Fifty Shades Of Red | Charles Leclerc

10. Rivalry

                               Hailey's pov

"For the hundredth time, I'm telling you Christian, nothing happened, I swear." I say to my team principal, who has been pacing around in front of me for the past twenty minutes.

"Then why was he there then?" Christian says and turns to look at me "Did you tell him anything about our strategies?"

"What?" I ask in disbelief "I told him nothing, Charles was there because he was mad at me and wanted to confront me."

"Yeah and he would do that by sneaking inside your motorhome?"

"I had no idea he was there." I say and Christian turns to look out of the window "You have to believe me."

Christian lets out a long sigh while stroking his forehead with one of his hands, clearly stressed and unpleased by this situation.

"You have no idea how many problems this will cost us. The media is already going crazy with their assumptions."

Charles was the one that was standing in my room but yet I still feel like it was partially my fault. Maybe if I avoided Charles like I said I would when I joined formula one then maybe we wouldn't be here right now.

"How can I fix it?" I ask while letting out a slow sigh.

"I'm... we're going to talk with Vasseur and then I'll decide if I'll report it or not."

Christian opens his office's door and we leave the Redbull motorhome while I follow behind him.

We walk towards the Ferrari motorhome and I hesitate a bit when it comes to walking in.

"Wait here." Christian says and walks towards an open door, leaving me standing there alone. They've been expecting us.

"Come sit."

I look towards where the voice came from and I see Charles sitting on a couch, looking at his phone.

"I'm fine here." I tell him and shift my attention away from him.

"I don't bite." A smirk appears on Charles' face while he looks up at me.

"Well I do." I tell him and he chuckles.

"They're going to be in there awhile but...suit yourself."

I stand there for what feels like forever, trying to distract myself. I even take a walk around the room but my feet start feeling weak so I just give up and take a seat as further away from Charles as I can.

From the corner of my eye I can see Charles looking my way and grinning.

"Are you always so stubborn?" He asks but I decide to ingnore him and not give him the satisfaction.

"Are you just going to ignore my presence?" He continues to ask but I just look ahead.

That's the plan.

Suddenly he gets up and moves closer to me, so close that our knees are almost touching. Charles places one of his arms over the top of the couch, near my shoulders which irritates me even more. In fact, his entire presence irritates me right now.

"Ever heard of personal space?" I ask him with a flat tone.

"So now you're talking to me?"

I roll my eyes at his comment.

"Why do you always roll your eyes at me?"

"Because you're annoying and I like pushing your buttons." I turn to look at him and give him a fake smile.

"Try unbuttoning them, you'd like it more."

"Can you stop doing that?" I turn away from him, hiding the fact that my cheeks are turning red right now.

Definitely not thinking about Charles without a shirt on right now.

"Doing what?" He asks 'clueless'.

"Flirting with me. I'm still mad at you."

Charles leans in, his lips close to my ear.

"I can tell you secretly enjoy it." He whispers.

"Just the opposite." I place my hand on his face, pushing him away "It makes me want to throw up."

"Liar." He mumbles and I pretend I didn't hear him.

"Well, if you want my opinion-" Charles continues but I interrupt him before he can even finish.

"I don't." I say and I hear him sigh "I have my own."

A few minutes later a guy appears in front of us and tells Charles that Vasseur and Christian want to talk with him, alone, so he gets up from the couch.

I can finally breathe freely again.

"I'll see you after the race?" He asks and I look at him confused. We usually never interact at the end of the races with only a few exceptions.

"We had a deal." Charles then adds and I remember about what we agreed on. I was actually hoping he would forget about that entire thing.

"Unless you want to back out?" Charles taunts as if he read my mind and I look at him with a serious face.

"Never."

Charles doesn't know it but I'm not the type of person to back out or give up, so that's not happening anytime soon.

Charles opens the door where Christian previously walked into and winks at me before starting to get in.

I let out an irritated sigh and stick up my middle finger at him.

—-————-

After awhile of sitting on the couch and staring at absolutely nothing, some loud talking could be heard from the room.

Is that Charles talking loudly? More like screaming.

I try to make out what is being said but with the door closed it's kind of hard. My heart starts breating faster and I realise that this whole situation is making me nervous.

What is making Charles this upset for him to act out? But then again, that dude definitely has anger issues.

Suddenly, the door is open forcefully and Charles walks out with an angry expression. He doesn't stop to look at me or say anything, he just leaves.

"Hailey, they're waiting for you." The guy from before tells me and I slowly get up.

Now I really don't want to go in there.

I take a deep breath and walk in, greeting Vasseur and taking a seat in front of both team principals.

"Hailey..." Vasseur begins "You probably know by now that we have a delicate situation in our hands because of what happened today."

I slightly nod, my fingers that are under the table playing nervously with each other.

"The media and the other teams have taken notice on it and think that Redbull and Ferrari have some kind of alliance going on, which is why we always end up with such high results and that the whole rivalry thing it's just a cover up and this is damaging our image."
Christian continues.

"We both discussed it and we came to the conclusion that the only way to fix this is to come up with another cover up."

I look at Vasseur and then at Christian, holding my breath.

"You and Charles are going to commit to a pr relationship."

"We're what?!"

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IT'S ABOUT TO GET INTENSE 🫢
THANKS FOR READING ❤️