The Champion who ruined my Career
MILA
The contract sat on Victor Kane's desk. Three pages of legal language I had already read twice. I wasn't thinking, "I finally made it." I was thinking something smaller and meaner.
One season. That's all I get.
"The board wants to be clear," Victor said, eyes on his tablet. "One season. You do well, you get a permanent seat. You don't, Apex replaces you before the next contract cycle."
"I get it."
"Good." He finally looked up, like he was checking that his keys were still on the counter. "Then sign." I thought about my dad for exactly one second before I grabbed the pen. He spent his whole career one sponsor short of a seat like this one. He fixed carburetors at 2 a.m. instead of racing them. I used to call that bad luck. Now I think nobody ever held the door open for him.
I thought about the two years after my crash, too. Two years learning to trust my hands on a wheel again. Learning to walk into a garage without my heart going nuts. Learning not to jump every time a car backfired. Nobody saw any of it except my physical therapist. Everybody else talked about me in past tense, like I was already a documentary.
I signed.
The pen barely made a sound. Kinda rude, honestly, that something so loud in my chest could be so quiet on paper.
"Welcome to the team," Victor said, already back on his tablet.
I should've felt happy. One season was still a door, even if it was open just a crack. But my stomach twisted up tight, the way it used to at the top of a new track, waiting for the lights to change.
"One more thing," Victor said. I assumed it was a sponsor clause, something about appearances or social media conduct, the kind of footnote nobody reads carefully until it costs them something.
"Your teammate is Kai Sterling."
The name hit the room before I could get ready.My hands went cold first. They always do. My body knows before my brain does. My chest squeezed like somebody grabbed it. For one awful second, the office was gone and I was back on the asphalt. Metal screaming on metal. The world flipping sideways at a hundred and forty. White light. Then total silence, so quiet I thought, "Well, that's it. I'm dead."
"Duarte." Victor's voice pulled me back into the room. "You good?"
"Yep." The word came out steadier than I felt, which was the only skill I'd actually perfected over the last two years.
"I thought you knew he signed with us. It was all over the news for weeks."
Oh, I knew. I just never thought his name would get slid across a desk to me like it was nothing. Like it didn't come with two years of hospital bills, therapy, and a scar by my collarbone that still hurts before it rains.
"When do I meet him?" I asked. A question felt safer than the truth.
"At the press conference. Training starts the next day." Victor was already scrolling. Conversation over. "Thought the team would've told you. Sorry about that."I nodded, because my throat had shut down on everything except "I'm fine, I'm totally fine, never better."
Out in the hallway, the windows looked down on the garage. Rows of shiny cars under bright lights. Mechanics moving around like they had practiced it a hundred times. That used to be my favorite view.
Everybody knew, apparently. The whole racing world had been chewing on this for weeks, and I was the last person to get the memo. Typical. That's what happens when you spend two years hiding from your own life. You miss the headlines. You miss the gossip. You miss the part where your worst nightmare gets a team jacket.
In six days, I'd be sharing that garage with the guy whose crash ended my career. The guy I hadn't said out loud in two years. Hadn't watched videos of. Hadn't even Googled, not once, not even at 3 a.m. Because saying his name made it real, and real was too heavy.
Everyone loved Kai Sterling. That was the worst part. He was the golden boy of the sport, the champion with the perfect hair and the perfect smile and the perfect excuse. The reporters called the crash a tragic racing incident. Tragic. Like it was weather. Like he hadn't made a move he knew was too risky.
He walked away from that wreck with a bruised shoulder and a trophy case. I walked away with titanium in my collarbone and a doctor telling me to be realistic. Be realistic. I hated that phrase more than I hated him. Almost.
"Duarte!" someone yelled from the stairwell. It was Rosa Delgado, the head mechanic, wiping grease off her hands with a rag that had seen better decades. "Heard you signed. Welcome home, kid."
I forced a smile. "Thanks, Rosa. Good to be back."
Rosa studied my face a little too long. She had known me since I was a teenager hanging around the pits with my dad, and she could always tell when I was lying."You heard about the new driver," she said. It wasn't a question.
"Yeah."
"For what it's worth, the whole garage is on your side." She tossed the rag over her shoulder. "Even the ones who like him."
"That's not as comforting as you think it is."
She laughed, loud and short, and headed back down the stairs.
I pressed my hand on the cold glass and breathed the way my therapist taught me. In for four. Hold. Out for six. Until I could stand up straight again. I'd wanted this seat since I was eleven. Before I knew what wanting something that bad would cost me. I'd pictured this moment a thousand times, lying in hospital beds and quiet apartments. The contract. The handshake. Finally making it.
Not once did I picture it with his name stapled to it.
And the question that scared me most wasn't whether I could drive next to him. I could drive next to anyone. The question was whether I could look at him. Whether my hands would stay steady, or go cold again, right there in front of everybody, with cameras rolling.
I spent two years fighting my way back to the grid.
Now the guy I blame for knocking me off it would be right next to me. Same garage. Same team. For as long as it took us to figure out if either of us could handle it.
Great. Just great. Nothing says fresh start like a front-row seat to your own nightmare.
