Blinded - Charles Leclerc

Chapter 9

"Excuse me, miss?" I wake up. Did I fall asleep too? I'm still sitting in the chair next to Charles. The nurse who just woke me up is handing me my phone. I hear it buzzing now that I'm fully awake and I take it from her with a smile.

"Thank you." She walks out of the room and closes the door behind her. My phone is showing Gaby's name and I press the green button.

"Hi Gabs." I say in a yawn.

"Hey, I heard about the crash. How are they doing?" I turn my eyes at Charles who is still deeply asleep.

"Well, Max is fine. He has a broken arm and some scratches and bruises so it was not too bad. He left the hospital a couple of hours ago. Charles is still here though. He had surgery last night and has to stay here until tomorrow." I'm glad she called. I really miss her.

"That sound okey, right?"

"It could definitely be worse yeah." I respond and stand up straight to stretch my body after sleeping in a rather uncomfortable position.

"Wait, you said here. Are you still at the hospital? Didn't Max leave?"

Oh shit.

"Well, Charles' mother went back to her hotel to check in so that she would secure her room or whatever, so I told her I could stay with him so he won't wake up alone in the hospital." I could almost hear her laugh.

"You? With Charles? Alone, like together alone?" She bursts out in laughter like she's never heard anything like it before.

"Yeah. We've become closer these past two weeks, you could say." Now she goes silent.

"What the fuck. You sound way too serious. Tell me you're joking right now." This is not something I love explaining to her. It's weird, I don't even know what is going on myself..

"I am serious. Though I don't want to stand here talking about it when he could wake up right next to me, whenever." I laugh nervously and turn around to Charles to make sure he's still asleep. He is. "Though my flight leaves tomorrow. We could catch up when I get home. I'll tell you everything, promise."

"I can't wait. I'll pick you up at the airport." I smile at her. She's so considerate.

"That would be very sweet. I'll see you tomorrow."

"Love you, Bella."

"I love you too."

The call ends as I again sit down besides Charles. I watch him for a minute but when he doesn't wake up I consider going down to the cafeteria. He probably won't wake up in the next five minutes anyway.

I walk down quickly. Get a drink for myself and think of maybe getting him one too. I get him the same as I did for me since I don't know what he likes. It took me three minutes to go downstairs and up again though I have to stop in the hallway to wait for a man walking very slowly in front of me.

"You promised."

Damn it.

"Did you just wake up?"

"Yes, and you promised me to be here." He points a finger at me. So close. Maybe if that man hadn't been so slow in the hallway.

"Well I was here. I fell asleep too, but I had to run down to the cafeteria because I was dangerously dehydrated. I got you a drink too." I try to explain myself.

"You lied to me." Now I hear the sarcasm in his voice so I just laugh at him.

"Yeah yeah. Okey." I sit down beside him and hand him the drink.

--

"Ah, I've missed you too much." The blonde girl exclaims as soon as she spots me walking towards her in the airport. She embraces me in a welcoming hug and I take in a deep breath.

"And I have missed you more. It feels like we haven't seen each other in ages." I take my bag and we start walking together.

"We haven't and I know for a fact that you have a lot to tell me. I wanna hear everything." I laugh at her curiousness.

We reach her car, the same car she got when she had just taken her license at 16. I remember the day when she came to my house and told me she had driven there. I laughed in her face and told her she need to learn to lie better. There was no way she could haven gotten her license with the small amount of practice she had.

But she did, and we spent the day driving around town for hours, getting food, watching all the things we grew up around but from the cars point of view. The big olive trees, the flower field and the ice cream booth where we spent more time than we did in school.

"Wow, I don't even know where to start. The first race went horrible. Neither of Max and Checo even finished it." I know this is not what she meant when she told me she wanted to hear anything.

"Even though that is very interesting, I would like you to tell me the story of how you ended up in Charles Leclerc's hospital room." It does sounds worse than what it is when she puts it like that. "It's very kinky of you, sleeping with the enemy." I laugh at her. She has a talent of exaggerating.

"I am not, and will not for your information, sleep with Charles Leclerc." She gives me the look I recognize from when she thinks she knows something that I don't. "Stop that, I'm serious."

"Okay fine. But stop squirming, now tell me." 

I sigh and think of where to start this. "You know how he has always been kind of rude to me?" She nods as a signal for me to continue with her eyes on the road. "Well, we were at this party after that first race and he was being really weird and staring at me the whole night." I go back in my memories to remember the night and I still don't remember half of it.

"I don't really remember the rest of the night but when I woke up, Charles had texted me to call him which was really confusing. He told me that some dude had tried taking me home with him and Charles had taken over and helped me get back to my hotel room." I hate that night. The more I think about it the scarier it is. Thinking of what could have happened.

"I must say, that is probably the first decent thing I've heard him do." Her voice is as confused and shocked as I was.

"I know, I didn't really believe it at first either. Anyway we got into a fight, several fights actually. We kept making up and then he would do something to screw up and try to apologize. Right before the race this weekend we fought about just that and I told him I was really tired of it. We didn't get to finish talking and then he and Max crashed. I went with them to the hospital and when Max was released I couldn't just leave. I just had to see him and know he was alright. And then his mother showed up and she convinced me to.."

"Wait hold up. His mother?"

"Yeah, she recognized me in the waiting room. Apparently Charles had talked about an Isabella to her which do make me a tad uncomfortable but we started talking and I just stayed there for the day." I think I've never talked this fast before in my life. Silence wraps around us for a minute. I'm guessing she needs some time to process it.

"This is interesting. It's like you're in a movie. Does Max know about your little flirt?"

"It's not a flirt, Gabby. And no he does not know anything." She's smirking beside me while she's putting the car in park outside my apartment. "I don't know how to talk to him about becoming friends with his rival." She doesn't have an answer for me and neither do I. "It's complicated, I don't know."

I don't know how I'll ever talk to Max about this. Though I still need to talk to Charles. How sweet he might have been after the accident, I'm still not very happy with him.