I was there,” you say gently.

He laughs. “Yeah, but look at it. That’s mad, right?”

You nod. “Yeah. It is.”

He keeps scrolling.

Your chest tightens in a way you try to ignore.

You hesitate, then reach out, fingers brushing his arm. “Hey. Do you want to do something tonight? Just us?”

He glances at you, distracted. “Like what?”

“I don’t know,” you say. “Order in. Watch something dumb. Not… this.” You gesture vaguely at the room, the noise, the constant pull of the outside world.

He considers it, eyes flicking back to his phone like it might interrupt.

“Maybe,” he says. “There’s just this thing later. And then the guys wanted to go out after.”

You try to keep your voice light. “We haven’t really had a night. Since…”

“Since I won?” he finishes for you, smiling like it is obvious. “Yeah, because that’s kind of the point, isn’t it?”

It is said like a joke.

It does not feel like one.

Your chest tightens, small and sharp.

“Okay,” you say. “Another night, then.”

“Yeah,” he replies easily. “We’ve got time.”

The words should reassure you.

They don’t.

Because you’re starting to feel like time is the one thing you don’t have with him anymore.

It becomes easiest to notice when other people are around.

When it’s just the two of you, there are still flashes of the boy you know. The way he hums absentmindedly when he’s brushing his teeth. The way he automatically reaches for you in his sleep. The way he still curls into you when the day finally drains him dry.

But the moment the door opens, the moment there’s a room full of people and expectation and noise, something in him shifts.

Back in the hotel room one night, you sit cross-legged on the bed while Lando paces, phone pressed to his ear. The city glows beyond the window, all neon and movement, like it’s still celebrating without you. He’s halfway through another call, voice animated, laughing in that sharp, bright way he’s picked up lately.

“Yeah, yeah, I know,” he says. “It’s mad. No, seriously. I didn’t even think—yeah, we’ll talk.”

He hangs up and exhales, running a hand through his hair like he’s riding a buzz he doesn’t want to come down from.

“Sorry,” he says, already reaching for his charger. “That was quick.”

It wasn’t.

You nod anyway. “Everything okay?”

“Yeah,” he replies easily. “Just stuff.”

Stuff.

You watch him plug his phone in, watch the screen light up again immediately. Another message. Another pull.

You hesitate, then speak before you can lose your nerve.

“Can I ask you something?”

He hums distractedly, eyes still on the screen. “Mm-hm.”

“Do you still like being alone with me?”

That gets his attention.

He looks up, brows knitting together. “What kind of question is that?”

“I’m serious,” you say. “It feels like every time we have a second, something else takes priority.”

He scoffs lightly. “You know that’s not true.”

“I don’t know,” you say quietly. “It kind of feels like it is.”

He exhales, rubbing at the back of his neck. “You’re doing that thing again.”

“What thing?”

“Where you make it bigger than it is,” he replies. “This is just how it is right now.”

“Is it?” you ask. “Or is this just how you are now?”

The air shifts.

His posture straightens, defensive instinct snapping into place. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means I miss you,” you say. “And I don’t think you even notice.”

“That’s not fair,” he says immediately. “I’ve got a lot going on.”

“I know,” you reply. “I’m not asking you to stop winning. I’m asking you to stop acting like nothing else matters.”

He laughs, sharp and disbelieving. “Nothing else matters? You hear yourself?”

Your chest tightens. “I just want one night where you’re not ‘on.’ Where you’re not performing.”

“I’m not performing,” he snaps. “This is me.”

The words land like a slap.

“No,” you say, shaking your head. “This is you when people are watching.”

His jaw tightens. “You’re acting like I’ve changed into some monster.”

“I’m acting like I don’t recognize you,” you say, voice trembling despite your effort to keep it steady.

He scoffs again, pacing now. “So what, you want me to dim myself down? Pretend this isn’t happening?”

