System Failure - Chapter 91: Monaco - Part 2
Pairing: Max Verstappen x Dr. Anastasia "Ana" Wolff (Original Character)
Summary:
Max Verstappen to Mercedes? The paddock is buzzing. The media’s in meltdown.
Dr. Anastasia “Ana” Wolff, Mercedes’ notoriously brilliant, emotionally unavailable lead systems engineer and Toto Wolff’s eldest daughter, is not handling it well. Because Max isn’t just a potential signing, he’s the man she’s been sleeping with in secret for nearly a decade.
And if the rumours are true, and Max Verstappen really is joining Mercedes, then Ana’s carefully compartmentalised world is about to explode.
Warnings and Notes: None for once, I think. Well, unless you count Ana's super brain. Yes, that hotel actually does exist in real life. Would a wedding like Max and Ana's be possible there? I kinda doubt it, but go with it, please.
For Housekeeping Reasons, this is fiction. I don't know any of these people in real life. The world portrayed in this story is obviously not real life, and I am sure that none of the people mentioned are anything like I portray them in this piece of fiction. (Apparently, this needs to be said for some of the people in my inbox.)
Let me know if I missed something else, and I'll add it!
As always big thanks to @llirawolf , who listens to me ramble.
Maison Étoiles, Monaco - 12 October 2025
By the time they got back to Monaco, Max was exhausted in a way he found personally offensive.
He had spent enough of his life exhausted that the sensation itself did not bother him.
Race weekends did that. Jet lag did that. Bad races did that. Good races too, sometimes, if they were the sort of good that required fighting the car, the track, the tyres, and the entire concept of physics at once.
This was different.
This was useless exhaustion.
This was sitting too long with his leg angled badly in cars and aircraft. This was pain medication making his body slower without making his mind quieter.
This was Scotland still clinging to him somehow, in the damp smell of his jacket, in the bag of biscuits Sally had pressed into his hands, in the memory of John calling him the Dutch lad with just enough affection that Max had not known what to do with it.
This was also the knowledge that Gerhard Berger would be in Monaco by Wednesday.
That he had agreed to listen.
That listening was not acceptance.
That he was still thinking about Toto in John’s garage, saying it as if it were simple.
You can listen to someone’s reasoning and still not accept their apology.
Max knew how to overtake at two hundred and ninety kilometres an hour through a gap that only existed if one believed in it before the other driver did.
He knew how to manage tyre temperatures through traffic.
He knew how to feel, through his hands and feet and spine, when a car was about to give him less than it had promised.
He did not know why that sentence felt like learning a new braking point at a track he had driven for years.
When they reached Ana’s apartment, Ana moved into her evening systems immediately.
That was one of the things Max liked about her.
Other people came home and collapsed. Ana came home and restored order as if the house itself required reassurance.
Bags were put in the correct place. Medication was checked. His crutches were leaned where he could reach them without being an idiot, as she had put it. The kitchen lights were turned on low. The terrace doors were checked even though no one had opened them.
Max sat on the edge of the bed and watched her unpack the little bag of things she had brought from Scotland.
She was tired too.
Not in the same way. Ana’s exhaustion was rarely loud. It gathered in the tiny delays between movements. In the way she stood too still before choosing the next task. In the slight inward pull of her shoulders when she thought no one was noticing.
Max noticed.
Of course he noticed.
He had been reading Ana Wolff for nearly ten years.
That was the thing people did not understand.
They thought she was unreadable because they were looking for normal signs.
Smiles, easy affection, visible softness, obvious emotional weather. She was not responsive in the way people expected.
If you entered a corner with the wrong assumptions, you missed the apex entirely and then blamed the car for not telling you sooner.
Ana was like driving something difficult in changing conditions.
You had to learn where the grip was.
You had to feel the balance before the oversteer arrived.
You had to know that the silence before a sharp answer could mean irritation, or fear, or too much sensory input, or that she was trying to phrase something honestly and not wound anyone with the first draft.
You had to know that when she made tea and did not drink it, she was worried.
That when she reorganized a shelf she had already organized, she was processing something she could not yet say.
That when she touched the back of his neck for one second while walking past him, it meant I am here.
Max knew.
Not everything.
Never everything.
That was not how Ana worked.
But enough.
After a moment, Ana turned toward him and became practical again. “You need to shower.”
Max made a face.
Ana raised one eyebrow.
He sighed. “I know.”
“Your leg cannot get wet.”
