Chapter 9: Steam Room Confessions
The humidity of the Barcelona paddock had clung to her like a second skin, gritty with carbon dust and scrutiny. Alma walked out of the tunnel’s mouth into the evening’s relative quiet, the team radio left behind like a shed exoskeleton. She didn’t know where she was going. The city’s map in her mind was blank. She just needed not to be seen.
Her feet took her to the hotel, but the plush silence of her suite felt suffocating. The mirrored bathroom door was, as always, firmly closed. She stood in the center of the living room, the air conditioning humming a sterile tune, and felt the walls press in. The composure she’d armored herself with all day began to fissure, a fine crack spreading from her core outward. She needed to not be alone, but the thought of anyone’s eyes, even kindly ones, was unbearable.
An idea, desperate and simple, formed. The spa. Late on a Friday night, it would be empty. She could lose herself in the heat, in the dark. She changed into a simple black one-piece and a thick, white hotel robe, pulling the hood up over her hair. In the elevator, she kept her eyes on the descending numbers.
The spa was a temple of muffled sounds and soft lighting. The attendant, used to celebrity clients seeking anonymity, merely nodded and gestured down the hall. The thermal area was, as she’d hoped, deserted. She moved past the stone-lit pools, past the ice fountain, to the cedar-lined steam room. The door was heavy. She pushed it open, and a great cloud of eucalyptus-scented vapor rolled out, engulfing her.
Inside, the world dissolved into a warm, grey womb. She could see only a few feet in any direction. She found a corner on the highest tiled bench, the heat immediate and penetrating on her skin. She sank down, drew her knees up, and finally let the shudder she’d been suppressing all day ripple through her. It started in her hands, a fine tremor she stared at in the dim light. She folded them under her arms, but the shaking traveled inward.
The door opened again. Two blurred figures entered, talking in low, familiar voices. Alma froze, willing herself to be invisible in the fog.
“—told him if he brings that PlayStation on another trip, I’m donating it to the hotel staff,” Kelly’s voice laughed softly.
“You wouldn’t,” Carmen answered, settling onto a bench opposite. “He’d cry those beautiful Spanish eyes out.”
Alma held her breath. The steam swirled, briefly thinning, and she saw Carmen glance toward her corner. A moment of silence.
“Alma?” Kelly’s voice was gentle, no trace of the earlier pity, just recognition.
Alma couldn’t speak. She nodded, a movement she hoped they’d see in the gloom.
“Mind if we join?” Carmen asked, already knowing the answer wasn’t a refusal. They understood exile. They gave her space, continuing their easy chatter about packing horrors and flight times, letting their presence be just that—a presence, not an interrogation. The normalcy of it was an anchor. Alma listened to the cadence of their voices, the simple domestic complaints, and felt some of the ice in her chest begin to thaw.
After a long silence, Alma heard her own voice, rough from disuse and steam. “It itches. And burns. Like a sunburn, but underneath.”
The casual chatter stopped. “The healing?” Kelly asked.
“Yes.” Alma swallowed. “The specialist cream from my brother helps. But it… it feels tight. Like if I smile too wide, my face will split open again.”
She hadn’t meant to say that. The words had just leaked out, like pus from a wound.
“Can we see?” Carmen’s question was direct, not demanding. “Not if you don’t want. But sometimes keeping it shrouded makes it bigger in your head than it is.”
Alma’s hands went to the hood of her robe. Her fingers, still trembling, found the knot of the belt. The logic was sound. In here, the steam would obscure the worst of it. These women were not the paddock. They lived with the collateral damage of this world, the shattered collarbones, the concussions, the stress fractures no one saw. They understood scars.
Slowly, she untied the belt. She shrugged the robe off her shoulders, letting it pool around her waist. She kept her one-piece on, but her neck, her shoulders, the wicked, raw path along her jawline were exposed. Then, with a breath that hitched, she pulled the hood down.
The steam coiled around her. She kept her eyes shut.
For a moment, there was no sound but the hiss of the generator.
“Oh, honey,” Kelly whispered. It wasn’t horror. It was heartbreak.
Alma opened her eyes. Through the vapor, she saw their faces. Not staring, but seeing. Kelly’s expression had softened with a painful empathy. Carmen’s eyes were assessing, not the scars themselves, but their effect on the woman bearing them.
“It’s not…” Alma began, then stopped. The sentence wouldn’t form. A pressure built behind her eyes, in her throat, a dam straining. She looked down at her own hands, palms up in her lap. They were shaking violently now. “I just…” The words were fragments, crumbling as they left her mouth. “I don’t… I don’t even look like me anymore.”
It was the truth, simple and devastating. The sob that followed was a raw, ugly sound, torn from a place she’d kept locked and barricaded. It cracked the sterile professionalism, shattered the aloof distance. It was the sound of a young woman confronting a stranger in the mirror.
She gasped for air, the steam suddenly too thick, her chest too tight. She curled in on herself, arms wrapping around her knees, trying to hold the pieces together.
