Face falling, Carson instantly steps to his daughter’s side and takes her in his arms.

“Dad…” she sobs, “I…I’m sorry I broke my headset again! I’m so sorry I crashed the car! I don’t want to race anymore, Dad! I don’t…I can’t take the pressure! I’m sorry, I’m so sorry!”

“Never mind the stupid headset. Never mind racing, never mind the crash, never mind the goddamn auto supply business or being the future face of Sinclair’s!” Carson’s voice wobbles, then steadies again. “It’s me who’s sorry, sweetheart. So never you mind.”

Her face buried against his chest, she cries hard, her breath hitching as she tries to get herself under control.

“There, there, baby,” her father croons. “Everything’s okay. Everything’s fine now, don’t you worry about a thing.”

Brenda catches my eye and motions towards the hallway with her head, then turns and leads the way out. Tommy and I follow her into the hallway, where we stand in a huddle a little ways away from the door to Marie’s room.

“Let’s give them a few minutes,” she says. Tommy and I murmur our agreement, trying not to sniffle and avoiding each other’s eyes. “So, did you talk to her? Does she know you won? I bet she’s happy it’s over!”

“Yes, she’s very happy that I won the purse. She doesn’t care that she came in second. And yes, she’s glad it’s over.”

“Did you mention that my parents made you come over last night?” Tommy wants to know.

“Yes, she was happy to hear that, too.”

Brenda looks from Tommy to me and then back again. “She was feeling bad about how things went down. She blames herself. Poor thing!”

“It’s not just her. Dad’s a real charmer sometimes. They’re a lot alike, always butting heads,” Tommy says. “But, at least the audit is over with, and now, the race is, too. We can all chillax a bit, finally!”

“Yes. Say…I wonder what your dad has been up to all this time, though. Not that it’s any of my business!”

“Brenda,” I joke, “you telling me there’s something going on in this town that you don’t know about?”

Just then, a harried-looking doctor comes hurrying around the corner, trying to read a thick sheaf of charts and walk at the same time. He looks up and stops dead, shoes squeaking in protest on the polished floor, barely avoiding a collision with Tommy. “Sorry, excuse me,” the doc mutters, then he strides to Marie’s room and goes inside.

“Oh! That must be the doc on call. I don’t want to miss this,” I say, following him in.

“Me neither,” says Tommy, right behind me.

“I’m coming too! We’re practically family now, Marie won’t mind if I listen in,” Brenda says, bringing up the rear.

But, once we’re in the room, the doc orders us all out so he can conduct Marie’s neurological testing.

“I want Mark to stay with me,” Marie says, eyes red and sniffling.

But the set of her jaw tells us she’s not gonna take ’no’ for an answer.

So I take a seat while the doc does his thing, first testing her memory by asking her a bunch of simple questions, like, who’s the President; what year is it; when’s her birthday.

“Today!” She declares, smiling.

“Oh? Happy Birthday! But…what’s the date today?”

“December twenty-fifth.” She says it solemnly, looking at me.

My heart sinks. Oh shit, she’s worse off than we thought…but then she giggles. “No, no, it’s September seventeenth. I’m just messing with you!” She slaps her knee. “You should see your face!”

I let out a groan, shaking my head.

“Oh, we got us a joker here, huh,” the doc observes, before calmly completing the rest of the testing, including checking her pupils, her balance and her hand grip.

“Okay, good…good. Well, yep. You’re a little wobbly there, Miss Sinclair. Concussed, but recovering. The prognosis is…you’re gonna live.”

After telling me that I can call the rest of the family back in, the doc cheerfully explains to us all that Marie’s okay but she needs to be careful for a while.

“Despite all the advances we’ve made in immobilizing the car restraints, there’s still nothing we can do to stop the brain from bouncing inside the skull. Thankfully, her concussion isn’t that serious.”

Speaking to Marie now, he says, “The nurse will give you after-care instructions and then you can go home. The most important thing you can do right now is rest.”

“No problem, Doc,” Marie says.

“Good. If you have any vision problems, any nausea, headaches, or more sleepiness than usual, come straight back here to Emergency or call an ambulance. Otherwise, you should follow up with your GP in a week or so.” He looks around at the family. “Okay folks, that’s it. Have a nice day!” And he strides purposefully out the door, already flipping to the next chart in his rounds.

“Alright then,” Carson says. “We’ll get out of your hair and let you and your Grand Prize Winner go home and relax.”

“Yes, your father needs some rest,” Vivian says. “He’s not slept well for a while now.”

“Oh-oh-kay,” Marie nods. “Thank you! I love you guys.”

