✒️ ᴡʜᴇʀᴇ ᴛʜᴇ ꜱɪʟᴇɴᴄᴇ ᴛᴏᴏᴋ ʜᴇʀ - ᴄʜᴀᴘᴛᴇʀ 7: ᴡʜɪꜱᴘᴇʀꜱ ʙᴇʜɪɴᴅ ᴛʜᴇ ᴘᴀɢᴇꜱ ✒️
ꜰ1 x ʀᴇᴀᴅᴇʀ | ʟᴀɴᴅᴏ ɴᴏʀʀɪꜱ ᴀᴜ | ᴀɴɢꜱᴛ + ᴅʀᴀᴍᴀ + ʀᴇᴅᴇᴍᴘᴛɪᴏɴ
⚠️ ᴄᴏɴᴛᴇɴᴛ ᴡᴀʀɴɪɴɢꜱ:
ᴇᴍᴏᴛɪᴏɴᴀʟ ᴅɪꜱᴛʀᴇꜱꜱ & ɢʀɪᴇꜰ
ᴛʜᴇᴍᴇꜱ ᴏꜰ ɪꜱᴏʟᴀᴛɪᴏɴ & ᴅɪꜱᴀᴘᴘᴇᴀʀᴀɴᴄᴇ
ᴍᴇɴᴛᴀʟ ʜᴇᴀʟᴛʜ & ʜᴇᴀʟɪɴɢ
ɪᴍᴘʟɪᴇᴅ ᴇᴍᴏᴛɪᴏɴᴀʟ ᴀʙᴜꜱᴇ / ɴᴇɢʟᴇᴄᴛ
ᴀᴍʙɪɢᴜᴏᴜꜱ ʜᴏᴘᴇ / ʟᴀᴄᴋ ᴏꜰ ᴄʟᴏꜱᴜʀᴇ
The fluorescent lights of the McLaren debrief room buzzed overhead like artificial thunder. Rows of data screens filled the space with cold blue light, casting angular shadows across polished surfaces. Lando Norris sat in a high-backed chair, shoulders slumped, as engineers and strategists discussed tire degradation, fuel mapping, brake bias, terms that once sang with possibility but now felt like shards in his chest.
He let the words wash over him, half-listening, his mind a fog of regret.
Between stacks of telemetry printouts and thermal graphs, nestled among team manuals and technical journals, a slim hardcover book caught his eye. Its leather-wrapped spine was scuffed gently, embossed with Lily's name in gold: Lily. Beneath it, something handwritten in Y/n’s elegant cursive made the title glow like a singular heartbeat in a room of machines: A Title for Lily.
His breath hitched.
He leaned forward, tugging at the corner of the book, as though the world might slow if it recognized his action.
But before his fingers could touch the leather, a hand, smaller than he remembered, snatched it away.
“Can we not snoop through my personal reading, Norris?” Lily’s voice was light, but the dry humor in it trembled. She tucked the book behind her back, moving it just out of his view. “It’s mine.”
He straightened, jaw clenching, the line between professional and personal fraying like thin wire.
“Sorry,” he murmured, though something in the tone, broader, deeper, felt not like apology, but entreaty.
She didn’t respond. She merely sat down across from him, back erect, eyes hidden behind sunglasses.
I. OLD HUNGER
As the session wore on, Lando found himself drifting toward the table again, as if pulled by something he couldn’t quite name. The voices in the room—the engineers, the strategists, the pit wall consultants—blurred into a hum behind glass. He only half-heard the jargon, the clipped syllables of tire degradation, downforce ratios, race pace deltas. All of it washed past him, secondary to the thrum under his skin.
His eyes kept flicking to the side.
To Lily.
She sat at the edge of the room, cross-legged, almost casual, her arms folded across a worn paperback that was mostly hidden by the press of her elbows. But Lando saw it, had seen it from the moment he walked in. The edge of the cover was frayed, faintly curled at one corner like it had been handled too many times, thumbed through in quiet places. She wasn’t reading it. She was guarding it.
And somehow, that was worse.
Lando’s stomach tightened. His warning lights were blinking red, a sharp, internal alarm that pulsed in the back of his brain. Something about that book, something he couldn’t yet see, felt like it held gravity. Not metaphorically. Literally. Like it contained mass, like it remembered weight that he had forgotten to carry. A weight that once belonged to him. A truth, perhaps, camouflaged in fiction.
