GREENE | CS55

45 - We Can't Be Friends

cw: smut

It didn't take much effort for Pierce to get Carlos' hotel room information from Lando.

Any other day, she would have indulged in the way her future teammate tried to match her spunk. The competitiveness, even just there. Watching Lando throw her sass back at her, challenging her. She would have dragged it on much longer on any other day— if she wasn't riddled with nerves and the remaining impact of the day, she may have said something to effectively wipe the coy smile that had spread across Norris' face at her request. Or to deflect from the way his fluffy brows rose as she turned her back to him and typed the address and subsequent room information into her phone for safe keeping.

She returned back to her own hotel room, turning the stream of water in the shower to hot before sliding out of her sweaty team-kit, taking a full-body scan of herself in the bathroom mirror as it steamed around her. Her toes curled against the heated marble floors, her brown eyes scanning the rise and fall of her own bare chest. Today had drained her. This entire year had drained her. Hell, life had drained her.

Lavender and oud frothed through her locks, her fingers taking care to press against the pressure points on her temples, circling there. Her mind throbbed satisfyingly with the motion, the passing moments of the day flickering against the backs of her eyelids in an old film reel rotation. Her hand reached down, turning the water temperature up to scalding.

A red flush lingered across her features long after Pierce had toweled off and lathered herself in skin and body-care. With a towel wrapped around her mid-section, Pierce sat on her bed and thought this all through. Seriously thought this all through.

That signature didn't bring Pierce as much peace as she thought it would. Not under these circumstances. Not after a day like today.

One dedicated smudge of ink didn't change the fact that her and Carlos were both competitors at the pinnacle of motorsport. Didn't change the fact that for the weeks to come, the headlines would be flooded with statements in regards to that press conference. It wouldn't change the fact that she'd be taking his seat for the next two years to come, that she'd continue on in a position Carlos had felt so unfulfilled by. Would he think that a betrayal on her part? Would he add that to the growing list of reasons he currently definitely had to tell her to get lost?

Was that all this was? Pierce Greene, digging her own grave, deeper and deeper still? To what end? How long could she continue? How long could she pretend?

Pierce bit her tongue. This wasn't all bad. It was a smudge of ink she was grateful to Zak Brown to be able to create, but it just didn't change the way she felt about Carlos. He wasn't going away any time soon.

And, well, neither was she.

Her mind raced, playing through each memory of him today, grasping onto it like hands attempting purchase against mist. About what she should have said to him, then and there. How she could have chased after him, like he once chased after her. How easy it would be to just pick up her phone and call him.

When the Uber dropped her off around the corner from Carlos' hotel, Pierce tucked her navy blue Yankees baseball cap lower on her brow, thinking with a crushing sensation to her heart about every single time she'd done this before. Rental cars tucked away into dark alleys, take-out orders placed under pseudonyms, her collection of large glasses and her vault of back-street city routes growing by the week. Sneaky as a spy.