I swallow, heartbroken at the pain in his eyes. Even worse, he’s right. Every time he’s tried to fix things, I’ve pushed him away, doubted him, focused only on my own finish line.
“Since I gave you this favor, I thought, maybe it was safe to ask one for me. This was the only thing I ever asked of you, Lorina—to let me love you, my way, while we still have the chance.”
I have no air left in my body, my eyes wide in shock.
“And you could not even give to me this one simple thing,” he continues, his voice growing louder with every word, “perché you must have everything your way, your time, so you can win, and fuck anybody who wants different.” His eyes narrow, everything about him sharpening back into the fiercest rival I’ve ever known. “Vaffanculo, you and your waiting,” he says, gesturing harshly. “You are not the princess you think you are.”
Massimo turns away, walking around the end of the bed, his hands bluntly still after how animated they were only a minute ago.
My mind stutters, disbelief turning my veins cold.
He loves me? He’s never even said that he liked me. He flirts with me sometimes, but I always thought it was a joke.
How can he love me when all we do is fight?
Massimo rips back the covers on his bed, shaking his head in frustration. “Go,” he says, sitting against the pillows once more and kicking at the comforter until it’s bunched by the footboard. “You need to go back to your room. I want to sleep now. You make me esausto.”
I hug my arms around myself, more than a few tears slipping down my cheeks. I don’t even know if it’s because we’re fighting—again—or because he’s sending me away after saying he loves me.
It’s terrifying: the mess I’ve stumbled into. I also don’t know whether I created it in the first place. I don’t think I’ve led him on. Maybe I did. Is it leading someone on when you don’t know if you like the fact that he loves you?
“Lorina,” he says sharply, and my eyes snap to his. Hope flutters in my chest that he used his own private name for me, even now. “You go, or you stay. But if you stay, no more talking. And this time, you watch the crash.”
I sniffle and nod, wiping at my eyes before I walk to his bed, sitting beside him with my back to his pillows. He rewinds the last few minutes of the video, and my eyes stray to him as he presses play and focuses intently on the race. My shoulders instantly soften.
Honestly, I don’t know how I didn’t see it. Massimo has always shone a little brighter, his words cutting a little deeper than all the other guys I’ve spent my life battling against. Because he’s the kind of guy who will watch a video of my crash but not laugh at it like Santos would. The kind of man who defends your right to race to the peers who cut you down behind your back, but you hear about his tirade on gender equality from Billy and Mason. Not from Massimo.
My eyes drop to his lips, and I don’t regret a lot of things, but I’m starting to regret the last ten minutes. Because he’s the kind of man whose eyes appear to know every curve of my body, but his hands never have. And that is absolutely my doing, for better or for worse.
Massimo looks at me, and my pulse takes off. The breaths I’m pulling in give no satisfaction, and if he tries to kiss me right now… I’m not going to stop him. Not this time.
“Close your eyes, cara,” Massimo tells me, and I swallow, then do exactly as he says.
The air crackles against my skin as I wait for whatever he’s going to do, but I’m still not prepared when his arm comes around me, his palm settling on my far hip, and his other hand lying gently over my bicep between us. His intoxicating warmth caresses every part of me when he scoots a little closer, his body clicking into place around mine.
“This time,” he breathes, “we ride it together.”
I nod, comfort melting through my veins as I lean into him.
I think, maybe, we were always supposed to.
“Turn six,” he says, then tilts our bodies deep to the right.
Chapter 11
Massimo Vitolo—July; Chemnitz, Germany
She fell asleep halfway through Live and Let Die. I seriously never expected that Lorina and I would spend our first night together watching moto and old Bond movies and not having sex—she turns me on way too much, and with the way I catch her looking at me sometimes… Yeah, no way. But with all she’s going through right now, I think this was better. Actually, I know it was.
After drawing the clippers over the side of my hair, I glance out of the suite’s bathroom toward Lorina, still asleep in my bed. Like I should even know what this looks like. I still don’t know how I got lucky enough that she agreed to come over here in the first place, but she did, and I can’t screw this up.
I knew the sponsors would only take the losses for so long, and her manager’s warnings were the same ones I’d give her: if Dabria makes a change, it could happen with little to no notice. And I didn’t want to start down this road with her until I was free from Gabriele’s shadow, but with the risk of her going home to Memphis and never coming back…
I’m close enough to my payoff date to pull the trigger. I’ve been placing well and sweetening my garnishments with extra drops toward the principle. It’s a gamble against getting injured, which would pretty much send me into instant default, but I’m holding up okay for now.
With Lorina, I may not get another chance.
I reluctantly shave the next line of hair, then eye my shirt on the counter. I should probably put it on before I wake her. In ten more minutes. Maybe twenty. She probably has a flight to catch. I do, but flights can be changed.
There’s a rustle of sheets behind me before I can make up my mind, and I set down the clippers, blowing out a breath as I stare at myself in the mirror.
I told her I loved her last night, and she cried.
But she also stayed, and I meant what I said. I’m done hiding—what I feel, what I want, who I am.
