Faking it || Lando Norris LN

64

Saturday. France Grand Prix.

"Wait!! Olivia!" Lena yelled as I stormed out of the room. "Olivia! That's not everything!"

My body wasn't my own as I sped out of the Ferrari Lounge.

It felt as if a hundred different feelings were gripping me and pulling me in different directions, all of them doing so while laughing at me. I'd been trying so painfully hard to build my peace back up —a house of cards that finally stood firm and tall over shaking ground—only to find out there were so many people making the floor crumble as I struggled to keep myself standing.

A game. A cruel, cruel game I'd been forced to be the pawn of while people I thought cared about me pulled my strings like a puppet.

A game.

Another game.

I was seeing red. Time went by in fast motion as the burning feeling of my skin seemed to evaporate the cool wind breezing through the circuit. I didn't have time to think —about anything. I didn't know anything. I just knew I had to do this.

I knew I had to do this just as a wound knows it has to bleed.

It was the only thing I knew as I slammed open the door to Lando's room inside the McLaren Lounge.

"Not even a fight?!" I yelled as I entered the room.

Lando quickly jolted to his feet, looking like he'd just seen a ghost as his jaw went slack. His curls were messy over his head, as messy as the unzipped and untied race suit he quickly fixed up as he jumped from his seat. My brain couldn't even process that this was the first time I'd seen him face to face in a long time, but how he stared at me, speechless and like a deer caught in headlights, made my skin burn hotter.

Not even the Earth could've swallowed me whole with how I felt my rage would lift me up into the sky and set everything around me on fire. Not even a fight. He didn't even put a fucking fight to keep this idiotic situation from getting between us —whatever us meant.

"Not even a fucking fight?!" I snarled with disbelief that only grew with his silence.

My body was trembling with so much fury I could feel a scorching, incandescent glow coming out of my chest. I wanted to crack my ribs open.

"I saw you smoking from my room's window on Tuesday. You hear me?! I SAW YOU," I spat the words out. "You heard me knocking, you knew I was having a shit time and you didn't fucking answer, you didn't fucking come!" The words spilled out of my mouth in a string of fast sentences. "You let me think I meant nothing; you let me be a fucking pawn in the game everyone in the world was playing with me WHILE YOU WERE PLAYING WITH ME TOO!"

His face contorted into a pained grimace, his mouth hanging open as if he were about to talk. I shut my eyes tight so I couldn't see whatever face he'd put on while lying to me again. But he still didn't speak, so I kept going without missing a beat. I wanted to tear my skin apart and rip my hair out. My chest was a raging fire I couldn't put out. I couldn't keep the words from spilling.

"I may have meant nothing to you but you knew I cared about you, you made fucking sure of it, and you let me think you betrayed me only to turn around and actually betray me with your fucking silence. God! I—" I shut my eyes tighter as my eyes welled up and my balled fists traveled to my forehead before dropping them harshly to the sides of my body. "—I LOVED YOU and I still— fuck I-I still fucking do and you can't even say a word to me!!!"

I opened my eyes and a sob rose in my throat as soon as Lando's brows arched and his shoulders dropped with despair, and silence.

"Fuck you, Norris," I fumed. "Fuck you for letting me think you were better than this and fuck you for making me believe you were past playing games when you were still rolling the dice." I threw my hands in the air with rage and disbelief. "SO CONGRATULATIONS!!! YOU WON! Just like every fucking game you've played since the beginning. YOU. WON. But just so you know, this is the last. fucking. game you ever get to play with me."