“I know.”
“You need the cover.”
“I know.”
“And the chair.”
“I know.”
“And you cannot stand without holding the rail.”
“Nastya.”
She stared at him.
Max stared back. “I know,” he said.
“You say that while frequently behaving as though you do not.”
“I behave fine.”
“You tried to hop from the bed to the bathroom yesterday.”
“It was one time.”
“It was stupid one time.”
“It worked.”
“It did not. You almost fell into the suitcase.”
“Almost is not the same as did.”
Ana closed her eyes briefly.
Max smiled.
He loved annoying her.
Not properly annoying her. Not hurting her. Not making her life harder when she was genuinely strained. But this, the little arguments, the back-and-forth that had years behind it.
The way her mouth tightened like she was fighting amusement. The way she pretended he was unreasonable when both of them knew she liked having someone in the room who could make her stop.
She opened her eyes. “Shower,” she said.
“Yes, boss.”
“I am not your boss.”
“You are very bossy.”
“I am simply correct.”
“Same thing.”
Ana gave him a look and went into the bathroom.
Max followed more slowly, because broken limbs were inconvenient and crutches were evil.
The bathroom was already set up.
Of course it was.
Ana had done it before dinner, probably while he had been on the sofa pretending not to fall asleep.
The shower chair was in place. Towels were folded on the heated rail. The waterproof cast cover lay on the counter. His clothes for after were stacked neatly beside the sink: soft shorts, loose T-shirt, clean boxers. Pain medication and water had been placed within reach for later.
A whole process.
They had one now.
Max hated needing a process. He loved that Ana had built one anyway.
The first few times she had helped him shower, he had been worse about it. Not because he was embarrassed exactly. He had very little modesty in the general sense, and even less with Ana. She had seen him in far less dignified situations than standing on one leg in a bathroom with a plastic cover over his cast.
It had been the needing.
That had been the problem.
The slowness. The balance. The fact that he could not simply move his own body through the world with the automatic certainty he was used to.
The fact that Ana had to stand close with one hand on his waist and another ready at his elbow because if his balance shifted badly, both of them knew he would try to catch himself before he remembered he could not.
The first time, he had snapped at her.
Ana had gone very still, then said, “You are angry at your leg. Do not redirect.”
And Max had felt like an idiot.
Because she had been right. Of course she had been right.
Now they had rules.
No unnecessary speed.
No heroic balancing.
No pretending pain wasn’t a factor.
No sexual activity in the shower while he had a broken limb, which Max considered an overly specific and completely discriminatory rule.
Ana had added that one after he had tried his luck two showers ago.
He still thought it was worth protesting.
Ana picked up the cast cover. “Sit.”
Max looked at the closed toilet lid.
Then at her. “Take my shirt off first.”
“Sit first.”
“It is easier standing.”
“It is safer sitting.”
“You like me shirtless.”
“I like you alive.”
“Those are not mutually exclusive.”
Ana looked unimpressed.
Max sighed dramatically and sat.
Ana knelt in front of him to ease the cover over the cast, her hands careful around the edges. She checked the seal twice, then a third time, pressing gently with her thumbs.
Max looked down at her.
Her hair was loose now, falling forward over one shoulder. She had changed into soft black leggings and an oversized sweater after they arrived, but the sleeves were pushed up, because Ana could not leave sleeves alone when she was doing something with her hands.
She looked tired. Beautiful. His.
Not in the possession way. Not really. Max had never thought he owned Ana, even when every ugly part of him wanted to put walls around her and dare the world to try. She was not something to own.
But she was his in the way a track became his after enough laps. Not because he controlled it, but because he knew where it lived under his skin. Because he had learned its cambers and shadows. Because no matter what changed, some part of him recognized the racing line.
Ana glanced up. “What?”
“You are very serious.”
“You have a broken leg. It requires seriousness.”
“You can be less serious while taking off my trousers.”
Her hands paused on the cast cover.
Then she looked up at him slowly. “No.”
Max grinned. “No what?”
“No to whatever tone that was.”
“It was a normal tone.”
“It was a Max tone.”
He leaned back on his hands, watching her stand.
“You could shower with me,” he said.
Ana reached for his shirt. “No.”
“You haven’t considered it.”
“I have considered it.”
“When?”
“When you opened your mouth.”
She helped him pull the shirt over his head, careful not to make him twist too far. Max lifted his arms obediently, because he liked the way she touched him when she was pretending it was purely functional.
