SILENT (MV x CL)

20. ALEX'S PLAN

"I'm okay." Max said but his shaking voice gave away that he was not.

"Are you alone?" Alex asked, worried for Max's wellbeing

"Yes"

"Can you call someone to keep you company?" Alex didn't want Max to be alone after the picture he had just seen. Max thoughts immediately jumped to Charles, he didn't want to be with anyone else right now.

"I don't want anyone with me right now." He told his former teammate, determination in his voice.

Why had Alex been the first one to call him? Yes, they had spend a lot of time together in the Redbull team, making fun of everyone and they'd bonded complaining about everything they hate. However they weren't friends, they'd never shared personal stuff and didn't really talk apart from at the track.

Then Max's mind shot back at what Alex had said in the cab that night after the winnerdinner.

"You like him don't you?"

Had he been that obvious?

"I get if you don't want to talk about it with me, but what happened?" Alex asked Max, taking him out of his thoughts bak to real life.

"I don't really know what happened myself." Max answered unsure and asked a question in order to avoid Alex's. "How bad are the photo's?"

"Not good Max. It looks like you smashed someone to death."

"Fuck, I didn't." Max said as if that wasn't clear to Alex already. Max lost himself in his thoughts again, but he was thinking out loud. "But I did hurt him." He wasn't able to let go of the fact that he had hurt Charles.

"Who?"

Max didn't even hear the question of Alex and continued his monologue. "I hurt him. I told him he was selfish. I bruised him and threw him to the ground. All I did was hurt Charles." He didn't say that particularly to Alex, he just wasn't able to control his thoughts anymore and once they had jumped to Charles he couldn't think about anything else. Not even the fact that he had just straight out told Alex.

Alex listened to Max who continued to tell everything that had happened. He was shocked but not surprised. He had knew something was going on between them. He hadn't expected this. Alex let Max talk, making his worry increase with the second.

Charles' fingertips had started to wrinkle in the water that was cooling down. He listened to the soft melodies coming from his phone.

Joris was scrolling on his phone, obviously coming across the picture of Max. He however decided not to show or tell Charles. He had been through enough heartbreak without Joris reminding him. He had also just calmed down a bit and Joris didn't want to ruin that.

Charles stepped out of the bathtub letting the water out. He couldn't help but glance in the mirror. His naked body looked pale and thinner than usual, maybe because earlier that day he had been laying on that floor with his had in the toilet. He couldn't think about that without feeling bad, Max had been there with him.

3 days later, 27th of December

The past couple of days Max had to deal with angry PR calls, online meeting and on top of that heartbreak. He had made some sort of lousy statement about how he had injured his hand in a boxing training by accidentally hitting his hand against the wall.

Alex had called multiple times to check up on Max everyday. Max had blurted out everything in that first call, adding Alex and Lily to the list of the select group of people that knew about him and Charles.

Alex had been a real good support and Max had actually started to grow fond of their calls and him. He often tried to make Max laugh, forget his misery for a second, sometimes it worked, but overall Max felt very sad and lonely.