“I want you to come sit with me,” you say. “I want you to ask how I am without checking your phone. I want you to want quiet with me the way you used to.”

He stops pacing and looks at you like you’ve asked him to give something up.

“You knew what you signed up for,” he says. “This is part of it.”

Something inside you fractures.

“I signed up to love you,” you say softly. “Not chase you.”

He shakes his head, frustrated. “You’re making this harder than it needs to be.”

“Because you’re not listening,” you say.

“I am listening,” he insists.

“No,” you reply. “You’re waiting for your turn to talk.”

Silence stretches between you, tight and uncomfortable.

Finally, he exhales hard. “I don’t know what you want from me.”

You swallow. “I want my boyfriend back.”

The room goes very still.

He laughs, humorless. “I am your boyfriend.”

“Then why do I feel like I’m competing with everyone else for you?” you ask.

He looks away. That feels like an answer.

“You’re being dramatic,” he says finally.

There it is.

Your hands curl into fists at your sides. “I’m telling you I feel invisible.”

“And I’m telling you you’re blowing this out of proportion,” he snaps. “I finally have everything I’ve worked for and you’re upset because I’m busy?”

That’s when it really hurts.

Not because he’s busy.

Because he’s reducing you to an inconvenience.

“I just wanted one night,” you say quietly. “One.”

“Well, I can’t do that,” he replies without hesitation. “Not right now.”

The finality of it knocks the air out of you.

You nod slowly, a strange calm settling over you. “Okay.”

“Okay?” he repeats, confused.

“Okay,” you say again. “Then I think I need some space.”

His eyes flash. “You’re really going to do this now?”

“I don’t know when else I can,” you reply. “You don’t leave room.”

He runs a hand through his hair, frustration boiling over. “Why can’t you just be happy for me?”

The question lands like an accusation.

“I am happy for you,” you say, voice breaking. “I just don’t feel like there’s room for me in it anymore.”

“That’s on you,” he snaps.

Something in you goes cold.

You grab your jacket from the chair. Your hands are shaking, but your voice is steady when you speak.

“If that’s what you think,” you say, “then you don’t know me at all.”

He steps forward instinctively. “Wait.”

You stop at the door and turn back, eyes glossy but resolved.

“I love you,” you say. “But I won’t beg to be seen.”

The door clicks shut behind you.

The sound echoes louder than any crowd ever has.

The silence is immediate.

It rushes in the second the door shuts behind you, filling the room so completely that for a moment Lando just stands there, staring at the place you were standing like if he waits long enough, you’ll come back through it. Like this is all some kind of dramatic pause he hasn’t learned how to respond to yet.

You don’t.

The city hums faintly beyond the window, distant traffic and neon glow reminding him that the world is still moving, still loud, still very much alive.

Inside the room, it feels dead quiet.

“Fuck,” he mutters.

He drags a hand down his face, the adrenaline finally draining out of him now that there’s nowhere for it to go. His chest feels tight in a way he doesn’t like, pressure building without an obvious release.

He paces. Once. Twice. Stops near the bed, then turns and crosses the room again. His phone is in his hand before he realizes he’s picked it up, thumb hovering over your name.

You didn’t mean it like that.

He types it out. Stares at it. Deletes it.

You’re just tired.

Deletes that too.

This is a lot for both of us.

He scoffs at himself and clears the screen.

None of it sounds like an apology. It all sounds like an explanation, like he’s trying to make you understand instead of actually listening to what you said. And even in his own head, that feels wrong.

He drops onto the edge of the bed and exhales hard, elbows braced on his knees. His leg bounces uncontrollably, restless energy with nowhere to land.

Across the room, the trophy catches the light.

It gleams on the table, polished and perfect and heavy. Proof of everything he’s ever wanted. Proof that he did it.

Champion.

The word sits strangely in his chest now. Less triumphant. More… hollow.

“I did it,” he says aloud, like saying it might make the room agree with him.

The room doesn’t answer.

