บททั้งหมดของ Saved by Brother's Best Friend: บทที่ 81 - บทที่ 90

Marianna POVBeing twenty-three and living with your brother and conducting a relationship so secret it technically doesn't have a name yet are now what my life is.I wake up at 6:15 to Marco's coffee grinder.Not an alarm. The coffee grinder. It's the same grinder that's been waking me up since I moved in, the same morning ritual, the same sequence: grinder, then the particular hiss of the stovetop espresso maker, then the sound of Marco moving around the kitchen.Normally I lie there for another ten minutes. This morning I'm dressed and in the hallway in four.This is either personal growth or self-preservation. Possibly both.Duane is already at the kitchen table.He's in the same white t-shirt from last night, which means he slept in it.Marco is standing at the counter with his own coffee, looking at his phone, performing the studied neutrality."Morning," I say."Morning," they say, simultaneously.I get coffee. Sit down across from Duane. We look at each other."Okay," Marco sa

Marianna POVArdennes forest in late August: it's green in a way that feels aggressive.Every shade of green that has ever existed in the history of the color green, stacked on top of each other in rolling hills that go on forever, interrupted only by mist that materializes and dissipates according to its own schedule with no regard for what the weather app says.My weather app currently says: Partly cloudy, 18°C.The window of the hire car says: Actively raining, 14°C, the sky has personal grievances."Belgium," I say."Mm," says Henri, from the driver's seat, in the tone of a man who has driven in Belgian weather for forty years and has achieved enlightenment about it.We've been on the road from Brussels for an hour. The Spa-Francorchamps circuit is somewhere in these green hills, which I know because Henri's GPS keeps asserting it despite the forest's best efforts to suggest that nothing exists out here except trees and fog and the occasional cow looking at the road with the speci

Marianna.He crossed the garage toward me the way he crosses every room—unhurried, like the room will wait. Around us, the Veloce garage did its cathedral thing: tools in gleaming rows, engineers at their stations, the car sitting under the lights in red and black like a held breath."Eighty-one," I said, before he could speak."Eighty-one," he confirmed."That's up from seventy-eight.""I'm aware. I live in the shoulder.""Seven AM tomorrow. I'm assessing it properly before practice."We stood there in team kit, three feet apart, being extremely professional. Nobody in the garage was obviously watching us. Which, I've learned, is different from nobody watching us—there's a specific art to not-watching in a Formula 1 garage, and everyone in that room had mastered it years ago.I'd take it. I'd take anything. That's the embarrassing truth about being in love with someone whose face is public property: you learn to live on crumbs."McCartney," he said quietly. "She said something to you

Marianna POVHere's something they don't put in the Formula 1 promotional materials: rain at Spa-Francorchamps doesn't fall so much as arrive.It doesn't descend from the sky like normal precipitation. It materializes. One moment the air is merely damp and contemplative, and the next moment there is simply water everywhere, coming from all directions simultaneously.It's Saturday morning. Practice is in four hours.I know this because Patrick has sent me a weather briefing email at 6 AM—before my alarm, and a subject line that reads: THOUGHTS ON SHOULDER LOAD IN WET CONDITIONS.Patrick is my favorite person in Formula 1.I respond to the email before I get out of bed.Duane arrives exactly on time, seven AM means seven AM, in team kit, hair slightly damp from a shower."Eighty-three," he says, as he sits on the table.I haven't touched him yet."From when?" I say."This morning. Self-assessed.""Your self-assessment runs approximately one point five below actual," I say, pulling on gl

Marianna POVThe universe is not particularly interested in my cardiovascular recovery.Zandvoort is two days after Belgium. Two days, a four-hour drive, and one very significant logistical shift that Dr. McCartney delivers over what passes for dinner in the team hotel restaurant at Spa—a salad that costs twenty-two euros and contains approximately the nutritional content of a decisive opinion."Veloce has expanded their Kinetic deployment request for the Netherlands," she says, between precisely fork-stabbed leaves. "They want support for both drivers through race week.""Both drivers," I repeat."Richter and Ferrante." She looks at me with her data-filing eyes. "You'll take Ferrante. I'll continue with Richter."I set down my fork.McCartney continues eating with the calm of a woman who has just rearranged a professional situation with full awareness of its implications and is giving me approximately thirty seconds to process before she expects a coherent response."That's—" I stop.