How to load a Livewire component from a controller?

I had a fullpage Livewire component Contract, to create a contract, called directly from the routes in web.php:

Route::get('contract', AppHttpLivewire::class)->name('contract.create');

Now I want to switch to having a Resource Controller instead, so my web.php changes to:

Route::resource('contract', ContractController::class);

How can I load the Livewire component from the create function of the controller?
I tried:

class ContractController extends Controller
{
    public function create()
    {
        return view('livewire.contract');
    }

what is loading the view correctly, but it is missing all the data that I load from the mount function. Thus, I assume, it is just displaying the view without loading the Livewire class.