Chapter 30
SIXTEENTH
The next race weekend felt wrong from the start. And it reminded her of the last.
Reese noticed it in the small things first—the missed braking point she never missed, the hesitation in a corner she usually trusted without thinking.
The car was fine. The track was familiar.
She wasn’t. Her lap times hovered close enough to respectable to keep anyone from panicking outright, but the stage was set, and the data was adding up.
“I don’t know what’s wrong,” she told Shanelle, as they sat in her office later that day.
“Other than I’m in my head a little more than usual.
” She couldn’t argue that part. She missed her girlfriend immensely and walked around on autopilot, hollow and worried and second-guessing everything she’d done and said up to that point.
But when she got behind the wheel, she focused, she executed, and none of it was paying off the way she was used to.
“Here’s the thing. The change in your driving is small, but those quarters of a second add up,” Shanelle told her. “A tiny shift in your mindset makes incremental differences lap after lap after lap until you’re finishing three seconds behind your competitor.”
Reese nodded. “Fewer hesitations. I have to process quicker.”
“Do I look worried?” Shanelle said, sitting back in her chair like a woman waiting patiently on a martini.
“I know who I hired, and she’ll be back.
Let’s see how you do in your practice session today and come up with a workable race strategy with Geoff.
” The new engineer she was working with, now that Damon was back with Ezra, was patient and smart, but they had yet to develop a rhythm.
“Okay, let’s hope for a good session.”
Shanelle’s confidence was helpful, the way it always was. Reese left the office, telling herself to simplify. Brake later. Commit sooner. Trust the muscle memory that had carried her this far.
The practice session was cleaner. She hit her marks more consistently, stayed out of trouble, and finished without incident. On paper, it looked like progress.
Inside the car, it felt like holding something together with both hands.
When she climbed out, Delaney, Marissa, and Cassidy were waiting near the back of the garage.
There was no academy race that weekend, no overlapping obligations—just three familiar faces she’d invited as guests, guest passes clipped visibly at their waists.
They stayed deliberately out of the way, like people who knew the rhythm of a paddock and respected it.
Delaney didn’t bother easing into it. “You’re late on turn-in.”
Reese gave a tired half-smile. “Cool. Hello to you, too.”
“Sorry. Hi. But, I mean it,” Delaney said. “You’re not committing when you should. You hesitate, then overcorrect.”
“And that’s new,” Marissa added. “You usually trust your first instinct.”
Cassidy watched her quietly for a beat. Her friends knew everything that was going on with her and Sloane, but Cassidy was the most attuned to her feelings, checking in on her multiple times a day.
“You’re not distracted,” she said. “You’re guarded, which makes sense when you think about it. Given everything you have going on.”
Reese leaned back against the wall, helmet tucked under her arm. “I don’t know how to stop thinking long enough to drive.”
“You don’t,” Delaney said. “You stop trying to think your way through it.”
“That’s not helpful,” Reese muttered.
“It is,” Marissa said gently. “You’re trying to solve something that isn’t a driving problem while driving. Your brain keeps wandering because it doesn’t feel settled.”
Reese stared at the concrete. “Well, I don’t know how to settle it.”
Later, as the garage thinned and the day wound down, Reese found herself alone again—too quiet, too much room for the thoughts she’d been keeping at bay.
Sloane’s absence pressed in on her from every direction.
The empty space where she should have been.
The unanswered questions Reese was trying not to ask yet.
That night, Reese sat on the side of her hotel bed, phone in her hand, thumb hovering over Sloane’s name. She didn’t text. Not because she didn’t want to, but because she didn’t know what she could say that wouldn’t sound like pressure.
I miss you felt obvious.
I’m not okay felt unfair.
Please come back felt like too much.
She set the phone down and stared at the wall instead.
The thought came to her slowly, without drama. If this—this life—meant losing Sloane, then no amount of speed or success would make it worth it. Ever.
She would race this weekend. She would show up. She would do her job. But if the choice ever became real, if the cost became final? She already knew the answer.
