When Bash finally lets go of his youngest, gently, he turns to Frankie. “MaLouloutte”
He pulls her into a hug. It’s just as tight and loving as his hug to Lucia, but Frankie just pats him lightly on the back. “You just concentrate on Lucia. I’ve got everything else covered.”
He lets her go, but it’s reluctant. Lucia is wiping at her eyes with her good hand now. “Frankie, please go get some rest now.”
“Fine,” she replies but it’s hesitant.
Bash looks at me. “Can you make sure she actually does, son?”
I nod and follow Frankie as she heads to the door. She glances over her shoulder one last time to watch as her dad sits on the edge of Lucia’s bed, holding her good hand as Lucia says, “Where’s Adelaide? If she’s here, she should come in.”
Frankie continues out into the hallway, walking robotically, and turns toward the private waiting room, but I hook her arm and lead her to the elevator where I punch the button. “You can message Nick and update him. I’m taking you home.”
“Billy, I have work to do too. I can’t just leave,” she says, her eyes hard and her beautiful face stern. Like I’m suggesting she play hooky or something.
“I’m taking you back to the hotel,” I say quietly as the elevator pings and the doors slide open.
I tug her into it with me and punch the ground floor. She says nothing and stares straight ahead the whole way down. “I didn’t get pole for tomorrow,” I tell her because the silence is suffocating.
“I know,” she replies, her voice suddenly robotic. “I’ve debriefed with Rocco too. He said there’s nothing more you or Antonio could have done, and I believe that. I managed to watch the highlights while they bandaged her up. Our cars just aren’t as strong on the warmer tracks. Mercedes does better. We’ll work on it for next year. You have a good shot at taking the lead from Samuels. Especially if he takes that first corner wide like he tends to. Stay tight on that turn and you could grab him early and then never look back.”
It’s surreal. She’s so… businesslike. I understand it completely though. It’s a coping mechanism. She’s tuned out the emotion of the day, the gravity of it. But that only lasts so long. She will break, and to be honest, the sooner the better. I know. I watched my mother carry too much emotionally after my dad died. She didn’t want to bury me, but then we found out about Clara, and she snapped, and I drown in her emotional baggage. Hell, I’m still treading water in all the trauma if I’m honest.
She heads straight to the front doors of the hospital so quickly I have to jog for a second to catch up. I didn’t expect her to take off right out of the elevator like that. There’s a smattering of media still milling about the parking lot. When they see her emerge, they cluster together around her, and it seems crushing. I want to step in but hold myself back. I’m just a driver to them. They probably wonder why I’m even here. I don’t need to give them anything to gossip about.
Frankie gives a brief summary of Lucia’s injuries and assures everyone she will be fine. She answers some questions, most of them completely invasive and kind of crude. Stuff like ‘is she disfigured?’ and ‘how close was she to death?’ Frankie answers all of them as cool as a cucumber to the untrained eye. But I know her. I know her body now, and I see the truth. Her posture is too stiff. Her eyes focus slightly above the journalists, not at them. The fingers on her left hand, clutching her phone by her hip, are bone white from the pressure of her grip. And then there’s the way she keeps shifting from one foot to the other. It’s subtle, but I notice.
“Okay, as per her family’s request, I’m going to sweep her away,” I interrupt suddenly after a stupid ass asks me if Lucia is going to retire now. “No, she won’t retire. I wouldn’t either if it was me.”
They start yelling questions at me, and I ignore them and the fact that Frankie is trying to shake off my grip on her hip as I guide her out away from the media to the cab stand because I realize that although Clara left the car, I didn’t grab the keys. All I managed to remember to grab was my room key and cell. I open the back of the first car in line, gently push her inside, and climb in after her, giving the guy the address the hotel. “Drop us off in the alley behind it, please.”
Frankie says nothing. She either stares out the window or at her phone, typing furiously to someone about something. I send a quick message to my concierge to arrange things. The driver does what I’ve asked, and I pull her out of the cab with me after paying him with a hefty tip on top. The back door, the one staff use and the kitchen uses for large deliveries, opens immediately. My personal concierge is there with a smile, until she sees Frankie, and then the smile drops. “Welcome back Mr. James. Ms. Castera.”
I can tell she is struggling to figure out whether or not to say something. All of the hotel must be buzzing about what happened. Hell, all of Mexico probably is. I hold her eye and nod. She clears her throat and leads us through the kitchen. “Let me know what you need.”
“Extra bathrobe, and can you have room service send up a club sandwich and fries?” I say. “Not right away but in an hour or so, please.”
“I need to get back tomyroom,” Frankie argues, but she’s letting me lead her through the staff hallways to the service elevator.
“You will. Eventually,” I tell her. The concierge lets us in the service elevator, swipes her pass card, and punches my floor before stepping out again.
As the elevator chugs upward, Frankie unleashes on me. It’s a high level of anger and completely uncalled for, but I just stand there and take it because I know it has nothing to do with me. “I am not a child, Billy. Jesus Christ I’m your boss, and I don’t need a babysitter of any kind, least of allyou. I just want to go back to my room and watch the qualifying so I can dissect it and figure out how we can improve before the race tomorrow. Then I have to send out another official statement from Mirabella and call our social media manager and yell at her for not updating the team’s official Instagram with something more positive than that horrific crash picture. I mean holy fuck, I get it, everyone is using it, but we can do better. Lucia is more than click bait. So I need my hotel room. Not yours. If you think that this is the time for a quickie, it’s not.”
She keeps rambling and ranting as I take her hand and drag her down the hall to my room. I swipe my key card and push her inside. Frankie spins on me as soon as the door is closed and repeats herself. “I don’t want to be here. I have work to do.”
“Yeah. I know. So do it here.”
“No.”
“Frankie. She’s fine.”
“I know she’s fine. I was there with her in the hospital. I talked to her doctors.” She sighs angrily and turns back to stomp across the room, toward the bathroom. I follow her.
“She’s okay.”
“I know!” Frankie bellows at me, glaring daggers at me through the mirror she’s facing. She turns on the water and sticks her hands underneath. She bends over and splashes water on her face. “Fuck off Billy. You’re not my boyfriend.”
She yanks a towel off the rack and pats her face, then throws it on the floor and curses.
I speak with a level voice. Slow and calm. “Let it sink in. Really. Let it. Lucia is going to be just fine.”
She swallows so hard I can see it in the mirror. And then she blinks, trying to hold back the tears and her next breath is a shudder. “She… could have…”
“I know. She could have. But she didn’t.” I walk closer, and as Frankie’s head dips, and her shoulders sag, and she lets out her first sob, I turn her toward me.
It feels like every bone in Frankie’s body melts as she collapses onto my chest. My arms around her back are the only thing holding her up, and I’m okay with that. I’m more than okay with that. I hate that she’s gone through this trauma, but I am here for it. For her. I will give her everything, anything she needs right now. I won’t be whole until she is whole again. That’s a feeling I’ve never experienced before, and if it wasn’t so all-consuming, I would be having my own panic attack right now.
Instead though, I hold her in my arms and kiss the top of her head and whisper words of encouragement to her. And when she lifts her tear-streaked face to press her lips against mine, I kiss her back.
