Chapter 47
SHEP’S LAP
When I woke the next morning, Jonathan was once again already gone, but I expected that. When I opened my laptop, there was a longer response from Thea Blackwood. “Not what I expected, but a great job. I expect there’s more to the story but we can discuss it in person.”
Professional approval in my inbox. Silence from the man I’d risked everything to write honestly about.
By the time I walked into the media center Saturday morning, I knew everyone had read the article.
Some journalists nodded as I passed. Others avoided eye contact, suddenly fascinated with their laptops. Across the room, two reporters fell abruptly silent when I sat down, their conversation evaporating into the hum of air-conditioning and keyboard clicks.
One woman from AutoSport Italia lifted her tiny espresso cup in a silent toast. I wondered if she knew about Adrian Thompson and hadn’t been allowed to print anything.
Nobody said my name out loud. But the word article hung in the air like tire smoke. And under it, I could feel another unspoken word: boyfriend. Not printed anywhere, but whispered under breath, threaded into every glance.
On social media, the reactions were still trickling in:
Pulaski wrote what everyone else was afraid to print. Finally.
@F1TruthTalk
Journalism or betrayal? There’s a reason access is earned, not exploited.
Anonymous post on a motorsport forum
Thank you for standing up for drivers who don’t have a voice.
DM from a freelance photographer I’d never met
I sat, opened my laptop, and pretended to check lap times. My hands were still. My heartbeat wasn’t.
A shadow fell across the desk. I looked up.
Shep.
He glanced around to make sure no one was watching, then leaned in just enough that I could hear him over the background noise.
“You told the truth,” he said quietly. “Not many people do.”
His loyalty should’ve made me feel better. Instead, it only reminded me that Jonathan was out there defending everyone but us.
For a second, I thought he might say more. Instead, he clapped me once, lightly, on the shoulder, almost awkward, like he wasn’t used to saying thank you, and walked away before anyone could notice.
He wasn’t the only one.
An hour later, by the Meridian hospitality entrance, the team’s PR director intercepted me with a professional smile that didn’t reach her eyes.
“Pulaski.” Her voice was smooth as polished carbon fiber. “You’ve made things… complicated.”
“I reported facts.”
“Facts have consequences.” She adjusted her badge lanyard. “Teams don’t forget who opens locked doors. Be careful which ones you try next.”
She walked off before I could answer.
Funny how no one warns you about the consequences of opening your heart instead.
I barely had time to process that before Jonathan appeared beside me, hands in his pockets, jaw tight.
“You okay?” he asked.
“Yes. No. I don’t know.”
What I didn’t say was: I don’t know if we are.
He nodded as if that was the only reasonable answer. “For what it’s worth, I’m proud of you.” A beat passed. “My father isn’t.”
That one landed harder than I expected.
It should have comforted me, but all I heard was everything he wasn’t saying. That pride was safe, but choosing me still wasn’t.
But Monza doesn’t pause for moral dilemmas. At 11:00 sharp, the first strategy briefing began, and the world snapped back into engine maps, tire compounds, and braking zones.
Low downforce. Full throttle for 80% of the lap. Tire degradation higher than simulations predicted. Slipstreaming essential in qualifying. Track temperatures climbing faster than expected. Ferrari running lighter fuel. Mercedes gambling on a one-stop. Rain possible Sunday.
Truth has consequences, I reminded myself.
So does speed.
I had Jonathan’s radio feed piped into my headset, and the static crackle made my pulse race as if I were in the cockpit with him.
Jonathan: “Track’s heating up, Shep. Everyone’s out already, we’re sitting ducks here.”
I leaned closer to the monitor. He was right. The timing board lit up with sector times as car after car hit the track.
Shep: “Hold your position. Thirty seconds more.”
Thirty seconds? My pen tapped nervously against my notebook. At Monza, thirty seconds was forever.
Jonathan: “We’ll miss the window. I need to be on track now!”
I could picture him, jaw tight inside the helmet, fighting that instinct to go.
Shep: “Negative. The pack’s going to bottleneck at Ascari. Let them trip over each other. You’ll have clear air. Trust me.”
There it was. Trust me. Shep had reduced the whole qualifying session to two words.
The screens showed Jonathan finally rolling down pit lane, the Mercedes engine snarling to life as he began his out lap. My heart thudded with every sector time. Yellow, then green, then another green. Clean air. Perfect lines.
Engineer: “Jonathan, you’re through to Q3. P4 overall. Excellent work.”
Gasps rippled through the press room. Reporters looked up from their screens, impressed despite themselves.
Jonathan: “Lucky timing.”
Shep: “Not luck. Eyes up, Hirsch. That was planned.”
I pulled off my headset for a moment, the room around me roaring with keyboards and commentary. Everyone else saw a clever strategist and a driver who had obeyed at the last second. I saw something more dangerous: Jonathan letting Shep’s judgment overrule his own instincts.
It had worked this time. But what if the trust was misplaced next time? What if the gamble failed, and Jonathan was the one left paying the price?
I forced myself back to my notes, but my hands shook as I typed. The championship wasn’t just being fought on the track. It was being fought in Jonathan’s ear, and Shep’s voice was winning. What did that mean for the final qualifying round? For the race tomorrow? For Jonathan’s career?
The media center had gone hushed as Q3 began, everyone glued to the timing screens. Ten cars, twelve minutes, everything on the line. My headset crackled again.
Jonathan: “Okay, Shep, what’s the plan?”
Even his tone had shifted. Less resistance, more… deference. I caught my breath.
Shep: “Out late. Last man across the line. You’ll pick up a tow down the main straight. Everyone else will be tripping over each other.”
