64

Marianna.

The victories are the hardest part.

Victories want to be shared. Victories are extroverted. They grab you by the collar and drag you into the street and demand that someone else be there to witness the fact that something good happened, that the world produced something worth celebrating, that you are happy and happiness requires a witness or it doesn't fully count.

Duane wins the Canadian Grand Prix on a Saturday afternoon and I watch it on a break room laptop and I cannot tell a single person in that room why I'm smiling like that.

This is the problem.

The call comes Sunday morning at 7 AM.

Not from Duane. From Dr. Lindholm.

"Ms. Reyes." Her voice has that pre-coffee precision that suggests she's been awake for hours and finds the concept of sleeping in faintly irresponsible. "I have an opportunity for you. Veloce Racing has requested Kinetic send a practitioner to Montreal for their post-race medical assessments tomorrow. Dr. McCartney will lead, but she needs a second on the soft tissue evaluations."

I'm sitting up in Marco's guest bed, suddenly very awake.

"Montreal," I repeat.

"The flight leaves at six AM. Monday return. It's short notice, I understand, but given your existing familiarity with the Veloce protocols—" A pause. "The request came from the team directly. They were specific about wanting continuity of care for their drivers."

The request came from the team directly.

I know exactly which part of the team made the request.

"I can do that," I hear myself say.

"Good. I'll send the details."

She hangs up. I sit in Marco's guest bed for a long moment, holding my phone, doing the math.

Duane didn't ask me to come. He created a legitimate professional reason for me to be there, routed it through proper channels, made it Dr. Lindholm's decision and Kinetic's business trip and therefore nobody's personal choice at all.

Deniable. Clean. Exactly the kind of chess move you make when you want something but can't say so directly.

I text him.

Me: Dr. Lindholm just called.

Duane: Henri will be at arrivals. Black SUV.

Me: Who's Henri.

Duane: You'll see.

Henri is, as it turns out, approximately sixty-five, bilingual, and deeply uninterested in who I am or why I'm being driven in a Veloce Racing contracted vehicle, which I appreciate more than I can say.

Montreal at 7 AM smells like possibility and also very aggressively like a city that had a better night than I did. The 6 AM flight was brutal—the kind of early that makes your body feel like it's been assembled incorrectly, all the parts present but in slightly the wrong order.

The hotel is the kind of place that uses the word "boutique" without irony. Stone walls, exposed beams, the specific hush of somewhere that understands that wealthy guests equate silence with quality.

My room has been upgraded. I know this because my confirmation email said Standard Room and what I'm standing in is approximately the size of a small country with a view of the St. Lawrence river that does something embarrassing to my chest.

There's something on the bed.

A small paper box, the kind from a patisserie. And on top of it, weighted down by the box, a piece of paper.

Folded into an airplane.

I stare at it for a moment that probably constitutes a minor medical event.

I pick up the airplane first, because I have priorities.

It's more elaborate than the Wynwood one. Longer wingspan. More precise folds. Someone spent actual time on this, which means someone sat somewhere—a team debrief, probably, a drivers' briefing, some officially important meeting—and folded paper with the focused precision of a man who does everything with focused precision.

I unfold it.

Two words. Angular handwriting, economical, no wasted motion even in pen strokes.

Welcome back.

I sit on the edge of the bed.

Press the unfolded paper against my chest.

Do not cry. Do not cry. You are a professional adult in a boutique hotel in Montreal and you are not going to cry because a man left you a paper airplane with two words on it.

I cry a little.

Just briefly. Just for a moment. The kind that leaks out before you can stop it, that happens when something unexpectedly kind finds the place you've been keeping carefully sealed.

Then I open the patisserie box, which contains two croissants and a note in different handwriting that says compliments of the chef and is clearly from the hotel, but I eat both croissants anyway because the 6 AM flight ate my soul.

The post-race medical assessment takes three hours.

Four drivers cycle through. Three are straightforward.

The fourth is Luca Ferrante.

He arrives twenty minutes late with an apology so polished it had clearly been rehearsed between the elevator and the door. Green eyes that sweep the room and land on me with a quality of recognition that makes my skin do something uncomfortable.

"Ms. Reyes." He says my name like he's noting a data point. "You made the trip."

"It's my job," I say.

"Of course." He settles onto the examination table with practiced ease, perfect posture, the specific physical confidence of someone whose body has always cooperated with him. "How's Miami?"

"Miami's good." I check his blood pressure. Normal. Everything about Luca Ferrante is exactly what it should be, I suspect, because anything else would be inefficient. "Any pain I should know about? Stiffness from the race?"

"Left hip flexor. Nothing serious." He watches me note it down. "You know, I was hoping you'd be assigned to my regular sessions when I'm in Miami. I mentioned it to Dr. Lindholm."

"She'll make the call based on scheduling."

"Of course." A pause that has a shape to it. "I find I work better with practitioners who understand the competitive environment. The pressure of being—" He tilts his head slightly. "—adjacent to the front of the grid."

Adjacent. Not at it. The phrasing is deliberate. A man performing awareness of his own position.

"I'll assess your hip flexor now," I say. "Can you lie back?"

He does. I work through the assessment with the clinical efficiency I've been building for three weeks, hands professional, expression neutral, awareness of his cataloguing-everything quality maintained at the front of my mind like a yellow flag.

"You're good at this," he says, while I'm pressing into his psoas.

"Thank you."

"Better than the team physio." A pause. "Richter uses you, doesn't he? For his shoulder."

My hands don't change pressure. Nothing in my face moves.

"Client information is confidential," I say.

"Of course." I can hear the smile without seeing it. "I was just curious. He's been performing at a different level since Monaco. Some of us were wondering about the variables."

The variables.

I press into the iliopsoas with slightly more precision than strictly necessary.

Luca makes a small sound.

"Found it," I say pleasantly.

I don't see Duane until 6 PM.

I'm crossing the hotel lobby toward the elevator, carrying my assessment notes and the patisserie box I've kept for reasons I'm not examining, when I hear him before I see him.

Not his voice. His footsteps. I've apparently memorized the rhythm of his walk, which is either romantic or deeply concerning and probably both.

He's coming from the direction of the conference rooms—still in team kit, a Veloce Racing jacket, which means he's gone directly from some post-race debrief to— here. To this lobby. At this specific moment.

Which is not an accident.

He sees me.

I see him.