Never Again

Chapter 49: Avoidence

Hey guys :) The busses are on strike in Ireland, so instead I spent the morning writing. Time for some much needed perspective from Seb's side!

It was Friday and in between the two practice sessions of the day. He had been seventeenth during first practice and everybody was really concerned if there was something wrong with the car. He could see Keira sitting in the garage discussing something frantically with Rocky and a few of his mechanics were also contributing to the conversation. Sebastian couldn't stop staring at her as she looked as beautiful as ever even while looking flustered. He didn't want to admit that she had been the reason for his crappy position this morning. He was sure that next practice he would be on the pace again, but he couldn't stop thinking about Keira this morning and what had changed between them. She had been so distant ever since he had met her at the airport and this morning she had even bluntly ignored him. He had gone over many things of why this could have been in his head, although it maybe hadn't been that wise to do that while driving.

'Seb, are you even listening?' Britta sounded annoyed and she followed Seb's eyes to find out what was distracting him.

'Yes, I was,' Seb replied and he tore his eyes away from the group of people and smiled innocently at Britta. She had been informing him on his duties after practice and halfway through it had stopped sounding interesting as he had found better things to focus his attention on.

'Repeat what I was telling you then?' she clacked her tongue and was now sounding rather impatient.

'Eh, I have to do some interviews?' he tried, he couldn't come up with a better excuse and he knew it was a rather weak one.

'Glad we both agree on that you weren't listening,' she rolled her eyes and shot him a disapproving glare. 'I know who you were staring at and can I please advise you to be careful again. I don't want any pictures going around from you two together when everybody expects it to be Hanna,' she said warningly.

He was caught again, shit. Britta and Heikki knew everything as they were always around, at moments like this that was really annoying. He was relieved that what had happened between Keira and him somehow had gone unnoticed and he was grateful for that. He knew he had massively fucked up and he knew there was a lot needed to fix it again. Things hadn't been going smoothly between him and Hanna for a long time, but no one knew about that. They had both agreed to keep their life as private as possible, so relationship problems were not really something you wanted to discuss with anybody. Not even his friends knew about it, because he had been too afraid it would somehow be leaked to the media. He had tried working on their relationship for the last couple of months, but they hadn't made any real progress sadly.

He had known Hanna forever and it was so normal to have her around that it had gone unnoticed that they had somehow grown apart. Hanna had her life back home and wasn't really interested in his racing and he was always somewhere around the world or in the factory in Milton Keynes. Although things weren't perfect, he had never intended to cheat on her and he felt disgusting for having done exactly that. He had tried for so long to not let it get that far, but this new fire Keira had ignited in him had clouded his judgement several times. The alcohol and having her on her own had proved too much and he would never forgive himself for that. Women deserved to be treated with respect and he always saw himself as someone who did that, but this hadn't been respectful at all. Not towards Hanna, but also towards Keira, because she didn't even know about Hanna.

He had never been able to bring up Hanna as Keira had been so angry with him when he had kept his true identity from her. He knew he should have told her at that same moment, but he somehow couldn't bring himself to do it. She was having such a horrid time after the break up, that he didn't want to make her feel bad by telling her about his own relationship. He had thought it would upset her, to be confronted by something she had just lost. It was also because he enjoyed spending time with her so much and the fact that she needed someone there to look after her because she obviously had been hurt had made him foolishly decide against it. Things had progressed from then on like he could have never imagined would happen and he had then been afraid that he had misled her and that when he told her now that she would be even angrier. He knew he had to tell her, but he dreaded it as much as he had done when he told Hanna what he had done. He knew that doing that could mean losing her, but it was something that needed to be done. He only had himself to blame for that if it turned out that way, he knew that, but being in this tight title fight hadn't exactly helped him with making the right decisions.