It was never purely functional.
Not with Ana.
People missed that too.
They would see her checking the medication schedule and think it was clinical. They would hear her say your next dose is in forty-five minutes and think it was practical. They would watch her wrap his cast cover and assume she was simply solving a problem.
Max felt the love in the pressure of her fingers.
In the fact that the towels were warm because she knew he hated being cold after a shower.
In the way she had put the chair exactly where he would not have to angle his bad leg too sharply.
In the fact that his shampoo was already open because dealing with lids one-handed annoyed him.
Ana loved like preparation.
Like telemetry. Like seeing the failure point before the part broke.
Max had always been good at feeling a car underneath him.
Ana made him feel loved the same way.
Through data other people did not think counted.
She tossed his shirt into the laundry basket, then reached for his waistband.
Max smiled. “You are undressing me.”
“Yes.”
“Very romantic.”
“Medical.”
“Could be both.”
“No.”
“Nastya.”
“Max.”
He put one hand over hers before she could pull the shorts down.
She looked at him.
He softened his grin into something more persuasive.
“Get undressed with me.”
“No.”
“You say no too fast.”
“Because you already know the answer.”
“We are both tired.”
“Yes.”
“Showering together would be easier.”
“That is false.”
“It would save water.”
“Max.”
“Good for the planet.”
“You drive Formula One cars for a living.”
“That is why I have to do my part at home.”
Ana stared at him.
He held her gaze with the solemnity of a man making a very reasonable environmental argument.
Her mouth twitched.
Victory.
Very small victory, but still.
“You are impossible,” she said.
“I am injured.”
“That does not help your argument.”
“It means you should be nice to me.”
“I am helping you shower.”
“You could help more.”
“I am not having shower sex with you while you have one broken limb.”
Max made an offended sound. “I did not say sex.”
Ana’s stare became flatter.
He smiled. “I implied it.”
“Yes.”
“So we agree.”
“No.”
“It would be fine.”
“It would not be fine.”
“We could be careful.”
“No.”
“I am very good with balance.”
“You almost fell into a suitcase this morning.”
“One time.”
“And shower floors are slippery.”
“We have a mat.”
“Max.”
He sighed, long and wounded. “You are very strict.”
“You already have one broken limb.”
“Yes.”
“I would prefer not to explain a second injury to your doctors.”
“We could lie.”
“I will not lie to medical professionals because you were horny and overconfident.”
Max smiled at her. “You think I am overconfident?”
“I know you are.”
“You like that.”
“Not in this context.”
He laughed.
That made her face soften despite herself.
Ana pulled his shorts down carefully, helped him shift, handed him the rail when he stood, and kept one hand hovering near his ribs even though he was stable.
Mostly stable.
Stable enough.
“Your turn,” Max said.
Ana looked at him.
“I said no.”
“Not for sex.”
“No.”
“For a shower.”
“You do not need me inside the shower.”
“I need emotional support!”
“You do not.”
“I have trauma.”
“You have drama.”
“That too.”
Ana pressed her lips together.
He could see the moment she calculated the cost of refusing versus the cost of agreeing. That was also Ana. Love did not make her impulsive. It made her run probabilities more quickly.
He shifted his weight slightly, just enough for her eyes to flick down.
“Nastya,” he said, softer.
Not joking this time.
Her gaze lifted.
He did not know what his face looked like.
Tired, probably. Annoyed with his leg. Still full of Scotland. Still carrying Gerhard and Baku and Toto’s garage voice. Still wanting her close in the simplest way, skin and water and the absence of everyone else’s grief.
Ana saw whatever it was.
Of course she did.
Her expression changed.
“All right,” she said.
Max smiled.
“But no sex.”
He opened his mouth.
“No,” she said again.
“I didn’t say anything.”
“You were about to negotiate.”
“I was about to thank you.”
“No, you were not.”
“I could have been.”
“You were not.”
Max leaned on the rail and watched as she pulled her sweater over her head.
He loved her body.
This was not news.
He loved it with the blunt certainty of a man who had spent years trying not to look at her too long in rooms where he had no right to want her.
He loved the clean lines of her shoulders, the softness of her stomach, the small freckle near her hip, the scar on one knee from some childhood accident she had once described in such technical detail that he still had no idea whether she had fallen from a tree or defeated it.
But what undid him most was not that she got undressed.
It was that she folded her clothes.
Even now.
Even after everything.
