⚠️ A little notice: Possible triggers - just to warn you all that this chapter and the next one does mention and has content of self harm and suicide.
This chapter and the next one does get a little heavy but better times are coming! Xx
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"I'll come with you!" Gisela ran after Seb as he dashed down the stairs, pulling on a blue t-shirt.
With a million thoughts rushing through his head, he shoved his bare feet into a pair of white trainers and grabbed the key to the Porche Cayenne.
"Seb, wait!" Gisela grasped a handful of the back of his t-shirt just as he opened the front door. "Let me come with you!"
He spun round to look at her as if she was crazy and hastily snapped, "don't be stupid! Who's going to look after the kids?!"
She helplessly watched as he stormed across the stones outside and unlocked the car. She tried to not take his reply too personally, he was worried about Alex, they both were.
But she had no idea of just how worried her husband was about his pretty PT, she had no idea of how he was feeling at all.
He didn't even look her way as he turned the car round and headed down the drive, spinning the wheels on the stones as he accelerated.
The second he got on to the road, he floored it, such was his frantic need to get to Alex's side. She had to be ok, she just had to be. They'd barely had any time, he hadn't even fully got to grips with his feelings for her, he couldn't have her snatched away from him now.
He felt so guilty, so fucking awful. He'd been shooting his load down Gisela's throat while Alex had been clawing her way out of a ditch, only to lose consciousness in the arms of a stranger. Her last words before she'd blacked out? His name, she'd asked for him and he'd not been giving her a thought while he was being sucked off. He felt like a grade A bastard and bizarrely, as if he'd cheated on her with Gisela - his own wife.
She had to be ok. He'd been told that the car didn't look that bad, that the main damage was at the front where Alex had nosedived into a shallow ditch. He didn't care about the car, it could easily be replaced - but a soulmate? She can never be replaced.
Alex would be fine. She'd likely banged her head on the steering wheel and was being scanned for any other injuries. She'd be fine. He'd walk up to her bed in accident and emergency and she'd be sitting up, brushing off her head wound as 'just a bump to the head'.
He turned the radio on to try and distract himself, he'd be no good to her if he lost control of the car and crashed himself because he'd been busy worrying about her instead of concentrating on the road.
Yeah, Aleksandra would be fine. She'd survived an abusive relationship, she could survive anything.
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It felt like a sign from heaven when he was approached by a doctor who shared the same name as his brother, Fabian.
Fabian led him to small, private room. It was lined with burgundy coloured chairs with a pine coloured, low wooden table in its centre, topped with two boxes of tissues. It was very basic; there were no vending machines, only the ones outside and not even a single picture on the plain cream walls. It felt like the kind of room where you'd be given bad news.
"How is she?" Seb asked, before the door had even closed. "I need to see her, she's been asking for me."
Fabian could see the immense worry etched into Seb's features. He wasn't one to drag things out and got straight to the point. "She's been lucky; we were quite concerned by her head injury, she's taken quite a hit from the steering wheel but there's nothing broken and nothing of any concern on the scan."
"Is she awake?" He asked, already feeling a huge wave of relief just from this information alone.
Fabian nodded. "She's awake, she's concussed and feels a bit unwell but other than that, she's fine."
Seb puffed out a shaky breath and rubbed his face with his hands. All of a sudden he felt quite emotional. She's ok! Thank fuck!! I can't believe how close I felt I was to losing her.
"We'll move her to a ward just for overnight observation but she should be able to go home tomorrow." The doctor watched as Seb slowly paced around the small space, stopping every so often to rub his eyes. It was clear that he was fighting to control his emotions. "Mr Vettel?"
"Please, it's Seb, just Seb." He stopped and raked a hand through his hair, puffing out another breath as he tried to compose himself. He didn't want to go to Alex looking like an emotional wreck.
"Seb, she's ok and she's asked to see you as soon as you get here." Fabian opened the door and gestured for Seb to leave first. "Shall we?"
He nodded, a smile returning to his face as the news sank in. She was ok! And she was asking for him. Not Jake, not anyone else....him. He followed Fabian through a waiting area and then through a set of automatic doors. Turning left, they came to a side room, just off of the main resus room where she'd first been treated. Opening a door, he stepped inside and there was Alex, sitting up in bed.
