Page 15

Seeing that guy on his knees in front of Harper affected me in a way I can’t even begin to admit.

The original reason for me seeing them – a desperate need to piss – was no longer possible afterwards because my dick was so hard and I’d silently had to relieve myself when I climbed back into bed. It was the way Harper’s eyes rolled back as the guy enthusiastically sucked his cock that tipped me over the edge. It felt like the image was burned onto my retinas so that when I climbed back into bed and stared blindly at the ceiling, I could see nothing but the utter bliss on his face. I got harder and harder, maybe even more so when he realised I’d been stood in the door frame watching wordlessly for a couple seconds before I announced my presence.

I’d had to readjust to stop it being obvious that the sight was turning me on, but Harper knew. His shit-eating grin told me so.

Yet the second I snapped out of the trance, there was nothing left but rage. It’s one thing being a bit untidy, leaving dirty dishes on the side and clothes all over the floor, but having sex in our shared space? That’s inconsiderate, unforgivable and downright gross.

I’m still thinking about it when I wake up. It’s taken years of practice to focus during qualifiers, and I need the structure of my routine more than ever in order to centre myself and approach the race in the right frame of mind, but the images of last night are a constant in my brain. I fall into bed that night and have another terrible night’s sleep.

As a result, I’m late to my morning yoga practice. It’s way after eight when I finally roll out my mat and get going in the lounge, but I have to trust the process and follow the steps that I know work for me.

I’m in the sun salutation pose when Harper appears. I think for a second that he’s about to piss me off and watch me from the sofa again, but he’s fully dressed in team apparel and sprints out of the door before I can even say good morning.

He doesn’t say where he’s going, and when I check our shared calendar once I finish my routine there isn’t anything in his diary for this early in the morning.

It’s strange. I’m almost a little bit worried about what the hell he’s up to, but it only takes a flash of his rock-hard dick appearing in my mind to dash away any worry. Harper’s a selfish fucker, and I need to focus only on my own performance.

Several hours later, he returns from wherever he’s been, a blaze of silent fury trailing behind him. He locks himself in his room, the whole place eerily quiet until it’s time to leave for the track.

What’s even weirder is that he doesn’t say anything the whole way over. Normally he’s rattling on about anything and everything, or ribbing me about the yoga and meditation he’s ‘caught’ me doing more times than I care to admit.

If anyone accused me of having moved to doing it in the living room so he can watch, I would deny it to my dying breath. But you know what they say about love and war.

The second we enter the garage, I’m pulled into a couple of pre-race interviews on the track. There’s always so much more of a buzz when you’re being interviewed in front of the crowd. People cheer and chant, and I spot at least a dozen people in Hendersohm merch, some of whom are holding up signs with my name on them. The backdrop won’t do my reputation any damage, and my ego does a little happy dance. They’re not asking when I’m going to retire.

‘We always see you with headphones on when you’re warming up on the side of the track. Who or what are you listening to?’ the Sky Sports presenter asks. I haven’t heard this one in a while, maybe because when I was asked this a lot at the beginning of my racing career, my answers always used to be the same.

Not anymore. ‘Sometimes it’s a guided-meditation podcast, sometimes it’s Noah Kahan or Hozier.’

She nods along as though I’m going to expand on that but suddenly I’m frozen. Harper, his hood pulled up over his head, is standing in the shadow of a feather flag branded with the logos of the team and our major sponsors, and he’s wiping his eyes. It’s not something I ever thought I’d see.

The reporter’s started speaking again and I thank God this isn’t live because I miss every single word she’s saying. All my brain power is focused on Harper.

What the hell is going on?

‘I’m so sorry, could you repeat the question?’ I ask as politely as possible, trying not to come across as an arrogant prick.

‘I asked why guided meditation?’

‘I find it helps me get my head into the right space. Racing is as much a mental game as it is physical. Being in the right headspace is just as important as putting in the gym work or time on the track. It affects my performance massively. I know most drivers sway towards more upbeat music to get them pumped, but this is what works for me.’

Or at least, it normally does. It’s failed me a couple of times recently.

Not today though. I won’t let it fail me today.

Today I have to have my wits about me. I can’t afford to worry about what’s going on with Harper. He certainly won’t be worrying about what’s going on with me.

We both have good starting positions, but that’s the last time the picture looks good.

Lap one, we lose two people straight away. A minor crash that neither of their cars can recover from happens right in front of me. Even with only minimal debris, I have to fight to avoid hitting it and that slows down my lap.

It’s their accident, but it’s beyond frustrating for me when every single second really counts.

Then, just two laps later, it happens again.

‘What’s going on out here, Cole?’ I ask as another yellow flag appears and I have to slow again.

‘It’s one of the Ferrari guys – we’re just waiting to find out. Could be serious. Crashed into the barrier. May be a safety car incoming. I’ll keep you up to date.’ This track isn’t really known for crashes so I’m shocked there’s so many.

‘How many people down are we right now?’

‘Four.’

‘Who’s in P1?’

‘Yorris. You’re close, though. You’re still in P2. Keep pushing.’

‘And Harper?’

There’s silence for a brief moment, almost as if he’s letting me finish my lap before he replies. Even though he knows me well and has been my race engineer for, like, five years, he doesn’t see how stressed this delay makes me.

Especially after how Harper was this morning.

I zoom across the line again, gearing up for another lap, when he says, ‘P16.’

I’ve got time still to push Yorris and try to get up to P1, but Harper’s clearly having a shocker.

‘What’s his problem?’ I ask, but Cole doesn’t know. Harper must be absolutely gutted. Dead last, on a day like today, is not where anybody wants to be.