For the first time since the championship, the noise doesn’t help.

The messages, the praise, the constant validation he’s been riding all week suddenly feel thin, like they’ve been propping something up instead of filling it. He wonders, uncomfortably, if he’s been using it to drown something out.

He thinks about the way you looked at him when you said you didn’t recognize him.

Not angry.

Not dramatic.

Just hurt.

That’s what finally gets him.

Not the fight. Not the door slamming. The certainty in your voice when you said you wouldn’t beg to be seen.

His phone buzzes in his hand. Another congratulatory message. Another clip. Another reminder that the world thinks he’s untouchable right now.

He turns the phone face down.

The next morning, he wakes up alone.

That’s new.

The bed feels too big, sheets cool where your body should be. For a moment, half-asleep, he reaches out instinctively, fingers brushing nothing but empty space.

Reality crashes in all at once.

He sits up slowly, running a hand through his hair, eyes landing on the door like it might open if he looks at it long enough.

It doesn’t.

His phone lights up again on the nightstand. Messages stacked one after the other. Interviews. Appearances. Congratulations.

He scrolls without really reading them.

Then he starts trying to fix it.

The way he’s been fixing everything else.

The first attempt is fast and instinctive, fueled by the same confidence that’s been carrying him all week. He books brunch at a place you once mentioned liking, adds a note about a private room. Quiet. No cameras. He sends the confirmation to you like it should explain everything.

Flowers follow. Of course they do. Big and expensive and impossible to ignore. A card attached in his neat handwriting.

Let me take you out. We’ll talk. I love you.

It feels right when he sends it.

Like action. Like control.

When there’s no response, that confidence starts to crack.

By the afternoon, the quiet has turned sharp. His chest feels tight again, nerves buzzing under his skin in a way he doesn’t know how to shake. He paces the room, phone glued to his hand, checking it far too often.

When you finally answer his call, relief floods him so fast it almost knocks the air out of his lungs.

“Hey,” he says quickly, voice too bright. “Okay, listen. I messed up. I know that. But I’ve got this idea—”

“Lando,” you interrupt gently. “What are you doing?”

“I’m fixing it,” he replies immediately. “I booked us a table tonight. Private. No media. I made sure of it.”

There’s a pause on the line.

“I didn’t ask for that,” you say.

The words hit harder than he expects.

“Well, yeah, but—” He stumbles slightly. “I thought you’d like it. I thought if we just had somewhere nice to go—”

“That’s not the point,” you say, tired now. “I didn’t leave because I wanted a nicer dinner.”

His frustration spikes, sharp and defensive. “So what, you just want me to sit around and do nothing? Ignore everything else?”

“No,” you say. “I want you to listen to me.”

“I am listening,” he insists.

You don’t raise your voice. You don’t have to.

“You’re not,” you say quietly. “You’re trying to buy your way out of this.”

The accusation lands, ugly and undeniable.

“You think I don’t care?” he asks, wounded now. “I’m trying to show you I care.”

“I know you care,” you reply. “But you’re showing me everything except what I asked for.”

He exhales hard, hand dragging through his hair. “I don’t get it.”

“I know,” you say. “And that’s the problem.”

The call ends shortly after.

Lando sits on the edge of the bed, staring at his phone like it’s personally betrayed him.

That night, the trophy looks different.

It sits on the table where he left it, polished and gleaming and heavy, like a witness. He stares at it for a long time, then lets himself slump forward, elbows on his knees, hands tangled in his hair.

“I did it,” he mutters again.

The room stays silent.

For the first time since the championship, the noise doesn’t drown anything out.

The thought slips in uninvited and unwelcome.

What if winning cost him the one person who loved him before any of this mattered?

The idea settles in his chest, ugly and persistent.

And no amount of attention is enough to make it go away.

The waiting is worse than the silence.

Lando is used to waiting for lights to go out, for calls on the radio, for moments where everything balances on a fraction of a second. This is different. This is slow and shapeless and entirely out of his control.

