"I don't give a damn about a stupid legacy!" I shout, the frustration finally snapping. I don't back away. I shove at his chest, my palms hitting the rigid muscle of his shoulders, needing him to feel the force of how wrong he is. "I’m wondering ifyou'reokay, you asshole! I’m wondering if you’re scared! I’m wondering how you can get in that car and push it to two hundred miles per hour, knowing there’s a clock ticking that you can’t see."
My voice cracks, my hands lingering on his chest as if I can physically hold him steady, hold him in the present. "I'm not looking at the math, Dominic. I'm looking at you. I'm looking at someone who has to carry this entire weight behind a smile for the cameras while his own nerves are betraying him. I’m asking because I can’t stand the thought of you being alone in that cockpit, waiting for the lights to go out while the rest of us just cheer you on. I care because it'syou."
The impact of my words seems to do what the silence couldn't. The armor doesn't just slip—it shatters.
He doesn't look at me. He raises his right hand between us, staring at it with an eerie, detached fascination, as if it’s a foreign object he’s trying to identify. He spreads his fingers wide, the light of the workbench catching the faint, rhythmic tremor.
"I don't know," he says, his voice empty, stripped of every emotion until it’s just a flat, dead sound. "The doctors... they don't have a timeline. It’s a genetic lottery. My brother won. My mother lost. Me?"
He lets out a short, dry breath that isn't a laugh. "I could have forty years of being 'fine.' Or I could wake up tomorrow and realize my body doesn't want to follow instructions anymore. They say staying active helps. Keeping the neural pathways fired up. Which is just a fancy, medical way of telling me to drive until my body tells me I’m done."
He looks at me then, his eyes searching mine for the exact moment the pity turns into a "goodbye." He’s waiting for the flicker of hesitation that tells him I’m already halfway out the door. When I don't move—when I just stand there holding his gaze with that raw, aching weight in my chest—it seems to agitate him more than if I had screamed.
He doesn't want my silence. He wants me to confirm what he already believes: that he's a broken investment.
He falls quiet, drifting into a strange, vacant sort of haze. He looks at me, but it feels like he’s looking through me, processing my words—that I care because it’shim. His head tilts slightly, his expression almost childlike in its confusion, like I’ve just spoken a language he’s never heard. He wants to believe it, I can see the flicker of it in the way his breathing hitches, but then the skepticism curdles. The idea that someone could stay and not care about the driver’s status is a luxury he can't wrap his mind around.
Suddenly, his fingers snap shut, his hand curling into a fist so tight the knuckles go bone-pale. He brings it down towardthe bench, but stops just short, the tension in his arm vibrating through the air. The haze is gone, replaced by something dangerous and unsteady.
"So," he says, the word a twisted edge. "Are we done? Have I scared you off yet?"
I take a half-step back, my pulse jumping into my throat. The air in the garage suddenly feels heavy, charged with a violence that makes the hair on my arms stand up.
"No," I mutter, though the lie feels thin even to me.
"No?" he echoes, the expression on his face all mockery and teeth. He somehow crowds closer until the air feels too thin to breathe. The warmth coming off him should feel human. Instead, it feels dangerous—like standing too close to exposed wiring.
"You’re a better actress than I thought, Shortcut," he sneers, his voice low and splintered around the edges. "Most people see the wreckage and start looking for the exit before they even get to the good stuff. Is that why you're still here? You finally got your front-row seat to the collapse. You finally got in my head enough to find the cracks, and now you want to watch them spread."
He tilts his head, his eyes scanning me with a clinical, freezing distance that makes me feel exposed.
"Or is this just some sick kind of research for you? Collecting data on the dying star so you can write the perfect report on the failure I am in the making?" He invades every inch of space between us until I can’t tell where my breathing ends and his begins. "Because let's be clear—you didn't just 'see' me, Carter. You’re telling me you took a look at the disaster I am, really thought it all through after today, and decided to stay for the show anyway? You’re lying. You’re lying to me, and you’re lying to yourself."
"You're reacting like this because you're afraid," I snap, my voice trembling despite my best efforts to keep it steady. "You're lashing out at me because you can’t control the fact that you're losing control, and you hate it. Why are you being like this?"
He doesn't just snap; he explodes, the sheer impossibility of my care hitting him like a physical blow. He snarls, his hand sweeping across the workbench in a blind, furious arc. He sends a metal tray of bolts and washers crashing to the concrete floor. The sound is deafening—a chaotic roar that echoes off the walls and makes me jump, my heart leaping into my throat.
I stare at the scattered metal, my chest heaving, and I feel it—the hot, unwanted sting of tears threatening to brim in my eyes, but I don’t dare let them win. I am scared. I’m scared of the noise, but mostly I’m scared for him, because beneath the anger, I can feel his absolute, helpless despair. It’s the sound of a person drowning who is shoving away the hand reaching for him.
He sees the pink rim of my eyes no doubt. For a second, his expression falters, his features softening into something that looks almost like regret. But then he catches himself. He sees the truth in my eyes—that I’m still here, that I’m not running—and it terrifies him.
The cruelty returns like a reflex, sharper and uglier than before. It’s his only defense left.
"Don't do that," he hisses, reaching out as his fingers catch my chin, his grip firm and uncompromising as he forces me to look up at him. "Don't you dare look at me with pity. I don't need whatever you think this is, and I definitely don't need you crying like you plan on staying. We both know the second this place stops benefiting you, you’re gone."
I jerk my head away, pulling out of his reach.
"You're right," I breathe, my voice shaking as I turn away. "You really are alone in this. But it’s because you won't let anyone be anywhere else."
"Good," he snaps, his back already turned to me as he reaches for a tool. "Go tell your father the car is fine. That’s the only part of this you’re actually here for, right?"
The cruelty of it—the way he just reduced everything I feel to a status report—hits like a physical blow.
"You’re such an asshole, Dominic," I breathe, the words shaking as I turn away.
"Tell me something I don't know," he calls out after me, his voice echoing in the vast space of the garage.
I storm toward the exit, my footsteps frantic against the concrete. I leave him alone with his tools and his silence, but the heaviest thing I carry out with me is the realization that the version of him I’d started to think was more—the person I thought was letting me in—was just a lie I’d told myself to feel like I mattered.