By the time the debrief ended, the room exhaled. People stood, stretched, closed laptops. The synthetic murmur of radio chatter faded as chairs scraped back, feet shuffled, and voices rose in casual relief.
But Lando didn’t move.
He stayed rooted to his spot, hands slow as they opened his laptop with a deliberate calm. The screen flickered to life, telemetry maps and performance graphs casting cold light across his features. He plugged in a USB drive, let it mount. Clicked on a replay file. He stared at it. Pretended.
But he wasn’t looking at the data.
He was watching Lily in the reflection on his screen, watching the shape of her as she gathered her things with quiet precision. The way her fingers lingered on her keys a moment too long. The slight dip of her shoulder. The tilt of her head, betraying that she knew he was still watching.
She was heading out.
And something inside Lando clicked.
He stood abruptly. The legs of the desk chair shrieked against the polished floor, jarring against the hush that had settled over the nearly empty room. He didn’t apologize. Didn’t explain. Just moved—quick, but not reckless. Steady. Intentional. Like a man retracing the edge of a dream, trying not to wake it before he reached the truth.
He was within arm’s reach when he saw it again—the book, poking just slightly from under her arm, like it wanted to be noticed. The corner bent. A smudge of ink on the spine. His fingers twitched, reaching—
And then Oscar was there.
Tall, quiet, a presence like iron appearing in his path.
He hadn’t heard him come up.
“Thought you had something important?” Oscar’s voice was low, even, but it carried weight. A blade sheathed in velvet.
Lando froze.
Lily’s expression didn’t change much. Just the barest flicker of a reaction, lips curving into a tight, humorless smile that didn’t touch her eyes.
“He was just leaving style tips,” she said lightly, as if the air hadn’t just shifted, as if nothing about this moment carried consequence.
“Right,” Oscar replied. He didn’t smile. Just folded his arms, gaze unmoving.
Lando’s jaw locked. His heart thundered against his ribs like it wanted out.
He didn’t know what he had been reaching for—the book, a memory, a second chance.
But it wasn’t his to take. Not right now.
“Sorry to disappoint,” he said finally, voice quieter than he meant it to be. And then he stepped back, spine straightening as he let them pass. He didn’t watch them go.
But he heard Lily’s heels echo down the hallway like punctuation.
And the weight of that book stayed behind in his chest.
II. A NIGHT SHIFT OF CURIOUSITY
Sunlight was already burning over Woking’s grey buildings when Lando returned home. The sky had turned a muted gold, casting long shadows on the pavement, the kind that should have felt warm but only made everything look colder. He barely registered the transition from car to door to room. Automatic. Robotic. Muscle memory. A few half-hearted data calls echoed in his head, clipped sentences from engineers he hadn’t really heard. A pizza box in the bin, its lid half-closed. The blinking light of the coffee machine pulsing in the corner like a dying star.
Every familiar thing screamed in silence.
Not home.
He stood for a long moment, just inside the doorway, before moving to the kitchen. The space was still. Too still. Like a life paused mid-frame. He sat down at the table without really deciding to, shoulders hunched forward, head bowed over a cold mug of coffee that had never been warm to begin with. The ceramic was slick with condensation. He didn’t drink from it.
The night came back to him in fragments, as if his mind didn’t trust him enough to hand it over all at once. Rain tracing crooked lines across glass. Y/n’s silhouette half-obscured by the trees, wind catching in her hair. The way she had stood there—distant, unreachable, beautiful in a way that made his chest ache. Then, the quieter things. The mornings. Light drifting through curtains. Coffee shared in silence. Trust given like breath.
Golden memories.
Terrible mistakes.
His phone buzzed, sharp and sudden against the table. The screen lit up with a group chat notification—team thread, nothing personal.
We need to talk—Friday, morning. Tell him not to skip. He’s looking worse every day.
He read it once, twice. Let it sit.
He didn’t type a response.
Instead, he reached across the table, pulling his laptop toward him with a slow, deliberate hand. The screen flickered to life, folders blooming open, data graphs reloading themselves in a cold, clinical rhythm. Telemetry files. Tire wear analytics. Sector timing overlays. None of it landed.
