Red past | Charles Leclerc

Possible regrets

It was 2 hours before one of the most important Qualifying sessions of the season and yet I still made it my personal goal to talk to Charles before I headed out onto track.

"Charles?" I yelled while knocking on the door to his drivers room.

When he opened the door, you could tell that his body was bouncing with nerves, it was his and Arthur's home race, the pressure on them to do well was quite high.

"Can we talk?" I asked looking at the anxious glow over his eyes.

"Of course," he relied gesturing for me to enter his drivers room.

The door snapped closed with a large band just before he turned to look at me.

"What's up?" He seemed concerned about my sudden appearance so close to a quali session.

"I feel like I should be the one asking you that," I sigh, meeting his gaze.

He had a blank expression on his face, his head slightly moving back and forth.

"Charlie.... talk to me, please," No matter how much I tried to convince myself to stop worrying about him, I couldn't. He was all I could think about.

He let out a long ragged breath, his voice was shaky as he spoke, "I'm guessing your talking about the nightmares?"

By the silence I provided him with, he seemed to realise the answer.

"Ever since Arthur's crash, or maybe some time before that, I'm not to sure. I started having nightmares, they are always people I care about spinning out on the track, something bad happening to them each and every one of them."

"You, Pierre, Arthur and I've even had one of Jules. I don't know how to stop it. I want it to stop," he whispered, his eyes on the brink of flooding with tears as if he was seeing the dreams all over again.

"Charles, nothing is going to happen to us, I promise. We are always going to be here for you. Just like you are for all of us, do you understand?" I wanted him to feel some hope and not the pain.

There was an uncertain tone in my voice, no matter what I told him, I didn't know what would happen so me telling him we would always be there was almost a complete lie. I didn't know what the future had in store for any of us.

"And I know that Jules would be so proud of you, your strong and confident, you need to prove that to yourself."

A miniature smile appeared on his face, it was small but so genuine. I couldn't help but reciprocating his actions.

"Thank you, Mila. Where would I be without you," he was quite but let out a small laugh as he spoke.

"Probably stuck at the Miami airport trying to get your Airpods with a pair of tweezers," I laughed thinking about the time it happened.

He ended up missing his flight and by the end of it he gave up and just bought a new pair when we got to Monaco.

"You promised to never bring that up again," he chuckled shyly.

We spent another ten minutes joking around before everything stopped, we were both looking at each others eyes, we had gotten so close I could smell the all to familiar cologne wrapping around me. I didn't even know how we had ended up only inches apart. A comfortable silence sat between us. I couldn't help but revert my gaze to his lips, he was smiling slightly, his dimples standing out on his face.

Before I knew it, his lips were on mine, the worst part wasn't that I didn't pull back, the worst part was that I enjoyed it. My hand sat at the nape of his neck while the other was emerged in his fluffy brown hair. His arms were wrapped around my waist, pulling me Deeper into the kiss.

The kiss abruptly ended just as quick as it began, us jumping away from each other as a ferrari engineer popped his head into the room.

"The F2 Qualifying starts soon, Arthur is preparing now, just in case you want to see him," he didn't acknowledge my being there, his focus remained on the boy. The boy I had just kissed.

"Yeah I'm coming," he replied, mgiving me a quick glance before following the Ferrari engineer leaving me alone in his drivers room.