Carter
Chapter twenty-seven
Race day is supposed to taste like fuel and focus. This one tastes like copper.
The track looks clean from here. Dry in the places it wants you to look. But I can see the darker patches off-line where the sun hasn’t reached—the thin, sheen lingering in the seams. The asphalt doesn’t care about the schedule. It doesn’t care about the act Dominic put on this morning.
I’m tucked into the space between worlds.
The pit wall is a hard line of bodies and screens, headsets and clipped voices.
Hands move over data like this is all math and no pulse.
I’m half a step back, close enough to hear the static, far enough that I’m not in the way when the physics of this weekend finally collect their price.
My lanyard sits heavy against my sternum. The plastic edge digs into my skin, a constant, hitting reminder of the professional I’m pretending to be.
My dad is at the wall. He’s leaning forward, chin tucked like the track is going to confess something if he stares hard enough. I see his cheeks flex when Dominic’s voice crackles in the channel—a low, rhythmic twitch that tells me he knows exactly how close to the edge Dominic is riding.
The black car flashes past on the main straight like an animal cut loose. It looks untouchable until you remember that gravity doesn’t care about your name.
I don’t cheer. I don’t clap. My arms are crossed so tight I can feel my own pulse drumming against my ribs. Because behind my eyes, the loop won’t stop.
The truth. The engagement. The "Yes."
The way he looked at me like I was a variable he’d finally accounted for. The sound of the garage door slamming—a verdict that traveled through my bones.
I tell myself I’m here because it’s my job. But really, I’m here because I need to watch the world keep moving. I need proof that everything doesn’t stop just because I broke.
My phone sits in my back pocket like a live wire. Then it vibrates. Short. Precise.
I slide it out, my thumb hovering over the glass. I’d spent months telling myself these messages were his—that the cryptic, pressing weight of them was just another part of Dominic’s damage. I wanted them to be his. I wanted the haunting to have a face I actually liked looking at.
But Dominic is on the screen. He is a blur of paint and screaming pistons, his hands occupied with a steering wheel and a death-defying lap time. He can’t be here and there.
Unknown Number: You watching?
Something inside me turns abruptly weightless.
Sharp. Like a window finally wiped clean.
A wave of pure, concentrated nausea rolls through me, not because of the words, but because of my own stupidity.
I should have known. The second my father signed with the Valerio’s—the second his name was back in the headlines—the shark would have smelled the blood in the water.
My hands aren’t shaking. That’s the part that scares me. The numbness has finally reached my fingertips, turning my skin into a shell.
I type. No emotion. Just impact.
Carter: Funny, Mother. I was starting to think you’d never be seen again.
I hit send. The message whooshes away—a digital footprint sent to find a monster. I’ve spent my life trying to outrun her gravity, and yet here I am, caught in her orbit the second I let my guard down.
“You’re overdriving!”
My dad’s voice, raw and biting, anchors me back to the pit wall. I look up, my vision swimming for a second as the two worlds collide. My mother in my hand; my father at the wall; the man who lied to me in the car.
On the screen, Dominic’s lap time turns purple. Fast. Too fast for a track that’s still weeping in the corners. He’s driving like he can still outrun consequences if he pushes hard enough.
“Dominic,” my dad snaps, his hand gripping the edge of the monitor so hard the plastic groans. “Bring it down. Now.”
“I need the time,” Dominic’s voice comes through, clipped and frantic.
“You don’t need the time if you don’t finish.” My dad’s voice rises, cutting through the radio chatter like a serrated edge.
The car hits the main straight, a streak of obsidian under a mocking sky. Then he hits the braking zone, and I see it immediately—the way the nose dips too hard, the way the chassis groans. He’s attacking the corner like he’s trying to make the car apologize for every lie he’s told me.
The engine note spikes—a high, thin scream that hits the back of my throat like a punch I never braced for.
“Brake earlier!” my dad barks into the headset. “You’re carrying too much speed—”
The seconds distort until they barely feel real.
I watch, my vision tunneling until the only thing in existence is his car and the damp patch of asphalt waiting for him on the exit.
He’s holding the throttle pinned, his knuckles likely as crushing as they were when he gripped Luka’s wrist. He isn't driving for a podium anymore. He’s driving like letting go of the speed would mean admitting he’s already lost.
He doesn’t lift. The engine screams, climbing higher, vibrating through the floor of the pit wall and into the marrow of my bones.
My phone buzzes in my palm. I don’t want to look. I do anyway.
Unknown: You’ll be seeing me sooner than you think.
“DOMINIC—LIFT!” my dad screams, his voice cracking, the raw terror of a father and a coach finally colliding.
Dominic doesn't lift. He does the opposite. He pushes. He drives like survival is negotiable.
The needle on the telemetry hits the crimson, the engine wailing in a pitch that sounds like metal begging for mercy. He’s past the limit. He’s past the safety of the physics he spent his life mastering. He’s crossed the line where talent stops and consequence begins.
The rear snaps. Violent. Decisive.
Black paint blurs into a sickening cloud of tire smoke. The car breaks loose, spinning with a frantic, ugly grace, finally done fighting with someone who has nothing left to lose.
I feel the impact in my teeth before I hear it.
It’s the sound of a world ending—the crunch of carbon fiber folding, the screech of speed being snuffed out in a heartbeat, the earth punching back. The car slams sideways into the barriers, the force of it shaking the very ground beneath my feet.
The onboard feed jerks violently. The image fractures into a thousand digital shards—frames tearing, sound clipping, reality failing to keep up with the violence of the stop.
For a split second, everything goes silent. No radio. No crowd. Nothing.
Then the world slams back in.
My father is shouting Dominic’s name into a dead channel, a raw, splintered sound I’ve never heard him make—a sound of pure, unadulterated grief. My phone is still lit in my hand, my mother’s promise burning into my skin like a brand.
I thought I’d run out of air in the garage. I thought the word engaged was the impact—the collision that was supposed to end me. But I was wrong. Reality is cruel like that; it wasn't finished with me. It was just warming up.
That was just a vibration. This is the structural collapse.
I told myself I couldn’t breathe earlier, but I didn’t understand the truth of that until now. I’m not just gasping; it’s a total system failure. It feels like my ribs have fused together, a cage that refuses to expand no matter how hard I fight for it.
The car is a mangled skeleton of carbon fiber, twisted and unrecognizable against the ground.
Gray smoke curls lazily from the wreckage, drifting up toward that mocking blue sky like a final breath.
It looks small. For the first time, the car looks fragile—a broken toy discarded by a world that finally got tired of his arrogance.
Static hisses in my ears, a flatline of white noise on the monitors that tells me the sensors are gone. The data is flat. The heart of the car has stopped beating. And through the static, I can hear the faint, rhythmic ticking of cooling metal—the sound of a machine dying in real-time.
He isn't moving.
My father is still screaming into the radio, his voice cracking over and over, begging for a response that doesn't come. I can’t look away from the silence.
And as the first yellow flag begins to wave in the distance, I realize the countdown didn't just reach zero. It took everything with it.
The redline was the limit.
He finally crossed it.