He doesn’t chase you this time.

That feels important.

He keeps his phone on the table, face down, even when it buzzes. Even when his instincts scream at him to do something, say something, fix something. He forces himself to sit with the discomfort instead of trying to outrun it.

It gives him too much space to think.

He thinks about all the times you were quiet for his sake. All the times you swallowed things so he could shine. How often you made yourself smaller so his world could be bigger, and how easily he took that for granted once the world started applauding him for it.

He thinks about the way he said unstoppable.

The word tastes wrong now.

By the time your message finally comes, it’s late afternoon. The light in the room has shifted, softer now, the city outside washed in pale gold.

Can we talk tonight? Somewhere quiet.

His chest tightens, relief and fear tangling together.

Anywhere you want, he types, deletes, then tries again.

Yeah. Of course. Just tell me where.

You send an address.

Nothing flashy. Nothing impressive. A small café you used to love before everything got loud.

He doesn’t overthink what he wears.

No team kit. No logo. No jacket that turns him into something other than a person. Just a hoodie and jeans, hair still a little messy like he didn’t try too hard.

He leaves the trophy behind on purpose.

When he gets there, you’re already waiting.

You sit at a corner table with a drink in front of you, hands wrapped around the mug like it’s doing something important. The café is warm and dim, rain tapping softly against the windows, the kind of place that absorbs sound instead of amplifying it.

You look tired.

Not broken.

Just guarded.

He stops a few feet away, unsure if he’s allowed closer.

“Hey,” he says quietly.

You look up. “Hey.”

He doesn’t reach for you. Doesn’t try to hug you. He sits across from you and places his hands flat on the table, palms open, like he’s trying to show you he’s not hiding anything.

“I’m not here to take you anywhere,” he says. “Or to make a big thing out of this. I just wanted to talk. If that’s still okay.”

You nod once. “It is.”

The silence between you is careful. Not hostile. Just fragile.

“I was awful,” he says. He doesn’t soften it. “I let it get to my head, and I took it out on you.”

You watch him closely. “Why?”

He swallows. “Because everything felt like it would disappear if I didn’t hold onto it. And I confused attention with confidence.”

He shakes his head slightly. “I thought being loud meant I was finally secure. I was wrong.”

You don’t interrupt.

“I tried to fix it the way I fix everything else,” he continues. “With access. With plans. With money. Like if I could just make it look good enough, it would feel better.”

Your jaw tightens. “It didn’t.”

“I know,” he says immediately. “You didn’t want to be impressed. You wanted to be chosen.”

The words hang between you.

“I made you feel invisible,” he says quietly. “And that’s on me.”

You take a slow breath. “I felt like I stopped being a person and started being something you managed.”

The honesty hurts, but he nods. “I did that. And I’m sorry.”

You look down at your hands. “I didn’t leave because I don’t love you. I left because I was disappearing.”

His voice breaks just slightly. “I never want to be the reason you feel like that.”

The waiter comes by. He waits until you order before asking for anything himself.

You notice.

When you leave the café, the rain has slowed to a mist. The street is quiet, reflective, lights smeared across wet pavement. He walks beside you, hands in his pockets, giving you space even though it clearly costs him something.

At your door, you hesitate.

“I’m not fixed,” you say.

“I know,” he replies. “I’m not either.”

You meet his eyes. “But this helped.”

He nods, relief careful and contained. “I’ll take that.”

He doesn’t kiss you.

He just says, “Text me when you get inside,” and waits until you do.

It isn’t a dramatic reunion.

It isn’t a clean ending.

But it’s honest.

And for the first time since the championship, it feels like something real again.

It doesn’t fix itself overnight.

That’s the first thing Lando learns.

The instinct to fill silence still flares up in him. The itch to check his phone, to see who’s watching, to reach for the reassurance of being wanted by the world. He feels it in his chest like a phantom limb, a reflex built from weeks of constant noise.

