VIPER || Oscar Piastri

Chapter 80

[POV: Narrator]

Andreanna Saunterre hadn't slept.

At all.

She'd laid there for hours, flat on her back, the duvet twisted uselessly around just one leg like she'd tried to kick her way out of it and lost the battle halfway through. Her arms were rigid by her sides. Eyes wide open. The ceiling wasn't blank; every corner, every uneven patch of paint, flickered in and out of focus like it was trying to crawl closer.

She flexed her hands. Unflexed. Adjusted the pillow. Switched sides. Tried again. Nothing helped. Her brain kept looping back to one thing.

Every time she closed her eyes, she imagined it again — his hand, brief, steady. The brush of his mouth near her collarbone.

She rubbed her face hard with both hands.

At 2:53 a.m., she curled up on her side, fists against her chest, and muttered into the pillow, "What the hell is wrong with me?"

It wasn't rhetorical. It was full-body, complete and encompassing dread. Heart pounding, vision wobbling dread.

She knew what panic felt like and this was long past it.

By 3:08, she had Lando's name typed into a message bar, followed by:

Im going insan—

Delete.

Please come bac—

Delete.

She stared at her phone, then eventually let it fall onto the duvet. She went back to staring.

By 7 a.m., Andi had made peace with it all the same way people make peace with hurricanes. You don't stop it. You just stand very still and hope you're not dead when its over.

It had happened.

She couldn't deny that it had definitely happened.

And she was as involved in it as he was.

*

In the kitchen, Oscar was making toast. He looked up when she walked in, his expression startled in the way someone looks when they aren't sure whether to move or stay still.

"Morning," she said, flat and grey.

Oscar froze. "Uh." He blinked. "Yeah. Morning."

She didn't move away from him. Didn't fidget. Just asked, "Want tea?"

"Oh, uh— sure..."

She made it fast. No commentary. No asking how he takes it. Just black, two sugars, splash of oat milk. He watched her set it down in front of him and hesitated to pick it up like it might be poisoned somehow. Even though he'd watched her make it.

"...Thanks."

She nodded and started making herself food.

Very calmly, at that.

Oscar stared.
He sipped.
Stared some more.

He was trying to figure out if she was broken or just momentarily buffering.

Or maybe, he thought, she had been drunk after all and now remembers nothing from the night before.

He cleared his throat. "Did you, uh—did you sleep okay?"

"Yep."

That caught him off guard. "Oh." He paused. "Same."

She yawned a moment later — clear and obvious — shoulders up, eyes squeezed shut, not even trying to suppress it.