62. Chapter Sixty-Two
Chapter Sixty-Two
Kat
Iawoke to Henry stirring around me, over me, below me, everywhere. Sometime between me sobbing myself back to sleep and now, we’d gotten even closer. I wasn’t sure where I ended and he began. I felt a soft brush of his nose against my forehead, pushing my hair back.
“Kat?” he murmured sleepily.
“I’m awake, Henry,” I said softly. He rolled onto his back, taking me with him. I didn’t have the energy to fight him.
“It’s early, Kat. Do you want to go back to sleep or head back to the hotel?” he asked softly. I looked down at his chest, thinking. I knew I couldn’t stay, though.
“I really want to head back and take my weird little bath and change my clothes,” I admitted honestly. He paused for a second, just rubbing his hand up and down my back. It felt strange that I was fully dressed and he was in his boxers. But I knew he’d get too warm.
I didn’t mind anyway.
I less than didn’t mind. I preferred it this way.
Well, his part anyway.
I managed to get him to let me head back alone, because I didn’t want people seeing us. I was glad he understood and didn’t get upset about that.
I couldn’t handle any emotions right now.
None. Not even my own.
I had a few hours before I needed to be back for the last practice and qualifying, and I knew I could and should just monitor today and not keep trying to code.
I was too fried.
In every single direction.
I had struggled my way through my oddly dry bath and brushed my teeth, luxuriating in having the room to myself. I could walk around naked to my heart’s content. Tam took offense to that for some reason.
Prude.
I glanced at myself in the mirror and my jaw dropped. A disbelieving, overloaded laugh left my lips.
I had had a hickey on my neck. I knew that. Even if I hadn’t found the chance to yell at Henry about it yet.
But it turned out, I had one hickey… that was visible while wearing a shirt.
I had six others peppered across my upper chest and boobs. I laughed again.
What the fuck was my life right now?
I didn’t have an answer. But I pulled myself together, got some clothes on, and headed back. I was tired and my body still hurt and I was actually hungry and I was thirsty and needed caffeine and I couldn’t find any of my emotions I should be feeling.
But I needed to head back. So, I did.
Ain’t no rest for the wicked.
I spent my day just observing the software data through the last practice instead of simultaneously coding, as well. I couldn’t multi-task today.
Or, well, I could, but holding all my pieces together was taking more energy today than normal.
I felt like I was being torn apart internally, and I was too tired to stop it.
So, I ignored it instead.
Henry brought me a mug of tea in an in-between time that he certainly didn’t have, and I didn’t fight him when he planted a kiss on the top of my head. At least I saw him check the doorway before doing so.
I couldn’t afford a professional disaster like that right now.
I was watching my data for Henry in the third round of qualifying, Milo having gotten knocked out in the second round. He would be starting in eleventh, which was NOT his usual performance.
What wasn’t usual either was the stormy, angry look on his face when he stalked down the hallway to his room. I didn’t think I’d ever seen him without a smile on his face.
But missing out on Q3 would do that to any driver.
Henry’s time currently had him starting in P4, but there was time left. He was starting another hot lap to hopefully move higher, and with his history at this track and the car performance this year, he should be able to do it.
I tried not to think about all those years of watching him race, betting on him, not knowing why.
Knowing my dad knew why.
I was watching closely, half listening to the melodic exchange between him and Tim over the radio, wondering at how he was able to keep his metrics so low while in so much constant pain.
It made me sad.
Because the practice had to have started long before last month.
I was watching the TV on the far wall, seeing Henry cross the start/finish line and collect speed for the first corner. Perfect line after perfect line, corner after corner, he had the fastest times in the first two sectors.
He was coming up on a driver on an in lap. These slower moving cars were required to get out of the way for drivers coming through on a hot lap.
And he did, in the very next corner. He pulled to the inside of the track, getting off the racing line, allowing Henry through.
But then something happened. I wasn’t even sure what I was seeing. But it seemed as if that slower driver locked up. Even though he was going much too slowly to lock up his brakes, so I wasn’t sure why it happened.
But it didn’t matter why. It only mattered what it DID.
Instead of turning left around the corner, slower and on the inside line, he continued straight, plowing across the width of the track toward the outside wall.
My mind absurdly noticed there was no smoke, no laid rubber, from the lock up.
And his front wing and both front tires plowed into the inside rear tire and rear wing of Henry’s car, more effective than in any New England storm.
And despite being on a relatively slow lap, over a hundred miles an hour was still devastating to a car using the limit of its tires around a corner, going almost two hundred miles an hour.
Henry lost the rear end, and I watched in what had to have been slow motion. I could see Henry’s hands twisting the wheel, turning into the skid, but it was hopeless.
Utterly hopeless.
I was standing before I knew what I was doing as Henry’s car spun at an alarming speed through the gravel.
I flinched at every bounce, hoping and praying it didn’t send him rolling.
As he neared the wall, I noticed he was still hanging onto the wheel.
Even after there was nothing left to do.
Even after a driver needs to let go so that the impact doesn’t snap their wrists like twigs.
But he was tense. Bracing. I could see it. I could see him clinging to the wheel, ignoring his driver instinct for a much more basic one. One that overrides everything else.
A protective one, protecting the injuries he already had.
“Let go, god dammit!” I yelled, not caring if my door was open or closed. I could hear Tim saying the same thing over the radio.
Come on, Henry.
You know what to do.
I gripped the edge of the table with my shaking, casted hand.
Just before he hit the wall, he let go. I flinched as his front wing crunched into the barrier, leaving a massive hole before continuing on its way. He just had too much momentum.
I flinched again when the back of his car hit.
And my hand flew to my mouth when the side smacked into the wall and stopped the spinning, if not the movement. His mangled car slid another twenty feet, metal on metal throwing sparks as the wall slowed him down to a final, horrifying stop.
The silence was deafening.
My knees gave out. I was lucky my chair was behind me, because I was going down either way.
No. No, no nonono. He couldn’t. This couldn’t be happening. He never crashed.
Vegas was a fluke.
Vegas was something with the car.
This was… that other fucking driver.
I was shaking so hard, I saw three of his cars on the TV. My ears were ringing so loudly I could barely hear Tim calmly ask if Henry was okay.
Fucking THANKFULLY, the radio continued working. Unlike Vegas.
But he didn’t respond. And he wasn’t moving on the screen. I skidded forward to where every single sensor that mattered was screaming at me on my laptop.
Flashing red.
Beeping.
Heart rate, blood pressure, respiratory rate, body temp, ambient car temp, O2 levels. All wildly outside of an acceptable range. G force. Too high.
The car was less fucked than the driver.
It wasn’t supposed to be like that.
The car was supposed to PROTECT him.
I couldn’t breathe. It felt like it had been an hour, but Tim hadn’t even asked a second time yet.
“I’m… alright,” he said slowly over the radio. I could hear the pain in his voice. Not just pain. AGONY.
But he slowly, unsteadily, climbed out of the car. I wanted him to wait for help but I knew he wouldn’t.
Any driver wouldn’t. But especially not him. Especially not with such a high likelihood of fire.
He was terrified of fire. Rightfully so.
He stumbled. He FUCKING stumbled. He never stumbled. But the marshals were there. They caught him and hurried him off the track.
I didn’t know what to do.
I didn’t know what I COULD do.
But there was one thing. I could watch the sensors. The sensors in his suit that he was still wearing. And at least…
At least they’d let me know his heart was still beating.
Because I couldn’t do anything else.
Because he wasn’t mine.