Torn

American GP

Need smiled fondly at her sleepy little girl who'd just lost the fight to keep her eyes open while looking at the phone screen as Seb read to her from his driver's room in Austin, Texas. His voice was extremely comforting and even Neev herself had found her eyes beginning to feel heavy, she just wished that he was here for real so that she could reach out and touch the beautiful face from where the voice came from. He didn't need to prove himself as Anaya's father, he was already a brilliant father and Neev had told him that she didn't expect him to read to their daughter at night when he was away but he'd insisted, not wanting to miss a night unless he really had to. It made Neev love him even more and proved yet again that he was a changed man from the one she'd left behind years ago.

Looking from Britta's iPad to his phone, Seb noticed that Anaya had fallen asleep and so he stopped and put the iPad down to blow a kiss to her, it was as close to kissing her goodnight as he was going to get for now.

Neev quietly left Anaya's bedroom before she spoke, Seb's concerned frown telling her that he noticed something. "I should let you go now, you've got your final race prep to get through."

"Are you ok? You've been quiet."

She entered her bedroom, something else that he noticed but decided not to comment on for the moment. Sitting down on the bed, she yawned; she was struggling to sleep without Seb here. "You've just been reading to Anaya, of course I was quiet."

"Before that, you don't seem yourself. I know we've not been back together for long but I know you well enough to know that you've not been yourself for the last couple of days."

It was time to come clean, keeping secrets was not the way to re-start their life together. "I spoke to Fernando on Thursday, he called me."

Seb bit his tongue, his first instinct being to ask her why it had taken over two days for her tell him this.

She could see that he was annoyed by what she'd just said and she swallowed nervously, there was worse to come. "I know that my timing is really crap and that I should have told you this Thursday night, it's been keeping me awake at night ever since."

"What's he said to you?" He couldn't help but think that Fer might have said some cruel things to her and if he had then he wasn't just going to stand back and do nothing about it.

"He knows everything." She confessed; she felt awful for offloading all this on to him now, right before a race, but she had to warn him, she was so worried that something bad might happen.

He tensed up. Why the hell had she done that?!

"Seb, I'm sorry." She could almost see what was going through his mind just by looking at the scowl on his face. "He's a mess and he kept asking me questions, like did I tell you about the wedding, did I want you to come and stop it, did I ever love him and then he asked if we'd...." She paused as he looked intensely at her through the screen, she could see that he was fighting himself to not yell at her. "I decided to be honest with him but I hadn't planned on telling him that we'd......" She stopped, unable to say the words.

Seb filled in the blanks for her, trying hard to keep his tone even and not raise his voice to her. He didn't want to step into the SF1000 knowing that they'd argued over Fernando. "We had sex behind his back, you can say it Neev."

"He kept pressing me and I.....it just came out and then he hung up on me. I've tried to call him since but he just rejects my calls."

Seb sighed and looked towards the door as Antti tapped politely on it before entering the room. "Can you give me a few minutes?" He asked, waving his trainer away.

Antti looked uneasy, Seb was a few minutes late as it was and would soon have to be leaving for the grid. "The guys are getting a little nervous."

"Tell them I'll be there, but this is important." He gestured again for Antti to leave.