Drive to Survive

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Fifteen

When Max Verstappen awoke the following morning, he had two missed calls from Brad, three unread text messages from Christian, and a whole lot of regrets about the night before.

He should have taken Dylan's offer to skip the dinner and then hid in his room until she was safely back on a plane to England. Unfortunately, he didn't do that. Instead, he went along to the dinner and pretended she didn't exist, delayed showing up to the VIP room for as long as possible to pretend she didn't exist, and then stood on the edge of the dance floor watching her until he could no longer pretend she didn't exist.

Max may be a lot of things but he wasn't a bullshitter. He couldn't lie to himself anymore.

He was ridiculously attracted to Dylan.

She was real and unbelievably beautiful and in a moment of stupidity, fuelled by one too many vodka shots, he'd convinced himself she'd want to dance with a man like him. Most of the time, he didn't even dance in a club but he hadn't been able to resist her. The way she moved, the fit of her dress against her curves, the feeling of having his hands on her hips, it all felt overwhelmingly right.

In those few moments of anonymity, he'd convinced himself that he was right. He'd talked himself into a delusion where she would want to be with someone who had been so awful to her.

Of course she'd looked upset when she turned around and saw him. She'd probably been expecting Charles or one of her pit crew friends, someone more attractive than him anyway.

What a masochistic thing for him to do, to be drawn to someone who wanted nothing to do with him.

Well, he'd refused to stand there and be blatantly reminded that he wasn't Charles Leclerc or Pierre Gasly. He may not have been someone who was so good looking they could attract fans to the sport based on their face alone, but that didn't mean she had to look so heartbroken at the sight of him.

So, he'd walked away, savouring one last look of her in all her messy, out-of-breath beauty. As he'd stormed off the dance floor and out of the club, he did his best not to linger on the smell of vanilla and jasmine that always wrapped around his brain. He resigned himself to the fact that this attraction would be one he had to keep tucked away at the back of his mind.

The ringing of his phone pulled him out of his reflections and he groaned, running a hand through his bed hair and shaking off the sleep before answering, "Yeah?"

"Have you seen Christian's messages?" Brad asked, straight to the point.

"Saw them come in, haven't read them yet."

"We've got a meeting at 11, which is in about half an hour. Can you make it?"

Max wanted nothing more than to switch his light off and go back to sleep for another two or three hours but he was not one to neglect his responsibilities.

"Yeah, that's fine. See you in a bit."

As he unwillingly pulled himself out of bed and grabbed his towel for the shower, he scrolled through Instagram. It was the only social media he could bear to look at during the season as he had more control over the content he viewed, so he didn't have to see so much negative speculation about himself.

There were loads of photos from the race weekend across all the teams, and he saw Carmen and Lily had been posting lots of content together. Magnussen's wife had been back in the paddock with their daughter. He thought all babies looked the same but her pudgy cheeks were admittedly quite cute. Debates about the tyre compounds that had been on offer and whether Ferrari had the right strategy- well, that's an easy answer of no, he thought to himself.