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The video auto-plays before Alistair even realizes he’s tapped it.
McLaren. Team media day. Gavin’s face fills the screen—clean-cut, closed-off, that scrubbed-down version of him they’ve always preferred. He’s in the soft sling still, but his arm doesn’t seem to bother him anymore. Or maybe he’s just hiding it well. Gavin was always good at that. Disappearing in plain sight.
The interviewer smiles like this is all normal. Like the season didn’t end in flames. Like Gavin’s whole future wasn’t shattered at the side of the circuit while the red flags waved overhead.
“...it’s been a long recovery, but you’re looking strong, Gavin. Can you tell us how you’ve stayed focused?”
“Just kept my head down,” Gavin says, evenly. “There’s no point in holding onto things you can’t change.”
Alistair blinks. Rewinds. Plays it again.
There’s no point in holding onto things you can’t change.
It’s nothing. A boilerplate answer.
Except Gavin won’t look at the camera properly. He’s angled slightly off-center, gaze fixed on the reporter, his mouth tight even as he speaks. Controlled. Precision-tuned. The way he used to be when he was trying not to say something that would cost him.
Alistair grips his phone too hard. The edge bites into his palm.
He told himself he wouldn’t do this. Wouldn’t watch Gavin’s media. Wouldn’t go looking. But it’s like muscle memory now, how some part of him still moves in Gavin’s orbit, no matter how scorched the gravity’s become.
He rewinds it again. Watches it frame by frame.
The pause before Gavin speaks. The glance down. The calmness, too calm, like he’s reading from a script.
Like none of it meant anything.
There’s no point in holding onto things you can’t change.
Bullshit.
Alistair feels something cold coil low in his stomach. He’s not angry, not exactly. It’s worse than that. It’s the sense of being erased.
Gavin doesn’t even say his name. Doesn’t even acknowledge him.
As if they weren’t everything to each other, once. As if Monaco never happened. As if Singapore didn’t end the way it had. As if Alistair hadn’t—
“I didn’t crash him on purpose,” he says aloud. Just to the room. Just to hear it. Maybe to the imaginary camera and the too-slick, too-sensible reporters. “I didn’t.”
But it doesn’t matter, does it? Gavin’s not going to say otherwise. He doesn’t need to. That video says it all. Gavin’s version is clean, untouchable, all angles buffed down. Just kept my head down. Can’t change it.
He’s moved on. No one’s asking what he did to get them there.
What he withheld. What he provoked.
But of course. Of course. Gavin broke and they called him brave. Alistair cracked and they called him cruel.
Alistair paces. The room is too quiet. The screen still glows, Gavin, still, like a painting. That calm, unreadable mask.
“He’s rewriting it,” Alistair mutters, talking to the wall, to the mirrors, to the bed. A new habit, because no one ever seems to hear him properly. “He’s rewriting the whole thing. Making me the villain.”
It hits like nausea. Like injustice. Because it wasn’t always like this.
They used to see each other. In the dark. In the back of motorhomes. In the moments after near-death on track, adrenaline still singing through their skin. Gavin used to touch him like it meant something.
He’s pretending it was all nothing now.
He’s pretending I was nothing.
Alistair sits down, phone still in hand. He watches the clip again. Gavin’s voice, again.
“No point in holding onto things you can’t change.”
But Alistair can’t let go.
Because he remembers it too clearly.
Because he knows Gavin, knows what lies look like on him. And that wasn’t truth, not even close.
The hotel room was too still. Too dark. Even with the city humming outside the window, the quiet in here felt surgical. Like being sealed inside the back of an ambulance, somewhere between incident and consequence.
Alistair sat on the edge of the bed, elbows on knees, phone screen glowing up into his face. A voicemail beep clicked into silence. He said nothing.
Didn’t leave a message. Just listened to his own breathing. The kind of shallow, sick rhythm he used to get before a wet qualifying.
The call had gone straight to voicemail. Not even a ring.
Blocked, then.
He laughed under his breath. Bitter. Ugly.
Of course Gavin blocked him.
