All in all, Y/n managed to sleep maybe a few hours because she woke up at dawn in her room. She was lying on the bed, with the sheets rolled up but still wearing her Ferrari uniform. She got up with her elbows on the bed and realised that Charles was sleeping on the armchair in her room, holding his mobile phone in his hand. Her head ached and she got up to drink some water but Charles jolted awake.
"Are you okay?" he almost jumped out of the armchair.
"I'm fine, Cha. I was just getting some water. You want some too?" said y/n offering him a glass. He nodded and they drank together. Silence reigned in the room, while outside the first birds of the morning began to chirp.
"Caco texted me a little while ago," said Charles looking at his mobile phone and scratching his head, "I must have fallen asleep and didn't hear the message."
"What does it say?" Y/n didn't know if she actually wanted to know the content of that message, she was too afraid. Charles read it quickly in silence.
"Please, what does it say?" y/n tried to interpret Charles' facial expressions, without succeeding, she was too tired to even try.
"It says he's out of surgery, he's fine but for now he's in intensive care as a precaution."
"ICU?" y/n's heart thudded against her chest. Charles' phone began to ring and y/n could see that it was Caco. Immediately Charles answered it, putting it on speakerphone.
"Hey!" Charles tried to sound as calm (and not sleepy) as possible.
"Hey Charles, what's up?" the voice of Caco on the other end of the phone was muffled and strained.
"How's Carlos?" asked Charles ignoring Caco's question and sat down at the foot of the bed, y/n followed him by placing herself beside him, she wasn't about to miss any information.
"Good, he's out of surgery. They operated on his right leg and left wrist but everything seems to have gone well." Suddenly y/n and Charles took each other's hands and shook them tightly. It seemed that the nightmare was really over.
"But is he conscious?" asked y/n in one breath.
"Hi y/n. Yes he is conscious and is resting now but the doctors said no one can come in to visit him."
"Fine, what's important is that he's okay."
"When you can come, I'll tell you right away, okay?"
"Alright, just keep us updated," Charles said and then hung up the phone call. He turned to Y/n and they hugged again. "I think I'm going to go to sleep now, Y/n. My back is a mess" Charles got out of bed holding his back with his right hand. Y/n smiled because it seemed funny to her, then got up and walked him to the door.
"You rest now too" he gave her a kiss on the forehead and walked off towards his room, he greeted her from a distance and entered the room.
Y/n closed the door behind her and took off her work uniform, slipped into her pyjamas and got into bed. Within seconds she was sound asleep and woke up just before noon. She went to the door and opened it, hoping to find Charles coming out of his room but saw no one, so she went back, took a long shower and went down to the restaurant to get a bite to eat, as she had been fasting for almost 24 hours. She grabbed a slice of pizza and went to sit alone by the window and like a bolt from the blue, she was reminded of that message from Max that made her leave the pizza on the plate. She began drumming her fingers on the table thinking and rethinking what she would do. Whether she would ignore him or give him a chance to explain himself. Suddenly her mobile phone display lit up.
Did you sleep?
It was Charles, she smiled at that message
Yes, I'm now at the hotel restaurant eating a terrible pizza
She blocked the phone and returned to her thoughts.
"You have to eat pizza in Italy, certainly not in Canada" Charles sat down in front of her with a sandwich and started eating it. He devoured it, more like, as y/n continued to stare at the street and passers-by.
"Everything okay?" asked Charles, swallowing the last bite of bread. Y/n merely nodded "I know there's something else, spit it out" Y/n turned to him who was drinking water from a plastic bottle. She noticed the line of his jaw, his beard was growing and he hadn't had time to shave, his golden hair was curling a little on his forehead and the "Forza Ferrari" bracelet, that a fan had given him, was ending up on the sleeve of his blue jumper. He thought that Charles really was the perfect fairytale Prince Charming and that Charlotte was really lucky.
"So? What's on your mind? Carlos is fine, so there must be something else going on" Y/n felt that Charles had read her soul and sighed.
"Since when do you know me so well?" she hinted a smile.
"Since I saw you crying going out of the Red Bull box... and since I've been your best friend." Y/n became serious again and told him about what had happened in the Red Bull pits with her father and Max's message.
"You have to talk to Max" Y/n rolled her eyes, she had no intention of seeing Max again and Charles' advice did not sit well with her. "I know you don't want to, but you have to end this once and for all. You don't have to become best friends, not least because that seat is already taken" they both smiled, then Charles turned serious again. "The point is that you need to close that chapter and move on. For yourself, for Carlos, for the two of you, whatever it is between the two of you"
The last sentence sounded different from the others, it had a more serious, almost mocking tone to it and Y/n felt judged. Then she looked at Charles and his eyes were fixed on her, those blue eyes looked at her intensely, as if they wanted to peer into her thoughts, to understand what Y/n's real feelings were at least.
"What do you mean?" asked Y/n, she was feeling very exposed by now.
"I'm talking about the team radio, Y/n" the answer came almost out of breath, as if Charles had been waiting to talk about it since he had heard it uttered during the race.
