Faking it || Lando Norris LN

66

Saturday, Before Qualifying

Lando Norris.

Olivia's rage could've turned the orange sea around her into scorching red if she'd wanted to.

"Not even a fight?!" She yelled as she burst into my private room.

I jolted to my feet in a heartbeat; my jaw immediately going slack. I had to blink twice to register the sight of her before I could even fix up my untied race suit. From one moment to the next, the world had become a complete contradiction. The room had quickly burst into flames, but all I could hear was Olivia's voice reaching out to me underwater.

She looked more gorgeous than ever, so alive and real but the red in her cheeks wasn't a sudden blush I'd fought to achieve like months ago —it was fury. I ran around inside my mind trying to comprehend, I didn't even catch her repeating the first phrase she'd said.

"I saw you smoking from my room's window on Tuesday. You hear me?! I SAW YOU," she spat the words out. "You heard me knocking, you knew I was having a shit time and you didn't fucking answer, you didn't fucking come!" The words spilled out of her mouth in a string of fast sentences I was having a hard time holding on to. I felt Olivia, and the situation, falling through my hands like water with the desperation of a man who'd gone years with an undying thirst.

"You let me think I meant nothing; you let me be a fucking pawn in the game everyone in the world was playing with me WHILE YOU WERE PLAYING WITH ME TOO!"

My face contorted into a pained grimace. This couldn't be happening. My mouth was hanging open as I tried to concentrate and will something, anything, to come out of it but my mind had utterly and disgustingly betrayed me. Panic was exploding like anxious bursts of fireworks inside my chest. I'd had no idea how much it was going to tear me apart to see her again, now fully aware of how much I loved her and how much I'd hurt her as well.

I've been trying to do you right, Olivia. I've been trying to do this right. I've been trying.

I had failed to realize, through all the pain and heartache that had been last month, how blindsided I was going to be by the urge to kiss the hands that were now slapping walls with disbelief and disgust; how blindsided I was going to be listening to Olivia cursing the damage I'd caused while trying to do the right thing.

"I may have meant nothing to you but you knew I cared about you, you made fucking sure of it, and you let me think you betrayed me only to turn around and betray me with your fucking silence. God! I—" Olivia shut her eyes tighter and brought her balled fists to her forehead before harshly dropping them to her sides.

For a moment I forget about the contract and my brain has no idea what my mouth will say but it knows it will talk. I forget about anything that isn't Olivia and her eyes staring into mine, even if with disgust; I forget about my own body, even if with chains; and I forget about the way that, all those years before, the world had gone in fast motion and urged me to run whenever I heard the words I love you directed to me.

"—I LOVED YOU and I still— fuck I-I still fucking do and you can't even say a word to me!!!"

Because when I heard them this time, the world didn't go in fast motion. The world stopped.

Olivia was still talking. The words she spoke were still leaving bullet holes with no exit wounds inside my chest. They bounced inside me, tearing skin and muscle open; and while I paid attention to them, I couldn't stop thinking about her previous sentence. My face contorted into a grimace, as if I could see both her words and her bullets bouncing against the room's walls while praying they don't collide with each other.