Chapter Three #2
“Henri,” the journalist followed up, like a shark sensing blood in the water, “do you feel like you left her enough room?”
“We made no contact,” Henri replied.
There was no stopping the snort that left my mouth, and I could practically feel Bertha’s invisible hand squeezing her stress ball somewhere in the back.
“Right. But it was close?”
His voice was level, but I noticed the small finger taps on his knee—his age-old tell that he was nervous. “As Lily said, we both wanted the same piece of track.”
An understatement. But I bit back what I really wanted to say.
He’d nearly put me into the wall—a topic that Felix had been allowed to mention during his team principal interview, but which I’d been told to ignore.
I suspected Bertha couldn’t control Felix’s frustrated outbursts toward Hermes like she could mine.
I leaned toward the mic, giving them the answer Bertha had prepared. “Honestly, the camera angles can be deceiving. There was more space than it appeared on the broadcast.”
“It looked tighter on TV than it felt in the car,” Henri added, and I had to give him credit—his voice carried just enough casual confidence to make it sound believable.
“Well,” a different voice cut in, female this time, “I assume he apologized to you after this weekend’s incident? Given what happened in Miami?”
The question hung in the air. Henri’s fingers tightened on the microphone, a small but visible tell that he was already done with this line of questioning. I suspected he was probably as sick of hearing about yesterday’s free practice as I was hearing about Miami.
This ought to be good.
“Look, my car had a little steering issue,” Henri said slowly, deliberately. Then he turned to me, and a knowing grin curved on his lips. “Lily knows what that’s like.”
He paused, and I watched danger dance in his hazel eyes. Henri Dubois was many things, but gracious in defeat wasn’t one of them. “But of course,” he continued, voice dripping with false sweetness, “I’m always happy to offer an apology to her. One similar to the apology she gave me in Miami.”
Prick!
Henri punctuated the jab with a subtle wink, brief enough that the cameras might miss it, but obvious enough that I definitely didn’t.
“Well, Henri,” I began, forcing sincerity into my voice even as fury burned in my chest, “I’m sure you’ll give me a detailed tutorial on proper apologies once you’ve mastered that particular art yourself.”
Two can play at passive-aggressive, golden boy.
The next question came fast, cutting through whatever retort Henri might have been formulating.
“Henri, let’s talk more about Friday’s free practice sessions.
Your lap times were slower than your expected pace.
Was there a specific issue with the car or setup?
It almost looked like you froze out there. Was there a malfunction?”
The word “froze” seemed to hang in the air, and Henri’s shoulders stiffened beside me. He leaned toward the mic, but nothing came out at first. His mouth opened then closed again. The silence stretched just long enough to make everyone in the room lean forward.
Well, that’s new.
The Hermes media darling, fluent in charm and control, suddenly looked like he’d forgotten how to speak.
“We had, um,”—he swallowed visibly—“some setup challenges we were working through.”
He tried for a smile, his trademark effortless grin, but it faltered halfway, giving more grimace than charm.
As he stumbled through the rest, something about “finding the right balance,” I watched him out of the corner of my eye.
The set of his jaw, the tight pull at the corner of his mouth, the crease between his brows.
His rambling was so unlike him that I found myself unable to look away from the train wreck unfolding beside me.
His rambling finally trailed off. A few journalists exchanged glances, but most just nodded mechanically. One bad weekend for Hermes wasn’t exactly headline news.
My eyes drifted over to éliott. He was Henri’s best friend on the grid, the two of them having raced together their entire lives. The French driver wasn’t smiling anymore. His easy charm had flickered off, replaced by something akin to concern.
He was watching Henri the same way I was.
“Right, so setup challenges,” another journalist pressed, clearly unsatisfied with the vague response. “What exactly were the issues you—”
“I said there was nothing wrong!”
The room froze like someone had hit pause on a video. Even the moderator’s hand stilled on his tablet. Henri never raised his voice. Not in interviews, not in the paddock, not even after crashes. This person next to me definitely sounded like Henri, but they felt like a stranger.
He immediately realized his mistake, and I watched the change happen in real time. The widening of his eyes, the color draining from his face, the way his hand flew up to rake through his hair before rubbing down his face in a gesture that looked more like desperation than frustration.
“I meant…” He took a breath, trying to reset. “We’re reviewing the data. That’s all. Standard procedure after any session where the lap times aren’t quite where you expect.”
éliott leaned forward, offering him the smallest lifeline.
“I think what Henri means is that we’re all still finding our rhythm this early in the season.
Setup tweaks, getting a feel for the car.
It’s an ongoing process. You have to remember, our cars are brand-new to us.
These new engineering specs, they’re difficult to learn. ”
Fortunately, the moderator seized the moment. “All right, that’s all the time we have. Thank you, everyone.”
As chairs scraped and journalists began gathering equipment, I risked a glance at Henri.
He was already standing, moving to leave with mechanical precision, his PR team closing around him like a protective detail. His face had gone carefully blank again, that professional mask firmly back in place.
But his hands were shaking.
Just slightly, barely noticeable unless you were looking for it, but I saw the tremor in his fingers as he straightened his team polo, the way he shoved them quickly into his pockets to hide it.
I watched him disappear through the media-room door without a backward glance, éliott close on his heels.
Bertha appeared at my side, tablet hugged to her chest like a shield. “Not bad,” she said. In Bertha-speak, that was practically a standing ovation. “Though next time…” She paused, sighing. “Well, it could’ve been worse.”
I’d take it.