“We love you too.” Carson hugs her again, and she lays her head against his chest, closing her eyes. “Now, never mind work for a while, either. You should take a couple weeks off and just concentrate on school, and getting better. We’ll treat you to a big birthday dinner out somewhere, later on. Okay?”

Vivian and Brenda sniffle at the same time, then laugh. Vivian pulls a tissue from Marie’s bedside box and then hands the box over to Brenda.

“Sounds good, Dad. Thank you so much!”

He and Vivian say their good-byes to Marie and the rest of us,.

And then, to me, Carson says, “And I’ll see you soon as well…son,” winking and clapping me on the back as he walks past.

Marie and Brenda look at each other with wide eyes, and then at me.

I just shrug, smiling.

Tommy and Brenda stick around to chit-chat with us for a few minutes. Marie extracts a promise from each of them to send her a copy of any movies or photos they made of the race and crash, as soon as possible. She’s impatient with Brenda’s concerns about whether she really needs to see herself crashing her car, insisting that she wants to see all footage available.

“Okay, okay, sheesh. No need to get all Crash-Footage Nazi on my ass,” Brenda says, leaning in for a hug good-bye as the nurse arrives to process Marie for her discharge.

“Yeah, yeah, I’ll put my video on fricking Facebook, if you want,” Tommy says, hugging his sister in turn. “You’re gonna see it on the news anyway, probably. I’m just glad you’re still around to be a pain in the ass.” Easily avoiding the playful punch she aims at his arm, he follows Brenda out of the room, laughing.

Once the nurse has completed her work and we’re alone again, I pull the curtain and help Marie get dressed…more out of my own need to help her, then any need of hers to be helped.

From the moment the race started, I couldn’t do anything to help her…and now, I feel the need to do whatever I can for her.

She’s my life now. That’s all there is to it.

So I pull the strings of her hospital gown and she lets it fall. I examine the bruised areas of her body. I kiss them, here and here and here, and then I kiss her lovely mouth. I help her pull her shirt on over her head and hug her once more, unable to resist her nearness.

I can’t wait to get her home, safe and sound, where I can keep her close and care for her.

She takes my arm as we leave the hospital together.

Fuck, I’m so glad to be going home with my girl! She’s okay. We’re okay. We have a bright, fine future. That’s all that matters.

* * *

In the truck, she digs her phone out of her Hello Kitty bag and turns it on. Her message notification goes off but she mutes the phone. With a sigh, she attaches it to the charger cable that lives in one of my truck’s AC sockets, and then sets it face-down on the seat.

“I’ll read those later,” she says. “Right now, I just want to know what happened after the crash.”

She wants to know everything, including details I don’t know myself.

“I just want to get it straight in my head,” she says. “Can you tell me, what was the, um, sequence of events as you recall them?”

“I…well, it was…chaotic. The checkered flag, and then my tire blew, and then…everything’s kind of mixed-up. In the back of my mind, I knew I had won, but didn’t give a shit any more. I left my car on the track and ran over to you. You put your arms out to me and I helped you out of the car…and you started pulling on your helmet and talking about Kazuko.”

She listens quietly.

“The medics were there by then and took over. They tried to stop you pulling your helmet off, but you just ignored them and pulled it off anyway. You said your head was sweaty and your radio stopped working before the race started. Your dad and brothers feel really bad about that, by the way.”

She shrugs, waving it off. “What happened then?”

“You refused the stretcher and we walked to the infield together. You got dizzy and said your head hurt, but then you tried to refuse treatment again. Your dad…your dad came running over from nowhere, and your mom followed pretty quick. Between your parents and me, we got your butt into the ambulance and they took you to Mercy. Your Mom went with you.”

“I kind of remember your voices…Mom’s voice, too. But I don’t really remember the ambulance ride. Funny huh?”

“Yeah, concussions are real funny, Marie.”

“No…I meant, funny, as in, strange.”

“Oh. Sorry.” He gives me a sheepish glance. “Well, it might still come back to you.”

“Yeah. Okay, so…then what happened? Did they do an award ceremony?”

“Later, yes. But I wasn’t there. I was at the hospital with the family. The Mayor accepted the big, fake check in my place.”

“When are you getting the real check?”

“No idea. Soon, probably. I’m not worried about that anymore. All I care about is you.” I hold my hand out to her.

Smiling, she takes my hand and kisses it.

* * *

Much later in the afternoon.

We eat lightly, just a can of soup and some hastily-made sandwiches.

We receive the crash footage from Brenda and Tommy as requested, but naturally, neither one kept recording after Marie’s car hit mine. They were too busy freaking out.

No one who’s family member is race car driver wants to see them crash, much less record it for posterity.

But there’s plenty of other footage available and she gets a couple different short videos taken by other people, passed along from friends and acquaintances. Plus, there’s the news footage, which is playing at the top of every hour as a teaser for the evening and late night news.

