Just Drive (Sebastian Vettel)

Chapter 34: Secrets

Canada, Wednesday

The Ferrari team had arrived in Montreal several days before the racing weekend began.  As Canada was the first race outside of Europe since April, they weren't running the weekend out of their usual motor home, and this meant the teams generally liked to arrive that little bit earlier in the week than usual to reacquaint themselves with their surroundings - and also to adjust to the time zone.

Seb and Kimi (along with their entourages) were also in Canada but hadn't yet made it to Montreal.  Instead they had spent a few days on the opposite side of the country, in Vancouver, their diaries filled with publicity commitments and interviews to capitalise on the opportunity to be with fans in this part of the world.

After a long day in their temporary make-shift analysts' office (Pierre's hotel suite), Caitlin, Simone and Pierre, decided to call it a day.

"It'll be really hard to know for sure until we see how long the tyres last in the race sims on Friday," Mattia concluded as he closed his laptop lid with a flourish (Caitlin and Simone shared a habitual smirk), "but we've got some good options here so we're in the best place we can be going into the weekend."

The team all nodded a general agreement as they packed up their things and made their way to the door.

Caitlin caught up with Pierre in the corridor.

"Before you go off on a classic Ms. Black rant about how annoying Mattia is, please can I just cut in and say I haven't got the energy for this?!"

"Whatever.  If you're tired shall we grab a coffee?"

"Cait, we're meant to be recovering from jet lag!  Do you really think a coffee at 6pm is a good idea?" he asked incredulously.

They'd just emerged into the ground floor foyer of the hotel, and through a marble archway spotted Jon, Alex and Franny sat around a table in the bar having a few drinks.

"Suit yourself," said Caitlin, as Pierre made his way towards reception to get his room key, "I'm going to join the lads for some drinks in the bar then."

"Lads?!" he scoffed, "you hate that word!  Don't pretend you're one of the lads!"

With a cheeky grin and curly fingered wave, Caitlin said good evening and walked towards the bar.

Before she got to the entrance she cast a side-glance over her shoulder back towards Pierre, and seeing he was busy talking exuberantly to the receptionist she deviated from her course and slipped through the large revolving doors, outside into the hotel grounds.

It wasn't a pretentious hotel, in fact for Ferrari it was small and modest, but at the front outside there was a small gardened courtyard which over the last few evenings Caitlin had become accustomed to retreating to for a bit of alone time.  She walked towards her favourite tree, and settled down on the grass around it.

With one last precautionary glance around the courtyard, she pulled her phone out of her bag, and stared blankly at the screen.

If you didn't include their paths briefly crossing at the airport, and somehow Caitlin couldn't bring herself to include that because it had been so brief and distant, Caitlin hadn't seen Seb atall since she'd fallen asleep in his arms on the roof 4 days ago.

Caitlin abhorrently disliked the idea of playing hard to get, but equally she'd been trying her best not to come across as too needy or expectant.  She had a sneaky suspicion that Seb was doing the same thing to her, because when they spoke although there was only the slightest edge of flirtation in their conversation, and there had been no mention of the other night.