His eyes moved, but his mind didn’t follow.
One line repeated itself, etched into the back of his skull like it had always been there.
The name on the spine. A Title for Lily.
He blinked once. Then again.
His hand drifted toward his phone.
He tapped slowly until Lily’s contact appeared. Just her name. No photo. No heart or star emoji. Nothing soft about it. Just a single name that now held too much weight.
He pressed call.
It rang once. Twice.
Then stopped.
Call refused.
He stared at the screen long after the sound had gone, thumb hovering above the glass. The silence that followed wasn’t empty. It pressed down on him like something with teeth. Something coiled and restless slithered through his chest, cold and unwelcome.
The hunger didn’t go away.
Not for food. Not for sleep. For something else.
Something just out of reach.
He opened the message window. Typed a single word.
Please.
Then stopped.
Watched it blink in the blue-grey light.
And erased it.
III. CONFRONTATIONS AT HQ
Friday felt like Christmas. Sunlight poured through the cloud-thin sky in clean, piercing shafts, painting the ground in sharp angles of light. But the warmth never reached the skin. It was the kind of brightness that felt brittle, glassy, cold. The kind that made everything look clearer than it really was.
Lando entered the McLaren garage with something close to resolve burning in his chest. Not loud, not flashy, just a low thrum of purpose beneath the surface, steady as a drumbeat. The polished floor reflected his steps. Mechanics passed by with nods and data pads, half-aware, half-distracted. His pulse didn't waver.
Zak was already by the coffee corner, standing in close conversation with Andrea. Oscar leaned against a worktop nearby, arms folded, posture unreadable. And Lily stood at the edge of the group, silent, facing the machine. Her figure was still, carefully still, like someone bracing themselves before a wave.
She didn’t look up when Lando approached.
But the book lay there anyway.
Set down like it didn’t matter. Like it wasn’t the axis around which everything now turned. It rested atop a glossy health-and-wellness magazine, its cover soft with wear, the spine gently creased. Familiar. Undeniable. The words glinted under the overhead light.
A Title for Lily.
It glowed like a beacon.
He hesitated only a second before drawing in a breath. Steadying himself. Then reached.
But Lily moved first.
Her hand shot out, snatching the book in one quick, almost instinctive motion. She pressed it behind her back, her knuckles white around the binding.
“It’s personal,” she managed. Her voice was low. Tight around the edges.
He paused, hands held up in careful surrender, palms open to the air. “May I ask why?” he said quietly, like a question at the edge of something sacred. “It’s just… a book. I just—”
“You heard me.” Her voice cracked faintly. Not enough to break, but enough to tremble. “It’s mine.”
For a heartbeat, nothing moved. Then Oscar stepped in, his hand resting gently on her shoulder. His presence filled the space with quiet certainty.
“Let’s go,” he said, his voice calm but decisive.
Lando’s jaw tensed. He looked past them—not at them anymore, but through the open space of the garage. Out at the organized rows of equipment, the white-painted walls, the tangle of wires and tire warmers and technical order. But none of it registered.
A flicker of desperation sparked low in his gut.
Mixed with something else.
Ignition.
He didn’t say anything. Just watched them go. The hallway stretched ahead, sterile and bright, and they disappeared into it without looking back.
Eventually, he followed. Not too fast. Not too slow. Each step measured like a countdown.
His heart thrummed with something primal and tangled.
Chase. Hunt.
Maybe it was nothing. Maybe it was everything.
IV. DEFAULTS AND DENIALS
On the team bus, the engine was off, but the heaters hummed faintly, pushing stale warmth into the corners of the vehicle. The windows fogged lightly around the edges, blurring the grey world outside. Screens mounted along the aisle glowed with muted slides—mock-ups of liveries, sponsorship placements, data overlays—none of it absorbing enough to matter.
A tense silence clung to the space like static.
Lando sat hunched forward slightly, elbows resting on his knees, eyes locked on the floor beneath him. He hadn’t spoken since they got on. The hum of the heater, the occasional click of a laptop key, the low murmur of someone adjusting their seat—these sounds filled in what his voice didn’t.
Lily sat across from him, back straight, hands folded too carefully in her lap. The book was beside her, resting innocently on the seat, its worn cover half-shadowed by her thigh. Still turned spine away, deliberately, as if protecting both it and him.