Luckily, I’m able to push the thought of him upset to the back of my mind. I don’t manage to overtake Yorris and have to be content with a P2 finish, but I’ll take it.

Harper, on the other hand, limps home.

I hope someone’s checking in on him and that he’s not alone right now. Ash will be on it, I’m sure. It can so easily become a dark time when you have a really bad day after previously doing so well. It’s a gut punch that just keeps on punching while your mental game spirals into a hole. And it’s not like you can forget about it, because you’ll have to answer press questions about your performance and then read about the analysis of your mistakes. Then, ahead of the next race, you’ll be asked about how you’re going to fix your mistakes, and what you do to pick yourself back up after such a failure. It’s like being slapped in the face with your failure right when you need to be talking yourself up.

When I get out of the cockpit, the garage is quieter than normal after a Hendersohm driver finishes second, and I know instantly it’s because of Harper.

He’s sitting in the corner, a team hoodie pulled on over his suit, the strings tightened around his face so he can’t see or be seen. I don’t even know what to say. It’s a devastating sight, and I suspect he’s crying under there. To finish outside the top ten can be soul-destroying, and he doesn’t have the resilience of an experienced driver. Sometimes I forget he’s a rookie still in his first season.

It must only be making him feel worse that we’ll slip into second place in the Constructors’ Championship as part of the fallout from his result. He knows it’s his fault – there’s no two ways about it. This isn’t like football where a mistake could be made by three or four or more players, or compounded by different incidents, to cause the loss overall. The way the points get divided up in the sport makes it obvious.

When he’s sitting there, completely miserable, especially after how quiet he was this morning, I don’t have it in me to be annoyed at him. He has to write off Austria and focus on what comes next – Silverstone. That’s our home turf and we have to smash it. It’s not like I finished first today, even I could have done more to be first rather than second.

I just hope Harper knows how to deal with setbacks and doesn’t end up spiralling, and that Johannes is the kind of friend who doesn’t kick a man when he’s down.

Normally, by this point of the post-race analysis, Harper’s joking about with Ash, finding out specific lap times and going through individual points of the race where the tyres didn’t feel great or looking at footage of key moments.

Ash tries, bless him. He brings up highlights of Harper’s laps, but it’s not working. Harper’s heading for a meltdown, and because this is the first time this has happened, nobody knows how to help him. Is he an angry whirlwind, does he smash and break things, or does he sulk? There’s a kind of collective breath-holding while we wait to find out.

Instead, it just breaks him.

He shuts down completely. It’s like the soul is sucked out of him. It’s utter devastation.

Thankfully, Anders releases him from doing any media and Harper leaves so quickly that it’s almost like he evaporates. Unfortunately, there’re journos already lingering nearby and he has a battle to get to a car while savage questions are being fired at him about his performance. I hope to God that he’s ‘no commenting’ everything, mostly so that he doesn’t say something he’ll regret.

Anders jogs after him, calling out that ‘no media’ doesn’t mean he can just leave, but Harper’s already gone.

I’m left to tackle the media alone and not a single one of them wants to talk about my P2 finish. Everyone wants to know what’s up with Harper James.

‘Was it a technical or engineering issue?’ one of them shouts, microphone stick dangling over a whole other heap of columnist and radio presenters.

‘Not that we’re aware of. There will of course be in-depth post-race analysis of the car, but it didn’t seem to be a mechanical fault.’

‘So we’re looking at driver error for his poor performance today, then?’

That boils my blood a little. Could he have done better? Of course he could, but he didn’t cause any accidents on the track, he didn’t screw up the car, he just had a really, really shitty day.

‘Everyone has bad days. None of us are perfect – we’re not robots. But the season is far from over. That’s the beauty of motor racing. We learn from this race and put it into practice for the next one.’ I drawl out so many answers like this to anyone trying to goad me into bad-mouthing Harper, especially when they bring up the fact that Harper might have cost us a win in the Constructors’ Championship. My tone gets sharper as the questions continue. I don’t know when I became so protective of Harper James, but it’s got nothing to do with Anders’s threats and everything to do with the image of him huddled in the corner looking like his heart was going to break.

I just want to get home now – mainly back to the UK where I will see my family and feel the strength of their love and support, but also back to the motorhome.

Even though I’m not quite sure what I’m heading ‘home’ to.

With how distraught he was when he stormed out of the pit, taking his frustration out on all the waiting journalists, and ignoring Anders’s calls for him to stop, I have no clue.

Maybe he’s trashed it, set it on fire, or maybe he’s drowning his sorrows in vodka or blow-jobs with randos. It’s hard to predict with Harper.

It’s quiet as I step in through the door. All the lights are off and as I turn them on one by one, I take note that nothing’s broken, smashed, or on fire.

There’s an eeriness to the silence, though. It’s almost too much. I didn’t hang around that long after the team debrief so I’m surprised he’s managed to come home, shower, and head out in this time, but then again nothing should surprise me about Harper James anymore. He does whatever he damn well wants and screw the consequences – or the collateral damage.

I’m about to take a shower myself, my hand hovering over the button, when the softest noise leaks under the door of the Jack and Jill bathroom. It’s almost inaudible, as though my mind’s playing tricks on me. Until I press my ear up against the door, and there it is again: small sobs. I can almost picture them wracking his body, his chest rising and falling as he struggles to control the sound.

It’s downright heartbreaking. Even more so from a guy who has the toughest shell going.

I can’t stop listening, and I feel like the world’s worst person that I’m just standing here eavesdropping on his pain instead of going in there and checking on him.

But what do I say to the guy who’s got a hard layer of arrogance around him that he wears like armour? Who would likely vigorously reject any attempts to comfort or console him?

A guy I’ve kissed once and not stopped thinking about since?