There was a movement. Not hesitant, not slow. Carmen crossed the space in two strides and simply pulled her into a hug. It wasn’t tentative or soft. It was a crushing, solid embrace, an anchor in the rolling fog. Alma stiffened for a second, then collapsed into it, her face buried in Carmen’s shoulder, the sobs coming in uncontrollable, shuddering waves.
“I know,” Carmen murmured into her hair, her hand a firm circle on Alma’s back. “I know, I know.”
Kelly was up, moving with a practical grace. Alma heard the door open and close, a brief influx of cooler air. She returned a moment later, her hands holding a white towel wrung out with cold water. Without a word, she sat on Alma’s other side and gently, so gently, pressed the chilled, damp cloth against the inflamed scars on her neck and cheek.
The shock of the cold against the heat of the steam and her own crying made Alma gasp. It was a sharp, clean feeling, cutting through the hysterical numbness.
“The cold helps with the inflammation,” Kelly said quietly, her hand holding the towel with a steady pressure. “And the crying. Believe me. Salt tears are hell on healing skin.”
The absurd, practical kindness of it—the combination of Carmen’s unshakable hold and Kelly’s clinical care—pierced through Alma’s despair. Her sobs began to quiet, breaking apart into hiccups and shuddery breaths. She didn’t let go of Carmen, and Carmen didn’t let go of her.
They stayed like that for a long time, in the silent, steamy dark. No one spoke. The only sounds were the gentle hiss, the drip of condensation, and Alma’s slowing breaths.
Finally, Alma pulled back, wiping her face with her own hands. Kelly gave her the cold towel to hold herself. Her eyes were swollen, her face blotchy, but the terrifying pressure in her chest had eased.
“It’s going to fade,” Carmen stated, not as empty reassurance, but as a fact. She traced a faint, silvery line on her own temple, nearly invisible. “Mark my words. In a year, you’ll have to point it out to people.”
“It’s not just…” Alma started, her voice hoarse. “It’s the… the before and after. There’s a line through my life now. And I’m stuck on the wrong side of it.”
“So cross it,” Kelly said, refolding the towel to find a fresh cold spot. “It’s not a wall. It’s a line you walk. Every day. Some days you’ll stumble over it. Other days you’ll forget it’s there. We all have them.” She gestured between herself and Carmen. “Different shapes, same thing.”
The door opened, a new customer maybe, but then a familiar, hesitant voice cut through the mist. “Alma?”
Sergio stood there, blurred by the vapor, a look of stark panic on his face. He’d evidently gone to her room, found it empty, and the spa attendant must have mentioned someone matching her description. He was still in his team kit, his hair damp with sweat.
He took in the scene: Alma, robeless, tear-stained, a cold cloth in her hand. Carmen and Kelley flanking her, protective. His eyes went to the fully-visible scars, then snapped back to her face, his own crumbling with guilt and fear.
Alma felt a flash of the old shame, the instinct to cover up. But the crushing hug was still around her shoulders, the cold towel still in her hand. She didn’t move.
“I’m okay,” she said, and for the first time, it wasn’t a lie to shut him out. It was a report from the other side of the breakdown.
Sergio just stood there, stranded in the doorway. “I… I was worried. You left your radio.”
“She’s with us,” Carmen said, her tone leaving no room for argument. “We’ve got her.”
He nodded, swallowing hard. His eyes sought Alma’s, asking a silent, desperate question.
Alma looked at him, really looked, through the steam and the aftermath of her tears. She saw not the celebrity, not the source of her trauma, but a man as lost and guilty as she was broken. The professional distance she’d enforced seemed suddenly like a pointless, exhausting fiction.
“Come in,” she said softly, her voice barely carrying over the hiss. “And close the door. You’re letting the cold out.”
Sergio stepped forward. The heavy door swung shut behind him with a muffled thud, sealing them all back into the warm, private gloom.
He moved like someone crossing thin ice, each step deliberate and quiet. The vibrant team kit he wore seemed absurdly out of place here, a splash of corporate color in this nebulous, grey world. His eyes, wide and dark, remained fixed on Alma. He took in the angry, raised lines on her skin, the damp tracks on her cheeks, the way she held the cold towel like a lifeline.
“I shouldn’t have come,” he said, the words barely audible over the steam’s sigh.
“Probably not,” Carmen agreed, her arm still resting loosely around Alma’s shoulders. Her tone wasn’t hostile, just factual. “But you’re here now. Sit down before you faint. You look terrible.”
He lowered himself onto the bench opposite, perching on the edge, his helmet-scuffed hands dangling between his knees. The confident world champion was entirely absent. In his place was a tired man wearing a sack of guilt.
“Kelly was just educating me on the benefits of cryotherapy for post-traumatic inflammation,” Alma said. Her voice was scraped raw, but a thread of dark humor ran through it. She gestured weakly with the towel. “Very practical.”
A flicker of something—relief, maybe—passed over Sergio’s face. She was talking. She was making a joke, however feeble. It was a communication.
