“Me,” I said.“You run my story.”
Alex blinked.“Your story?”
I sat down across from him and made myself hold his gaze.
“After Miami, that crash with Lily, I started having anxiety attacks in the car.”Alex perched on my desk, his phone already recording.I could see the small red dot on the screen, but he didn’t draw attention to it.He just let me talk about Miami.About F2.About what my old racing director had told me.
About the panic that filled me every time I drove in the rain.
“Henri…” Alex’s voice was careful.“Did you tell your team?”
“No, and I know I should have.”The certainty in my own voice surprised me.“I’ve hidden this from everyone.My team, my family, my physio.I convinced myself that if I just pushed through it, it would go away.That admitting it would make me weak, like I was told in F2.”I laughed, and it sounded hollow even to me.“Back in those days, I also had a big crash, but we didn’t treat mental health the same then.I was worried about their reaction.”
“What changed?”
And there she was.Right at the center of everything, exactly where she always seemed to end up.
“Lily.”Her name felt different when I said it out loud to someone else.Heavier.More real.“After she banged on my hotel door one night, she demanded I tell her what was going on with me.I told her everything, and afterward, she didn’t look at me with pity.She didn’t treat me like I was broken or fragile.She sat with me and said, ‘You need to talk to someone.’”
Alex was very still.
I could feel my throat tightening, but I kept going.
“She’s the only person in the entire paddock who knew.For weeks, she carried that secret for me and never once used it.Never told her team, never leveraged it for a competitive advantage.She just listened.”
It felt good to say that out loud.
“And I’ve watched her carry her own weight this entire season—the pressure, the harassment, a mother who treats her like a brand instead of a daughter—and she never once asked anyone to carry it for her.”
“I need you to include that,” I said.“What she did for me.How she helped me when nobody else could, because she understood what it was like to be struggling and too proud to say it out loud.I mean, hell, even got me a dog, Alex.”
“Henri—”
“I’m serious.This isn’t just about me.The woman Ollie tried to reduce to a victim in his article is the reason I’m still racing at all.”My voice cracked on the last word, and I didn’t bother trying to hide it.“I need the world to know that, before they decide who she is based on what he wrote.”
“Sounds like you’re not just talking about a colleague,” Alex said quietly.
I stared at the wall behind him.There was a hairline crack in the paint, thin and jagged, running from the ceiling down to the corner.I traced it with my eyes while the silence stretched between us.
“I’m not.”
The admission sat in the room, simple and enormous.
“She’s the bravest person I know,” I said.“And I know how that sounds—like hyperbole, or some rehearsed line—but I mean it literally.She walked into a sport that was designed to exclude her, and she didn’t just survive it.She’s winning.She’s beating people who’ve had every advantage she never had, and she’s doing it while someone terrorizes her in private and the whole world scrutinizes her in public.She never complains.Never uses any of it as an excuse.”I paused.“She just drives.”
Alex looked at me for a long time—long enough that I felt every wall I’d ever built sitting in rubble at my feet.Then he nodded once, slowly.“There’s going to be a lot of questions from your team about this.You sure?”
“I know.”
He paused.“And look, I’m not saying what Ollie did was right, but I want to mention that Lily’s story is one that should be told as well.”
“But on her terms,” I agreed.“And not by the person I suspect might be sending her the notes…”
Alex exhaled slowly.Shook his head.Then he pulled his laptop from his bag and set it on the table between us.“All right, Dubois.Let’s write this.”He cracked his knuckles over the keyboard.“When do you want it live?”
“Today, if we can.Before Ollie’s article gains another hour of traction.”
“That’s an outrageous deadline!I need to write it, get editorial approval, fact-check—”