Bra, leggings, underwear, all placed neatly on the counter. Efficient. Precise. Slightly ridiculous.
Max watched her step out of herself layer by layer and still organize the evidence.
He smiled.
Ana caught it. “What?”
“You fold your clothes before showering.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“So they are not on the floor.”
“They are dirty.”
“Not all of them.”
“That is not an argument.”
“It is a little bit an argument.”
“It is not.”
She stepped into the shower first, adjusted the water, checked temperature with the inside of her wrist, then looked back at him.
“Slowly.”
Max obeyed.
Mostly.
Getting into the shower was an operation. One hand on the rail. Ana’s hand on his waist. Bad leg protected. Good foot placed exactly where she told him. Shower chair waiting. He hated it less when she did not fuss verbally.
Ana had learned that.
He had learned to let her steady him without making a joke every time.
Mostly.
Once he was seated, she stood in front of him under the spray, hair darkening as water ran through it. The bathroom filled with steam, softening the edges of the mirror, the glass, the whole city beyond the walls.
For a moment, Max forgot to be annoyed.
Ana reached for the shampoo.
He caught her wrist.
She looked down. “What?”
“Come here.”
“I am here.”
“Closer.”
She looked at him for one second too long.
Then she stepped between his knees, careful of his leg, and let him put his hands on her hips.
Not pulling.
Just holding.
Her skin was warm and wet under his palms.
He leaned forward and pressed his forehead against her sternum.
Ana went very still.
Not because she did not want it.
Because sudden tenderness still surprised her sometimes when it was directed at her in a form she could not immediately categorize.
Then her hand came to the back of his head.
Careful.
Fingers sliding into his wet hair.
Max closed his eyes.
The water hit Ana’s shoulders and ran down between them.
For a while, neither of them spoke.
This was what he had wanted, really.
Not sex.
(Though also sex, obviously, because he was injured, not dead.)
But this. Her close enough.
The day had been full of families.
Sally and John. Susie and Toto. Jack. Ana and Toto in some complicated orbit of hurt and forgiveness. Max and the ghost of Jos. Gerhard waiting on Wednesday with explanations Max had agreed to hear and might not accept.
He had not realized how much he needed one room where he did not have to think through anyone else’s reasoning.
Only Ana. Only water. Only the steady pressure of her hand at the back of his head.
After a while, she said, “You are quiet.”
“I am enjoying my emotional support shower.”
Ana’s fingers paused.
Then moved again through his hair.
“You are ridiculous.”
“Yes.”
Another silence.
Then Ana said, “Max?”
The tone was different.
He lifted his head.
She was looking down at him with an expression he recognized immediately and still could not easily name. It was not fear. Not quite. Not ordinary worry either. Ana’s worry usually arrived with a list.
This was softer.
More exposed.
“What?” he asked.
Her thumb moved once near his temple.
“You know that I do love you, right?”
Max stared at her.
For half a second, his brain did nothing useful at all.
Then he said, “What?”
Ana’s mouth tightened.
Not irritation.
Regret, maybe.
She looked away slightly, toward the tiled wall.
“I know I do not always say things correctly.”
Max’s hands tightened on her hips.
“Nastya.”
“And I know that other people probably make it more obvious. More frequently. With words. Or—” She paused, visibly searching. “Spontaneous affection. Or whatever the social expectation is for romantic partners.”
Max stared at her.
The water ran down the side of her face, but he could tell her eyes were too bright for it to be only water.
“I am bad at it,” she said.
“You are not.”
“I am.”
“No.”
“Max.”
He stopped.
Ana swallowed.
“I am bad at emotions,” she said, with the bluntness of someone reporting a technical deficiency she had not yet managed to resolve. “I can identify them. Sometimes. I can act on them in structured ways. I can make decisions based on them if I have time. But I forget to say things. I assume things are understood because they are obvious to me. I become a closed book, and then I am surprised when people have not read it.”
Max’s chest hurt.
Ana looked at him. “And sometimes I worry,” she said, quieter now, “that you do not know.”
Max looked at her for a long moment.
Then he huffed a laugh. Not because it was funny. But becuase she was standing naked in the shower with him, helping him wash because his leg was broken, looking genuinely concerned that he might not know she loved him.
His Nastya.
His terrifying, difficult, brilliant Nastya, who had rearranged half her life around making sure he had what he needed before he asked for it.
Who had texted Raymond before the plane landed because Gerhard Berger might try to turn an apology into pressure.
