2. Mario
Mario
The next morning, I woke up to the enemy.
Sunlight.
It streamed through the guest room window at the Sage house like a cheerful interrogation lamp, demanding I acknowledge another day I hadn’t asked for.
“Mario, breakfast is almost ready.”
As if I couldn’t smell the bacon wafting up the stairs.
My own mama could yell down the house, so I didn’t hesitate to call back. “Coming, Mrs. Sage.”
Below, the house hummed with life—pans clattering in efficient rhythm, small feet thundering down the hall. A normal family morning. To me, it felt like trying to breathe underwater.
For ten years, my mornings had followed a different protocol.
Physio at six. Data analysis by seven. Track walks, strategy meetings, the controlled chaos of the pit lane.
The soundtrack was engine whine, radio chatter, and the precise click of tools on carbon fiber.
Now it was this—a domestic symphony in a key I didn’t recognize.
I swung my legs out of bed, and the floorboards protested with a groan.
My best friend’s old room was a time capsule: soccer trophies lined up like tiny golden soldiers, faded posters of bands I’d never bothered to learn, a bookshelf packed with fantasy novels.
Everything lived-in and comfortable. Everything I’d never had time for on my way to the top.
Now I was a refugee hiding in its cozy chaos.
I pulled on my uniform of anonymity—jeans, gray henley, the kind of clothes that made people’s eyes slide right past you.
The mirror was a tactical error. My reflection showed fatigue etched in every line, plus the purple shadow of a bruise high on my cheekbone.
A souvenir from my last dance with physics and a concrete barrier.
The media had called it a “spectacular crash.” For me, it had been silent.
The world went quiet when the engine died, everything suspended in that terrible moment before the noise and pain rushed back.
Coming to Autumn Grove was Ben’s solution. “Lay low,” he’d said from Michigan to my hospital bed in Monaco. “Let the circus die down. Mom will feed you until you burst. It’s the perfect to hide. Who would look for you here?”
Ben had even sorted out a tiny rental cottage two blocks off Main—small, drafty, and exactly the kind of anonymous place I preferred.
For now I was crashing at his mother’s, but I’d signed a lease to stay in town through December.
It was somewhere to sleep, close enough if I needed help, and far enough away to pretend I wasn’t being looked after.
My best friend had failed to mention his mother would look at me like a wounded sparrow, or that the family’s relentless cheerfulness felt like being pelted with marshmallows. I was grateful—I should be grateful. But all I felt was displaced, a ghost haunting someone else’s happiness.
The kitchen was mission control for the Sage family operation.
Mrs. Sage, Margaret, commanded the stove, flipping pancakes with military precision.
Ben hunched over his phone, bacon dangling forgotten from his fingers.
And Olivia—Lily’s seven-year-old daughter—sat at the table creating art with blueberries, arranging them into what looked suspiciously like a racecar.
“Mario, dear! You’re awake!” Margaret’s voice could power a small city with its warmth. She gestured with her spatula like a conductor, as if she hadn’t just yelled up the stairs at me to get moving.
She smiled. “Pancakes? Eggs? I made extra of everything.”
“Coffee.” My voice came out rougher than I intended, like gravel in a gearbox.
Ben glanced up from his screen. “Sleep okay?”
“Fine.” The lie came automatically. I hadn’t slept more than three hours straight since Monaco.
“Mom’s making pot roast tonight,” he said, taking a deliberate bite of bacon. “Fair warning.”
Another family dinner. Another performance where I pretended to be a functional human being instead of spare parts looking for a purpose.
I poured coffee into a mug that proclaimed “World’s Best Grandma” in cheerful purple letters.
The irony wasn’t lost on me. I’d spent my career drinking from sponsored cups, everything branded and calculated.
This was just coffee in a grandmother’s mug, and somehow that felt more foreign than racing at Monza.
Leaning against the counter, I tried to blend into the cabinetry. Olivia looked up from her blueberry engineering project, studying me with the intensity of a chief mechanic inspecting a suspension setup.
“Half of your face is purple,” she announced, as if this were breaking news. “I could put some makeup on it if you want. To hide it.”
“Olivia,” Margaret warned gently.
