LOVE OR RIDE | LESTAPPEN

chapter seventeen - sweet, forgettable sins

Max

I'm looking at the calendar on my phone, not knowing what to do anymore. We are just flying to Monaco and I'm starting to regret agreeing. I have a lot of problems right now, and partying with this man will complicate everything even more. It was for him that I made so many enemies and I regret it. I damn well regret trusting him so soon, because now I'm the enemy in my own team. I feel like an unwanted scoring boy there.

"Max?" I hear Charles' voice across from me.

"Yes?" I lift my head, meeting his gaze. I still feel strange when he calls my name after the way he treated me. I could have passed by indifferently at the time, leaving him alone, but when I saw him sitting in the corner, clenching his eyelids as he got pepper spray in his eyes it made me unable to leave. He looked like a little kid who doesn't know what to do.

"Shall we have a drink?" he glances toward the bottle of vodka.

"How are you going to hold the glass? With your teeth?" I kidding, to which he opens his mouth in surprise and looks at me in shock, not expecting me to say such a thing.

"You asshole!" he shouts, at which I start laughing. "We always have your hands available." He shifts, sitting down next to me.

"Oh, yeah?" I ask, turning toward him.

"God, go." He mumbles, turning his face the other way.

I grab the bottle and unscrew it, which Charles hears and turns curiously toward me. I pour the alcohol into two glasses, then top off the juice and throw in ice cubes from the bucket it's in to cool the bottle.

"Professionally. I thought you were making me drink from the bottle." He says, smiling.

"Don't tempt." I wink at him and glance uncontrollably at his hands.

I immediately have that day in my mind. We were all so terrified, thinking the worst, and he came out of it with almost no injuries and still had the strength in the hospital to taunt me like that.

"Here's to your victory?" he asks as he crookedly catches the glass in two hands and lifts it up.

"Here's to your health, Charles." I lift my drink and, without waiting for him to say anything, tip the glass, drinking its entire contents at once. I need alcohol today more than ever, because sober I will think too much about being careful in his company, which will ruin everything.

As I put down my glass, I see the boy looking at me with a smile, and his drink is not moved. I furrow my eyebrows, already wanting to ask what this is all about, but suddenly the pilot notifies us that we will be landing, so Leclerc drinks the contents of the glass and also sets it down on the table.

"No one will see us on the yacht?" I make sure. I don't want to have a problem with Christian again. Things haven't been very interesting between us lately.

"No, no one goes far out."

After a while we are already at the airport. We leave the plane in silence and walk toward the substituted car. I open the door, waiting for Charles to get inside. I can see perfectly well how he smiles under his breath that he making me a chauffeur. We both get into the back seats and listen to music on the radio in silence as we drive toward where his yacht is standing.

"Max?" he asks quietly, leaning his head against my shoulder. I shift my gaze to him, looking closely at the still softly red eyes after the pepper spray incident.

"Yes?"

"Can we forget about everything and everyone today and spend it having fun?" he asks hopefully. I can see it in his eyes. He's tired of what's happened to him, the media, the constant questions about when he'll return to Formula, and watching Oliver do so well in his place.