Who had accepted Toto’s wedding fund not because she needed money, but because she had understood the love underneath it. Who let Max call her Nastya.
Who had built exits instead of walls and then worried the exits looked too much like walls.
“You think I don’t know?” he asked.
Ana’s expression did not change. “Sometimes.”
“Nastya.”
“I do not want you to feel unloved because I am not demonstrative in the correct way.”
He laughed again, softer this time.
Then he pulled her closer as much as he could without disturbing his leg.
She came willingly.
He looked up at her.
“I have known you for nearly ten years,” he said.
Ana’s mouth parted slightly. “I know.”
He reached up and touched her face, thumb moving over the wet line of her cheek. “I know that you love me.”
Her eyes searched his. He let her.
This was another kind of racing, maybe.
Not in the fast way.
In the knowing way.
The reading. The listening.
The constant adjustment to something alive underneath your hands.
“People think you are hard to read,” Max said.
“I am.”
“Yes,” he agreed. “If they are trying to read you like someone else.”
Ana went still.
Max continued, because he had never been good at poetic things but he could do this. He could explain it in the language he had. “You are like a race car,” he said.
Ana blinked.
Then said, dryly, “Romantic.”
“Shut up.”
Her mouth twitched.
He smiled.
“A difficult car,” Max said. “Not bad. Difficult. You cannot just drive it like whatever you drove before and then complain it does not respond. You have to learn it. The braking, the rotation, where the grip comes from, what it does when the temperature changes. You have to feel the little things before they become big things.”
Ana stared at him. The shower hissed around them.
“And after enough laps,” he said, “you know.”
Her face changed.
Max’s thumb moved over her cheek again.
“You think you don’t tell me things,” he said. “But you do.”
“I do not.”
“You do.”
“How?”
“You put my pills beside water because you know I will forget if they are in the packet. You open the shampoo before I shower because the cap annoys me when my hands are wet. You sit beside me when I am pretending I don’t want company. You touch my neck when you leave a room. You check my crutches are on the correct side of the bed. You let me call you Nastya. You tell Toto yes to the wedding fund because you know he needs to give you something and you are kind enough to accept it.”
Ana was very still now.
Too still.
But not locked.
Listening.
Max looked at her and felt so much love it became almost annoying.
“You love people all the time,” he said. “You just don’t always announce it.”
Her eyes shone.
“That is inefficient,” she said, voice smaller than usual.
“What?”
“Announcing.”
Max smiled.
“There she is.”
Ana made a sound that was almost a laugh and almost not.
Then she looked away, but he caught her chin gently and brought her gaze back.
“I know,” he said. “Okay?”
She swallowed. “Okay.”
“And I like reading you.”
Her brow furrowed faintly. “You do?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because it means I get to know you.”
Ana’s face went open for one dangerous second before she tried to close it again. Max did not let her by making a big thing out of it. He only slid his hand back to her hip and leaned forward, pressing a kiss just below her ribs.
Ana’s fingers tightened in his hair.
“You are very good at saying things sometimes,” she said.
“Only sometimes?”
“Do not become arrogant.”
“Too late.”
She huffed a breath.
There.
That was almost laughter.
Max smiled against her skin.
Then he tilted his head up. “So, since you really love me…”
“No.”
“You don’t know what I was going to ask.”
“I do.”
“It could have been innocent.”
“It was not.”
“I am injured.”
“You are horny.”
“Also injured.”
“May, you are not using your leg as emotional blackmail to negotiate shower sex.”
“Not emotional blackmail. Medical context.”
“No.”
“Hand stuff?”
Ana stared at him.
Max smiled.
“I am asking respectfully.”
“You are asking while seated on a shower chair with a waterproof cast cover.”
“Yes.”
“That is not seductive.”
“You are naked. I am naked. It is a start.”
“You already have one broken limb.”
“My hands are fine.”
“Max.”
He grinned.
Ana closed her eyes, as if seeking strength from the universe and finding none.
“You are impossible,” she said.
“You love me.”
“Yes,” she said.
It was immediate. That was the best part.
Max’s grin softened. “I know.”
She looked at him for a second longer.
Then she reached for the shampoo. “Hair.”
“Yes.”
“I am not rewarding you.”
“This feels like reward.”
“It is hygiene.”
“Could be both.”
“You are very annoying.”
“But loved.”
Ana’s hands sank into his hair, working shampoo through it with firm, careful pressure.
“Yes,” she said, quieter now. “But loved.”
