Fifth Light (Sebastian Vettel)

Chapter 52: Working Late

"More importantly, how are you?" Jacob said, focusing his attention on Casey.

Evan was half-listening in to them as he made the order to room service.

"I'm alright," she replied casually.

"She's lying." Evan blurted out, thoroughly confusing the girl on the other end of the phone who was taking his order.

"I haven't seen him in so long. Am I supposed to just get over him at some point?" she asked.

"Well, how do you feel about seeing him?" Jacob asked.

"Like, talking to him?"

"Yeah?"

Casey balked, "Fucking terrified."

Jacob nodded in understanding, "Well, he definitely wants to see you."

Casey cringed. So long as she didn't see Seb, she could still fool herself into believing there was hope. If he wanted closure, that was one traumatic conversation she could do without on this particular weekend. Was it worth the risk of underperforming at her debut Grand Prix with her new team?

---

The next day brought with it Free Practice 1 & 2. Everything seemed to be business as usual in the Ferrari garage until the last 10 minutes of FP2.

Casey sat between Monte and Ric as they watched the overhead monitors.

They noticed a sudden flurry of movement on the pit wall as Kimi's engineer called out, motioning for some of the crew back in the garage to prepare. Something had happened.

Casey looked back up at the monitors with the rest of the pit team and waited to see if the footage would reveal what was going on.

"If it's an engine failure I'm going to kill someone." Lanzo huffed.

Sure enough, the footage flicked over to Kimi who was in the middle of a fast flying lap. He was approaching Vergne, who looked as if he was about to yield before his back left tyre suddenly burst and the car jerked unexpectedly, swerving straight into Kimi's tail and causing them both to spin out into the tyre barrier.

The pit crew collectively gasped as the nose and front wing crumpled into the barrier and the back wing hung in a gnarled twist off the rear of the car.

Some of the guys around Casey stood up to voice their frustrations as they watched their car go from a pristine machine to a sad, dented mess.

Casey was just glad to see Kimi clambering out of the car, seemingly un-phased. A little further up the track, Vergne was also climbing out of his now well and truly damaged car.

And just like that, the crew's finish time that day was pushed well back into the early hours of the morning.

---

Later that evening after Seb had changed out of his race suit and finished de-briefing from the earlier sessions, he wandered back in to the garage and made a beeline for Evan.

Seb shot him an expectant expression as Evan looked up and sighed, pulling out his phone and passing it over.

Seb took it quickly and walked a few paces away, navigating to Casey's name and copying the number across to his own phone.

"Thank you." Seb said pointedly as he threw the phone back.

"I don't think you'll get through today though, Ferrari will probably be working till the early hours of the morning." Evan said, tucking a cloth in his belt casually.