"Why does everyone keep talking about this team radio? What team radio?" y/n was getting annoyed, no one was speaking clearly to her and she remembered practically nothing from the collision between Max and Carlos. Charles looked at her a bit astonished, he certainly didn't expect y/n to have forgotten she had said those important words, but she kept staring at him, waiting for some kind of explanation, at least from her best friend.
"Well, you said you love Carlos while his car was on fire" those words pounced on y/n and imrpovvisely brought back her memory of everything that had happened a few hours before. Everything became clearer to her and she remembered the moment when she had said those words, she blushed.
"I...well I...this is awkward" an embarrassed smile broke out on her face, she wanted to disappear. "But then who heard that?" her hands were shaking.
"Pretty much anyone who was plugged in to watch the race" now Charles was also greatly embarrassed.
"Oh no!" y/n covered her face with her hands and leaned towards the table. She thought of the reporters, the commentators, the team members, her father, Carlos's father. Everyone had heard her, everyone had heard those words, everyone except Carlos...maybe it was a good thing, given the point of agreement they had reached in those months. Good thing at least Carlos hadn't heard it, it was necessary to make sure that he never found out.
"It's okay, Y/n. Nothing happened," Charles didn't quite know how to act. "Everyone will have forgotten about it by now, don't worry!" He didn't believe what he was saying either, but he was so used to hearing about love scandals in his account that he was now taking it philosophically.
Y/n looked up, she was all red and looked into Charles' face who laughed affectionately."Don't laugh!" said Y/n burst out laughing in turn. "I said I love you to someone live on the world's air...and this someone didn't even hear it!" they both burst into thunderous laughter and for a while the thought of Max drifted from Y/n's mind.
As soon as they got up from the table, however, Charles brought her back down to earth. As they arrived in front of the lift doors, Charles urged her to go to Max's to wrap things up and, not without inebriated snorts, Y/n took her leave of Charles, who went up to his room, while Y/n walked out of the hotel to Max's. She walked for a while and on the way thought and rethought about what Max would say to her, not knowing what to expect. On the way, however, a thunder rumbled loudly and it rained soon after, catching Y/n unprepared. Immediately she took off running and arrived at Max's hotel completely soaked.
I'm in the lobby of your hotel
Y/n sent a message to Max, shivering from the cold.
Go up to the sixth floor, the receptionists know who you are.
That was the same hotel the Red Bull team was staying in during every Canadian GP, so all the people who worked there, knew who Y/n was, her father shouldn't have known about this.
Y/n took the lift and went up to the floor Max had told her, she felt her hair freezing cold and had all her wet clothes sticking to her. She cursed herself for the millionth time, and cursed Charles too, she was going to make him pay.
From a room down the hall, Max emerged. Y/n moved towards him and slowly Max realised that the rain had caught her. He immediately rushed into the room and grabbed a large towel and came towards her, handing it to her.
"Come in, you'll freeze like that!" Y/n followed him as he entered his suite. It was really big, with a sitting room, a table and, further on, an unmade bed. In that room there was a mess. Suitcases were open and their contents were scattered all over the room. She was reminded of those times when she went to Max's house to work and indeed everything was in a mess most of the time there too.
"You need something to dry you off," Max said, running from one side of the room to the other, trying to find, in that hellish mess, something else to keep her warm.
"Do you have a hair dryer?" asked Y/n, her head was starting to hurt from the cold.
"Oh yes, of course I do! Come" he accompanied her to the bathroom and showed her the hairdryer. He walked away from the bathroom and rummaged through his suitcases until he found a blue sweater and a pair of grey Nike shorts. He leaned into the bathroom and saw her standing in front of the mirror with her hair waving in the air and one hand trying to untangle it. He looked at her for a moment and thought he was a complete idiot for messing it up. Y/n turned towards him and shook his head as if to ask what he wanted.
"I found you some dry clothes," he merely said a little awkwardly.
"Is that a Red Bull sweater of yours?"
"It's the only clean one I have left"
She puffed out. He handed her the clothes he was holding and his fingers grazed her wrist. He immediately drew back and looked at her for a moment, smiling."I'll close the door so you can change at your leisure, I'll wait out here," Max said pointing to the armchairs behind him. He had never been so awkward in his life. After a few minutes, y/n emerged from the bathroom, her hair was still a little wet in the ends and she hadn't managed to comb it back but she still looked beautiful. Max was sitting in an armchair, looking at his mobile phone and when he saw her he straightened up and smiled at her. She was really beautiful but immediately looked away.
