[Soren’s POV]
The lights go out and I stop being a person with problems.
This is the mercy of racing—the way two hundred and sixty kilometres per hour compresses identity down to reflex and geometry. No showers, no phone calls, no father's voice cataloguing my failures.
Just the car, the track, and the binary simplicity of faster or not fast enough.
Qualifying put me P2, half a tenth behind the Red Bull, and the grid slot feels earned in a way nothing has this season.
Karina's voice is calm in my ear as I navigate the opening lap, holding position through the first chicane, letting the leaders sort themselves out while I conserve tyres and wait.
Patience has never been my virtue.
Today it is.
The car is alive beneath me—responsive, balanced, every input translating to output with a fidelity that makes the steering wheel feel like an extension of my nervous system.
I pick off the McLaren on lap twelve with a move through the outside of turn four that requires more commitment than common sense. Lap thirty-seven and the leader brakes early into the hairpin—fractionally, maybe two metres—and the gap appears like a door left ajar.
I commit before the calculation is complete, diving inside on a line so tight my front wing nearly kisses the apex kerb.
The overtake is clean, surgical, the kind of move that happens in the space between thought and instinct where driving becomes something closer to art.
"P1, Soren. P1! You are leading the race now." Karina's Finnish composure cracks for the first time in two seasons. "Bring it home!"
I bring it home.
Fourteen laps of managing gap and tyres and the specific terror of having something worth losing. The chequered flag falls and the number on my display reads P1 and something detonates in my chest that I haven't felt in over a year—pure, uncomplicated triumph.
Äntligen. Finally!
Apex's first win in thirteen months. My first victory of the season.
Nico finishes P3 after a battle with Julien for second that the commentators are already calling the fight of the season—forty laps of wheel-to-wheel warfare, neither yielding, until Julien's fresher tyres gave him the advantage through the final stint.
P1 and P3 for Apex. The kind of result that changes a team's trajectory.
The cooldown room is small, institutional, three chairs and a water cooler when Julien drops into the middle seat, still buzzing, towelling sweat from his neck.
"That hairpin overtake," he says, pointing at me. "Lap thirty-seven. You had maybe half a car's width. Were you even thinking?"
"Thinking is overrated. I prefer to commit and negotiate with physics afterward."
Julien laughs, shaking his head. "Insane. Beautiful, but insane." Then he turns to Nico. "And you—fifteen laps I spent trying to pass you. Fifteen. I threw everything at you through that chicane and you shut the door every single time."
"Your braking was predictable," Nico says, and the corner of his mouth lifts. "You always commit a fraction early on the inside. Makes you easy to position against."
"Easy?" Julien clutches his chest. "You wound me, Almeida."
Nico glances at me over Julien's shoulder, and the look bypasses every defence I own.
Not cold. Not controlled. Warm. Private. His eyes carrying something specific that says ‘I watched you win and it mattered to me’ without a single word.
I hold it two seconds too long.
The tightness in my chest compresses into something acute and terrifying, and I turn away—studying the water cooler's filtration label like it contains the meaning of life—because my face is about to betray something no amount of charm can explain.
The podium is sensory overload—champagne spray catching the light, crowd noise hitting my chest like a wall. My eyes keep finding Nico below me on the third step, and every time I look down he's grinning up with a warmth so genuine it makes my ribs ache.
Not performing happiness—actually, radiantly happy for the team result even though he finished behind me.
The champagne hits my face and I grin for the cameras, but the real feeling—the one threatening to crack me open in front of forty million viewers—is the expression on Nico Almeida's face when he looks at me like I'm something worth celebrating.
After the podium, Henrik claps the chief engineer so hard during the debrief that the man stumbles into his data screens.
"This," he says, jabbing a finger at the results board. "This is the car we designed, performing at the level we designed it for. Lindqvist—that overtake on thirty-seven was the best piece of driving I've seen from any of my drivers in five years!"
"Careful, Henrik." I lean back, grinning. "That sounded dangerously close to a compliment."
"Don't get comfortable. Almeida—your tyre management was textbook. You extended that middle stint three laps longer than the model predicted."
He looks between us with something approaching warmth.
"This is a turning point. Whatever you two have figured out, keep doing it."
"Maybe we should figure it out harder," I say, and I feel Nico's gaze on the side of my face like sunlight through glass. "Really commit to the methodology."
Henrik frowns, missing the subtext entirely. "Just keep delivering results."
The engineers are energized—animated discussions about development paths, championship projections, the kind of optimistic planning that only happens when a team remembers what winning feels like.
The invisible line that bisected the garage for weeks has blurred, mechanics exchanging data across the former divide like diplomats after a ceasefire.
The post-race celebration fills the hospitality suite with champagne and noise. I'm mid-conversation with James when Julien materialises with two glasses and that particular French smile that manages to be charming and insufferable simultaneously.
"Congratulations, both of you." He hands me a glass, then turns to Nico with a focus that makes something prickle along the back of my neck. "But especially you, Almeida. That defensive masterclass deserves its own highlight reel."
He extends his hand for a shake that Nico accepts, and Julien holds it a beat too long, his thumb brushing Nico's knuckles.
"You're driving with a confidence I haven't seen from you before. It suits you."
"Podium suits everyone," Nico says, but he doesn't pull his hand away.
"Not like this." Julien's other hand settles on Nico's shoulder—too intimate for professional congratulation, too casual to call out. "Something's changed. You're looser, more aggressive. Whatever you're doing differently, it's working."
My jaw tightens as the champagne goes sour on my tongue. I watch Julien lean closer, body language unmistakable—angled toward Nico, voice dropping, the posture of a man who sees something he wants and isn't shy about reaching.
"I'm serious," Julien says, low enough that I strain to hear over the noise. "We should have dinner this week. I want to hear about your setup philosophy—among other things."
Nico laughs at that. Not the controlled, media-appropriate response he deploys for interviews. A real laugh, warm and unguarded, his head tipping back, eyes creasing, the sound cutting through the party noise and landing in my sternum like shrapnel.
Something sharp and possessive twists in my gut—visceral, immediate, having nothing to do with rivalry and everything to do with the irrational.
Furious conviction that Nico's real laugh belongs somewhere… private.
Somewhere mine.
The feeling is so enormous that I drain my champagne in one swallow and grip the empty glass hard enough that the stem creaks.
Avundsjuka. Jealousy.
I don't name it. But I can't unknow it either.