The difference now is that he notices.

The first time you’re back in the paddock together after the fight, he almost slips without thinking. Someone congratulates him, asks him how it feels, and the old rhythm rises easily to his tongue.

He stops himself mid-sentence.

“Yeah, it’s been good,” he says instead, softer. “A lot. Still settling.”

It feels strange. Smaller.

It feels right.

Later, when someone turns to you and asks how you’re holding up with all the travel, he doesn’t answer for you. He doesn’t squeeze your shoulder or redirect the question. He waits.

You answer.

He watches you do it, something warm and steady blooming in his chest that has nothing to do with applause.

That night, back in the hotel room, his phone buzzes on the bedside table. He glances at it automatically, then catches himself.

“Do you mind if I check this?” he asks.

The question surprises you.

You shrug. “Go ahead.”

He looks at the screen, reads the message, then turns the phone face down anyway.

“It can wait,” he says.

He sits with the discomfort of that choice. Lets it itch. Lets it pass.

It keeps happening in small, unremarkable moments.

He asks before changing plans. He notices when your smile doesn’t quite reach your eyes. He listens all the way through when you talk instead of jumping in with reassurance or solutions.

Once, when someone jokes about him being untouchable now, he laughs and shakes his head.

“Trust me,” he says. “I’m very touchable.”

He catches your eye when he says it.

Later, alone, he admits quietly, “I almost liked it when they said that.”

You nod. “I know.”

“I don’t want to anymore,” he says.

And he means it.

The rebuilding is quiet.

There’s no announcement when you slip back into each other’s routines. No dramatic moment where everything suddenly feels fixed. It happens in increments, stitched together by consistency and care.

He shows up when he says he will.

He plans dates that look suspiciously like the ones you used to have before the world got loud. Takeout on the couch. Late-night walks with no destination. Coffee runs where he insists on carrying your bag like it’s the most important job he has.

The first time his phone lights up during dinner, he flips it face down without comment.

You notice.

Later, when you lean back against him, he stills, like he’s memorizing the weight of you there.

“Is this okay?” he asks softly.

You nod. “Yeah.”

His relief is immediate and unguarded.

There are still moments where the old version of him flickers at the edges. A compliment that goes on too long. A room that hums a little too loudly with attention. A story he almost tells the way he used to.

But now, you see him catch himself.

You see him choose.

One evening, you’re sitting together on the balcony, legs tangled, the city stretched out below you. The air is cool, quiet enough that you can hear each other breathe.

“I’ve been thinking about the number,” he says after a while.

You glance at him. “The number?”

“Number one,” he clarifies. “Being champion.”

You wait.

“I treated it like proof,” he admits. “Like if I held onto it hard enough, nothing else could hurt me.”

His fingers lace with yours. “That’s not what it’s supposed to be.”

“What is it supposed to be?” you ask.

He gestures vaguely, searching. “A reward. For everyone. The team. The people who stayed. The ones who showed up when it wasn’t shiny.”

His thumb brushes your knuckles. “You.”

Your chest tightens.

“I don’t want it to make me smaller with you,” he says. “I want it to mean I show up better. That I don’t forget what matters when things get loud.”

You squeeze his hand. “That’s all I ever wanted.”

He smiles, soft and familiar. “Yeah. I know.”

The second time doesn’t feel quieter.

The noise is still there, crashing in like a wave the moment the lights go out. The pit lane erupts all over again. Champagne sprays, cameras flash, bodies surge forward in celebration. His name is shouted until it blurs into sound instead of meaning.

Champion. Again.

The difference is not the volume.

It’s the choice.

Before the microphones, before the hands pulling at him, before anyone can redirect his momentum, Lando looks for you.

Not frantic. Not scanning wildly like he might lose you in the chaos.

Deliberate.

And when he sees you, standing exactly where you always stand, something in his face softens. The sharp edge of adrenaline rounds off into something steadier, something grounded.

