Chapter 25
“Are you sure you don’t want me to come with you?” Mom asks for the fifth time in ten minutes.
The imposing gray-and-black facade of the OTC entrance looms over us.
“I’m sure.”
I’ve been calling Frank nonstop for the last four hours. Unfortunately, he has chosen to ignore me. As have Cameron and Roz. Only Dietrich has given me any sign of life, and that was to leave a string of apology texts on read.
With no other path left, I’ve opted to gate-crash. I’m going to sit outside Frank’s office and wait as long as I have to until he hears me out.
“Call me if you need anything.” Mom squeezes my hand hard enough to grind my knuckles together. “It’s going to work. I know it.”
Her face tells a different story, even though she endorsed my Hail Mary idea and paid our cancellation fees for the Chicago plane tickets without hesitation.
I step out of the car. Behind me, the Uber drives off, taking Mom to the Starbucks at Kingston, where we agreed she’d wait. I take a deep breath to calm my nerves, then walk into the grand lobby.
I swipe my pass at the clear glass turnstile. The doors fail to open, beeping red.
“You’re no longer a registered employee,” the receptionist, Carolina, says from behind the visitor desk.
“But it’s only been a week.”
“Sorry, I don’t run security.” She yawns, turning her attention back to her phone.
That was ruthlessly efficient. I shouldn’t be shocked the racing team that’s won six F1 Constructors’ Championships moves quickly, but it hurts all the same they’ve already written me off, literally wiping me from the records.
I sigh and open WhatsApp. My thumb floats between Cameron, Roz, and Dietrich, debating who is less likely to ignore me. Again. Finally, I hit call on the last name, since he’s the only one who’s bothered to open our chat since Spa.
The line rings and rings. I’m debating taking my chances and jumping the turnstiles—the geriatric security guard looks like he couldn’t win a footrace against a turtle and certainly won’t be able to catch me—when there’s a click.
“Yes?” Dietrich’s voice is flat.
“Hi,” I say breathlessly. “Thanks for answering.”
“And?”
“I’m really, really sorry,” I say, getting ready to launch into a word-for-word of the heartfelt apology I already texted. How I royally messed everything up, how I didn’t mean to get him splashed all over the tabloids, how he was right—so right—about my dumb mistake.
Dietrich cuts me off with a sigh. “I think I understand. It’s very foolish, but I can understand.”
Relief washes over me.
“So. What else? You didn’t ring me just to apologize, I assume.”
“I need your help getting into the OTC.”
“You want to come back.” Dietrich states it like a fact, not a question. I can hear a small smile in his voice.
“How do you know?”
“From everything I know about you. It’s what you would do.”
I grin in spite of myself. He’s not wrong. “What do you think my chances are?”
“Did you watch Zandvoort?”
“Nope.” I’ve been staying away from F1 and all things related to minimize the pain. I turned off my ESPN alerts, deleted the F1 TV app, asked Mom not to play the F3 broadcast on our TV yesterday even though she was dying of curiosity.
“Your reserve was terrible,” Dietrich says. “Zero points, when Orbital had the fastest setup. If he drives the next race, Triton will certainly walk away with the team championship.”
“Really?” I knew Georgios wasn’t the most dexterous driver, but I didn’t know he was at shit-the-bed-so-badly-an-F1-driver-notices levels of incompetence.
“With how he has performed, I think they’d rather have a points haul with a public image complication.”
Hope bubbles up within me. Maybe it’s not as much of a Hail Mary as I thought. “So… can you come get me? I’m in the lobby.”
“This moment?”
“Frank’s been ignoring my calls. It’s the only way I could think of to make him talk to me.”
“I’m in the engineering lab. I’ll be there in a few minutes.”
I hang up, a small ray of optimism twirling in my chest. Maybe if Dietrich has forgiven me, Frank will also find it in his heart to let me off and convince the higher-ups at Orbital to give me another shot.
“Kwong?”
I whirl around.
Cameron looks gorgeous as always, even in a casual team hoodie and jeans. “What are you doing here?”
It’s not the friendliest greeting, but it also isn’t overtly hostile. I’ll take what I can get. “I’m trying to see Frank.” Because I know what he’s thinking, I say it. “I’ve come crawling back.”
“Good luck with that.” He starts for the turnstiles.
I weigh my pride and my desperation and opt for the latter. Not like I’ll have much of the former left after I’m done begging Frank anyway.
“Cameron, wait!”
Carolina looks up from her phone, grim curiosity all over her face.
“What?” He turns around, and we’re nose-to-nose again, just like old times.
Heat creeps up my neck. “I just… I want to apologize. For Spa, for everything. It’s like what I texted you, I didn’t mean to—”
“Be a selfish twat?” he says acidly. “Break my heart?”
“I broke your heart?” Even though I know there’s not a chance in the depths of hell we can be anything after all this, it still makes me morbidly happy to know part of him still cares.
He flushes. “Don’t flatter yourself. It’s just a turn of phrase.”
I swallow. “Well, I’m still sorry I didn’t follow team orders. I was too desperate for my first win—”
“I don’t need a replay, thanks.” He turns away.
