The Limit (Sebastian Vettel)

69. Addiction

Seb's eyes kept drifting towards the open doorway, waiting eagerly for Lily to make her appearance.

"Waiting for someone?" said the familiar voice from his left hand side. He turned and saw Daniel Ricciardo grinning at him.

"No," he lied. "Just hungry and fed up of waiting."

"Ah, there's only a few more to arrive. Esteban, Yuki, Damon.... And Lily." He stretched Lily's name out, making it sound twice as long as it actually did.

Seb knew they could trust Daniel, but he hadn't told him that he and Lily were still sleeping together. He figured the less people knew, the better.

In fact, the only person that knew as far as he knew was Antti.   He knew he'd be unable to keep things secret from Antti once Lily had moved to Italy.  He knew the Finn wouldn't say a word though. He trusted him implicitly. 

Where was she?  She was five minutes late at least.  He was the one that was usually late.  She was still coming, wasn't she? He hadn't seen her since he'd dropped her at the airport over a month ago.    Sure, they'd texted, and FaceTimed but it wasn't the same as seeing her with his own eyes.

Once he'd seen her he then had to figure out how he was going to go three weeks without touching her.  

Thank God it would only be three weeks.  Once the testing, and the Bahrain and Saudi Arabia double header was over Lily would be moving into the house she'd decided to rent in Italy. 

She'd chosen to rent rather than buy until she knew whether Ferrari would be extending her contract or not.  

She'd chosen a four bedroom house just a few miles down the road from Lake Como.   She'd sent Seb some photos of it.  It was a lovely place, even if the decor was a little on the white side for his taste. 

It was miles from any other house, and had several acres of grounds.  It was surrounded by a high wall, had a wrought iron gate at the entrance, and a swimming pool in the back garden.

It was around a four hour drive from his house to hers, but they'd agreed she would make the drive to his for a couple of reasons.

One being if anyone at Ferrari got suspicious it would be her house they'd be watching. Two, Luca didn't know about them so if he popped in for any training reasons he'd find out, and three, was the fact that Lily wouldn't be living alone.

Joel had been appointed as her new race engineer and would be making the move with her.

Seb had been pissed off when he'd heard the news, not because he had anything against Joel, but he'd thought the whole idea of her moving to Italy was so they could spend time together. Lily had told him she could hardly refuse her brother.

They'd had an argument about it on FaceTime when she'd told him the week before, and they hadn't spoken much since, just exchanged the odd text.

Esteban was the next to arrive. Seb found himself desperately hoping the Frenchman didn't choose the empty seat next to him. He really wanted Lily to sit there.

To his relief Esteban chose to go and sit next to Lance at the other end of the table.

"If you're trying to pretend you're not looking out for Lily you're doing a crap job," Daniel continued.

"Daniel, just leave it will you?"

He heard Daniel chuckle. "I was thinking of asking your ex out on a date, you know, Catarina."

"Really? You should. She's a great girl."

At that moment Seb turned his head again, a big smile spreading across his face as he saw Lily enter the room.