He doesn’t reach for the trophy first.

He reaches for you.

His hands settle at your waist, warm and sure, anchoring himself before the world can take him again. He presses his forehead to yours, eyes bright and damp, breath still uneven.

“Hey,” he says, like the entire world hasn’t just exploded around you.

You smile, tears threatening. “Hey, champion.”

He huffs a quiet laugh. “Not yet.”

Then he kisses you.

Not rushed. Not messy. Not for anyone watching.

Just real.

It feels like a promise.

The cameras catch it, of course. They always do. But this time, it doesn’t feel like you’re being folded into the moment for optics.

It feels like the moment is being built around you.

When the team finally pulls him away, he squeezes your hand first. Once. Twice.

“I’ll be right back,” he says.

And he is.

The interviews happen. The speeches happen. The trophy is lifted, glittering and heavy and deserved. He talks about the car, the team, the year. He names people. He spreads the credit wide, sincere and unforced.

When someone asks how it feels to do it again, he smiles and says, “Better. Smarter. With perspective.”

Later, when the noise dips just enough, he finds you again.

This time, he brings the trophy with him.

He sets it down between you, not like a prize to guard or a wall to hide behind. Just there. Solid. Shared.

“We did good,” he says.

You raise an eyebrow. “We?”

He nods, unapologetic. “We.”

That night, when the chaos finally thins into something manageable, you slip away together. No entourage. No afterparty hopping. Just the two of you sitting on the edge of the bed, city lights glowing beyond the window.

Lando exhales deeply, letting the tension drain instead of chasing it.

“Thank you,” he murmurs.

You tilt your head. “For what?”

“For reminding me who I am,” he says. “Every time it got loud.”

You smile, fingers threading through his hair. “You remembered on your own this time.”

He nods, leaning into your touch. “I don’t forget anymore.”

He looks at you then, serious and soft and very much yours.

“I still want it,” he says. “The wins. The goals. Being number one.”

“I know,” you reply.

“But it’s not the thing,” he continues. “It’s just a number. A reward. Not who I am.”

His thumb brushes your knuckles. “You are.”

Outside, the world keeps celebrating him. Headlines roll in. Replays loop endlessly. The noise never really stops.

Inside, he pulls you close, grounding himself in the quiet he learned how to protect.

This time, when he wins everything—

He doesn’t lose himself.

fifth grade

you had loved christopher sturniolo ever since you were ten years old.

the fifth grade class at your school took a trip to the bunker hill monument every year, and the class was able to climb all the way to the top.

you never told anyone you were scared of heights.

the entire class was on the top floor of this insane two-hundred-foot monument, and you thought you were going to throw up.

it felt like your chest was trying to escape your body.

but chris—

chris saw you panicking. his blue eyes locked on your face, and he held your hand, letting you lean into him.

he didn’t tease. he didn’t laugh. he didn’t roll his eyes like everyone else did when you froze.

he just let you panic.

at ten.

at ten years old, chris was being so chivalrous, so kind, so unapologetically him.

and you just loved him right there, in that moment.

you wanted to tell him. you wanted to tell anyone.

you wanted to tell the world that he was the reason you felt something you couldn’t explain. but you didn’t.

after all, you were only ten.

but.

you just held his hand a little tighter, and he held yours a little firmer.

and you felt something you hadn’t felt before.

like maybe, even if the world was terrifying, there was one thing in it you could trust.

the summer of fifth grade was one you would never forget.

you spent your time in the sun with chris, nick, and matt, playing at the town pool, dancing in the sprinklers.

you spent your mornings with the triplets, and your nights with them too.

marylou set out a blanket, and the four of you sat down on it, finding shapes in the stars and giggling.

roasting marshmallows in the fire and burning the s’mores.

telling horror stories in the dark and screaming.

scraping your knees and crying.

stealing money to go grab ice cream.

the summer of fifth grade, you spent your time being a kid.

freshman year

high school wasn't like fifth grade.

the hallways were louder, the people were meaner, the lockers were taller.

but chris never left.

he stayed, still impossibly himself. he held you together when you were sure you were about to fall apart.

he didn’t hold your hand anymore, not in public.

not yet.

but he smiled at you the way he used to, like he knew every secret you’d never told anyone.

and you loved him more for it.

you sat at the edge of the bleachers during gym, trying not to breathe too loud, trying not to be noticed. but of course, he noticed.

