I can do it with a broken heart (Lando Norris)

Chapter Thirty Five

Lando didn't really know what to do for the best. She'd emerged from her shower composed, but completely devoid of all the emotion she'd shown earlier. It was like the twenty minutes in the shower and allowed her to completely retreat into her own mind and he didn't know what to say or do to help.

He'd take the sobbing and crying over this any day, he could sort of deal with that. This blank, emotionless look as she went through the motions of getting ready to head to the venue for the show scared him far more.

"Have you packed everything?" She asked quietly, not looking up from where she was packing everything into her own suitcase.

"Yeah. I'm all done." He tried not to look too surprised that she was talking given she hadn't said a word to him since she'd come out of the bathroom, despite his repeated attempts to check in on how she was doing.

"Okay." She nodded, turning her attention back to her suitcase.

The two of them were flying to London at the end of the show, a private jet booked to take them to stay with his family for Christmas. They'd both been really looking forward to it, but looking at Hannah now, her mind looked like it was literally anywhere else. He found himself wondering if she was going to find an excuse not to come at the last minute.

They'd loaded the suitcases into the car he had hired and he'd driven them both to the stadium where she was playing her final stop on the tour. It should've been a momentous occasion, a celebration of everything she'd achieved, but Cassie's words hung over the both of them, and no matter how hard she tried Hannah just couldn't shake off the self doubt it had lodged deep in her head.

The relatively short car journey passed in complete silence, except for the background noise from the radio he'd turned on when he realised she wasn't going to talk to him. She stared out the window as the rain fell, with him stealing glances at her occasionally out of the corner of his eye.

He reached his hand out, resting it on her thigh in an attempt to offer some kind of silent comfort, breathing a sigh of relief when she placed her hand over his and interlaced their fingers. She was still in there somewhere.

"Are you okay?" He asked quietly as he parked the car and turned off the engine.

"I can't talk about this now." She shook her head.

"Hannah." He sighed.

"We'll talk about it, just not now." She promised. "I need to get my head in the right place to go up there and do this so I don't prove her right, okay?"

He nodded in silent agreement. She did have a point. If he was about to get in the car for a race the last thing he'd want to do was be talking about something like this. Maybe she did have a point.

She was visibly nervous as she went through the motions of getting ready, fidgeting in her chair while her hair and makeup were done, then pacing around the dressing room after she'd got dressed.

"You'll still love me right, if I completely fuck this up?" She asked out of nowhere, stopping to face him.

He jumped up from where he'd been sat on the sofa, hand finding her face to tip her head up to look at him. "I love you." He said softly. "But you're going to be fine. You can do this. You know you can do this."

There was a flicker of uncertainty in her eyes as she chewed on her lip nervously. Her eyes wandered to the clock on the wall behind him. "I need to go."

"Come on." He took her hand and let her lead him out of the dressing room and through the busy hallways in the direction of the stage.