“Practical is good,” he managed. He watched a bead of condensation trace a path down the cedar wall. “I’m not… I’m not good at practical right now.”
“What are you good at?” Alma asked. It wasn’t an accusation. It sounded like genuine curiosity.
“Winning races,” he said instantly, then flinched at his own answer. He rubbed a hand over his jaw. “Sorry. That’s all that’s left in my head. It’s all I know how to do.”
Kelly exchanged a look with Carmen. “We’ll give you two a minute,” she said, rising smoothly. “I need to check on that flight manifest anyway. Carmen, you’re lying about your luggage weight again.”
“It’s just shoes,” Carmen protested, standing up with a grace that defied the slippery tiles.
“It’s always shoes,” Kelly sighed, pushing the door open.
They left without another word. The cloud of steam swirled violently in their wake, then settled into a thicker, more intimate blanket. The silence they left behind was different now, charged and fragile.
Sergio stared at the space where they had been. He cleared his throat.
“Enzo said I should give you space. He said my hovering was like a… a vulture waiting for you to stop moving.” He gave a hollow laugh. “He’s not wrong. I just don’t know what else to do.”
Alma adjusted the cold towel against her neck. The sharp contrast grounded her. “You could try talking to me like a person. Not a problem to be managed.”
“I don’t know how,” he confessed, the admission stark and painful. He finally looked directly at her. “Every time I see you, I see the woman attacking you. How do I talk past that?”
“You just did,” she said softly.
He absorbed that, blinking. A drop of sweat or condensation traced from his temple to his chin. He didn’t wipe it away.
“Does it hurt? All the time?” His gaze was on her scars now, not with pity, but with a painful, focused attention.
“Not all the time,” she answered truthfully. “It aches. It pulls. It feels like… like I’m wrapped in someone else’s skin that’s two sizes too small.” She took a slow breath, the moist air filling her lungs. “The worst is the phantom pain. I keep feeling the shower of glass. I’ll be in a quiet room and flinch.”
Sergio nodded, a sharp, understanding jerk of his head. “I get that. After my first major crash, for months, I’d hear the impact in my sleep. Not a sound from outside. Just my own memory, playing on a loop inside my skull.” He leaned forward, elbows on his knees. “They don’t prepare you for that part. The video reel your own brain won’t stop screening.”
A feeling of profound relief, fragile and new, uncurled in Alma’s chest. He wasn’t offering empty sympathy. He was speaking her language. The language of aftermath.
“It’s exhausting,” she whispered.
“It’s a fucking marathon,” he agreed, his voice low. “And you’re running it in heels while everyone watches.”
A faint, real smile touched her lips. It pulled at the tight skin near her jaw, a strange, tingling sensation. “I don’t wear heels to the track.”
“You should. It would terrify the mechanics. They’d think you’re going to lecture them on torque vectors.” The joke was awkward, stumbling, but it was an attempt. A peace offering crafted from the only banter he knew.
She let the smile stay. She looked at him, really seeing him—the shadows under his eyes, the tension in his shoulders that had nothing to do with g-forces. The great Sergio Valente was scared. Of her. Of what he’d done. Of not knowing what to do next.
“Enzo was right about the vulture thing,” she said after a moment, her tone lighter. “You’ve been looming. It’s unsettling.”
He let out a breath, a real one. “I’ll try to loom less. More of a… distant, supportive tree.”
“A tree?”
“Solid. There. Not in your direct light.” He shrugged, a boyish gesture that seemed at odds with everything. “It’s a work in progress.”
Alma shifted, the tile cool beneath her. The cold towel had grown warm in her hand. The initial raw wave of grief had receded, leaving a strange, weary calm. She wasn’t fixed. The line through her life was still there, a canyon at her feet. But for the first time, she wasn’t standing at the edge alone.
“The team dinner is at eight,” she said, her professional facade instinctively reassembling, but with new cracks that let the light in. “Your speech is on your iPad, highlighted. The sponsor from Basel will want at least ten minutes of your time. He’s a talker.”
Sergio listened, a look of profound gratitude softening his features. She was still Alma. She was still doing her job. It was a map back to some kind of normalcy.
“Okay,” he said. He stood up, his movements less hesitant now. He paused, looking down at her. “Will you be there? At the dinner?”
It was a simple question, weighted with meaning.
Alma thought of the crowded room, the glances, the whispers concealed behind hands. She thought of Carmen’s crushing hug and Kelly’s practical towel. She looked at Sergio’s anxious, hopeful face.
“Yes,” she said. Not as his martyr. Not as his victim. As his PA. For now, that was enough. “I’ll be there.”
He nodded, accepting this. He moved to the door, then stopped with his hand on the handle. He didn’t look back.
“Alma?” His voice was thick.
“Yes?”
“Thank you. For letting the cold out.”
He left then, the door closing with a softer click than before. Alma sat in the enveloping steam, the silence now a comforting thing. She pressed the now-tepid towel to her face, breathed in the eucalyptus, and began, slowly, to plan what she would wear.