Deep Breath | Daniel Ricciardo

Part Twenty-Three

We'd spent most of that night watching films and making out. I'd got up and headed back to my room to collect my final belongings at about 9am and Daniel left for his flight to Monaco.

Lauren and I landed back in rainy London that afternoon, everyone heading in different directions. Most people going home for a few days to spend time with friends and family.

I'd allowed the assumption to be that I was heading home to see my family, when in fact I was heading for my very much empty apartment. I'd text a few times with Daniel over the following days but nothing really compared to how we were in Baku. I worried that it was just a whirlwind weekend for him, he got his fun and he'd move on. I very much tried to ensure I developed no deep feelings about the situation.

We flew out to the next race in China on the 27th so we'd only had just under a week at home anyway. I had arranged to meet up with Lauren toward the end of the week for a coffee and catch up.

I carefully made it seem like I'd spent time with family and she shared everything she'd done with her mom and the work she had left to do before we headed out. I'd been working pretty much the whole time we had off, it was a good distraction for the lack of a life I had in the weeks away from race weekends.

It was a double header weekend China and then Australia. I knew it was going to be crazy in Australia, it being Daniels home race, so I tried to prepare as much as possible for it.

'Jump in time to the Australian Grand Prix.'

We had a good weekend so far, it had been packed full of engagements for Daniel and media opportunities for Red Bull. He'd had amazing race in China finally making the podium with a P3 finish and now was looking great going into the race here.

We'd spent a lot of time together when the race weekend's started back up. Daniel had got us adjoining rooms for both here and in China. He'd been true to his promise of looking after me. We'd spend some nights together starting in one bed other nights we'd fallen asleep separately with the door between our rooms on the latch. This was Daniel's request so he could come in if I had a nightmare. The nights we started in bed together usually went smoothly and I started to sleep almost straight through in his arms. Some nights I might have stirred and quick tightening of Daniels arms around me brought be back to safety and I'd be able to drop back off.

The nights I'd been alone were not so good. I'd tried in the beginning to stay as quiet as I could if I woke from a nightmare, sometimes managing to wake myself without alerting him. The problem then being I needed to find a way to calm myself, so I'd make my way to go out the door to the pool and he'd hear me. He'd then call me back to his room and ask that I give him 10 minutes to calm me down and if it didn't work he'd come swim with me.

I felt so guilty taking his sleep from him. The nights I had nightmares were bad enough for me but I was disrupting his night.

I had become so close to him so quickly, we'd been having fun. Neither of us had put any labels on anything or even asked the other what we were doing. We were just enjoying each other.

We'd had a lot of fun in the bedroom, but I'd still not had the courage to go all the way with him. For some reason that felt like something more, like if I did that then I'd be giving him something, something I wouldn't get back. But it didn't seem to bother Daniel, he never pushed, he made it clear to me he was happy seeing the pleasure he could give me.

And all I could say is that he was very good at it.