Chapter 223
HARLOTTE-
I saw the crash.
For a few minutes I did not know what to do.
Scream or cry.
My body picked both.
The screen in the garage showed it twice before
my brain caught up. One second his car was on a flyer. The next it was sideways and the wall was there and the front right was damaged badly.
I heard a sound and realized it was me shouting his name. I was screaming it. I could not tell if he was okay and that had me hysterical.
“LUCA!” I cried. “LUCAAA!”
They said he was okay. They tried to calm me down.
They said they had him on the radio.
I was still terrified.
Luca was everything to me. Seeing him crash, when that had maybe only happened twice a long time ago, made me hysterical.
He was my best friend. I loved him. I would lose my mind if anything ever happened to him.
I could not run onto the track even though I was terrified enough to make that crazy mistake.
I saw the red flags already coming. A crying best friend running toward a wreck would only make a bad situation worse.
I still wanted to.
I saw the marshals first. Moving fast. Then the medical car, already rolling in before the replay had even finished.
Red flag on every screen. The session dead. The crowd holding its breath the same way everyone in the garage was.
It became a room full of people telling me to breathe while a screen showed his car against a wall and the serious damage done to it. I was freaking out.
I knew I should be strong for him but I’d never been this scared in my life.
“Charlotte. He’s on the radio.”
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14:36 Mon, Sep 28 JOM.
The Hockey Captain’s Unwanted Wife
“He’s talking.”
de’s fine. Sit down.”
I did not sit down.
My pass was in my fist so tight the plastic edges bit my skin.
My mouth was dry. Someone tried to put a bottle of water in my other hand and I did not take it. Someone else said my name like I was the one who had hit the wall.
“He’s responding,” an engineer said, the calm kind of voice they used when they needed the room not to fall apart. “He’s out. Walking. Everyone breathe.”
Walking was not enough.
I needed him in front of me.
Protocol took forever.
They checked him in the cockpit first. Neck. Hands. They asked him questions. Then they helped him out. Then the medical car was there. Then they took him to the medical centre, the building drivers hated because it meant they were not allowed to pretend a crash was nothing until a doctor agreed.
The walk back felt like a year.
I was not supposed to leave the garage.
I left anyway.
A hospitality staffer tried to stop me. Another person said I should wait. Someone from the team said he would come to us. I did not hear any of it the way they wanted me to. I heard the impact as a spiral in my head. I heard myself shouting his name. I kept seeing the wall. The crash. The smoke.
“Charlotte, breathe.” Someone said.
“I am breathing.”
I was not.
They let me through after the centre. A place that existed for the seconds after something went wrong.
That’s when I saw him. And my heart paused for a few seconds.
Luca. My Luca.
He was in the suit still. Gloves off. Hair flattened from the helmet. A mark on his cheek.
Walking toward the garage.
That’s when he spotted me, we both froze.
It looked as though he had already been heading back in my direction.
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14:36 Mon, Sep 28 JOM
The Hockey Captain’s Unwanted Wife
I did not think twice.
an towards him and threw myself into his arms.
I could not hold back. I cried into his chest like I had no pride left. I needed this. To let it all out. How
terrified I was that something could have happened to him. That the radio could have gone quiet. That the medical car could have meant something the screens would not say yet.
His arms came around me hard.
Not the way he had held me in the suite.
This was different.
Careful. Locked. Like he had decided I was the thing that might fall apart now that the car had already
done it.
“It’s okay,” he said into my hair. Gentle. “I’m okay. Hey. Look at me. I’m here.”
I could not look.
My entire body was shaking.
I could feel his heart. Too fast. I fisted the material over his chest and did not care who saw.
- Right now they were only trying to keep me from shaking apart in a corridor.
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