Fabian left them to it but not before Seb had given him his sincerest thanks and shook his hand.
Then he stood there, with them both looking at each other, both of them silently communicating, reassuring each other. She had a dressing on her head wound and some nasty bruising that was spreading from just above her eyebrow to round the outside of her eye socket. Apart from that and a few bruises on her arms, she looked largely unscathed.
"Are you just going to stand there gawking?" She drawled tiredly, with a weak smile.
"Alex." He breathed, making his way to the bed. Saying her name felt so, so good.
She shook her head and then winced from the pain again, her head was throbbing and the paracetamol they'd given her earlier wasn't even touching it. "Not Alex."
Seb scoffed and rolled his eyes, "don't start all that 'I'm not Alex' bullshit now, you could've died, correcting me on your name is insignificant now."
"It's important to me." She replied quietly, unable to speak too loudly because of her bad headache.
He sat down on the edge of her bed and drank in the sight of her, so thankful that she was alright. He wondered if she was feeling a bit cold, her arms were buried under the blanket. "Ok, Aleksandra." He conceded. "Now let me hold you."
Just as he leant in she weakly whimpered, "I'm so sorry about the car, if you want me to pay for it....."
He leant back to look at her as if the bump to her head had made her lose all common sense. "Are you crazy? You think I care about the car?"
"I drove it into a ditch, it's probably a write-off." She leant her head back against the pillow, keeping Seb at arms length was the last thing she wanted but her hospital gown was short sleeved and her scars would be visible if she wasn't careful.
"I can easily replace the car, what I can't replace is you." Just the thought that her accident could have been a whole lot worse pulled painfully inside him and he shuffled closer before carefully embracing her, gingerly pulling her close to him. "I'm so relieved, thank fuck that you're ok." He exclaimed in a hushed voice, turning his head to bury his face into her hair.
She returned his embrace with her own, though hesitantly, as she slipped her arms around him, aware that she was closer than ever to him seeing her scars.
She heard him take in a shaky breath before whispering, "so glad you're safe."
Being in his arms like this felt good, she felt safe, appreciated but most of all she felt loved. Whether it was love-love or friendship love or something in between, she wasn't sure but he was making her feel like she really was his, like she really meant something to him. Like he does to me.
His emotions were rising once again, she was meaning more and more to him, losing her was getting more and more painful to think about. He kissed her hair, her cheeks and then her lips, moving his arms from around her to tenderly cup her face, finishing by leaving his forehead resting against hers, nuzzling his nose to hers in a gesture of pure affection.
Alex was starting to feel a deeper connection to him and for her it was new and quite frightening. She didn't want to become reliant on him, she didn't want to feel like she depended on him to be happy in life but right now he was being so affectionate and so caring that it was hard to ignore her feelings.
"Tell me how it happened." He said, pulling away from her after realising that anyone could walk in and catch them together after a couple of minutes of them staying close to each other.
She leant back against the pillows, carefully positioning her arms. "I wasn't looking where I was going, it was completely my fault." She admitted guiltily, staring miserably at the ceiling.
Seb could see straight through her, he knew that there was more to it than that. She wasn't careless behind the wheel. "And the real reason?"
Her eyes met his, his single raised brow letting her know that he didn't entirely believe her and was now waiting for the real reason why she'd lost control of the car. She didn't want to admit that she'd been panicking over Soren but she was well aware that Seb knew she was still worried about him showing up again. "I can't believe you're so calm about the car." She muttered feebly to try and distract him for a bit longer.
Then she said something that gave it all away, that just put all the puzzle pieces in place, enabling him to start to build a picture of why she'd crashed.
"Soren would have cared more about the car, he'd have gone mad. He'd probably have killed me." She tried to make it sound like a joke, with a weak smile and a half hearted attempt at laughing.
"This was to do with him, wasn't it." He guessed, watching a flicker of fear cross her beautiful features as she thought about her answer.
Her eyes immediately filled with tears. "I thought I'd be ok." She began, her voice trembling as she recalled the night's events. "I only wanted to get a packet of cigarettes."
Seb looked bemused, "since when do you smoke?"
"Rarely and not for a long time; just when I get stressed or upset, it helps me to relax." She confessed.
