Dances with Wolff - Max Verstappen

35.

Max's POV

Rylee went home because she had to take her exams. I really missed her. She was the person I wanted to see after every race or qualifying. I never felt like this before.
My family really liked her too, except for my dad who told me he had doubts about her but he had doubts about almost everyone.

I remember the first time I met her, I already knew she was special. She could make me laugh again after my heartbreak with Kelly.
She wanted to spend time with me because she liked me for me, not because I was Max Verstappen.

———————

Quali didn't go the way I wanted. Both Mercedes cars ended up before me which I thought was weird because we had much more pace during the past couple of races.
I had to beat them during the race. I really wished Rylee was here. She was great at motivating me, she always knew the right things to say or do. God, I missed her.

Christian came up to me giving me a pat on the back. "You can do it son, good luck out there" I nodded at him, putting my helmet on. I was going to make Rylee proud, I knew she was watching the race.

I got into the car and drove out of the garage. I really needed a good start.
The race went quite well until the pitstop. My engineers were slow, they were never slow, they were the best engineers I could wish for but everyone makes mistakes I guess.
I was frustrated when I got out of the pit. I put my foot on the throttle, I needed to push everything out of this car.
A lap later, Lewis came out of the pit and I was driving right next to him. I wasn't going to back away now. I couldn't let him get away.
Before I knew we were both in turn 1 and a couple of seconds later we were both in the gravel. My car was on top of his.  "That's what you get when you don't leave the space. Fucking hell."

I jumped out of my car. I saw Lewis trying to back out of the gravel but he couldn't. Of course he couldn't, my car was literally on top of his Mercedes.
I walked back to the paddock, still wearing my helmet. Every camera was pointed at me or Lewis so I really didn't want to let them see my face. They would probably see my frustration.

I walked into my garage, finally taking my helmet off. No one really tried to talk to me, I guess everyone knew to leave me alone right now.
I wish Rylee was here right now.
I went to my driver room, I needed to calm myself down, Rylee always told me to calm myself down before doing interviews. I really wanted to hold her right now.

———————

It was time for some interviews. I walked to the media pen, Daniel was smiling from ear to ear. I walked up to him. "Hey mate, congratulations! You really deserve it." I meant what I said. He's a great driver and great friend. "Thanks man, what happened?" The microphones were now turned to me. I really wanted to tell them that the idiot didn't leave me any space but I couldn't. "I don't know. I went over the curb and landed on top of him." Daniel nodded, he understood I couldn't say much. He gave me a pat on the back and gestured that we would talk later.

I had to do my own interviews now. I knew everyone would ask the same questions and today I couldn't tease Rylee during them.
At first she hated it when I touched her during interviews but I knew she kinda expected me to do it every time.
After the interviews were done I just wanted to go back to my hotelroom. I wanted to call Rylee and just hear her voice.

I walked through the paddock, trying to ignore everyone. A Mercedes engineer started to walk next to me. "Great strategy to put your car on top of ours when we were clearly faster." I rolled my eyes, trying to ignore him. What was his fucking problem.
"Rylee probably has a lot of work cleaning up your PR mess." I could hear him laugh.
"Rylee isn't here but she's great a cleaning up my mess mate." I walked faster, trying to get away from him.
"Oh did she go back to Austria?" I realized I actually never asked where she was from. I decided to ignore him again.
"Well, I hope Wolff will be back soon, we miss her great input and information." What did he just say? I quickly stopped walking and looked at him.
"Wait... Wolff?" The asshole just winked at me and walked away.

I couldn't move. He called her Wolff but why did he call her Wolff?
Wolff, Austria, the phone calls from Toto which she thought were more important than sex. I felt my heart break.
She was related to Toto.

She lied her way into Red Bull. She probably knew who I was all along.
I was so stupid. I convinced Christian that she would be a great PR manager. I invited her to our performance and strategy meetings.

But worse of all, I invited her into my heart.