I grab the cross on my necklace and press a kiss to it for good luck, preparing myself for any and all reactions. Then I step into the doorway. Lorina’s eyes go wide as she spots me from beside the bed, where she’s halfway through making it like she’s trying to hide the evidence of her stay. The white sheets and plush down comforter drop thoughtlessly from her hands, and I hook my thumbs into the pockets of my jeans, letting her look.
Like my heart’s not pounding faster the longer her eyes spend cataloging the span of my tattoos: rotting and dead faces snarling from my shoulders and all the way down my arms, blood and torn flesh dripping from their twisted mouths. A scythe curving around my ribs, a stack of dates down the other side. She swallows, and I gesture to the elaborate script over my heart. “La paura è la morte. Fear is death,” I translate for her.
She clears her throat, but her voice is still raw when she asks, “Is there more?”
There’s so much more. But none of it is perfect or pretty in the way she deserves, or even close to what she’s used to—her family’s loaded, and she’s never known hunger or real fear. I’m really not thrilled about the day I’ll have to confess my arrest record, but I can take her judgment. I just can’t take the easy road. She deserves to know the truth, screwed up as it is.
I turn around, my hand on the edge of the sink, letting her take in the Catholic Madonna that’s most of my back and centered over my spine, the words in the ribbon below her feet.
“La velocità ti salva,” Lorina mumbles, and I bite down a grin at her country accent, somehow even more distinct when she’s speaking my country’s language. “Speed is savior,” she breathes, and I turn to face her—my angel of speed, faster than death. But still so afraid of me.
“Did you sleep okay, Lorina?”
She kept reaching for me in the dark, her unconscious self determined to snuggle into my side no matter how many times I scooted back. I eventually let her have her way. I also kept my hands to myself a
nd got up this morning before she realized what she was doing.
“Um…”
Her eyes are glued to my chest, my abs, dropping down to the front of my jeans.
“Lorina,” I try again, and a shiver races through her that makes my mouth water for her skin. She needs to cut that out. Especially when she’s wearing those shorts and we’re in a bedroom. With the door locked. “Maybe if I put on my shirt, you will remember.”
Heat rises in her cheeks, and God, she’s cute when she blushes. “I, um, I slept fine. Sorry if I made you late for a train or something. You could’ve woken me sooner if you needed to go.”
We could be stuck in this German hotel room for the next three weeks and I wouldn’t give a shit. “And miss out on my chance to take a video of you snoring in my bed?” I wink. “Silly Tigrotta.”
Something like relief floods her features, and she tries her best to glare at me. “I don’t snore.”
“As you say,” I drawl, holding up my hands. “Video says different.” I turn away from Lorina’s growing smile, facing the mirror and picking up my hair clippers. But I can’t help watching from my peripheral vision as she walks around the unmade bed, past the door, and keeps coming my way.
I half assumed she would’ve bolted by now—this is more reality than she usually likes to confront where I’m concerned. But I also want her to know what this looks like. To start our jet-lagged days in foreign hotels, together. It doesn’t have to be so scary for her to be with me, and I’m fully capable of being nice. Romantic even. And it’s time she knew that.
Like usual, she throws all my plans out the window. She stops next to me and barely runs a knuckle down the bruise starting to darken my side. Every nerve in my body goes haywire from her touch, and I suck in a breath from the electricity surging through my veins and congregating behind my zipper.
“Does that hurt?”
I shake my head, grateful for the Tylenol I took earlier so I don’t have to lie. “No.” I also eye her shoulder, which I know she landed hard on yesterday. “Are you hurt?”
“I’m okay,” she says softly, but I’m not entirely convinced she’s telling the truth. I don’t get the chance to question her, though. She snatches the clippers from me without warning, lightly pushing my shoulder so I face the mirror again. “Look forward, or you’re gonna have to downgrade to a crew cut.”
“Lorina,” I ask warily, “you have done this before?”
The woman is a force to be reckoned with on a moto, yes, but this is my hair.
Without answering, she tilts my head down and threads the razor’s teeth from the base of my neck up toward my crown. A shiver of pleasure surges through me, Lorina thankfully pulling the clippers away with a grin just before she gets to the edge of the longer strands. “Nope.”
“Fantastico.” My chuckle is pure nerves, but it’s seriously fantastic when she scoots closer and settles her left hand on the side of my neck. I wonder if I can get away with adjusting my erection without her noticing. Probably not.
“If you needed a haircut…” She happily winces as she glides the razor up the back of my head. “Why didn’t you just go to a barber?”
There it is. I tell myself to stay calm. To take the opening and do what I promised myself I would: make my move, be honest, and tell her everything. Except telling her everything means telling her about everyone, and this is so dangerous, but I know we can get through this.
My father said we could. If it was right. And he was right about everything else.
“I cannot go to a barber.”
“Can too.” She blows a burst of air so the freshly cut hairs fly away, and goose bumps rise on my neck. Because that’s not embarrassing or anything. At least it’s not as bad as when I was seventeen and had finally grown a full mustache, and she laughed me straight out of the paddock. “Italy isn’t the end-all-be-all of the world, you know.”
