Lap 16

until you

Someone had slipped a Redbull into her water bottle. She made a face at the unexpected sourness. Briggs, her engineer, just winked at her. She hadn't gotten much sleep and for multiple reasons. Her phone was just blowing up, between texts from people in her life, her true friends knew that it was a conversation to be had in person or was there that fateful night in Monaco.

People within any proximity of her life wanted to know what was going on. She had called her brother before they left the track that night. She explained everything to him. He laughed slightly then hit her with the 'I told you so.' Then he advised her on how to best go about it. He was one of the very few people that could ground her.

She hadn't heard from her family so she trusted that Ben had set things straight for them. Her social media was a frenzy of both hate and relief apparently. There was a lot of unrest since most people were convinced Charles was with Alex, yet neither of them made it official and it had been months. Then of course there were fangirls that were upset and were very creative with their unsavory things they were posting.

Devlin's own fans and Mercedes fans were defending her to the max, she felt bad for the arguments she was seeing in comment sections and private messages. While it was somewhat entertaining, she was exhausted. She turned her phone completely off and requested a wake up call. 4 in the morning couldn't come fast enough.

She rubbed her eyes as her eyes finished scanning the page.

"Behind them, across the hall, the dancers shattered their roses on the floor, and Aedion grinned at his queen as the entire world went to hell."

She glanced over her shoulder at the clock, shit it was nearly 2 in morning. She needed to be up at 3:30 to be ready to leave for the track at 4. The earlier she got to the track, they hoped the less issues she would run into. She could always nap in her drivers room between all the media, social media content and team meetings and briefings. She entered back into the fictional world of her book. Sometimes she wished she could hop into the pages between the words.

She jolted awake when the phone rang, she had dozed off apparently at some point of the night. She placed a sticky note into her book and shut it. As she set it on the nightstand, she slipped off of the bed and walked over to the window. She opened the blinds and took in the city laying out below her. Most of the people below her hated her, but then she reminded herself why they were below her...

~

She had tugged on a black nike hoodie and navy leggings. She was going to the track for a briefing but then would make a typical reappearance in the paddock, much better dressed. The media ate up outfits the driver wore to the track, especially on race day.

As her leisure but early morning replayed in her head, she hadn't noticed she was completely zoned out until Mick waved his hand in front of her face.

"You good V?"

She turned to look at the reserve driver, he deserved a seat. He was so unproblematic and the sweetest person ever. She was quite the opposite.

"Yeah sorry, just tired."

He shot her a sideways look but didn't further question her. He knew she was just over this race weekend. She went through boring meetings and briefings, they had a pretty straight forward strategy, they just had to execute it right and fast and they would win. She would also regain her lead in the WDC, her DNF in Spain did not help her adding to the lead she had on Charles.

She found herself thinking about her book, she glanced at her Apple Watch, it was only 6. She was scheduled to go back to the hotel at 6:45. When she went to change she was going to grab her book to bring to the track.