It took me a moment to translate the racer slang. If you time it right, you can get behind another car on the long straight and let their slipstream pull you faster.
Jonathan: “That’s risky. What if I get boxed in?”
Shep: “You won’t. I’ll guide you through. Eyes forward.”
The minutes bled away. The other nine cars streamed out, each fighting for space in the queue. On the monitors I saw the ridiculous Monza traffic jam unfold at Parabolica. Cars crawling, jostling, desperate not to be the one without a slipstream.
Jonathan’s car stayed silent in the garage. My chest tightened with every second he wasn’t out there.
Finally, with two minutes left, he rolled. Shep had cut it to the wire.
Engineer: “You’re clear behind. Push hard on the out lap. We need this.”
Jonathan: “Copy.”
The screens lit up with his sector times. First split: purple. Fastest of anyone so far. A ripple moved through the room. Second split: purple again. He was on a pole lap. By the third sector, I was holding my breath.
Race Engineer (over comms): “Jonathan Hirsch. Provisional pole! One-twenty point three!”
The media center erupted. Half the room swearing, half applauding. Jonathan had done it. Pole position for Sunday at Monza.
Jonathan (over the radio, breathless): “How about that, Shep?”
Shep (cool, almost smug): “Job’s not finished. Park it. Tomorrow’s what counts.”
I tugged the headset off, pressing a hand against my chest as if I could calm the hammering there. Jonathan had trusted Shep, and the trust had paid off spectacularly. Pole at the Temple of Speed. Every headline was already writing itself.
But what about tomorrow?
Today, Shep’s gamble had made Jonathan look like a star. Tomorrow, one bad call could make him look like a fool. If Jonathan’s faith was misplaced, it wouldn’t just cost him points. It could cost him everything.
But if he won? If this trust kept paying off, and Jonathan rose higher? Then the choice would be mine. Stay the neutral journalist, or give in to what the team already suspected: Jonathan’s lap dog.
I shook my head. A lap dog waits for scraps. A retriever brings back what others can’t bear to face.
Pole position had answered nothing. It had only sharpened the question.
I kept the follow-up tight and clinical. No politics, no vindication. Just the lap.
Shep’s lap wasn’t just fast. It was a statement.
While others lifted through Curva Grande to protect their tires, Hirsch held his foot down and trusted the car would stick. Low downforce. Light fuel. No margin for error.
There will be time to debate who believed in him and who didn’t. For now, the stopwatch is the only vote that counts, and today, it landed squarely with Shep Stevens.
The paddock was electric after Jonathan’s pole. Every journalist in the media center had a headline half-written, and when I slipped out to catch him leaving the garage, I could see why. He looked like the star of the weekend. The photographers swarmed, microphones shoved in his face.
I hung back, notebook in hand, trying to look like I belonged to the press pack, not to him.
Jonathan glanced at me once over the shoulders of the reporters.
Just a flicker of recognition. Before the team hustled him into the sponsor zone.
That glance carried a thousand unspoken words, but in public, it couldn’t be more than that.
By the time he was finally free, the sun had dropped behind the grandstands and the paddock lights glared off the transporters.
We walked the short stretch to the hotel mostly in silence, both too aware of the crowd around us.
Only when the elevator doors closed did Jonathan let out a long breath and sag against the wall.
“God, Wally. I can’t believe I’m on pole at Monza.” His smile was bright, but there was something brittle under it.
“You earned it,” I said, careful to keep my voice low. “That lap was extraordinary.”
He rubbed his face with both hands. “Yeah, but tomorrow… tomorrow’s what matters. What if I screw it up? What if Shep’s wrong next time? Everyone’s expecting a win now. Pole means nothing if I don’t deliver.”
The admission startled me. Jonathan Hirsch didn’t show cracks. Not to the press, not to his team. But here, in the elevator, I was seeing the nerves he hid from everyone else.
“You’ve done everything right so far,” I said. “You’ll do it tomorrow too.”
His eyes searched mine, desperate, almost pleading. “Say it again.”
“You’ll do it tomorrow too.” I meant it, though my stomach twisted at the thought. Because if Shep made the wrong call during the race, Jonathan’s belief in him, in this whole system, could collapse. And I didn’t know what that would do to us.
The elevator dinged, doors opening to the hotel corridor. A couple of mechanics passed us, and Jonathan straightened immediately, mask back in place. To them, he was the confident pole-sitter. To me, he was the boy who had just whispered his fear.
When we reached the door, the pit of my stomach was tight. In the paddock, I was his shadow, careful not to overstep. At dinner later, I’d be seated at the far end of the table, introduced as “a friend.” And here, in private, I was the only one he trusted enough to admit he was afraid.
It felt like a privilege. It also felt like a trap.
As he closed the door behind us, Jonathan leaned his forehead against mine, just for a moment. The world outside, the cameras, the questions, and the weight of tomorrow fell away.
“I’m glad you’re going to be here tonight,” he whispered. “Not for… you know. Just, so I don’t have to be alone with all this in my head.”
My throat tightened. He wasn’t asking for sex, or even distraction. He was asking for presence, for someone to hold the fear with him.
“Of course,” I said.
He pressed a quick kiss to my temple, so light it almost didn’t register, and then headed toward the shower, already shifting back into focus.
I sat on the edge of the bed, listening to the water run, and let myself breathe. This was what it meant to love him: not the podiums or the headlines, but the quiet comment in the dark, the trust that I would be there when the rest of the world couldn’t be.
It was tenderness, yes. But also a weight. Because tomorrow, if Shep’s gamble went wrong, Jonathan’s trust in him would shatter. And if I wasn’t careful, Jonathan’s trust in me might go with it.