And that knowledge, heavy as it was, finally let her breathe.
Sloane was already packing when Veronica answered the phone.
The suitcase lay open on the bed, and she moved around it with purpose, tossing clothes inside without folding. She took stock. Jeans, a soft T-shirt, her academy polos, the jacket she always grabbed when she didn’t know what the weather would be like, but needed something familiar.
Her phone sat on the nightstand, Veronica’s voice coming through on speaker, even and unhurried. “You don’t have to rush,” Veronica was saying. “Take another week if you want. We’re not racing this weekend anyway. I feel like this time has been good for you, and I want to see that continue.”
“It has,” Sloane said, tugging open a drawer and scooping up socks. Veronica was worried because she was a good friend, but Sloane felt emotionally stronger than she had in years, and now was the time. “It’s not that I’m undoing the work. If anything, I’m acting on it.”
There was a brief pause on the other end of the line. “Okay,” Veronica said. “Tell me what changed.”
Sloane stopped moving for a moment, one hand braced on the bed. Her chest tightened with certainty, the panic gone.
“I saw qualifying.”
Earlier that day, she’d been sitting on her couch, coffee cooling on the table. She’d had the broadcast muted and her laptop open so she could check in on the progress, monitor the timing graphics. It had turned into more than that.
Reese’s turn came early in qualifying. The first lap was messy. Nothing catastrophic, but off, almost like she wasn’t warm yet. The second attempt was worse. A snap of overcorrection, a missed apex, momentum bleeding away in places where Reese usually gained it.
Sixteenth.
It was an abysmal result, and Sloane knew how devastated Reese had to have been.
The number had sat there on the screen, stark and undeniable.
She’d have an uphill battle going into the race, and a third poor showing was going to start voices behind the scenes talking.
The media would join the speculation. Had Laurens acted impulsively when they’d brought Reese on?
Would they correct the mistake before the season was too far gone to save?
Sloane hadn’t felt fear then. She’d felt something colder and sharper. Recognition. Reese was so much better than what she was showing, and it was time to step up and support the woman that she loved.
“She’s in her head,” she said quietly. “She’s drowning, and I know I can help.”
Veronica didn’t argue.
Standing in front of her suitcase, she stared at the ceiling, hands on her hips. “She needs me, Ronnie, and I need her, and for the first time in a long time, I feel like I can truly be there to cheer her on, hold her hand, and help. And I can do it in the right way.”
“She has been struggling. That part’s true. She misses you.”
“I miss her, too.” She took a deep breath. “And I’m ready.”
Sloane exhaled and reached for her passport, sliding it into the outer pocket of the suitcase. There was a flight late that afternoon that would have her in Barcelona by midmorning their time, in plenty of time for the race.
She zipped the suitcase closed and rested her palm on it for a moment, grounding herself. No rush in her body. No spike of adrenaline. Just intention.
“I’ll text you when I land,” she said into the phone.
“I’ll be there,” Veronica replied. “In more ways than one.”
“I know.” Sloane smiled, small but real. “Thank you for trusting me to know when it was time.”
“That’s the thing,” Veronica said gently. “You didn’t rush back to the fire. You learned how to stand near it again. Proud of you for that. Travel safe.”
“Thank you, Ronnie. See you soon.”
She moved through the apartment slowly, deliberately—checking the back door, setting the coffee mug in the sink, straightening the throw blanket on the couch without thinking about it. Ordinary motions. Anchors.
She paused at the doorway, one hand on the frame, and took stock of herself the way Lindsay had taught her to. Chest open. Breath even. No bracing. No rehearsal of disaster.
This wasn’t about proving anything. It wasn’t about erasing what had happened or pretending she was fixed. It was about showing up honestly.
She rolled her suitcase down the hall, the sound soft and ordinary, and stepped out into the day.
By the time the plane lifted off, Sloane felt settled in her seat, hands resting easily in her lap. She looked out the window as the city fell away, not replaying the past, not racing ahead.
Just moving forward.
Toward Reese.
Toward the life they were still building, one step at a time.