So she watches crash footage repeatedly, making me wonder if I should worry about it. She’s especially interested in the moments right before the crash, when my tire blew just over the finish line and our vehicles made contact, sending me into a spin and her car into the wall.

“Look Mark,” she says. “Is it just me, or does it seem like this could have been a lot worse?”

Uh oh. She sees it.

On her phone, she replays the moment she’s talking about. “I was drafting behind you, right? I was planning to overtake you on the inside…but if I had tried that, wouldn’t your car have been broadside to mine? Wouldn’t that have made me T-bone you?”

Shit. Hell yeah I noticed. And so did all the men in her family. And who knows, maybe a lot of independent observers may have noticed it, too.

But I don’t want her to obsess about it.

“Yes…maybe, sweetie. Maybe. But we’re both fine and that’s all that matters. Right?”

“Yes. Right. I’m just curious.” But she watches the footage again, with shining eyes and a strange expression on her face.

Almost like…a look of wonder.

Still. I don’t like how close we came…or might’ve come to a much worse collision.

So I press her to stop watching it.

To my relief, she complies, brushing her fascination off as morbid curiosity.

“It already seems like it happened to someone else,” she says, and beams a reassuring smile at me.

She responds promptly and properly to birthday greetings and Get Well wishes as they come rolling in on her phone, by text and voice, chatting animatedly. Her memory is returning and she doesn’t seem to worry unduly about the crash or what the footage shows.

So, I stop worrying about it, too.

Of course, she’s completely right. If she hadn’t changed directions at the last minute when she was drafting in my wake, things might have been worse.

Much, much worse.

Carson, Tommy, Callum and Hamish and I lost sleep over that last night, looking at the footage over and over. Why on earth did she decide to do something so counter-intuitive as to try to overtake me on the outside?

We may never know. But we’re all grateful that she did.

However, I don’t intend to make a big deal out of it. Ever. I’m just happy we’re both here and one piece.

Over the next few hours, we both field numerous calls and texts of concern and congratulations about the race from all kinds of people.

The calls and messages seem like they’re non-stop. We answer them all, but by dinner time, we’re both too tired to stay awake.

So we turn the phones off, lay down for a nap and fall into an exhausted sleep.

Two hours later, we get up. We’ve both got a second wind, with Marie feeling chipper and cheerful and in a giddy mood.

I’m so happy to see this, for more than one reason. My sweet girl is not only okay, but I think I can go ahead with at least one part of the secret plan I’ve had for this post-race evening for weeks now.

We shower together, the two of us in my claw-foot tub, me helping her while she clowns around, pretending to be weaker than she is, so that I have to put my arms around her and “hold her up” as she lets her knees sag, giggling. I take the opportunity to kiss the curve of the back of her neck, more than happy to “help her” stand up.

Her good mood is contagious, and we goof around, getting slippery and silly, letting off steam…and then things get even steamier when she bends over in front of me so that I can soap her gorgeous ass.

She wiggles it temptingly, making it jiggle and bounce under my hands.

Damn!

Then she turns around and begins soaping my cock.

I groan, instantly hard. Her attentions feel great as usual, making it hard for me to say ‘no’.

And I try…I really try to say ‘no’.

“Doctor’s orders, “ I intone. “Nothing strenuous, no sports, no jumping around, no excitement!”

She pouts, and lathers soap bubbles on her pert breasts, pulling on her nipples. “But, baby, I’m horny…and sex is good for you!”

My erection waves at her. I look down at it and then back at her pointedly. “As you can see, I’m in no position to argue. But right now, I’m not taking any chances. How bad would I look if you relapsed before you’ve even been home for a day?”

“But…but…baby,” she says, “it’s my birthday. Don’t I get a present?” She takes my rod in both hands and squeeze-strokes it, making me groan and grit my teeth.

I want her so bad, I can feel it up and down my spine.

My cock wants to give her something, alright. Hard and fast.

Damn.

But I do happen to have something else planned, too.

A present that I hope she’ll like… a lot. I hope it doesn’t over-excite her, but I’ve been planning it for weeks now and I don’t want to wait any longer.

“Yes. I got you something. But you have to promise not to get too excited. Okay?”

“Ohhh-kay? What is it?” Her shining, mischievous eyes…her sweet mouth…damn!

“Come on, let’s dry off and I’ll show you.”

Towels wrapped around ourselves, she follows me to the bedroom nook.

Opening one of my dresser drawers, I take out a tiny red velvet box.

Lowering myself to one knee, I solemnly open the box and proffer it up to her.

She gasps, her hands going to her face.

“Wee Marie…I’m crazy in love with you. Will you marry me?”