"So what was on your mind for you to be heading out on a special trip just to buy them?" He asked. "Was it Soren?"
She shook her head, she wasn't going to tell him that he was the reason why she was craving nicotine. Instead she carried on telling him about what had happened earlier, "I thought I'd be fine going out on my own. I still worry that he's watching me but I'm refusing to let him stop me from carrying on with my life."
Seb stayed quiet, his overriding thought being that Alex should still be staying at his place if she was still this worried about Soren. He should never have let her go back to living in that house on her own.
"My heart was going mad just by sitting in the car, on the drive, but I told myself to just go and that the sooner I got to an off-licence, the sooner I'd be back inside the house. But five minutes up the road, I felt awful. I felt sick, I was struggling to catch my breath and so I opened the window to let some air in. Then I told myself that the quicker I drove, the quicker I could get there and back home. So I started to drive faster and then I saw a set of car headlights appear behind me; at first I tried to tell myself that it wouldn't be him but it stayed behind me, gaining on me." She stopped to take a breath, her hands grabbing at the blue blanket that covered her legs, wanting to hold on to something that would make her feel safe as Soren's snarling face slithered into her mind again.
Seb took hold of her hand, gently uncurling her fingers from the soft material. He felt so bad, she'd been going through hell, having a panic attack at the wheel of the car while he'd been......he looked at her, concentrating on her bruised but beautiful face, trying to forget what he'd been up to earlier on with Gisela.
"To make it worse....." she carried on, feeling a little calmed by the way his hand was covering her own. "....I think I missed a turning, I had no idea where I was and the car was getting closer. I felt sure it was him. My eyes became focused on the rear view mirror instead of on the road, even in that mirror with those bright headlights shining back at me, all I could see was his vile face."
"You could see him in the car?" He asked, alarmed that her vicious bastard of an ex really could have tracked her down. If that was the case then she was having twenty-four hour security.
"No, just in my mind. It might have been him, it might not. The next thing I knew there was these headlights in front of me, blinding me. I couldn't see a thing and swerved to avoid hitting whoever it was and ended up in the ditch." She looked agitated and then angry, raising her voice not at Seb but at herself. "Basically I crashed the fucking car because I wasn't paying attention to the road. I was too busy looking behind me and having a fucking panic attack. How could I have been so fucking stupid, I could have killed someone!" She lifted her other hand and began to hit her forehead repeatedly, only being stopped by Seb who was afraid that she'd hit where her wound was.
"That's enough Alex." He gently scolded her, while taking a firm hold of both of her hands. "What's important here is that you're alive, you're ok and no one else was injured."
"But they could have been." She cried.
"But they wasn't. Focus on you and the fact that you're still alive, not on what could have been."
She knew he was right. The only thing now was that he knew she still wasn't coping with the whole Soren thing very well, she could no longer lie and say she was ok. Feeling weak and out of control of everything, she lowered her gaze to where his hands were holding her own tightly. Her arms were fully visible, she froze. She couldn't deal with this as well and went to pull her hands away.
It was only her reaction and the look of shame on her face that made him look down too. What he saw was sickening and distressing and made his stomach churn. He wasn't sure how old her scars were but they looked like the result of self harming or even a suicide attempt. Or was Soren to blame? Either way, he felt freaked out and distraught that she could do that to herself or that someone had done that to her.
Alex yanked her hands roughly from his and buried her arms under the blanket, her face reddened with shame. She could tell by Seb's visibly paler face that he'd seen her scars, he looked shocked, disgusted and even a bit frightened.
He didn't know what to do at first, the shock had set in, rendering his brain completely useless at offering him any help. Should he just say that he'd noticed the disturbing marks on her arms and ask her outright what or who had caused them? Or should he just make out that he hadn't seen them? Maybe it was better to just say nothing. "When I pick you up in the morning, you're coming back to stay at mine." He said instead, his head still trying to process what those marks could mean.
She opened her mouth to protest but he spoke again before she had the chance.
"I'm not taking no for an answer Aleksandra." He got up from the bed, she looked exhausted and he felt tired too. It was time he left and let her get some rest, he also needed time to think about what he'd just seen.
"You're going?" She asked worriedly, her fragile emotions plummeting further because she knew he'd seen her scars and now couldn't wait to get away from her.