"Tell me everything," said y/n getting to the point
"Sit down, please" Max said pointing to the armchair next to the one he was already sitting in. A few moments passed before Max decided to speak. He had rehearsed and rehearsed that speech for so long, yet he seemed to have forgotten everything. She was looking at him and he could feel how annoyed she was, he couldn't blame her. Then he took a breath and began:
"When I signed the contract for Red Bull in 2016, I remember we were at the headquarters in Milton Keynes. I was excited because I had moved to a very important F1 team but at the same time I was afraid of letting everyone down, of letting my father down, of letting Christian Horner down. I remember when I walked into Helmut Marko's office to sign the contract, I was terrified. There was all the Red Bull management and there was also a girl, tiny, with big eyes and a Red Bull uniform. She stood next to Horner and was the only one who smiled at me. I smiled back at her and stopped shaking. Since that day, you have been a constant presence in my life. Maybe you never realised it, Y/n, but I always had feelings for you, but I knew you weren't interested. I watched you from afar as you worked, as you learned as much as you could from the mechanics, from your father's work. When you're concentrating, your face lights up, and it happens even now."My father was never a loving father, not at all. So was your father. So when there were team meetings, the air was heavy, serious, but as soon as you entered the office, the air became lighter and all the tension disappeared. Seeing you grow, day by day, and become the woman you are now, makes me happy and proud, and when your father told me he was going to promote you to my track engineer, I couldn't have been happier. I finally had the chance to get to know you better, to have you get to know me better. I saw it as the perfect opportunity to show you how much I cared about you, how much I would have liked to be more than friends, even though we were never friends."
Y/n smiled bitterly, Max too, when his face suddenly turned dark.
"But then came what I did not anticipate. Carlos Sainz, my old teammate. I don't think he was aware of my crush on you, also because we were no longer in contact after my departure from Toro Rosso. Suddenly I felt you were distant, more than you already were. I felt that my only chance to get closer to you was receding irretrievably. Then came your first mistakes, you got caught with Carlos at the Red Bull restaurant, you disappeared for hours, you showed up under the podium when Ferrari won, some races weren't finished perfectly. So your father called me and we had a meeting in secret, Checo never knew about it. Your father proposed to me to stand by you, to stop you from spending time with Carlos. He hadn't explicitly told me to hit on you, but I saw it as the perfect second chance. I had to make the most of it and I did.
"I had managed to make you understand who I really was, my feelings for you were sincere but I regret every day that I accepted this pact with your father. It was my biggest mistake because it led me to lose you forever. I, more than anyone, should know how much it hurts to have an anaffective father, ready to do anything to achieve a goal. It could have been an important common ground between us, we could have supported each other, instead I turned it into a weapon against you.
As for Carlos, on the other hand, I admit that I was really jealous of him because in a very short time he had managed to get close to you, to be liked by you, and I don't wanna think about what else you did." He got chills. "I never, ever thought of hurting him during the races, just liked to tease him, get him nervous, at least on the track I could be better than him. Yesterday's incident was absolutely not intentional, really. Never doubt that. My blood froze, I saw death with my eyes and was terrified that I had killed him when he didn't come out of the flames.When you got to the pits I wanted to tell you, I don't give a shit about the championship at this point, Charles is going to win it anyway. Your father's words there really made me feel like a shitty person because I realized how ruthless Christian is, how far he could go to get what he wants and I was afraid of that."
Y/n had been silent and still the whole time, looking straight into his face, trying to scrutinise every movement, every hesitation in his speech, yet he seemed truly sincere to her. "I know we'll never be friends and you'll probably hate me forever, but you had to know how things turned out. I owed it to you."
Finally Max looked into her eyes, his eyes were bright and red, he had never exposed himself so much to another person, and yet there he was, vulnerable. The Formula 1 world champion felt naked, defenceless, completely at the mercy of another person's judgement looking at him without a word. They remained silent for a long time.
"I believe you, Max," said y/n in one breath. Then she got up from the armchair and walked over to the large window that overlooked a beautiful forest which now was in darkness, as the sun had already gone down. She couldn't say how much time had passed, but judging from the sky, it had been quite a while. It was still raining very hard, the thunder and roar of falling water had accompanied Max's story. After hearing those words, Max felt a huge weight leave his stomach and looked at her from a distance.
"I don't expect you will ever forgive me," he said as he stood up and drank a Red Bull from the can on the table. He was back to his old Max self, he felt more relaxed now. She stood in silence watching the rain and thought about her mother, every time something important happened in her life, it rained. She smiled as she looked up into the sky and felt relieved too. She turned towards Max.
"I think I'll go back to my hotel now," he said y/n approaching toward the door. At that same moment thunder rumbled loudly and y/n gasped.
"Maybe I'd better drive you back to your hotel in my car" Said Max again embarrassed. He didn't want y/n to get any ideas, of course. But the weather outside was really dangerous and Max didn't want y/n to get soaked again. Another thunderclap. Y/n found herself forced to accept Max's proposal and together they went down to the covered parking lots. Max's car was a black two-seater Aston Martin, really a nice car. Max opened his door, so did y/n and the two got in at the same time.
On the way they spoke little, Max asked y/n how Carlos was doing and y/n told her what she had heard from Caco. They arrived at the hotel a short time later. Max stopped under the canopy at the entrance to the hotel and y/n turned to look at Max. She smiled at him for a moment, then got out of her car. It was already getting very late and y/n decided to change into something of her own and text to Charles if he had any news about Carlos. She took off Max's clothes, looked at his sweater for a moment, there was the Dutch flag under the Red Bul logo. She put it down and wore one that Carlos had given her, one of her favorites. Then she grabbed her cell phone.
There was a message from Charles:
What have you done?!!