Saved by Brother's Best Friend のすべてのチャプター: チャプター 1 - チャプター 10

MariannaAnd the car doors open.For a split second, I pray to a God I haven't spoken to since middle school that it’s just some random billionaire. A stranger who got lost on his way to a yacht. Anyone else. The heavy, expensive click of the car door unlatching sounds unnaturally loud, cutting right through the drumming rain.A dark, waterproof boot hits the wet pavement.Do you follow motorsports? Do you follow Formula 1? If you do, you're sure to recognize these names: Lewis Hamilton, Max Verstappen, and this man who's about to make his debut. If you're an F1 fan, you're probably already screaming, right?He unfolds from the car like some kind of predatory cat—all controlled grace and barely contained danger—and my stupid, treacherous body reacts the way it always does.Duane Richter steps into the rain like it's not even there, like weather is something that happens to other people. He's wearing all black—of course he is, because God forbid he make this easier on me by looking eve

MariannaThere are three universally acknowledged facts about my dynamic with Duane Richter that perfectly illustrate the canyon-sized gap between us.Fact one: he’s richer than God, which means his place is undoubtedly a sprawling architectural masterpiece that could swallow my entire apartment whole.Fact two: I spent the better part of my adolescence harboring a suffocating, secret crush on him, filling countless diaries with his name—all of which I’ve since burned to ash. The closest thing to a compliment he’s ever given me was a secondhand remark he allegedly made to Marco in the third grade: Your sister looks cute today.Fact three: I am currently a soaking wet, tragic disaster of a human being, while he looks like he just stepped off the cover of GQ.In every conceivable dimension of time and space, I am profoundly outmatched. Going to his apartment wouldn't just be a losing battle; it would be a total, humiliating surrender.So, naturally, my only viable option is to scream."

MariannaThe apartment is quiet. Too quiet. The kind of silence that presses against your eardrums, makes you hyperaware of your own breathing, your own heartbeat.I slip out of the guest room, padding barefoot across the cold marble floors. The hallway is dark—no lights on anywhere except the faint glow coming from under my door.Does he just... sit in the dark? Like a vampire? Like some kind of brooding creature of the night who doesn't require basic illumination?I'm halfway to the kitchen—I think it's the kitchen, everything in this apartment looks the same—when I hear it.A thud. Low and heavy, coming from somewhere deeper in the apartment.I freeze."Duane?"My voice echoes off the high ceilings, swallowed by all that empty space. No response.Another thud. Then another. Rhythmic now, like—Like someone hitting something. Over and over."Duane?"Still nothing.I find the light switch on the wall, flooding the hallway with harsh brightness. Follow the sound past a living room tha

MariannaAfter downing two bottles of Duane’s ridiculous, glass-bottled sparkling water and pacing back and forth to his marble bathroom three times, my crisis-fatigued brain finally offers up exactly two choices.Option A: Stay in Miami. Find a job. Figure out how to pay Brooklyn rent remotely.Option B: Disappear into the ocean and become one with the sea.Option B is looking increasingly attractive, but I'm told saltwater is bad for your skin, so.I let out a long, pathetic groan and flop backward onto the center of the massive grey bed. I stare up at the ceiling, trace the shadows cast by the Miami skyline outside, and finally force myself to sit up. I have to roll the waistband of Duane's comically large sweatpants for the fifth time just to keep them from sliding off my hips entirely.The silence in this apartment is deafening, and I need background noise to drown out the sound of my own spiraling. I grab the cracked iPhone, pull up Spotify, and click on my "Crisis Management" p

Marianna.Alina Lindqvist.In case you’re not a fan of motorsports, or if you’ve somehow managed to avoid the internet for the last five years, let me introduce you to Duane Richter’s public dating history. (And for the record, I haven’t been obsessively following his every move like a crazy fangirl; this information comes purely from Wikipedia, I swear.)First, there was Sofia Adler, a fiercely competitive endurance driver. After they split, he briefly dated two high-profile influencers whose names blur together in a cloud of Instagram filters, VIP lanyards, and sponsored posts. And then he met the woman who seems to have been the most important to him: Alina Lindqvist. Their relationship has been notoriously on-and-off, providing endless fodder for the tabloids.My primary takeaway from all of this data? He clearly has a very specific thing for tall, impossibly beautiful blondes.Of course, knowing that intellectually doesn’t stop me from feeling a crushing, suffocating wave of inse