He didn’t look at her directly. Just asked, voice barely above a whisper, “It’s by her?”
There was a pause. A beat that stretched too long.
Then Lily nodded, but even that was slow, uncertain.
“It’s... something she wrote,” she said. Her voice was soft. Uneven. “Three months ago.”
It wasn’t enough.
The words drifted into the air and hung there, weightless, fragile. Lando’s breath caught. He didn’t move.
“It’s special,” Oscar said, stepping in from the row behind. His voice was firmer. Intentional. Like he’d been waiting for the silence to fray.
“It’s... not just a cultural item,” he added. “It’s emotionally freighted.”
That word landed like metal in the back of Lando’s skull. Freighted. Heavy. Loaded. Burdened with meaning.
He almost laughed, almost. The irony wasn’t lost on him.
Of course it was freighted. Of course she wouldn’t write something light. Not after what happened. Not after the silence. Not after the vanishing.
He swallowed, the motion stiff in his throat.
“I just want to see it,” he said, the sentence low and cautious, as though any sudden movement might collapse what little remained between them.
Lily’s hand moved instinctively. Fingers curling over the book’s cover like a lock sliding into place.
“You don’t,” she said.
The words were gentle, but final. Not a warning, just a truth.
Lando closed his eyes. His jaw clenched. Breath stuttered in his chest like a car misfiring.
“Yes,” he said. Then again, quieter. “I— I do.”
V. LETTING IT SIMMER
Midday sun filtered through the bus’s tinted windows, casting diluted beams across the seats, soft gold warped by the glass. Outside, the world buzzed with movement—team members hauling equipment, prepping logistics, engines growling to life in distant corners of the paddock—but inside the bus, the tone remained subdued.
A handful of voices filled the space. They were talking about data sets, projected tire wear, aero efficiency at Spa. The hum of conversation wound around engine mappings and corner entry speeds. Someone pointed to a graphic on the screen—sector splits and overtaking zones. The rhythm of race prep, mechanical and precise.
But Lando barely heard any of it.
He sat there, nodding occasionally, offering a word or two when necessary, but his mind was nowhere near the Belgian Grand Prix. His focus splintered and reassembled, only to splinter again.
All he could think of was that book.
The way it lay beside Lily, so ordinary and yet... not. The way she had guarded it, not with aggression, but with something gentler—something protective. Reverent. Like the contents were fragile, or dangerous. Or both.
A book full of secrets.
A title still hidden.
And Y/n’s shadow clinging to every possibility.
The tightness in his chest returned, familiar now. A quiet ache that deepened with every unanswered question.
He stood abruptly, muttering something vague about stepping out, and made his way to the engineers’ lounge. It was empty, save for the low hum of the heater and the mechanical buzz of a screen left running in the corner. He let the silence settle over him, needing the isolation more than he expected.
He sat down with a tablet in his hands. Studied the circuit map of Spa. The high-speed curves, elevation changes, the delicate knife-edge of Eau Rouge. He traced lines of temperature curves, tire performance simulations, telemetry overlays.
But his mind kept skipping.
Back to her.
Back to Y/n. Back to Lily. Back to the book with the name he hadn’t read, but could already feel written on his skin.
On impulse, he reached for his phone.
His thumbs hovered over the keyboard for a moment, debating how to phrase it—how to soften what could not be softened. But in the end, he didn’t dress it up.
He typed it simply, cleanly.
Lando: Need to see Lily. We need to talk.
It read as urgent.
He stared at it for a moment.
Then hit send.
The minutes that followed stretched, slow and thin. He tried to return to the maps, the charts, the simulations. He scrolled through past races. Looked at historical data. Nothing held.
Then his phone buzzed once.
A reply from Zak.
Zak: Talked. She’s not ready.
The words sank in with a quiet finality. No drama. Just a closed door.
Lando stared at the screen for a long while, the weight of rejection unfamiliar in its calmness. He wasn’t angry. He didn’t blame her.
He just… wished it had been different.
He set the phone down on the table, gently. No clatter. No frustration.
Alone again, surrounded by ghostly telemetry lines and the faint whir of a cooling fan, he let his eyes close for a beat.