Of course Gavin had made a show of it, cutting him off in public and private, eyes flinty and unreadable in every press conference, a fucking war hero now that he’d come back in one piece, limping slightly and smiling like nothing ever touched him. Like he hadn’t once—
Alistair swallowed the thought. It burned going down.
He stood up and paced the room. The suite was high-end, spare. Ferrari had arranged it for the sponsor dinner, all gleaming white and gold accents and champagne on ice he hadn’t touched.
He picked up the bottle, turned it in his hand. Set it down again.
His fingers hovered over his phone screen, then typed out a message.
You know I didn’t mean it. We never meant anything we did to each other. Right?
He stared at it.
Then, almost too fast to register, he sent it.
Three dots of thought. Then nothing. No reply. No read receipt. Just that blank silence he remembered from hospital nights, listening to engines on a loop in his head, watching the replay of the crash again and again until it blurred.
It hadn’t looked that bad from onboard.
Had it?
He remembered the crunch of carbon. The smoke. The way Gavin didn’t move, not right away. His engineer’s voice going sharp on the radio.
Alistair’s stomach turned.
It wasn’t supposed to happen like that. You knew what you were doing. You provoked me. That’s always been your game, hasn’t it?
He sat back down. Pressed his palms to his eyes until stars exploded behind his lids.
I hope the martyr act was worth it.
Gavin knew how to get under his skin. Had always known. The smirks. The subtle digs in interviews. The way he’d leaned too close in the driver room, half-smiling like they shared some private language of violence and survival.
He wanted Alistair to break.
He got what he wanted.
Alistair looked back at his phone.
Message: Delivered.
Not read.
Maybe never would be.
You made me this way. You knew what you were doing. You kept pushing. You never meant anything you said either, not really.
But still, some part of him sat frozen in that hotel room, weeks too late, half-hoping for a reply. Half-hoping that Gavin would say:
Yeah. I know. We were both out of our depth.
And then, maybe, he could breathe normally again.
Instead, the screen stayed still. And Alistair felt the edges of the silence close in around him like a noose.
The rain had started again, slicking down the windows in long, steady strokes, soft enough to ignore if he tried hard enough. Alistair didn’t move from the booth. His tea had gone cold. He hadn’t touched it. He sat with his elbows on the table, eyes fixed on the corner of the room where the floor lamp flickered in and out like it couldn’t decide if it wanted to stay on.
He heard her footsteps before he saw her, Briony’s soft-soled trainers crossing the carpet, deliberate and unhurried. Not cautious, exactly. But not casual either.
“Couldn’t sleep?” she asked as she slid into the seat across from him.
He didn’t look at her. Just said, “I never do.”
It wasn’t meant to be dramatic. It was just true. Sleep hadn’t come easy in months — not since Brazil, not since Gavin’s hand in a cast and his eyes gone blank. And then gone entirely.
Briony leaned back in the seat, arms crossed. She looked calm, but not comfortable.
“First race back,” she said. “You’d think that might help.”
He shrugged with one shoulder, gaze still pinned to the table. “Not everything resets with the calendar.”
There was a pause then, a quiet kind of inhale. She was good at silence, letting it stretch without making it awkward, holding space like someone who was used to outwaiting people’s deflection. He didn’t like that about her. He didn’t like how still she could get.
“You know they’re going to ask about it tomorrow,” she said eventually.
He didn’t need to ask what she meant.
She added, “About Interlagos.”
Let them, he thought. Let them drag it up again, let them try to peel the scab off and find something fresh underneath. There wasn’t anything left to bleed.
“They’ll ask me too,” she went on. “I wasn’t there. I don’t know what happened. But if we’re going to be teammates, I figured I should ask you first. Just so I know.”
He blinked, slow. Still didn’t meet her eyes. “What exactly do you want to know?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “Whatever you’ve told yourself.”
He almost laughed at that. Almost. Instead, he picked up the sugar packet he’d been shredding between his fingers and stared at the torn seam.
“I told him I was going wide,” he said quietly. “Not on radio. Before. At the hotel. Two races before. Spielberg.”