“It’s fine.” I met the kid’s gaze directly. In racing, you never showed weakness, but children operated under different rules. “I ran into a wall.”
She considered this with the seriousness of a technical steward. “Did the wall win?”
Ben choked on his coffee, and something twitched at the corner of my mouth. The kid had a point. “It’s currently under review by the stewards.”
Olivia nodded sagely, apparently satisfied with this explanation, and returned to her fruit-based automotive design.
“Eat up, sweetheart,” Margaret said, setting another pancake on Olivia’s plate. “You’ve got a dentist appointment before school, remember? I’ll take you, then drop you off so your mom doesn’t have to close the shop.”
Olivia perked up. “Can I show Dr. Novak my racecar first?”
“If you brush the blueberries off your teeth,” Margaret replied, earning a giggle.
The walls were closing in again. Every surface in the kitchen displayed framed evidence of the Sage family happiness—Christmas mornings, birthday parties, graduations.
Decades of joy documented and displayed like trophies.
Each smiling face felt like an accusation.
This is what normal looks like. This is what you never had.
“I’m going for a walk.” I drained the coffee, ignoring how it scalded my throat. Pain was easier than this suffocating contentment.
“Oh, wonderful idea!” Margaret beamed like I’d announced a cure for world hunger. “Get some of that lovely autumn air. It’s so good for the soul.”
Ben just gave me a look that said try not to break anything.
I escaped through the back door into a crisp September morning. The air was clean and sharp, carrying hints of woodsmoke and damp earth. The kind of air that was supposed to clear your head and put things in perspective. Mine just felt more cluttered than ever.
Autumn Grove was exactly as advertised—aggressively, relentlessly charming.
Main Street, which some optimist had actually named Happily Ever After Lane, looked like someone had ordered small-town charm from a catalog and assembled it with obsessive attention to detail.
Historic brick buildings lined the street, their windows already dressed for fall with scarecrows in flannel shirts, artful pyramids of pumpkins, and cornucopias spilling silk leaves in perfect autumn shades.
It was a movie set, and I was walking through it in the wrong costume.
People I passed offered genuine smiles and friendly nods.
Real warmth, not the calculated charm I was used to from sponsors and journalists.
It should have been refreshing. Instead, it was deeply unsettling.
In my world, a smile like that usually came with an agenda.
I pulled my hood up and kept my head down, moving with purpose down the sidewalk.
A bakery window displayed pies cooling on wire racks, their crusts golden and perfect.
A bookstore had a fat orange cat sunning itself on a stack of novels in the window display.
A hardware store’s front porch was decorated with cornstalks and a scarecrow that looked suspiciously like it was winking at passersby.
Each business radiated an aura of wholesome contentment that felt like a personal challenge. Everything here was exactly what it appeared to be—no hidden agendas, no corporate sponsors, no calculated image management. Just honest small-town life in all its relentless pleasantness.
Then I spotted salvation. A corner shop with a simple, hand-painted sign: Sage & Bloom.
Ben had mentioned his sister owned the town flower shop.
From the outside, it looked like the quietest place on the entire street.
The large front windows were filled with an explosion of fall colors—deep burgundy mums, brilliant orange sunflowers, delicate branches of bittersweet with tiny orange berries.
It looked peaceful. Professional. A place where I could buy something for Margaret, make polite conversation, and escape without getting trapped in extended small-town social protocols.
The bell above the door announced my entrance with a cheerful tinkle that immediately shattered my illusion of quiet anonymity.
The air inside hit me like a humid wall—thick, almost tropical, saturated with competing fragrances.
Sweet roses battled sharp eucalyptus while the damp, earthy smell of potting soil anchored everything with an organic heaviness.
It wasn’t unpleasant exactly, but it was overwhelming.
Like walking into a greenhouse designed by someone with no concept of restraint.
And then there was the visual chaos. The shop was an organized disaster, a barely controlled creative explosion.
Metal buckets overflowing with flowers lined every available floor space.
Ribbons in every color imaginable spooled off shelves and dangled from hooks like festive octopus tentacles.
A half-finished bouquet lay abandoned on a scarred metal worktable, surrounded by the carnage of snipped stems, discarded leaves, and scattered tools.
In the eye of this floral hurricane stood Ben’s sister, Lily Sage.