“hey,” he said, his voice carrying over the noise of the class. “you okay?”

you nodded too fast, because you weren’t.

“you look like you’re about to jump off a cliff,” he said, smirking, but there was no teasing in his tone. just concern.

just him.

you laughed, but it came out more like a gasp. “i’m fine.”

he leaned back on his hands, eyes never leaving yours. “you’re lying.”

and maybe you were.

because loving him had never stopped.

it didn’t matter that everyone else thought you were just friends.

it didn’t matter that you weren’t ten anymore.

it didn’t matter that high school made everything more complicated, more exposed, more painful.

you had loved christopher sturniolo for five years by then, and somehow, he still made you feel like you were ten again.

like maybe, just maybe, you weren’t completely on your own.

sophomore year

in sophomore year, suddenly you weren't so close with chris anymore.

suddenly, he was friends with the jocks, the popular kids. matt was dating a cheerleader. nick was insanely charismatic.

and chris was one of them.

your friendship didn't stop suddenly.

it slowed first.

hangouts stopped being every other week and started becoming "i'll text you when i'm free."

you had your sweet sixteen with all of your friends.

but there were three faces missing at the table.

and that night, you stood in the bathroom in your gorgeous blue dress, with your hair styled, with your makeup done.

and you cried.

because the people you loved were supposed to be sitting at the table.

and there were three seats.

empty.

they were invited.

they just didn't show up.

they didn't care.

they left you standing with all of these people, alone.

on your birthday.

it was a stupid trick.

one that didn't prove anything, that didn't matter.

but that night, the last day of sophomore year, you stood by your window with a flower.

a daisy.

you stared across the street, at the lawn where you and the triplets had once spent your days.

and you began picking flower petals.

one by one.

whispering three words under your breath.

then four.

“he loves me.” “he loves me not.” “he loves me.” “he loves me not.” “he loves me.” “he loves me not.” “he loves me.” “he loves me not.”

the flower slipped out of your hand, limp and petal-less.

he loves me not.

you watched chris exit the house across the street, the house you used to call home, and get into someone else’s car.

you watched him lean across the console and kiss a girl on the lips.

helovesmenot.helovesmenot.helovesmenot.helovesmenot.

junior year

you threw so many parties junior year.

you became a completely different person. you forgot about all of your old friends. you joined the cheerleading squad. you woke up two hours early to do your makeup.

you changed yourself completely.

you starved your body.

you tried to fit into the mold of someone you weren't.

you became friends with the girls who knew everyone’s names.

you weren't yourself.

and somehow, it still wasn't enough. they weren't at the parties. they didn't acknowledge you.

chris dated his girlfriend.

the world turned on and on and on, but for you, it had stopped moving in the fifth grade.

at the bunker hill monument.

when chris held your hand.

senior year

you had managed to keep up the illusion of the perfect cheerleader.

you were at the house of someone you didn't know the name of.

and chris called you.

you could hear the smoke in his voice, the alcohol in his body, and you rolled your eyes. that night in your room had been your low, and you had given up.

you had a friendship.

and then you didn't.

“heyy,” he slurred, giggling slightly.

“what do you want, chris?”

“i heard—” he hiccupped. “i heard you applied to nyu.”

“yeah. i did.”

“did you get in?”

“mhm. i leave at the end of the year.”

“oh,” he whispered. “can you stay?”