"You need to get some rest, you look exhausted. I'll bring you some clean clothes tomorrow." He replied, heading for the door.
This was so frustrating; why did he always seem to want to run away every time they'd got a bit closer or a bit difficult? She'd thought that after the way things had heated up between them in Austria, after he'd got her to say that she was his, that things would be different now. Obviously she'd been wrong. She looked away from him with tears rolling down her cheeks, just wanting him to leave now.
"Sleep well, I'll see you in the morning." He offered her a tight lipped smile before stepping out of the room.
"Night Seb." She uttered quietly to the door as it swung shut, her frustration building and a feeling of rejection creeping in. She hated feeling this way, hated being needy. She saw it as a weakness but she just couldn't see her way out of it. She needed him. Before she could stop herself she sucked in a deep breath and cried out, "I only did it once! I was desperate!"
Seb had been hovering just a few footsteps up the corridor, staring at the floor, still reeling from what he'd seen, when he heard her. His head jerked to look in the direction of her door, her yelled, agonised confession sounding heartfelt and scared, she needed him.
He couldn't just leave things like this, he'd been blowing hot and cold so much, he knew that he'd treated her badly and she deserved so much better from him. She could have died today, he could have been at a mortuary, identifying her body. He turned and strode purposefully towards her door.
She was already looking his way as he walked back in and went straight to her bed where he sat down again. They looked into each other's eyes, silently reading each other's thoughts. He knew this was a big thing for her, even bigger than her confessing what Soren had done to her and how he acted now was crucial. He couldn't let her down, she was scared and she needed him. He'd been the one she'd asked for straight after her accident, the first one she'd thought of. It may well have been because he was her boss but Seb liked to think that it was also because of how she felt about him.
It felt like strong, ball busting Aleksandra was dead and buried right now. Alex was trying to figure out what he was thinking or feeling; was it shame, pity, repulsion? No, not now. As he lightly placed his palm on her cheek and she leant into his touch she could see that it was adoration, love maybe, and admiration.
This beautiful, strong, fierce woman had brought herself back from the brink. Seb found himself even more in awe of her than he was before and falling even harder. She'd overcome a lot more than Soren's abuse and she'd survived - for him. That's how it felt. She was his soulmate and she'd survived and battled throughout her life because she was destined to become a part of his. He swallowed heavily, close to tears, his body going cold at the thought that she'd sunk so low and been so desperate to escape Soren that she'd tried to take her own life.
"I'm so sorry you had to see that." She mumbled shamefully, though she felt a lot better now he'd come back.
"Don't be." He murmured, leaning in to connect their lips in a brief but soothing kiss.
She'd seen another side of him today; tender, loving and attentive. She told herself not to get used to it, he'd still be going home to his wife very soon.
"If you want to talk about it, I'm here." He added, leaving his lips brushing lightly against her cheek. "I won't force you, when you're ready, ok?"
She nodded, the tiredness was setting in now and her head was still banging with the pain that the earlier paracetamol had failed to touch. She felt his hands slowly wander to the blanket, searching for her arms. At first she tensed up, not wanting him to see them again but then she figured it was pointless to keep trying to hide them now.
"Can I look?" He asked softly, his fingers taking a careful hold of her bruised arms.
She nodded again and lifted her arms from under the blanket, turning her wrists to expose the scars she'd done so well in hiding.
Seb delicately trailed his fingertips over her skin, his eyes following in their path. Her arms were dotted with what looked like burn marks but what had affected him the most were the lines on her wrists. My beautiful fucking survivor.
"Can we talk tomorrow?" She asked wearily, following it with a yawn. "I know you've got to get back home."
"If you need me to stay, then I'll stay. I'll sleep on the chair." He pointed to a yellow chair in the corner.
"Go home Seb, I'll be fine here."
Letting go of her arms, he pulled her close to hold her. "Are you sure? I can phone......"
She cut him off, not wanting to hear Gisela's name. "You're tired too, go home. We'll talk in the morning, yeah?"
Regretfully, he released her and stood up again. "I'll have my phone with me all night, if you need me, call me."
"I will." She gave him a weak smile and relaxed back into the bed.
"Night Alex." He blew her a kiss before heading to the door, waiting for her to correct him on her name like she nearly always did.
Not this time though. "Night Seb."