61

Marianna.

Duane calls at 11 PM on a Tuesday.

I know this because I'm lying on Marco's borrowed bed, having a very productive argument with myself about whether to eat the last banana or save it for breakfast, when my phone lights up with a number I've memorized without meaning to.

I stare at it for two full rings.

This is a thing that's happening. Duane Richter is calling me. On purpose. Like he said he would. Like a person who makes promises he intends to keep.

The third ring starts.

I answer.

"Hi," I say.

"Hi." His voice sounds different on the phone. Closer somehow, and also farther. Like the distance has stripped away some outer layer and what's left is just the frequency of him, low and rough and immediately doing something to my nervous system that I refuse to diagnose.

"How's Canada?" I ask.

"Cold."

"It's June."

"It's Montreal. June is theoretical here."

I pull the covers up. Outside, Wynwood is doing its nighttime thing—music, laughter, the distant sound of someone's car alarm that's been going for forty minutes and at this point is basically neighborhood ambient sound.

"How was the track walk?" I ask.

A pause. "You know what a track walk is."

"I've been working with F1 drivers for three weeks. I've absorbed things."

"Mm." That sound. Even through the phone it does what it does. "The track walk was good. Circuit Gilles Villeneuve is one of the better ones. Interesting surface. Lots of overtaking opportunities."

"Oliver says Montreal is his favorite circuit."

Another pause. This one has a different texture.

"Does he," Duane says.

"He mentioned it at his session on Friday. Said the chicane in the last sector is—" I stop myself, because I'm doing that thing where I fill silence with words and some silences don't need filling. "Sorry. You called. You probably have something to say."

"I called to hear your voice."

The words land like something dropped from a height.

I open my mouth. Close it.

"That's—" I start.

"Don't make it weird."

"I'm not making it weird, you said a thing, Duane, you can't just say a thing like that and then tell me not to make it—"

"I said don't make it weird."

"You called to hear my voice."

"Yes."

"That's objectively a romantic statement."

"It's an accurate statement."

I press my free hand over my face. The stitches on my forehead have mostly healed—the bruising is gone, just a thin pink line now that Dr. Morrison says will fade to white within a year—and pressing my palm against it doesn't hurt anymore. Small victories.

"Okay," I say, from behind my hand. "Okay. I called to hear your voice too. Is that what we're doing? Admitting things?"

"If you want."

"I want," I say. "I think. Yes."

Through the phone, I can hear something in the background—the low hum of what's probably a hotel room, maybe a television on low volume. The white noise of a city that isn't Miami.

"How's the shoulder?" I ask.

"Fine."

"Duane."

"Seventy-three percent range of motion. Up from sixty-eight last week."

"That's actually good progress." I sit up, going into clinical mode without quite meaning to, the way I always do when someone mentions an injury. "Are you doing the external rotation exercises I showed you? The ones with the band?"

"Yes."

"And the posterior capsule stretching? Cross-body—"

"Marianna."

"What?"

"I didn't call to talk about my shoulder."

"Right." I settle back against the pillow. "Sorry. Occupational hazard."

"I know."

A comfortable silence. The kind I didn't know was possible with him, three weeks ago, when every silence felt like a test I was failing. Now they feel like breathing. Like the spaces between words that mean as much as the words.

"Tell me something," he says.

"What kind of something?"

"Anything. Something that happened today."

I think about it. The day comes back in fragments—Oliver's session in the morning, good, he's in peak condition heading into Canada. The new client, Luca Ferrante, in the afternoon, which was... something I'm still processing.

"I met your reserve driver today," I say. "Luca Ferrante."

The silence has a different quality now.

"And?" Duane's voice is neutral. Too neutral. The kind of neutral that's actually a very specific frequency of I'm paying close attention.

"He's..." I search for the right word. "Interesting."

"Interesting how."

"Interesting like a car that's very fast but the handling is unpredictable. You can see the potential. You can also see all the ways it could go wrong."

A beat. "That's a generous assessment."

"Dr. Lindholm said to be aware that his charm has agendas underneath it."

"She's not wrong."

"He spent the first ten minutes of his session asking me how long I'd been at Kinetic, who my other clients were, whether I'd worked with Veloce before—" I pause. "He asked about you specifically. Whether I'd treated you."

"What did you say?"

"That client information is confidential." I pick at a loose thread on Marco's duvet. "He smiled like that was the most interesting thing I'd said all day. Which was—Dr. Lindholm warned me about the charm thing but it has a specific quality, like he's filing everything you say away for later. Like he's always doing math."

"He is always doing math," Duane says. "Just not the kind that adds up to something good for the people around him."

"You don't like him."

"I don't trust him." The distinction is precise. Deliberate. "There's a difference. Luca is talented. Genuinely talented—top three junior formula record in the last decade, maybe top two. But he has decided the fastest route to where he wants to be is through the people currently standing there."

"Through you."

"Primarily."

I think about Luca's green eyes and the way they catalogued the room before he sat down. The charm that arrived slightly too fast, slightly too calibrated.

"I'll be careful," I say.

"I know you will." A pause. "You're better at reading people than you think you are."

"I'm really not. I've made some catastrophic misreadings."

"You read me," he says. "From the beginning. You just didn't trust what you were reading."

The words settle somewhere deep. In the place where I keep things I'm not ready to look at directly.

"Canada qualifying tomorrow," I say, because we've arrived somewhere tender and I don't entirely trust myself there yet.

"Yes."

"Nervous?"

"No."

"Not even a little?"

"No." A pause. "Focused."

"What's the difference?"

He thinks about this. Actually thinks, which I know because I've learned the quality of his thinking silences versus his withholding silences versus his I'm deciding whether to tell the truth silences.

"Nervous is energy without direction," he says finally. "Focused is the same energy with a line through it. A vector. You know where it's going."

I lie there in the dark, holding the phone, feeling something warm and specific move through my chest.

"That's a really good answer," I say.

"Mm."

"I mean it. That's—you should do motivational speaking."

"I would rather drive into a wall."

"That's also something you do voluntarily, so I'm not sure it's the deterrent you think it is."

The sound he makes—low, exhaled, the almost-laugh that I've been collecting like evidence—does what it always does.

"Sleep," he says. "You have a 7 AM session."

"Oliver."

"Yes."

"How do you know my schedule?"

"You told me. Two nights ago. On the couch."

I did. I remember now—the 2 AM quiet, his hand around mine, me talking about the week ahead in the way you talk when someone is actually listening. The way I talk to Jill. The way I've never talked to any of the men I've been with, because they were always waiting for their turn to speak.

"Okay," I say softly. "I'll sleep."

"Good."

"Duane?"

"Mm."

"Win tomorrow."

A beat. The longest one yet.

"I intend to," he says.

He wins.