Her eyes immediately fall to my belly, softening.
I gasp as the baby kicks me in the ribs.
“What’s wrong?”
“N-Nothing. Just a baby kick.” Without thinking, I reach for her hand to place it on my lower belly.
She hesitates, a quick look of fear invading her eyes before she shakes her head. “Intrusive thought,” she explains, placing her hand on my belly.
“Oh my …” she says in awe, her eyes going wide and filling with tears. “Hi in there?—”
Her talking to the baby is cut short when there’s a loud, all-too-familiar sound and a gasp that sweeps through the crowd right into the paddock.
“What was that?” I ask, although in my heart I already know.
Annalise turns back to the screen. “There was a crash … It’s Travis.”
CHAPTER 35
Travis
“Travis, are you all right?”
Drake’s worried voice crackles through the intercom. I blink a couple of times and try to shake my head, but the constricting helmet and HANS device I wear make that impossible.
They’re also the reason I’m only slightly dazed and not much, much worse.
“Fuck!” I curse into the communication with my team. I don’t have to see it from the outside to know this crash is the end of my race.
“Travis, are you okay?” Drake asks, his voice more insistent this time.
“Yeah,” I answer tersely before reaching up to pull myself out of the car. I examine the crumpled red pieces of the front of my car smashed against one of the race barriers.
Soon I’m surrounded by the safety team as they work to clear out the debris while also helping me out of the car and to another vehicle that’ll take me back to the first aid section to be checked out.
Sometime during all of the chaos of people checking on me and getting back to the paddock, I remember that Alyssia is here, watching.
Shit!
She most definitely saw that accident. Above and beyond trying to figure out what the fuck happened that caused my car to spin out, I need to lay eyes on Alyssia. To make sure she’s all right.
“Travis, how’re you feeling?” My team principal is the first to meet me as I arrive at the paddock.
“Where’s Alyssia?”
“What? Wait, what happened out there?” He presses a palm to my chest when I try to move past him.
The rest of my team rushes around me, assuring themselves that I’m okay. Even after I’ve been checked by first responders, they all know it’s honestly a little too early to tell. Adrenaline still pumps through my body, insulating me against much pain.
I’ve been in enough of these accidents to know I’ll be sore as hell later on. Probably will have some bruising, but that’s par for the course.
Alyssia doesn’t know that.
A crash from the outside looks a lot worse than from the inside.
“Wait, talk to me, what happened out there?” Drake asks.
“Just give me a minute.”