He hadn’t. Not really. Or maybe he had, half-drunk, half-hurt, leaning against a minibar in Azerbaijan three races earlier, spitting barbs that felt like intimacy. He could still see it: Gavin in the hallway, still damp from the pool, skin sun-warm and smug. Picking a fight like he didn’t even know he was doing it.
Maybe he’d said something like “You keep cutting me off and I swear I’ll send you to God.” And maybe Gavin had laughed. Or maybe he hadn’t. Memory was unkind like that.
“I told him he was being reckless,” Alistair went on. “I told him I wasn’t going to keep flinching just because he got impatient.”
“And you think that’s the same as a warning?” Briony asked.
He finally looked up. Her expression wasn’t cruel. Just unreadable. Quietly weighing the shape of him.
“It was a promise,” he said. “He knew what I meant.”
Briony didn’t respond right away. When she did, it was with the same maddening calm. “So why’d you hold the line?”
He hated that question. Hated that it implied there’d been a choice.
“Because he didn’t believe me,” Alistair said. His voice didn’t shake. “He thought I was bluffing. He always did. He thought I’d lift. That I’d let him have it.”
He let the words settle. He could feel her watching him. Trying to work out if this was guilt or something else entirely.
“You think he made you do it?” she asked, softer now.
His throat felt dry. “I think he made it easy.”
Briony tilted her head slightly. She looked like she wanted to say something else, but she didn’t. Just let the weight of that hang in the space between them.
After a moment, she asked, “Did you two have something going on?”
The question startled him. Not because it was surprising, but because it was so clean. So unburdened by accusation.
He didn’t answer.
Briony rose from her seat, not rushing, not dramatic. She paused for just a beat before she left, and said gently, “You don’t have to talk to me about it. But you’re not going to be able to avoid it forever. People are like hawks out here.”
He didn’t watch her go. He just stared at the window and the reflection of himself in the glass, pale and tired and still pretending he didn’t know exactly where the story started to rot.
And somewhere in the back of his mind, he could still see Gavin turning into the corner, too fast, too close, like he wanted to prove something.
Like he thought Alistair would move.
Like he didn’t understand that Alistair never did. He was foolish to have thought Alistair would change that for him.
He shouldn’t be here.
He knows that before he even swipes his pass. Before the quiet click of the door unlocks and the faint scent of antiseptic floor polish hits him in the face. Before the long, still silence of the McLaren simulator room wraps around him like a too-tight jacket.
He shouldn’t be here.
But he’s here anyway.
It’s past midnight. Factory dead. The telemetry rigs are still active, humming with ghost laps and half-finished overlays. They hadn’t wiped Gavin’s data yet. He knew they wouldn’t. Not while he was still technically “part of the season.” Not while they were still waiting for the green light from the doctors, still pretending that maybe he’d be back before Abu Dhabi. Liars, the whole lot of them.
Alistair slips into the seat like it’s familiar. Like he hasn’t been across enemy lines for months. He exhales slowly, legs folded awkwardly into the simulator rig’s tight cradle. His fingers ghost across the wheel.
The screen flashes to life with the last full simulation run Gavin completed before the crash. Silver car. Suzuka.
Sector 1: green. Sector 2: purple.
Of course.
He watches Gavin’s ghost car move through the esses, smooth and precise. His jaw clenches. Something inside him coils.
“Still hits apex early into Maggots,” Alistair mutters under his breath. “Doesn’t trust the rear. Overcompensates.”
His voice is flat, factual. He tells himself he’s just observing. Just checking. Just confirming what he already knows, that Gavin isn’t perfect. That he never was. And yet, somehow no one other than Alistair had seen it, seen the impurities. No, all they cared about were Gavin’s timings.
The door hisses behind him.
Alistair flinches.
He doesn’t have to turn to know who it is.
He does anyway.
Hendry stands in the doorway, hoodie pulled halfway over his hands, eyes wide and dark and disbelieving. He looks so tired. Not the usual pre-race tired either. A deeper, hollow kind of worn down. The kind of tired you get when you’re being asked to hold something together with duct tape and bare hands.
“What are you doing here?” Hendry asks, voice low.
Alistair exhales through his nose and rises from the seat. “Didn’t think anyone would be here,” he says lightly, as if that explains anything. “Just... curious how he’s managing with one arm.”