Max closed his eyes.
Steam curled around them. The cast cover crinkled faintly when he shifted. His leg still hurt. Wednesday still existed. Baku still existed. Gerhard Berger still existed. Red Bull, Jos, all of it waited outside the bathroom door like problems for another room.
Inside, there was Ana.
Her hands in his hair.
Her love in every precise, practical motion.
Max could read that just fine.
***
Text Messages: Dr. Anastasia “Ana” Wolff & Nico Rosberg
Nico:Ana.
Ana:Yes?
Nico:I looked through the photobook.
Ana:All of it?
Nico:Yes.
Ana:Good.
Nico:That is your response?
Ana:You were asked to review all of it.
Nico:I know what I was asked to do.
Ana:Then yes. Good.
Nico:Ana.
Ana:Was there an issue with the file?
Nico:No.
Ana:Color grading?
Nico:No.
Ana:Image resolution?
Nico:No.
Ana:Pagination?
Nico:No.
Ana:Then why are you saying my name like that?
Nico:Because I am emotionally compromised.
Ana:Oh.
Nico:Yes. Oh.
Ana:Is this about page forty-two?
Nico:It is about every page.
Nico:Ana, it is beautiful.
Ana:Thank you.
Nico:No, I mean it. It is really beautiful.
Ana:Good. I can get it printed then.
Nico:That is your response?
Ana:Yes.
Nico:I am telling you that you made a remembrance book for Roscoe so beautiful that I had to sit down halfway through, and your response is print authorization?
Ana:That was the purpose of sending it to you.
Nico:The purpose was for me to tell you whether it was good.
Ana:And you did.
Nico:You are impossible.
Ana:Was there anything you would change before printing?
Nico:No.
Ana:You are sure?
Nico:Yes.
Ana:You do not think the section with the paddock photos is too long?
Nico:No.
Ana:Lewis may not want that much public life in it.
Nico:It does not feel public.
Ana:It is literally the paddock.
Nico:Yes, but you made it feel like Roscoe’s paddock. Not Lewis Hamilton’s paddock.
Ana:That was the intention.
Nico:I know. You achieved it.
Ana:Good.
Nico:The photo of Roscoe asleep under the hospitality table destroyed me.
Ana:I did not want it to feel like a memorial post.
Nico:It does not.
Ana:Or like a fan edit.
Nico:It definitely does not.
Ana:Or like something made for other people to react to.
Nico:It feels like something made just for Lewis.
Ana:Good.
Nico:The end made me cry.
Ana:You cried?
Nico:Yes.
Ana:I am sorry.
Nico:Do not apologize.
Ana:I made you cry.
Nico:That was not a technical error.
Ana:It feels like one.
Nico:It is not.
Ana:Okay.
Nico:Lewis will cry too. That is not bad.
Ana:I know.
Nico:Do you?
Ana:Intellectually.
Nico:Ah.
Ana:I do not want to hurt him.
Nico:You won’t.
Ana:The book will hurt.
Nico:Yes.
Ana:So technically…
Nico:Ana.
Ana:What?
Nico:There is hurt that opens the wound and hurt that lets someone touch it without being alone.
Ana:That was almost wise.
Nico:Almost?
Ana:Do not get arrogant.
Nico:I am a world champion. Too late.
Ana:One-time world champion.
Nico:Unnecessary.
Ana:Do you think matte paper or silk?
Nico:Ana.
Ana:What?
Nico:We are back to printing?
Ana:That was the purpose of the review.
Nico:Matte.
Ana:That was my thought.
Nico:Then why ask?
Ana:Verification.
Nico:Of course.
Ana:Cover material?
Nico:The dark green linen.
Ana:Not black?
Nico:Not black.
Ana:Why?
Nico:Black feels like funeral. Green feels like Lewis.
Ana:Green was my first choice.
Nico:Then choose green.
Ana:Embossing?
Nico:Yes.
Ana:Silver or blind emboss?
Nico:Blind.
Ana:That was also my thought.
Nico:Ana, did you need me for anything besides confirming what you already knew?
Ana:Yes.
Nico:What?
Ana:Whether it was emotionally wrong.
Nico:It is not emotionally wrong.
Nico:It is kind. It is careful. It is private. It is very sad. And it is beautiful.
Ana:Thank you.
Nico:You’re welcome.
Ana:I will get it printed.
Nico:Good.
Nico:Lewis will love it.
Ana:I hope so.
Nico: He will.
