Veronica’s expression was gentle in a way that scared her more than anything else. “Hey, Reese. Can I come in?”
Reese stepped back automatically, the room suddenly too quiet. Veronica didn’t rush. She closed the door carefully, like she was containing something fragile.
“She’s not coming,” Veronica said, her eyes apologetic.
The words landed wrong. Like they’d missed their mark entirely. Reese shook her head once. “What do you mean she’s not coming? She’s—she was flying today.”
“I know.” Veronica met her gaze. “She tried. She really did.”
Something inside Reese dropped hard, like she’d missed a gear. Her chest tightened, breath turning shallow as the implications stacked up too quickly to process. “Hold on. Did something happen? Is she okay?”
“She’s safe,” Veronica said immediately. “Physically. This isn’t an emergency.”
That somehow made it worse.
“She said she couldn’t wait to see me,” Reese said. “There have been hiccups about my driving, but she said she was working on things.”
“I know,” Veronica said. “And she is.”
Reese nodded, already reaching for her phone without thinking and having to stop herself because maybe that wasn’t helpful. “Okay. Then I’ll give her time. Or space. Or—whatever she needs. I don’t need her at every race. I don’t need—” She stopped, breath hitching as the words outran her certainty. “I just need her to know I’m here. That I’ll be here.”
Veronica watched her gently. “Reese …”
“I mean it,” Reese pressed, the urgency sharpening. “I don’t need grand gestures. I don’t need her standing on the pit wall every weekend. We can figure this out.” She looked up, hopeful despite herself. “Right?”
The silence that followed was careful. Considered.
“Sometimes,” Veronica said slowly, “what someone needs isn’t something you can provide by offering more. Sometimes,it’s something they have to sort through on their own, and she’s taking time to do that. All of this happened really fast.”
She nodded. The words slid into Reese’s chest and stayed there.
She stared at the screen of her phone, thumb hovering uselessly above Sloane’s name. All the ways she’d been prepared to bend—reschedule, rearrange, compartmentalize—lined up neatly in her head, solutions waiting to be deployed. She was good at that. At adapting, executing. At finding a way to make things work.
But this wasn’t a line she could adjust with more practice.
“What if,” Reese said quietly, “what she needs is a life that doesn’t include … this?” Her voice wavered on the last word because what she really meant wasme.
Veronica didn’t rush to answer. “That’s the question she’s still trying to sit with.”
The thought hollowed Reese out. She had always believed love was an action: showing up, adjusting, choosing each other again and again. The idea that love might also mean standing still, hands empty, felt unbearable.
“I can’t lose her,” Reese said. Because to Reese, that was her thesis statement. All the rest were just details.
“I know,” Veronica said softly.
The room felt suddenly enormous. The future she’d been moving toward might happen without the one person she’d been picturing beside her. Reese pressed her palm flat against her sternum, grounding herself as best she could.
“She might never come back,” Reese said.
Veronica didn’t contradict her. She couldn’t.
After a moment, Reese lowered her hand, shoulders settling with the weight of it. “I still have to drive this weekend,” she said with disbelief. Because how was that going to happen? Howwas she just supposed to go about her weekend like everything wasn’t upside down?
“You do,” Veronica agreed. “And you don’t have to know how you’ll do it yet. Just that you will. You’re a pro, Reese.”
She nodded, though it felt like agreeing to something she didn’t fully understand. The ache didn’t lessen, but it settled in. Somehow, she was just going to have to move forward without knowing whether the person she loved would ever be standing beside her again.
Veronica lingered for a moment, like she might say something else, then thought better of it. She squeezed Reese’s shoulder once before letting herself out, the door clicking shut with a finality that felt too loud in the quiet room.
