‘¡Fuego! ¡FUEGO!’I yell. ‘Stopping!’
With my heart pounding in my ears, a prayer on my lips and my race engineer incomprehensible down my radio, I try to ditch as much speed as I can. Heat’s crawling up through the floor. It’s biting my ass. It’s searing through the backrest.
I can’t hold my nerve any longer. Visor fogging, I steer onto the gravel trap and stamp hard on the brake. My brain rattles around my skull like a marble in a tin can.
Stay calm. You’ve practiced this hundreds of times. Seconds pass like hours as I unclip my belt with slick, shaking fingers. My eyes widen when the heat of the harness surges through my gloves. The car’s bathed in orange, and it spreads goosepimples across my whole body.
I detach the wheel and scramble out, instantly feeling the temperature difference. I look up to see marshals sprinting toward the car.
‘GET BACK!’ I holler, stumbling away from it. One metre. Two. Three. Four. ‘SHE’S GONNA?—’
TheBOOMcatapults me forward. My feet lift off the ground and I hurtle through the air, suspended in terrifying nothingness. A violent flash reflected in the marshals’ eyes is the last thing I see before I plant flat on the gravel.
Adrenaline must be keeping me from feeling broken, even winded, because I manage to clamber to my feet and?—
Holy shit.
It’s a torch.
The whole car is one huge inferno.
And I could’ve been inside it.
Marshals are waiting for the flames to settle before they descend on it. It’s so bright it’s making my eyes go blurry. My helmet’s jangling – stones must’ve got stuck in the air vents – and I hurry to take it off.
To show the cameras I’m ok, I walk a short distance and sit on the ground while the medical team park up. My hair’s plastered to my forehead. My lungs burn like I’ve snorted a match. My ears are ringing something fierce.
I can’t fucking believe it. Two seconds more and that would’ve been me.
I’m pretty sure I’m in shock. All I keep thinking is that’ssonot what Pitbull was talking about in ‘Fireball’. I laugh despite myself, but it sounds maniacal and morphs into a coughing fit.
As the doctor checks my vitals trackside, my neck starts tightening up. My head feels too heavy for it like it could snap at any second. Thinking back, I felt it snap at least twice. The next couple of days are going to be fun.
Behind the medical team, the extinguishers make my car hiss like a dying animal. It’s hard to see the extent of the damage because it’s still extremely on fire, but it’s a shell. This is not what the team needs. We were doing well, morale was building, investors were sniffing around. And now?
We’ll be lucky if we’re not bankrupt by Monday.
Chapter 27
JULES
Ifeel like an idiot waiting outside his hotel room. In fact, I am an idiot. There’s a reason I never do things like this. I’m not good at spontaneity. Why the hell did I come here? I was planning a lovely, calm evening – editing, face mask, room service, Daddy Yankee in the background. But then I saw the race and…
I couldn’t just sit there.
Texting felt too ‘pick me’. Like standing alone outside his penthouse door in the middle of the night’s any better.
He’s probably not even here. He’ll be with his family, or at the hospital, or at the hospital with his family. He could even be flying home, in his jet somewhere over Spain. I’ll slink back to my hotel and pretend like?—
My finger’s prodding the lift button when the door swings open behind me.
‘Jules?’
Holy shit. He looks so battered, standing in just pyjama trousers. I trample on the flicker of arousal building deep in my stomach, choosing to focus instead on his shoulder wrapped in gauze, the dullness in his eyes, the blooming purple bruises sprouting around his ribs. My insides ache for him and what hewent through. I know first-hand there’s no worse place than a hospital, except maybe inside a burning car.
‘I heard someone mumbling to themselves,’ Tiago adds.
I retract my hand from the button. ‘That was me,’ I admit sheepishly. Like it could be anyone else – there’s only one room on this entire floor.
