𝐋𝐈𝐎𝐍𝐇𝐄𝐀𝐑𝐓 ~ | 𝘔𝘢𝘹 𝘝𝘦𝘳𝘴𝘵𝘢𝘱𝘱𝘦𝘯

Fire and Smoke

~'~

Max

I had tried to get her out of my head. Since that night, I have been all over the place. I hadn't let myself cry since I won my first championship, and my dad said he was proud of me. I don't cry.

What the fuck was wrong with me?

It was hard not to think about her since we worked together. It hadn't helped that this morning I had seen her leaving Lando's room. What had she been doing? And even better question was, Why the fuck was I this jealous?

I couldn't think about that right now. I had a race to win. Sabrina had beat me for pole by only a couple tenths of a second, but after a grid penalty, I had been demoted to P4. The only car that would be any kind of challenge to overtake was hers.

I lost myself in the seat by the halo. I took a deep breath as I felt my steering wheel being fitted in. I looked up at the sky.

The sky was beautiful.

It reminded me of-

No! Focus! For fucks sake, I shook my head at myself quickly, looking back down. I heard the horn, and the mechanics pulled away onto the grass. I took another deep breath, snapping down my visor.

The formation lap felt eerily smooth. Sabrina set a blistering pace as if she couldn't wait for the lights to go out. There was something about the way her car darted forward in clean, sharp lines, perfectly calculated. It was mesmerizing, but it didn't settle the restless feeling gnawing at my chest.

That feeling again.

My fingers flexed on the wheel as I lined up on the grid. It wasn't nerves, not exactly. I'd done this a thousand times before. Adrenaline was normal. But this? This was something else, something I couldn't shake. A sense of impending... something. I couldn't name it, but I hated how my heart thudded a fraction too hard, how the breath in my lungs felt tight. I glanced around, trying to find a sign that might justify the unease clawing its way up my throat.

There was nothing.

When the lights blinked out, instinct took over. Foot down, steering steady, focus absolute. I overtook Hamilton into turn one, easing ahead in a smooth, controlled move. The kind of maneuver that should've quieted my mind. But the nagging pull only grew louder.

Danger. Danger. Danger.

It whispered like a chant, looping in my head as lap after lap rolled by. I focused on keeping the car within the lines, clean passes, and maximizing every braking zone. But something in the pit of my stomach churned, louder now, insistent. By lap thirty, it wasn't a whisper anymore.

It was a scream.

"Shut up," I muttered to myself, trying to shake it off. I focused on the data, the gaps ahead, anything to drown it out. But it was no use.

And it wasn't about me.

Lap 48. That was when it happened.

At first, it was just a flash, a plume of gravel spraying in the air ahead. The kind of thing you expect when someone runs wide or loses traction. But then I saw it, through the gap between a McLaren and the flicker of carbon debris, the way it all unraveled too fast, too violently to be normal. A car spinning out, rear axle snapping around as sparks erupted beneath it. The first car hit the barrier with a dull crunch. Sickening, but survivable.

But the other.

It flipped, airborne, its underbelly gleaming for a horrible half-second before the impact came. An explosion of shrapnel.