La Rosa Gialla

Chapter 33

May 2024

The worst minutes of my life were interrupted by three words. "Something's on fire," Charles whined into the radio, and my heart seemed to be instructed to start pounding again. I gasped and turned to the nearest solid point, which I grabbed onto like my life depended on it. Joris wrapped his arms around me and held me as the rescue team finally came around Charlie's Ferrari and put out his car with a fire extinguisher. They helped him get out and I watched in shock as he made his way on his own to the medical car. Along the way, he still managed to wave to the fans in the stands and give them a thumbs up as a sign that he was okay.

I broke out of Joris's embrace and ran towards the entrance through which Charles had just entered. I didn't care how many people were around us, if cameras were pointing at us or if it was inappropriate. I hit him with such force that it probably equaled the impact he was just recovering from. He smelled like he'd just come out of the smokehouse, but I didn't care. "Are you okay?" I whispered into his neck where I had just buried my face. He wrapped his arms around my waist, took a breath and then nodded. "I'm fine," he reassured me once more, pulling back, kissing me and looking into my eyes. He wiped my tears-wet cheeks with his thumbs and then hugged me again.

I stood in front of the mirror in the bathroom of our hotel room and stared at my reflection. I looked absolutely horrible. My mascara was smeared all over my cheeks, my eyes were red like I hadn't slept in days, and I had a small gash on my lip from biting it hard to stop myself from crying. Dad, Alessandra, Luca, and even Joris offered to stay with me until Charles came back, but I turned them all down, saying that I was already fine. But it was a lie. Tears welled up in my eyes again as I remembered those moments of silence before he spoke on the radio. Those moments when I thought I had lost him forever.

Charles came to me after a couple of hours, during which he had to undergo a comprehensive medical examination, a few quick interviews and a quick run-through with the team engineers of the whole situation and the reasons why it happened. As soon as he appeared in the doorway, I ran to him and wrapped him in another bone-crushing hug. "I'm really fine, Adri," he whispered into my hair. "Take off your sweater," I ordered him completely seriously and he looked at me uncomprehendingly. "I want to see for myself." He smirked but obeyed me and pulled his blue sweater over his head. I ran my eyes over him from the tips of his hair to the hem of his jeans and found no fault. That is, except for the slowly changing color of the bruise on the right wrist. I touched it lightly and Charles raised his hand to get a better look at it. "I hit the steering wheel. It's nothing," he smiled.

"You know we have so many safety features now that it's almost impossible to get seriously injured?" he tried to comfort me long after we'd both showered, brushed our teeth, and crawled under the covers together.

"You know that nothing you say will erase the horror from my head?"

He nodded and kissed my hair again. "I don't want you to worry about me," he whispered.

"I'm always worried about you. Not only during the race. I'm afraid that a plane will crash with you, that you'll fall off a cliff, that you'll drown while surfing, that you'll get hit by a car, that you'll get sick. I worry about you all the time. I'm worried about all my loved ones."

"Adri," he said gently. "This isn't just about the accident any more, is it?"

I shook my head and felt my eyes burning again. I would have thought that after the whole evening, I couldn't have any tears left. "I miss my mom," I admitted. "For a long time I managed not to think about it, but today..." I paused for a moment to think about what to say next. "Today I realized again how fragile everything I love is. How little it takes for me to lose someone again." I didn't care that it might sound stupid. I knew that if anyone could understand it, it was Charlie. He himself knew very well what it was like to lose the people you care about most in the world. And that's exactly what Charles has always been and always will be for me. One of the few people who mean so much more to me than anything in this world.