“why would i do that, chris?” you laughed bitterly. “i didn't choose this town. i've dreamt of getting out.”

“stay. please.”

“for what? for you to forget about me all over again?”

“wai—”

you hung up.

it was midnight.

you were lying in your bed, staring at the ceiling, wondering if maybe you should have listened to chris.

maybe you should stay.

maybe listen to him.

maybe just give him one more chance.

and then you heard it.

soft tapping on your window.

you sat up, sleep forgotten, and stared at your curtains.

you never expected that when you opened them, chris would be the one standing outside.

he was throwing pebbles at your window.

you were so done.

you were so sick and tired of him.

you threw on a hoodie and made your way down the stairs, to your front door.

to chris.

“what do you want?”

“why are you leaving?” chris asked breathlessly, as if he had run all the way to your house.

“i'm done, chris. there's nothing left for me here.”

chris reached forward and grabbed your hand in his. “i'm here. i'm still here.”

you pulled your hand away as if it was on fire.

and you laughed.

hysterically.

bitterly.

madly.

“you're here?” you laughed again. “you left me in sophomore year by myself, for what? to live out your high school glory days? you can't come back after everything you've done to me, chris.”

“okay? i missed one party, so what?”

“one party? chris. you missed my sweet sixteen. you missed everything.”

“i didn't even miss that much. you're being overdramatic.”

and god, you were sick of him.

you shoved him. you reached forward and shoved him again, watching him stumble back, and you didn't help him.

“you missed more than one party. you missed three years, chris. you missed my sweet sixteen. my first boyfriend. my first kiss. you were my best friend. but real best friends are there for each other.”

“boyfriend?” chris muttered.

you threw your head back and sighed, done with whatever sick, twisted game the universe was trying to play with you.

“go fuck yourself, chris.”

and you turned back inside.

you didn't plan it.

you never expected to leave so early.

but you grabbed your suitcase and started throwing everything you wanted into it.

clothes.

books.

pictures.

you filled two suitcases, and maybe it was a little hasty. maybe you were being dramatic.

but you couldn't stay in this town any longer.

your parents never cared enough to notice.

chris, nick, and matt were gone already.

you were sick of it.

you dragged your suitcases down the stairs and ignored the tears blurring your vision.

ignored the tight pain in your chest.

ignored the memories you would be leaving behind.

you grabbed your keys, threw your suitcases in the trunk,

and you left.

you backed out of the driveway, hot tears streaming down your face.

and you drove away.

you stopped halfway through the drive to new york, and you sobbed.

you rested your head against the steering wheel, and you let go of all the pain that had been cooped up inside of you.

and it felt freeing.

but it also hurt so bad.

you had done what you always dreamed of.

you left.

and you were never, ever heading back to that town.

five years later…

chris cried for hours the night after your fight on the lawn.

he didn’t realize you had left until two days later, when the cheerleading team started asking around about where you were.

your parents hung up missing posters.

you had just vanished.

you were eighteen. the police stopped searching after two months.

they knew you had probably just left.

eventually, chris accepted it.

he never told nick and matt that it was his fault. that maybe, just maybe, you had left because of him.

because of that stupid fight.

he just stayed quiet.

and accepted it.

now, five years later, he was back in boston from LA for christmas.

and he went back to where it all started.

he stood at the bunker hill monument, on the top floor.

there was no shaking hand in his, no teary ten-year-old leaning against him.

no future best friend in sight.

chris was by himself.

and maybe he deserved it.

maybe he had to experience life the way you did for all of those years in high school.

by himself.

he had nick.

he had justin.

he had matt.

he had his parents.

and he had all of his friends.

but somehow, he was still alone.

because he didn’t have you.

note: this one was soo fun to write, i was listening to "you're on your own kid" on repeat while writing it, and i was in the zone.

also this might have been the best thing i've ever written???

but then again, "so high school" exists.

AHHH HEHEHE MIDNIGHT RAIN IS NEXT

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