The car sat waiting at the end of the grid, nose pointed toward Turn 1, impossibly sleek under the muted light. Mechanics hovered around it like guardians, tire blankets humming softly, heat rising in faint waves. The smell met her first: fuel and rubber baked into asphalt.
She slowed as she approached.
For years, she had watched this walk from the outside. From hospitality balconies in F2. From the academy paddock. From behind pit walls where her access badge hadn’t quite matched her ambition.
Now the path cleared for her.
Damon met her halfway. “All good,” he said, voice steady in her earpiece. “Just another race.”
Reese almost smiled. It wasn’t just another race.
She ran a hand briefly along the halo as she reached the car, grounding herself.
Her first Formula 1 start.
The noise of the crowd swelled as more drivers emerged onto the grid. The national anthem would come next. The formation lap. The lights. This was happening.
Reese eased her helmet on, the world narrowing instantly to the sound of her breath and radio chatter.
She lowered herself into the seat, hands finding the wheel like they’d always belonged there. It was go time.
As they grew closer to race time, Sloane stared at the clouds inching in on the circuit, willing them to stay in the distance. The weather scanner predicted a small shower a few minutes into the race, but the precipitation was scheduled to move off after that. She was holding those problematic clouds to the bargain. Reese had enough to contend with on her first race and didn’t need wet conditions and unplanned tire changes to worry about as well.
She’d attempted a light breakfast that morning, and had even walked around with a toasted bagel on a plate for a good half hour before she had to surrender it to the trash can. Her appetite had stepped out and probably wouldn’t return until Reese had successfully finished the race and could move safely back to her status as the reserve driver. Sloane just had to make it through today, and then she could regroup and figure out how to be better prepared for these feelings in the future.
She had checked the radar twice before the start and then once more on her phone during the formation lap, as if vigilance alone could influence weather patterns. The system had looked small. Fast-moving. Five minutes of inconvenience, the commentators had said.
But from her place near the Laurens garage, she could see the sky deepening instead of clearing.Dammit. The gray thickened, low and stubborn. The air felt heavy against her skin, charged in a way she remembered too well. When the first drops hit the track, they didn’t seem tentative. They came down with intent. Leave it to Silverstone to make this harder.
She folded her arms to contain the unease pressing outward from her chest. She would not devolve into anxiety. She would not give in.
When the lights went out, Sloane’s breath caught anyway. Reese launched cleanly without spin or hesitation, slotting neatly into the rhythm of the pack as the field surged toward Turn 1. She held her line, gave just enough room, and came out the other side exactly where she’d started, intact and unbothered. Sloane grinned. Reese Maddox doing exactly what she’d been trained to do, surviving the chaos and keeping her place among drivers who’d been here for years.
On the screens, Reese was composed. That was what struck Sloane first. The steering inputs were clean. The throttle application was controlled, and there was no panic in the corrections. No trace of ego. Reese was adapting really nicely to the conditions.
“Good girl,” Sloane murmured, hand on her chest. It seemed to be living there. “You got this, baby.” She exhaled slowly, an attempt to release some of the muscle tension. It didn’t work.
Sloane had told Reese a hundred times that races were won in small decisions, not bold declarations. Watching Reese make those little, disciplined choices should have felt like triumph. Butit didn’t. Why? Because if Reese could do this, if she could thrive here, then she truly belonged in this world, the very one that had Sloane so far back on her heels that she felt like she might fall over at any moment.
Behind Reese, Marco Faz began to close in. The gap shrank to tenths of a second. Marco had never been good at patience, plus he was hotheaded and sexist as hell. Sitting behind anyone irritated him, but sitting behind his teammate, who was female, would be intolerable. Sloane could scarcely blink, watching his proximity to Reese. “Fuck that guy.” She walked a few steps to her right and then back again.
To make things worse, the rain intensified, thick enough now that spray rose in sheets behind the cars. She knew firsthand how difficult it would be to see the track, adding tons of guesswork into the mix. Even Sloane couldn’t follow the action of the race clearly, and she had perspective. She squinted as the straightaway disappeared into a white corridor, visibility collapsing with every passing second.
Marco tucked into Reese’s slipstream.Dammit.
Sloane’s jaw tightened. He didn’t need to do this. They were both running in the points, the season was long, and they were teammates. There was no prize for bravado in fucking standing water. Why would he risk both cars?
The two red Laurens surged forward, nearly fused in the haze. For a moment, they were indistinguishable, twin flashes of color swallowed by spray as they barreled toward Turn 11.
Sloane stepped closer to the monitors without realizing she had moved.
She told herself it was fine. Drivers went wheel-to-wheel in worsening conditions every year. She had done it herself. It required precision and trust. The cars vanished into the corner, and Sloane lost them. She swallowed and waited.
Then the garage gasped.
Sloane swiveled her focus. On the broadcast screen, a red car snapped sideways in a violent arc. The rear stepped out, overcorrected, and the car rotated through the spray like something knocked loose from gravity.
For half a heartbeat, both Laurens cars occupied the same blurred space. There was no visible number. No clear identifier of who was who. Just color and chaos. Sloane couldn’t process just what she was seeing.
