Chapter Nineteen #2
Lily stood at the bar, her back to me, talking to the bartender.
Her posture was tense, shoulders drawn up slightly, one hand fidgeting with something I couldn’t see.
It looked like she’d ordered a Manhattan, her favorite drink.
She accepted it with a nod of thanks then turned to survey the mostly empty bar.
Her eyes found me almost immediately, like she’d known exactly where I was sitting the whole time.
For a beat, we just looked at each other across the space. Her expression was complicated. I waited for her to look away first. To pretend she hadn’t seen me, to take her drink and claim a seat on the opposite side of the bar, to maintain the awkwardness we’d established over the past few days.
Instead she picked up her glass and walked over, sitting down at the table across from me.
“I, um, missed you at the bar,” she said when she reached my table. “I just wanted to say congratulations on a good race. I mean it—you drove amazing today.”
I looked up slowly, taking her in properly now.
The fatigue around her eyes mirrored my own.
Today had been exhausting for both of us.
For a second, maybe less, surprise filled me.
I genuinely hadn’t expected her to approach, to willingly step into this conversation, after that press conference yesterday.
She had every right to be upset with how I’d acted.
“Thanks.” The word came out flat, emotionally stripped.
She gestured vaguely toward me with her glass, the maraschino cherry bobbing against the rim.
There was something expectant in her face, and she kept swirling her Manhattan around as if it might release a magic genie who could give her the words she was clearly missing. Finally, she looked up at me.
“Can I ask you something?”
I nodded, not sure where this was going.
“Why did you kiss me in Monaco? And Montreal?”
Nothing could have prepared me for that question. It wasn’t that I didn’t have an answer, it was just that I didn’t have a good one.
I stared into my glass, giving it a little swirl.
Now it was my turn to beg the genie to appear.
The silence felt heavy with things unsaid.
Because what was the point? We’d already established the boundaries.
I drew the line in Vegas, told her we should just be friends, and nothing had changed since then.
Our teams still hated each other. Her contract did forbid us dating.
“Henri?” Her voice was softer now, almost hesitant.
She seemed to take my silence as answer enough. I could hear her tap against the hardwood table—not with impatience, but like someone who was willing to wait a lifetime for an answer. When I didn’t provide one, because I couldn’t let the words form on my lips, she tried again.
“Can you tell me this then—what happened between you and Ollie? In F2?” She wasn’t accusatory, just searching, like a detective on a new case. “He told me a story a few days ago, but I wanted to hear your side of it.”
I set my glass down slowly, buying myself a moment to think. “What did he tell you?”
“That you were struggling, and he tried to help. That you… got him fired for it.” She met my eye. “But it doesn’t sound like you, Henri. So, I’m asking.”
The fact that she was asking, that she hadn’t just accepted Ollie’s version as the truth, made something loosen in my chest. A tension I hadn’t realized I’d been carrying.
I leaned back in my chair, studying her face in the dim light. Then I laughed—short, bitter, utterly disbelieving. The sound scraped out of my throat like fingers on a chalkboard.
“That’s the story he’s going with.” Not a question.
She nodded, waiting.
My gaze met hers, unblinking. The corner of my mouth twitched upward in a smile that didn’t quite reach my eyes. A defense mechanism, maybe. Or just the absurdity of it all finally breaking through.
“The truth? He was right. I was struggling in F2,” I said quietly.
“After a huge crash in the rain, I had panic attacks before any qualifying where it was even remotely wet. I couldn’t sleep more than a few hours without nightmares.
There was this constant noise in my head telling me I wasn’t good enough, that I was going to crash, that I was going to fail whenever there was bad weather, which seemed to be all the time that season. ”
I paused, my eyes flicking to the glass between my hands, watching the amber liquid catch and refract the low light.
“I told Ollie because I thought I could trust him. Because we were friends, and he was the only other person in that program who seemed to understand what the pressure felt like.” My laugh was hollow. “Stupid, right?”
Lily had gone very still, and I wanted more than anything to be able to jump inside her head and know what she was thinking.
“A week later,” I continued, my voice growing harder with each word, “I found a blog draft open on his laptop when I was at his flat. I’d borrowed his computer to check emails because my phone had died.
And there it was, everything I’d told him, in an email to a media outlet.
He called me reckless, unstable, and dangerous behind the wheel.
He didn’t use my name, but anyone who read it would’ve known exactly who he was writing about. ”
“So, he did write about you?” Her voice was barely above a whisper.
“He was planning to,” I corrected. “Said it would start an important conversation about mental health in motorsport. Called it advocacy, like he was doing some noble public service, instead of—” I broke off, shaking my head. “Exploiting someone’s private pain for clicks and credibility.”
I took a slow breath, trying to steady myself, to push past the anger threatening to crack through my carefully maintained composure.
“I showed the draft to our F2 team principal, Charles. Explained what had happened, what Ollie was planning to do.” The memory still burned. “Ollie was released from the academy within forty-eight hours for severe breach of confidentiality and trust. End of story.”
Lily fidgeted in her seat. “Henri… I’m so sorry.”
“Well, unfortunately, firing Ollie didn’t fix all my problems,” I sighed.
“The damage was already done. Once I admitted to struggling, to being mentally weak, that was how the team saw me from then on.” I ran my thumb along the rim of my glass, focusing on the simple sensation rather than meeting her eye.
“Mental health wasn’t a priority back then. ”
“What did the team say?”
I swirled my drink, watching the remaining brown drops slosh in the crystal glass. “After firing Ollie, Charles pulled me aside and told me to get my head sorted. Said champions don’t break under pressure, and that if I couldn’t handle the stress of F2, I had no business dreaming about F1.”