“You’ve been there before, though, haven’t you?” I reach out and grab his arm. He doesn’t swat me away like I dreaded he would. “So desperate to prove yourself that you forget about everything else.”
He considers me, working his jaw. “Remember who you’re talking to? My entire racing life has been built on desperately proving myself.” He lets out a long sigh. “That was a shitty move, don’t get me wrong. But fine. I probably would have broken team orders too if it were me.”
I’m making progress, little by little. I gird myself for the harder, scarier part. “And also, what you said about The Weekly Mail—”
“I was mainly mad about the race,” Cameron interrupts, not quite meeting my eyes. “You were already the front-runner for the F2 seat. I knew any shot I had went out the door with Spa.”
“The reason I wanted to hide you, us, wasn’t because—”
“Kwong,” he interrupts again. “I get it. It’s Dietrich Lange, for fuck’s sake. He can do things for you that I’ll never be able to.”
“No, but I—”
“It’s fine. We don’t ever have to talk about that.” He sticks out his hand, like he expects me to shake it and we can go on our merry way.
I know this is the wisest course. To go back to being teammates and pretend nothing ever happened between us.
But I can’t forget the look on his face that’s haunted me since Spa.
It’s important he knows that, in my eyes, he’s worthy.
That I don’t care that he can’t boost my profile or open any doors, because what matters isn’t where you start, but where you go.
“It’s not like that at all,” I say.
“Then what is it like?”
My face warms under his stare. Blood rushes to my ears as I try to come up with the right words.
“Hello. Welcome back.” Dietrich chooses that moment to materialize behind the entrance turnstile. I’m glad he’s smiling at me again, blue eyes sparkling, but this is the literal worst possible timing.
“Like I said, no hard feelings.” Cameron grabs my hand and shakes it briskly, as polite and impersonal as if I were any old billionaire in the paddock hospitality suite.
“I’ll see you around.” He gives Dietrich a curt nod, then passes the turnstile and strides into the bowels of the building without another look back.
“You have made up with Cameron?” Dietrich asks, swiping his badge to buzz me in. This is technically against the rules, but Carolina doesn’t say anything, because—of course—it’s Dietrich.
“Kind of.” I shrug weakly.
“Don’t worry, it will be okay. Everyone gets into scraps with their teammate. It will take a little bit of time, but he will forgive you in the end.”
I chuckle morosely. Now’s not the time to bring Dietrich up to speed on this particular mess.
He walks with me through the white stone halls until we get to the team principal offices. Frank’s is next to Otto Warner’s, with floor-to-ceiling frosted windows and a sign with his name printed on the door. His blurry shape moves inside.
“Good luck,” Dietrich says, clapping me on the shoulder.
I steel myself, then turn the knob.
Frank’s sitting at his desk, his chair tilted back as he watches a replay of yesterday’s race.
“Justine?” He hits pause.
“Hi.” I take two steps into the room.
Before I can lose my nerve, I launch into the speech I practiced over and over with Mom last night. “I would like to apologize for my part in the tabloid article. I got caught up, as many drivers my age do, at my first after-party. Going forward, I guarantee this won’t happen again—”
It’s impossible to read Frank’s expression and it only makes my knees tremble, so I focus instead on the picture of him and his cherub-faced granddaughter on the metal desk instead.
“—but that being said, there were also many things that weren’t within my control. Such as the WM fabricating my role as a third party in Dietrich’s personal life. I did go to the gala with him, but—”
“No need to elaborate,” Frank interrupts, coughing. “I’d rather not know.”
My ears turn red, but I fast-forward to the end. “I’m asking for a chance to finish out the season. I can help Orbital win the F3 team championship.”
He crosses his arms. “That’s a pretty big promise.”
“Come on, Frank, we’re neck and neck with Triton. You know I can make a difference. Please.”
He sighs. “Look, Justine. You are talented. Tremendously talented. And you are not the first young driver to fall to the media hounds…”
I nod eagerly, hope radiating within me.
“Like I told you at Spa, if it were up to me, we’d take a different route. But… the sponsors feel strongly about this, especially Hendriksen. I already tried speaking with Lou this morning, but he’s firm.”
As quickly as that, I come crashing down.
Could I somehow wrangle an audience with Lou Wilson, plead my case directly?
Not likely—he’s barely in Milton Keynes unless there’s a VIP sponsor visiting—and my best in, Roz, is still cold-shouldering me, not to mention she always goes out of her way to distance herself from her uncle.
Just like I go out of my way to dodge diversity-related initiatives pitched to me in the name of fitting in.
If there’s anything the tabloid debacle has thrown into light—it’s that no matter how many points I score, how friendly I become with the guys, I’m always going to be viewed in a different light.
So I might as well go ahead and own it, loudly and proudly.
Own it in solidarity with Roz and the other paddock women, stick my face on the energy bars, shout about it in interviews, be more visible for Maddie and the future.
“What if I could do a reverse Uno?” I ask, an idea slowly forming. “Get Orbital and Hendriksen some good publicity?”
Frank purses his lips. “What do you have in mind?”