She started volunteering at the Amberley library—two mornings a week, sorting returns, shelving books, running the children’s story hour on Tuesdays. The children were small, loud, trusting. They climbed into her lap duringThe Very Hungry Caterpillar, asked her to read it again, laughed when she made silly voices for the caterpillar eating through the pages. For an hour at a time, she could forget the paddock, the headlines, him. Their small hands in hers, their easy trust—it was a kind of medicine she hadn’t known she needed.
She began writing again—not press releases, but stories. Short ones. Fragments. A girl who left home and came back hollow. A boy who chased speed until it chased him back. She wrote in a notebook she kept hidden under her mattress, like a secret she wasn’t ready to share. The words came slowly at first—halting, painful—then steadier. She didn’t show anyone. Not yet. But putting them on the page felt like taking back a piece of herself she’d lost.
Her parents watched her—quietly, patiently. They saw the way she still flinched at notifications, the way she left the room when racing came on TV, the way she sometimes stared at the horizon like she was waiting for something that would never arrive.
One evening in May—autumn deepening, air crisp—her mother sat beside her on the veranda swing. The sky wasbruised purple, stars just starting to prick through.
“You don’t have to tell us,” her mum said softly, rocking gently. “But when you’re ready… we’re here.”
Mia stared at the darkening paddocks, the silhouette of the hills against the sky. She thought of Oxford—waking up bruised and disoriented, the whispers, the isolation. Vegas—the flash of Marco’s camera, the punch, the headlines that erased her again. Lucas’s voice breaking under the floodlights: “I love you.”
The words were gathering—slow, heavy, inevitable.
“I know,” she whispered.
She didn’t tell them yet.
But that night, after her parents had gone to bed, she pulled the notebook from under the mattress and wrote the first full page she’d managed in months. Not a fragment. A beginning.
She wrote about a girl who ran away from a story that wasn’t hers, and came home to write her own.
When she finished, she closed the notebook, set it on the dresser instead of hiding it, and turned off the lamp.
The room was dark. The house was quiet.
For the first time in a long time, she slept without dreaming of floodlights or headlines.
She wasn’t healed. Not yet.
But she was starting.
???
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Lucas
The season had begun with cautious optimism that felt like lying to himself.
Australia: P4. Home race for Jax, who podiumed and soaked up the crowd like it was oxygen. Lucas finished behind him, no drama, no headlines. He smiled for the cameras, said all the right things—“The car’s strong, we’re building”—but the eyes were dull. No fire. Bahrain: P9. Clean, controlled, the car responding well under his hands. No mistakes, no off-track drama.
Jeddah: P6. Solid points again, but he lost a place in the final stint to a faster Ferrari on fresher tyres. The onboard showed hesitation—braking earlier than necessary, lines too conservative. Paddock whispers started: He’s off. Still carrying the Vegas thing.
By mid-season—after Monaco (P14, poor start, traffic nightmare), Canada (P7, lock-up at Turn 10, self-inflicted)—the pattern was clear. Eighth in the standings. Consistent, but never threatening the podium. The team stayed patient on the surface, but the strategy meetings grew tense. Engineers adjusted setups. Claire pushed harder on media training. Sponsors asked careful questions in private calls. He answered them all with the same polished calm, but inside he was hollow—every lap felt like going through motions, every debrief like reciting lines.
Jax found him after Barcelona—another P7. They sat on the pit wall long after the garages emptied, the track lights buzzing overhead, the air still thick with tyre smoke.
“You’re driving like someone who’s already lost everything,” Jax said bluntly, no preamble, no jokes.
Lucas stared at the dark asphalt, hands clasped between his knees. “Maybe I have.”
Jax exhaled through his nose, leaning back on his palms. “She’s gone, mate. I miss her too—she kept you sharp, kept me from sounding like a complete dick in interviews. Everyone liked her. She was good at her job, fair, didn’t take crap from anyone. Made the place better. But she’s not coming back. And you’re killing your own season trying to race like she’s still watching.”
Lucas rubbed his face, exhaustion etched into every line. “I thought if I won… if I proved something…”
“You’d get her back?” Jax’s voice softened, no judgment, just quiet understanding. “She didn’t leave because you weren’t winning. She left because the whole thing broke her. Vegas, the headlines, the rumours—they tore her apart. You saw it. We all did.”
Lucas looked at him—eyes tired, red-rimmed. “I loved her.”
