“He survived.”
“So did I,” she says, looking me in the eye with such pain in her gaze that it rips my chest right open.
She rises from her seat and begins pacing.
“Baby, we talked about this. Gunther survived that accident because of all of the safety equipment our cars and our suits are equipped with.”
She makes a clucking sound with her tongue. “Yeah, but he still has the scars, doesn’t he? I felt it that first night I shook his hand at the gala. Didn’t realize until I saw that video last night what those scars represented.”
“They’re a result of a fluke,” I caution her. “A once in a lifetime accident, that?—”
“Whose lifetime, Travis?” she yells. “What if he’d gone into the barrier at a different angle? A few inches higher and his damn head would’ve been?—”
She breaks off as the first tear falls. Alyssia angrily wipes it away.
“And now he’s going back, isn’t he? He’s returning to race in the same sport that almost killed him.”
I go to tell her that it wasn’t as bad as it looked, but I don’t.
The last thing she needs right now is for me to be condescending.
“Baby, that didn’t happen because the barriers on the track are regulated, just like almost everything else in the race is built to keep us as safe as possible. I’ve shown you all of our safety equipment, remember?”
She lets out a laugh devoid of humor while still pacing.
“You know what I don’t remember? What you failed to tell me? That every single one of those safety measures is written in blood.”
The ground starts to fall from beneath my feet as I stare at her, tears running down her face.
Her bottom lip begins trembling while her hand goes to her left shoulder, massaging it.
When I try to take a step in her direction, she steps back. Away from me.
It feels as if the world is crashing down around me. I thought telling her about the safety measures would give her the assurance she needed. But I fucked up. She’s absolutely right. Just about every single safety measure implemented in my sport has come at the cost of a human life—sometimes many human lives.
I swallow the brick that sits in my throat, searching for the right words to let her know that I had only her peace of mind as the center focus of my actions.
The words spiral around in my mind like a hurricane but don’t come out.
Why the hell did I believe that I could keep this part of my sport from her?
“There hasn’t been a death in Formula 1 in well over a decade.”
She drops her head back and laughs. The mocking undertone slices through me.
“Right. What about Max’s father? Severino Ferreira?”
It’s as if ice water has been poured down my spine. “Ferreira,” I repeat, my heart sinking.
A dark, heavy weight begins to close in on me.
“The legend,” she says bitterly. “Isn’t that what Sam had called him at the museum?” A legend who died in the middle of race right in front of his son?”
I bite back a curse.
“But it’s okay because new course barriers were implemented after his death, right? What else?” she asks. “Oh, right, the damn halo you raved about was finally required after years of debate as a result of his death,” she scoffs.
“Only took ten years for the FIA to make it standard. Now his son gets to risk his life, but don’t worry because it’s safe now.”
