Melbourne

You don't sleep much after the texts in Barcelona. You lie awake replaying them, which is ridiculous, because they were about tires.

Mostly about tires.

By the time the circus lands in Melbourne three weeks later, you and Marius have settled into something you'd call a truce if truces involved this much arguing. He questions every number. You answer every question. Twice he's texted you past midnight with a single line: Explain sector 2. Twice you've explained sector 2 until one in the morning, and twice he's ended with Fine. Goodnight. like he's slamming a door, gently.

You haven't told anyone. There's nothing to tell.

Melbourne in March is hot and bright and loud, the circuit wrapped around a lake in a park, black swans gliding past the grandstands like they've paid for tickets. The paddock is a parade of team motorhomes, sponsor logos and influencers trying to look like they know what a diffuser is.

Qualifying is a knife fight.

Marius is quick. Aksel is quicker, by three hundredths of a second. When the times come up, Aksel's red-and-white car on top, Marius's black-and-bronze one beneath it, the Volante garage erupts four doors down and you feel it in your teeth.

"P2," Tadeo says into the radio. "Good lap, Marius. Very good lap."

"Not good enough," Marius says, and switches off.

Race day, the strategy meeting at nine. You lay it out on the screen: one stop, but early. The rear tires on this car still hate this track's long fast corners. Stop on lap eighteen, before the drop, take the hard tire to the end.

"Aksel will stop on twenty-two," you say. "If we go four laps earlier, the fresh tire gives us the undercut. We come out ahead."

Marius frowns at the screen. "Eighteen is too early. I'll be in traffic."

"You'll be in traffic for two laps. Then you'll be faster than everyone."

"And if the hard tire doesn't last thirty-eight laps?"

"It will. Thirty-eight is the limit. You'll have to manage it at the end. Gently."

He looks at you. "I'm not gentle."

Emre, sprawled across two chairs at the back with a protein shake, chokes. Tadeo coughs. Ciaran, leaning on the doorframe, raises his eyebrows at you with enormous Irish delight.

"Then learn," you say.

Lights out at three o'clock under a white-hot sky.

He gets a perfect start and sits on Aksel's gearbox for seventeen laps, so close you can't see daylight between the cars on the TV feed. Aksel is driving beautifully. You know that rhythm. You used to call it.

"Lap eighteen," you say into the headset. "Box, box. Box this lap."

"I'm faster than him right now," Marius snaps. "Give me two more laps."

"Two more laps and his tires are as fresh as yours. Box now and you win the race in the pit lane."

A silence. Somewhere in it, a world champion's sense of self-preservation fights a world-class strategist's math.

"Merde," he says. "Fine. Boxing."

He dives into the pit lane. The crew is waiting, twenty people in black and bronze, a blur of wheel guns and jacks.

Elvar Brix's hand comes down. The car drops.

3.9 seconds.

Not terrible. Not good. The front-right gunner fumbled the wheel nut for half a second, and in this sport half a second is a long holiday.

Marius exits the pit lane right next to Aksel's car. Not ahead. Beside. They go into turn one side by side, wheels almost touching, and Aksel, who knows how to do this better than anyone alive, holds the outside line and comes out in front.

You close your eyes for one second. Just one.

"Lap nineteen," you say, steady. "You're quicker on the new tire. Close the gap. Push."

He pushes. For thirty-nine laps he pushes so hard the commentators start calling it the drive of his life. He takes six tenths a lap off Aksel when the tires are fresh, then has to nurse them home when they fade, exactly as you warned him.

Final lap. 0.8 seconds behind.

P2.

You take the headset off and put it carefully on the desk so you won't throw it.

The press pen is a narrow fenced alley behind the podium, crammed with microphones. You're there because Rashida Pashley, Sauveterre's press officer, a fast-talking Londoner in a perfect blazer, grabbed you by the arm and said "they want the strategist" in the tone you'd use for "they want a hostage."

Aksel strolls through first, golden and grinning and soaked in champagne.

He's beautiful in the way a sports car advert is beautiful: sun-streaked hair, Danish cheekbones, Spanish eyes, a smile that has sold a million energy drinks. You called his races for three years. You know he cries at dog films and can't parallel park.

He spots you and his grin widens.

"And a special thank-you," he tells a dozen microphones, "to the strategist who taught me everything I know. Ava! I miss you on my wall."

Cameras swing toward you. You smile tightly.

Behind you, Marius walks past the pen without stopping for a single microphone. He doesn't look at Aksel. He doesn't look at you.

Rashida exhales. "Well. That'll be on every feed in the world in four minutes."

You escape behind the motorhomes, where the generators hum and the air smells of diesel and someone's barbecue. You need ten minutes of not being looked at.

You get two.

"Running away?" Aksel says.

He's changed out of his race suit into a Volante polo, sunglasses pushed up into his hair. He leans against the side of a truck as if he owns it, which, technically, his team does.

"That was cheap," you say. "In the pen."

"It was true." He shrugs. "Our new strategist is a robot. He calls the race like he's reading a weather forecast. I miss someone who sweats."

"You won."

"I won because I'm good." He tips his head, and something in his face changes. The grin goes, and you see the version of Aksel you used to see at 3 a.m. in debriefs, the one who actually thinks. "Can I ask you something? About last year."

Your skin prickles. "Go ahead."

"Lap 49." He says it quietly, like the name of a person. "You still think that tire was failing?"

"The data said so."

"Did it?" He pushes off the truck and steps closer, lowering his voice. "I gave that set back to Castellan myself. I felt it the whole stint. It was fine, Ava. It was the best set of tires I had all weekend."

"Why didn't you say anything?"

"Because I won." A short, unhappy laugh. "Do you know how hard it is to ask questions about the thing that made you champion of the world?"

You do. You really do.

He glances toward the Volante motorhome, then back at you.

"Ask Castellan for the raw feed," Aksel says. "Volante never did. I always wondered why."