“No.” I smile at her in the mirror like I’m not about to royally piss her off. And that’s so messed up, but I need her calm before I pull the rug out from under her. It’s my only chance for survival. “I cannot go to a barber, because Chiara would be angry. She handles all my clothes, my hair, as my…” What’s the word in English? “…stylist. So she is the only one who gets to cut my hair according to her backward mind.”
Lorina looks at me in the mirror, and there’s no doubt about it: she’s pissed just hearing another woman’s name come from my mouth. But there’s no way around the fact that Chiara and I have been inseparable since we were kids. We talk every day, she’s practically a part of my family, and that isn’t changing anytime soon. I also technically told Lorina about her before, way back in Austin—that it’s complicated, and we aren’t together, but we do sleep together sometimes—though I doubt Lorina remembers or even cares at this point. I’m definitely not bringing it up like a selling point to my innocence.
“And Chiara is…your cousin, who was at Mugello?” Lorina says slowly, testing me.
I fail with flying colors. “Not a cousin. Friend. As you called, Miss Difficult.”
Lorina’s glare sharpens, and there’s an angry strength in her hand when she shoves my head down. But at least she doesn’t stab me with the clippers. She also doesn’t lay her hand against my neck when she shaves the next line of my hair. But she stayed.
She fucking stayed.
“I, um, I didn’t realize you guys were still…”
“Sì.” I clear my throat. “Not always. But sometimes, yes.”
She strengthens her jaw, cutting the next line. “Well…” She forces a smile as she continues around to the other side. “I hope I’m not getting you into trouble by helping.”
I wonder if she realizes she just hesitated to pop from fourth gear to fifth.
“It is okay,” I tell her. “Chiara will not care if you do this.”
“Because she knows there’s nothing going on between us?”
I scoff. “No. Chiara and I have known each other a long time, long before you, and she knows how I feel for my Tigrotta.” I reach back and tickle Lorina’s side, and she barely even reacts.
“I’m lost,” she mutters, tilting my head to the side to check for missed pieces. “How can you…be with someone and tell them you care about someone else?”
“That is easy.” My eyes close as she carefully trims around my ear. God, it really should not feel this good just to have her cut my hair. “Chiara and I are always friends first. We grew up together, and there are no secrets between us. But people also need affection, sex, someone to welcome you home when you are gone for months and months. And Chiara…” I wave dismissively. “She needs to have someone when I am gone. Though many times, she still has someone even when I am home, but that is fine too. We have not been serious together for a long time, and after so many years, we both have accepted the truth.”
Lorina brushes away some loose hairs, then walks around to my other side, trimming behind my other ear. “And what’s this truth you’ve accepted?”
I catch Lorina’s eyes in the mirror, waiting until I know she’s really listening. “Chiara and I will always be in each other’s lives. As friends. But she is not mine, cara. I am not hers.”
Lorina pulls away the clippers, brushing off some stray hairs from my neck. “You know, I thought you were a good guy, but I guess I should have trusted my instincts.” She sets the clippers on the counter, scowling at me. “You always were a cheater.”
I turn around, irritated enough that I have to remind myself to stay in English for her. “What do you think, Lorina? You think because you are important to me I was going to sit around, waiting for you to think of me as something other than your enemy? No. I am a man, and I was to see the women I like. I was to get from them things I cannot ask from you.”
She sucks in a breath, her eyes incensed. “You never asked!”
“Because you are afr
aid,” I say before I can stop myself. “You cannot separate one from the other. You even said to me that you have no time for love because you need to fix you as Centauro first. So do not look at me like I am a terrible man when I say I have a friend who I care about, who cares about me, and so yes, I have sex with her. You want this to change? Then tell me things are going to change, show me you are no longer afraid, and then it will be done.”
She looks away, her jaw shaking, and Christ, I shouldn’t have said that. But she pisses me off to no end when she never gives me the benefit of the doubt, especially when I’m murdering myself with the truth.
Lorina takes a deep breath, and I hold mine, waiting for her to strike. To fight back in the way she does, that I’ve always relied on. That now, I’m dreading.
“Chiara,” she says quietly, looking down at the floor and not at me. “Is she nice to you?”
I almost recoil in shock. But I’m not so dense I don’t also see the trap for what it is. “Lorina—”
“Is she nice to you?” Her eyes snap up to mine, and that’s when I realize: it’s not a trap. She feels guilty, and it only makes me feel worse.
I sigh, half wishing I’d never brought it up and wondering how long it’s gonna take me to recover from this. A year? Six? “Sì. She is a good friend.”
“I’m glad,” Lorina mutters, nodding. “Glad you have her.”
I level a look at her. No woman I’ve ever dated has been okay with Chiara’s presence in my life. Quite the opposite, in fact.
“Okay, fine,” Lorina says, exasperated. “Look, I know I’m probably redlining on your awful bitch meter because I can’t give you what you want right now, and to be honest, yeah, I hate the idea that there’s another woman in your life. But if she’s your best friend, then…okay. At the end of the day, I still want you to be happy.”
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