The sun had dipped below the grandstands, leaving the paddock in that strange in-between glow where everything felt suspended — the noise, the adrenaline, the heat still clinging to the tarmac like it refused to let the day end. Mechanics shouted, wheeled carts scraped past, and voices crackled through radios, but Lando barely registered any of it. He had just climbed out of the car, his fireproofs hanging from his waist, sweat still fresh on his neck, the edges of his hair curling slightly where the helmet had pressed too long. He tugged off his gloves absentmindedly, his jaw set, his eyes scanning the area in front of the garage almost instinctively — like muscle memory.

That was where you usually stood. Right there. Just off to the side, out of the way but never out of reach. Sometimes you had your arms folded, sometimes your phone in hand, pretending to be distracted — but your eyes had always found his the second he looked up.

Not today.

You’d told him you weren’t coming. After the fight, after the silence that followed, after he said something he didn’t fully mean and you didn’t answer — he had believed you. He had told himself not to expect you, told himself to focus, to just get through the session, but still… still he’d looked.

“She’s not here,” he muttered to his engineer with a shrug that tried too hard to look careless.

“Didn’t think she would be.”

The man nodded and left, and Lando stood there a moment longer, alone now, the sounds around him dulling as his thoughts pressed in.

What he didn’t know was that you were there — not in the usual place, not with a team pass or media badge, but tucked behind a barrier a few metres away, half-shielded by shadows and equipment. You hadn’t wanted to be seen right away. You hadn’t even planned to come until your train was already halfway there. But something in you had snapped this morning — a thought, a need, a fear maybe — and now here you were, watching him from a distance, your hands cold despite the lingering heat.

He hadn’t seen you yet.

But you saw everything: the way he carried himself, trying to stay composed; the way his eyes still searched the crowd even though he didn’t expect to find you in it.