“I thought I wasn’t needed again until Hungary,” I said carefully.
“You’re not. Not trackside.” A pause. “But there are things we should discuss in person. Career things. And I’d like you working out of the office for a week. We have stories that need writing.”
Though I didn’t have a ticket yet, I had been planning to head back to Philadelphia during the three weeks between Silverstone and the next race in Hungary.
“We’ll arrange transport. Be at the Shoreditch office by two PM.”
The line went dead before I could ask anything else.
Jonathan came out of the bathroom then, his hair wet and slicked down.
“My father wants me at the office in Germany for a while. Then I’ll meet the team in Belgium for training, debriefing, and some recovery time before we ramp up for Hungary.” He began donning fresh team gear. “You’re heading back to Philly?”
I shook my head. “Thea wants me at the office in London.”
Jonathan leaned down and kissed me, soft and lingering. “These three weeks are going to go fast. Next time I see you, everything might be different, depending on what happens between my father and your boss.”
His smile was uncertain. “But we’ll make it work, right?”
“We’ll make it work.”
After he left, I took a cab back to the Travelodge, sneaking out so no one would notice I was wearing the same clothes as the day before. When I arrived, my phone pinged with a text from Mason. “Meet in the lobby in half an hour to return the car to Heathrow?”
I hurriedly showered, changed, and packed my bag. By the time I reached the lobby, Mason and Sandra were already there, Mason leaning against the wall with car keys in hand while Sandra scrolled through her phone with the focused intensity of someone rewriting a headline in her head.
“You look disgustingly refreshed,” Mason said as I approached. “Did you actually sleep?”
“Some,” I said. It wasn’t technically a lie.
Sandra glanced up, studying me for half a beat longer than was comfortable. “You vanished pretty fast after dinner.”
“Jet lag finally caught up with me,” I said lightly. “Even adrenaline has limits.”
She hummed, noncommittal, and slid into the back seat. I took the passenger side while Mason started the engine. The early morning air was gray and damp, the parking lot nearly empty as we pulled onto the bypass toward Heathrow.
For a while we drove in companionable silence, the road unwinding ahead of us. I watched the hedgerows blur past and thought about Jonathan’s word.
Transparency.
Michael had made it sound almost clinical. A strategy. A system you could implement and monitor. But sitting beside my colleagues, the people whose trust I depended on every day, it felt less like a plan and more like a confession waiting to happen.
I could tell them now, I thought. Get it over with. Control the narrative before it controlled me.
My mouth even opened.
“So—”
Mason beat me to it. “You see the paddock rumor mill this morning?” he asked. “Some genius thinks Hirsch is negotiating a mid-season engineering shuffle.”
Sandra snorted softly. “Clickbait. His camp’s been denying that for weeks.”
“Hirsch doesn’t do impulsive,” Mason said. “Everything with that guy is calculated.”
I felt a small, sharp twist in my chest at hearing Jonathan reduced to a case study in strategy. Not inaccurate. Just incomplete.
“People love a storyline,” I said. “Especially one that sounds like drama.”
They laughed. I managed a smile, but my thoughts were racing ahead of me. If transparency started anywhere, it would start with Thea. Not in the cramped anonymity of a rental car barreling down the M1, but in her office, face-to-face, where nuance had room to exist.