Then, under his breath, a whisper. Not to anyone. Not for effect.
Just a promise sent into the stillness.
“Okay. But someday.”
VI. A TENTATIVE TIPPING POINT
Later that evening, after the final debriefs had drained the day of its urgency, after the credits rolled on another media cycle and the cameras packed away their curiosity, Lando found himself drifting, not toward the exit, not toward his room, but back into the quiet hum of the hospitality lounge.
The space had emptied, mostly. Just a handful of people remained, cloaked in the soft light of floor lamps and the low murmur of post-race conversation. Lily sat at a corner table, Oscar beside her, and across from them, a visiting sponsor, laughing softly at something that had already lost its edge.
But Lando didn’t hear the joke. He didn’t see the sponsor.
His eyes were fixed on the table.
The book lay there.
Its cover caught the light just enough to glint faintly. Its position was casual, too casual, placed like it was just another object, something harmless, forgettable. But he knew better. It radiated presence. Like it wanted to be seen, but only on its own terms.
He moved toward it again.
One step. Then another.
Lily’s head turned as she poured water into a glass. Her motion stilled when she saw him. The glass trembled slightly in her hand as it filled.
“Seriously, Lando,” she said. Her voice wasn’t sharp. It didn’t scold. It was soft, but it carried weight. And pain. That quiet kind, the kind that comes from love and exhaustion.
He froze, breath tightening. The need inside him surged again, but he held it back, let it settle like sediment in water.
“Why?” he asked finally. Just one word. But it felt like asking for a world.
She exhaled slowly, like she'd been holding it in for days. “It’s hers. Meant for me only.”
He stepped closer, slowly, carefully, as though walking toward something sacred.
“This could tell me where she is,” he said, voice low but urgent. “It could help me understand... what I lost.”
Her eyes flickered.
That was when Oscar rose a little in his seat, enough to place a hand on Lando’s arm. Gentle, firm, unmistakable.
“Don’t,” he said.
But Lando didn’t back away.
“I have to know,” he whispered, voice fraying at the edges. “I owe her that much, don’t I?”
Silence fell again, but it wasn’t empty. It pulsed with tension, with hurt that had nowhere left to go.
Lily’s gaze dropped to the table. Her hand gripped the edge of her chair like it was the only thing tethering her to the moment. Something in her expression cracked, quietly, almost invisibly, but Lando saw it. The way her lips parted. The way her throat moved, like swallowing glass.
“I...” she began, the word shaking slightly.
Then she reached, slowly, for the book.
Her fingers touched the cover like she was bracing herself against the past.
“Okay,” she said at last. “But not now.”
VII. NIGHT WATCHES AND FAINT HOPES
Alone in his hotel room, Lando sat hunched on the edge of the bed, hands resting between his knees, head bowed beneath the sharp glare of the ceiling light. It cast a sterile, unforgiving glow across the room, white, cold, clinical. The kind of light that flattened everything, even memory.
Its reflection gleamed faintly off the angles of his skull, catching in the damp strands of his hair still mussed from the day. Around him, the room was silent but for the steady, relentless sound of rain.
It wasn’t gentle. It wasn’t soothing.
It pounded the windows with a hollow rhythm, insistent, repetitive, like a dirge written for someone already lost. Every drop sounded like a countdown.
He didn’t move. Just stared.
At the ceiling. At the dull beige walls. At his own reflection in the darkened glass, ghostlike and strange, outlined by the storm.
The tablet on the side table was still on. The telemetry data scrolled by in looping silence, graphs rising and falling like flatlines. He’d replayed it. Paused it. Rewound and started again, over and over, until the numbers no longer made sense, and still they meant nothing compared to the ache sitting in his chest.
He rubbed at his temple, eyes heavy with exhaustion he refused to name.
Then, his phone buzzed once.
A message lit up the screen.
Zak: We have to fly for Spa in 2 hours. Stop chasing ghosts.
He stared at it. The words blurred slightly, not from tears, but from sheer mental noise. He didn’t type anything back.
Didn’t need to.
The answer had already carved itself into the silence.
He set the phone down face-first.
Closed his eyes.
And whispered into the empty room, to no one in particular and yet entirely to her—
“I will find her.”
