Fifty Shades Of Red | Charles Leclerc

38. Fifty Shades Of Red

          Hailey's pov

The red flag being waved can perfectly be seen from on top of my car. I hear my name being shouted from down below, but I purposely ignore it...I purposely ignore my heart beating like crazy, my hands shaking.

The medical team becomes a raindrop in the large sea of people and I lose sight of the trail they were following but I don't give up. Not until I catch a sight of him.

Security teams are evacuating people out of the way but there's no longer chaos all around. The world itself has stopped spinning, everybody holding their breath, hoping, praying for any news to be delivered. Sirens of the medical car cut through the air, ringing in my ears before turning off. After that, it's completely silence. Silence so deafening I can practically hear my teeth ticking and I wish it could go back to the raging cheers and roars from the crowd, just so I could be a little distracted.

The calm before the storm. The moment where everything it's about to change. All the happy feelings from my win mix in with fear, creating a lump in my throat, a pit in my stomach and this, I've come to realise, is the worse type of feeling anyone can ever experience. Powerlessness. There's absolutely nothing I can do to fix this. To help him. I feel useless. Perhaps, all along it was the aftermath I should have been fearing.

I gulp down my dry throat as my eyes search for any piece of sign. And that's when I see it. Smoke. A huge cloud of black smoke forming near the finish line, raising up into the now almost black sky. Black smoke, against a bright red car.

I gasp, my mouth falling wide open like I'm about to scream, but no sounds come out. My entire body lights up on goosebumps and I could swear I can feel my bones tattering.

I watch as his car sets up on fire, the flames engulfing the entire front part of his car and raising up on the air. The crowd all around starts screaming and it looks like all hell is breaking loose and all I want to do is rip my ears off to prevent these screams being engraved in my brain forever. Fire extinguishers are used to put out the fire, but it only seems like they're making it burn more brightly. A slow breeze flows in my direction, making the warmth of the blaze that reflects in my eyes brush against my skin as smoke fills my lungs. It's the burning sensation from the warm breeze that proves to me that this is actually happening and it's not a creation of my own imagination.

Fire. Everywhere. And he started it.

He set my world on fire, colouring it fifty shades of red. From the very start, I was bound to get burned.

The sky above me is bleeding. The earth below my feet is shattering. My own heart is breaking, slowly and in the most painful possible way. A sob escapes my chest from all the beating my heart has been taking, my vision becomes blurry from the smoke and from the pain, making streams of salt run down my cheeks without me even realising it.

This was how it started. In flames. This is how it's going to end. Two broken hearts...one dead road. The game is over. The chessboard has been flipped over, no more pieces to move, no more strategies to play out, all of the pieces have fallen, except only one left standing. And the victory...it's so goddamn lonley.

Maybe this is the price we've got to pay to be the last one standing. Maybe we exist to bleed. Maybe we exist to burn.

I watch as the security guards and medical team fight to discover any signs of life and I'm immediately brought back to the night I've been trying to forget. The vision of a scared young version of me, crying and hiding my teary eyed-face behind my mom as my brother's car lit up on fire invades my head. And here I am, years later, watching history repeating itself.