AUTHORS NOTE: welcome to the long awaited chapter where we dive deeper into Dakota's Red Bull related trauma. This chapter is going to be heavy, beyond the point of minor panic attacks and her health issues. Please exercise caution when reading this chapter and remember to take care of your own mental health xx.

2022 Season

CAP FERRET

THE FRENCH HEADLANDS

The French air was cool against Dakota McManus' skin as she rested her weight against the wooden railing on the deck of the bar. 

The annual surf trip to Cap Ferret had been Pierre's idea, at first. Pierre, Dakota and Ilies made the pilgrimage out to the coast every year to catch the waves and let go of the stressors of real life. While she had expected the trip to be more complicated this year, with it being the first trip since she had broken up with Ilies, and going on a trip with two men who definitely weren't her boyfriend wasn't a good look for Dakota after the Leclerc Photos, the trip was already doing wonders for her. 

She had turned off notifications on her phone, and avoided the internet entirely, a major thing that she hadn't done when she took her sabbatical in Australia. Yuki called her every night, and talked with her until she fell asleep.

And for the most part, it kept the night terrors at bay. But there would be no remedy better than having the driver's arms around her while she slept. 

Pierre had offered to bring Yuki along this time, but Yuki didn't want to overstep. He knew that the traditions of the trip went back long before he was on the scene. He still called though, making sure that Dakota remembered to take care of herself, and that he loved her, and for that she was thankful.

"You okay?"

At the sound of Ilies Nadri's voice, Dakota jumped out of her skin. She truly had been in a world all her own. "Jesus Christ, Nadri. The fuck was that for?"

"Sorry if I startled you." The Frenchman apologized, passing her a glass with some fruity mixed drink in it. She couldn't remember what she had ordered, but she trusted Ilies more than anyone in else in Pierre's inner circle. "You've seemed really. . .out of it lately."

"Yeah, I know. I have been, shit's been rough since the season started. Where's Backseat Romeo?"

Ilies laughed. Sometimes, she missed that laugh. "Over by the bar flirting with a group of college girls."

"Jesus fucking Christ." Dakota laughed in response, looking over at where Pierre Gasly was talking to a group of girls that looked ready to jump his bones, wide eyes glued to his face and hanging on to his every word.

Ilies hesitated before he spoke, worried he was crossing a line. But he was worried about the Aussie, and he wondered for a fleeting moment if she was more likely to talk to him than Pierre. "I heard you screaming last night. That's not normal, Mac. Pierre said that you've been having these nightmares for a while now. We're starting to get worried."

Dakota sighed, sitting at the table closest to the railing. She couldn't bring herself to look at Ilies. "It's leaving AlphaTauri that's bringing everything up again, Ilies. I was nineteen, a fucking child. When I first started test driving, Helmut wondered why my times were faster than Alex and Dany's. And they weren't faster by a lot, we still had incredible pace given where we had finished in 2018, but Alex and Dany were slower, and Helmut couldn't figure out why. He decided that it was because I was lighter than they were, which was probably true, but instead of accounting for that when they did the final analysis, they decided it would be a better use of resources to get me to match their weights. Now, I was a willowy, five foot four teenaged girl with boobs the size of grapefruit."

"They were a little bigger than grapefruit, Mac. Give yourself some credit." Ilies joked, uncomfortable with how serious things had gotten so fast. But he also knew that Mac still felt safe with him, and that she likely hadn't told anybody else about this.

"Daniil is a Russian in his midtwenties who's got a half a foot of height and a hell of a lot of weight over me, and Alex is fucking tall, he's six fucking feet. There was no healthy way for me to match them. So they gave me a trainer, not a personal one because thy didn't do their research, nor did they really care enough about Toro Rosso at the time, and I was on these diets, these workout regimes. They pushed me way too far, and nothing was working. I wasn't gaining muscle mass, in fact I was rapidly losing weight to the point where it stopped being healthy."

She had tried so hard not to remember. Not to think about the pounding of her feet against the treadmill for hours on end, at a speed that she could barely keep up with. The terror in her eyes every time she stood on the scale and saw the opposite of what Marko expected of her. The sunken eyes, the desperation as she dry-heaved from the physical strain, nothing left in her stomach to throw up because the diet wasn't sufficient. 

"It got so bad that I lost the ability to have a period. I wasn't sure I was ever going to be able to get pregnant, even when COVID hit and I got healthy again. I didn't even get healthy on purpose, I got healthy again because I was depressed and that's why I wasn't getting on the workout equipment or going for runs or why I was eating things that weren't a part of the trainers diet plan."

Ilies remembered what she was like all too well. He even remembered the text message he had sent her the morning after they had broken up.

I'm proud of you for setting boundaries and realizing that this isn't working. I understand that you need to work through this alone, and I respect that. I'll be in the guest bedroom from now on, take all the time that you need to get back on your feet. I'm always one phone call or text message away.

"I didn't know." He said softly. "I had just assumed you got an IUD or something."

"How do I come to terms with this, Ilies? Yuki doesn't know. Red Bull are the reason he's even in the sport, and I don't want him to throw that away because of me. Daniil says I need to make peace with what happened to me there, and I don't know if I can do that. But I can't walk away from Formula 1 either."

"But you can't keep letting your trauma ruin your life, Dakota. You need to at least tell Yuki. And Toto deserves to know what you went through."

"If I tell Toto, he's going to run to the FIA."

"A formal investigation might not be the worst thing in the world."

"After we broke up, it was a long time before I could get intimate with someone again. I was so insecure, and I hated myself. I had to do a lot of work an seriously evaluate what I wanted to do with my life, what I wanted to fix, what I wanted to keep the same. Yuki makes me feel safe, Ilies. He brings security. I can see a future with him, and the fact that he's stood by me this year through all of this bullshit is incredible, wuite frankly. And I'm worried that he's not going to know what to do once he knows. That he's going to treat me like I'm fragile."

She didn't say it, but Ilies knew what she meant.

Like you did towards the end. He had been a shitty boyfriend, and he knew it.

"He's not going to think that Dakota, and this season has been the judge of that. But if you keep hanging on to this resentment, it's going to eat you alive, and it's going to destroy your relationships with the people you care about most."