He tries to smile. It doesn’t land. Hendry’s expression doesn’t change.
“You’re not supposed to be here.”
“It’s not like I touched anything.”
“You shouldn’t be here,” Hendry says again, and there’s something sharper this time. Not anger exactly. Worse. Something closer to disappointment.
“You don’t get to just walk into his sim rig like nothing happened.”
Alistair straightens slowly. His hands feel stiff. He crosses them in front of him, but the motion feels unnatural. “I’m not here to take anything,” he says. “I just wanted to see where you’re at. That’s all.”
Hendry blinks. Caught off guard. “Me?”
“You’re fronting the team now,” Alistair says. “Their best chance. I figured they’d finally stop splitting their attention.”
He gestures vaguely to the monitor, where Gavin’s ghost car is still coasting down the back straight. “It’s about time.”
Hendry stares at him, silent.
Then, flatly: “Don’t say it like that.”
Alistair blinks. “Like what?”
“Like it’s some… fucking blessing he’s gone.”
“I’m not saying it’s good,” Alistair says quickly, defensive now, trying to keep pace with a conversation that feels like it’s slipping sideways. “I’m saying it’s... strategic. They’re putting everything into you now. That’s what you always wanted, right?”
“That’s not how I wanted it,” Hendry snaps, louder this time. The crack in his voice cuts deeper than it should.
“I’m barely holding the team together,” he continues. “Half the garage is still waiting for him to walk through the door, sling and all. He was our shot. You didn’t clear the path, you shattered the car.”
Alistair’s throat tightens.
“You think I meant to crash him?”
There’s silence.
Hendry looks at him like he doesn’t know him anymore. Something in Alistair slips a little further, nestles a little deeper.
“I don’t know what to think,” Hendry finally says, and the way he says it—like it hurts him to admit it—makes the nerves in Alistair’s chest twist violently.
“You think I wanted to end his season?” he asks, almost whispering now. “To watch him limp through interviews while you try to salvage points?”
“No,” Hendry says. “But I think you wanted him… out.”
It lands like a slap.
Alistair’s mouth goes dry. He looks away. Runs a hand down his face, trying to steady his thoughts.
“You don’t know what it was like,” he murmurs. “Every race, he was there. In the mirrors. In the press. Every headline. It was like he swallowed the whole grid, and no one even noticed.”
“He earned it,” Hendry says, and Alistair hates how quiet his voice is. How certain.
“I know,” Alistair snaps, too fast, too sharp. Then, softer: “I know. That’s the worst part.”
The room falls into silence.
And for a second, just one, Alistair lets the truth creep out.
“All I’m saying is... maybe now, you get your shot. You get what you should’ve had. You’re not in his shadow anymore.”
Hendry looks at him, expression unreadable.
“Don’t turn this into some gift you gave me.”
“It isn’t a gift,” Alistair says. “It’s... a correction.”
That lands too.
Hendry’s arms fall to his sides. He looks like he’s been sucker punched.
“I wanted you to win, Hen,” Alistair says, the words coming out strangled and too raw.
For a moment, Hendry looks like he might believe him.
And then—
“Then why does it feel like you wanted him to lose more than you wanted me to win?”
There’s a long, terrible silence.
Alistair freezes.
Hendry stares at him, something flickering behind his eyes. Something dangerous.
And then, to Alistair’s horror, his brother’s expression shifts.
Something wilts.
A brief, flickering what if.
A moment where Hendry doesn’t argue again.
Just breathes.
It’s gone in a second.
Hendry steps back, grabs a half-open protein bar off the desk, one Alistair hadn’t even noticed, and storms out. The door slams hard behind him, leaving the room in a sudden, vibrating quiet.
But the damage lingers.
It pulses through Alistair’s bones like a bruise blooming under the skin.
That hesitation.
That tiny fracture.
The first crack in the foundation.
He sits back down in the simulator, slowly, carefully, like if he moves too fast something in him might break. Gavin’s ghost car is still looping Suzuka. Still purple in Sector 2. Still flawless.
Alistair presses play.
And watches him disappear into Sector 3, over and over and over again.