Stay A While | DR3 | BOOK 2

33 - Give Yourself A Try

"He loves you a great deal. That means so do we, Joe and I. You're family now, Alexa. Daniels love makes him tender, and sweet. He just wants you to be okay. He'll never tell you what you don't want to hear."

--

"Don't make that face, Alexa."

I cleared my throat and peeled my face away from my brothers passenger-side window, feigning a polite smile that I knew Rory would see right through. The church before us looked nothing more than your typical place of worship. The greige pressure-washed outer walls detailed with old-style ivy groves weaving through intentionally-placed rock styling popped like some sort of oasis in a desert. The man himself was portrayed in a stain-glass window, the center piece, the cherry on top.

Rory had mentioned that the Living Through Loss Grief Counselling Collective met a in church, one just outside of Camberley, not too far from the Hangar. I shouldn't have been shocked. But I was. It didn't take much to shock me, these days.

It would be wrong to say Rory was excited about my choice to come along with him. The bitter feeling of knowing we were both having to resort to this sort of thing made it loose some of its shine.

But— Rory was excited about my choice to come along with him. Maybe it was confirmation to him in a way, that this was working enough for him to convince me that it could work for me, too. A good, big-brotherly deed.

Daniel loved that I was giving this a shot with Rory. His knuckles tapped gently against the glass in my office, pulling me out of the numbers I had been lost in, analyzing for the wind-tunnel engineers.

"Can I help you, Ricciardo?"

He snickered, stepping into my office and shutting the door. I pushed my chair backward slightly, making room for Daniel to lean against my desk. I craned my neck up, closing the distance between us. His lips met mine in the middle, a trace of a smile lingering against them. "Are you excited for later?"

The question knocked me out of my momentary bliss. I wasn't. To be entirely honest, even though I said I'd go; I didn't want to.

"Yeah, I am," I smiled back. Fake it 'till you make it, Shark.

What I was excited about was the potential this had to get everyone off my back about seeking professional help. Going to therapy. Seeing a counsellor. Especially after what happened in Monaco.

I promised Daniel I wouldn't ignore it anymore. That I'd try to find help.

I could go once with an open mind, and if anyone had anything to say about it, at least I can say I tried.

"I'm not making—"

"You're making the face. I know you think this is a joke, but it's helped me through a lot."

"Rory!" I scoffed, setting a hand on my chest in shock at how deeply hurt my brother looked. My face contorted— the last thing I wanted to do was make him feel bad. Just because I didn't want to do this, didn't mean I thought the whole thing was a joke. "Give me some credit. If I thought this was stupid, would I really be here?"

Rory shook his head. I took a deep breath. "I'm just nervous. I have no clue what I'm walking in to. What if people recognize me?" My eyes widened. "What if someone says something, and this ends up all over everywhere?" I didn't even think to check with the PR team to see if this was something I was cleared to do.

"No one is going to say anything," Rory turned his body towards me. "And if they do, and this ends up as a headline— so what? Mental health is something McLaren stands for, is it not?"