VIII. MOMENTS BEFORE DUSK
At dusk, when the sky turned the color of rusted gold and shadows stretched long across the paddock, the rest of the team celebrated. Laughter rose in bursts from the hospitality tent, champagne bottles popped, hands clapped backs in congratulation. Another solid finish. Another race ticked off the calendar.
But Lando couldn’t taste the champagne.
He held a glass once, barely touched it. The bubbles stung his nose, the sweetness curled wrong on his tongue. He set it down and drifted.
Soon enough, he found himself there again, near the table.
The book sat waiting.
Same position. Same angle. Nothing had changed, and yet everything had. His gaze didn’t hold urgency now. Not hunger. Not possession. It was quieter. Warmer. Worn.
Longing.
He didn’t reach for it. Not yet. He only looked, as if hoping that this time, it might offer itself freely.
But before his fingers could even twitch toward it, Lily stood.
She gathered her things without fanfare. Her movements were smooth, practiced, an exit rehearsed. She didn’t look at him. Didn’t speak. Just slipped the book beneath her arm and walked away, her back straight, her silence firmer than any no she’d ever spoken aloud.
Lando remained there, frozen. His body upright, but his thoughts trailing behind her, pulled like thread.
Then Oscar appeared in the corner of his eye. He didn’t say much, didn’t need to. Just shook his head with quiet understanding and placed a hand on Lando’s arm, guiding him gently back to earth.
“Maybe tomorrow,” he murmured.
Lando didn’t nod. Didn’t blink.
“I won’t stop,” he said. His voice didn’t tremble. It was steady, like stone worn smooth by time. Certain.
Oscar paused beside him, measuring the cost hidden in those three words.
“As long as it doesn’t cost you your life,” he said, low, almost to himself.
That night, hours after the crowd faded and the lights dimmed, Lando sat on one of the hospital lounge-style sofas in the back corridor of the hotel’s medical suite, where tired drivers sometimes went to recover, or just breathe.
He didn’t speak.
Didn’t scroll.
Didn’t move.
Silence blanketed the room like static, and yet it wasn’t empty. It followed him, filled every corner with something weightless and watching. His breath slowed, but the ache in his chest remained sharp, coiled tight.
The book. The title. The promise tucked into pages he hadn’t seen. It brushed against his mind like an itch under skin, unreachable but ever present.
He tilted his head back and closed his eyes.
There was something electric in the ache, something alive beneath the bone-deep sorrow. A charge in the air. A sense that revelation wasn’t far now, that every hour was winding tighter toward something inevitable.
And somewhere, in ink beneath that unassuming dust jacket, Y/n’s words sat waiting.
To be continued...🧡
✒️ ᴡʜᴇʀᴇ ᴛʜᴇ ꜱɪʟᴇɴᴄᴇ ᴛᴏᴏᴋ ʜᴇʀ – ᴄʜᴀᴘᴛᴇʀ 8: ᴀ ʟᴇᴛᴛᴇʀ ʟᴇꜰᴛ ʙᴇʜɪɴᴅ ✒️
📝 Note from the Author: (a.k.a. the chaotic return of the girl who disappears like a plot twist mid-season)
HELLOOOO yes yes, this is the second post of the day because guess what? WE DON’T HAVE SCHOOL TODAY. Yasss surprise drop like I’m Beyoncé on a random Wednesday. HAHAHAHA. I am back for a little bit, back from the void, crawling out of academic hell like Lando trying to crawl into Lily’s personal space just to read a book like some Victorian ghost of regret. 😭📖
Lando’s been out here acting like the book’s gonna whisper her location if he stares long enough. Lily? Gatekeeping like her life depends on it. Oscar? Sir Oscar Piastri, MVP of cockblocking with dignity, standing guard like he’s defending the Holy Grail. And me? Writing this like I’m not supposed to be doing homework. But again, NO SCHOOL, so who’s really winning?
Anyway, I hope you’re enjoying this slow unraveling of Lando’s sanity. We love a man haunted by literature. If you’ve ever almost cried over a hardcover book with gold embossing... you are not alone.
I’ll vanish again eventually (probably when school returns like a horror movie villain), but for now, enjoy the drama, the tension, and Lando being one emotionally-charged "please" away from full collapse.
See you in the next one... if Lily ever lets go of that damn book. 📚
With love, me 🧡
