Wreckless

by Katie Golding

  Something moves behind me, and I spin to find Chiara leaning against the door to her room. Her arms are hugged over her faded “Vulcan in the streets, Klingon in the sheets” T-shirt, and wearing a pissed-off scowl that’s quickly downgrading to pity. “Where have you been all day?” she asks in Italian.

  “Paying off Gabriele,” I growl at her. “Where is she?”

  Chiara flinches, suddenly looking a lot more like my oldest friend rather than another roadblock. She blinks, a lifetime’s worth of hope in her voice. “You paid off Gabriele? Completely?”

  “Where is she, Chiara?”

  Her expression falls. Hardens. “She left.”

  I nearly drop to my knees.

  Chiara swallows, her voice losing all the accusation in it from a second ago. “She said she’d be back for the gala in Rimini…”

  I shake my head, turning and striding back into my room. Grab my bag, start packing. Shirts, pants, wallet. I don’t need much.

  “Massimo, where are you going?”

  “After her.”

  “You can’t. She didn’t go to Memphis.” Chiara sighs behind me. “Her manager called her, something about testing in Germany…”

  I punch my bag off my bed. If she’s testing, I absolutely can’t be there.

  I round on Chiara, all the pressure in my chest booming out through my voice because I can’t believe this is happening tonight of all fucking nights. “How could you let her leave?”

  Chiara stares at me, her chest rising quickly, but she never raises her voice. “She promised me she was coming back,” she repeats. “And how about instead of blaming me, you try answering your phone once in a while. She waited for you as long as she could, Massimo. Don’t think she didn’t. You were just too busy to notice.”

  I gesture absently in Chiara’s direction, then sink down to the mattress, my head falling into my hands.

  She’s coming back, I tell myself. It’s going to be okay.

  But who is she testing for? Please, don’t be anyone Superbike.

  “Are you ready to talk about whatever the hell is going on with you?” Chiara asks. “Because this isn’t the first time you’ve dodged her calls, and I don’t get it, Massimo. You waited ten years for this moment, it’s finally here, and you’re blowing it. So what was the point of everything if this is what you were going to do?”

  My knees bounce as my stomach flips, totally screwed because she’s right. I am blowing it. “It’s not that simple, Chiara.”

  “Then explain to me what’s making this so freaking complicated.”

  I look up at her, leaning against the doorway and staring me down. She’ll stand there all night if I don’t come clean, and I really do suck at keeping secrets from her. So with my eyes trained on the floor and my hands laced together, I tell her. Just the bare minimum at first. Except it’s Chiara, and once I start talking, it all comes out: Angelo watching my every move, him threatening to rewrite my contract if he doesn’t end it first, hiding my relationship with Lorina so Dabria can’t use that against her too.

  Everything.

  I feel scraped raw from the inside when I’m done, flattened from the impossible pull between trying to provide for my family, to protect the woman I love, and realizing there’s no way to be what everyone needs, everywhere they need me to be, every time they need me to be there, without also hurting everyone along the way.

  “Wow.” Chiara lets out a deep sigh, nods slowly, then half shrugs. “So…that’s it?”

  I flip her off. So much for best friends. “Screw you.”

  Chiara rolls her eyes, shoving off the doorframe. She comes over and sits next to me, bumping her shoulder against mine. “Fine. You’re right. Everything is terrible, and I think you should definitely keep ignoring her calls, because this is clearly her fault. Super smart play.”

  I stare at my best friend. “What do you think I should do?”

  “Turn your freaking phone back on,” she says. “Call Lorelai and tell her what’s been going on, get your tux cleaned, and YouTube some videos on how to waltz, because you need to dance with her at the gala.”

  I’m already shaking my head. “If I do that, Angelo is going to cut me.”

  “Why? He already knows about you. How is dancing with her gonna hurt? Besides, everyone else already suspects you’re together, and Dabria doesn’t really seem to care.”

  “I can’t take that—”

  “You’re not though,” Chiara says, exasperated. “You’re giving her the choice of whether she wants to risk it. And it is her choice.” Chiara arches an eyebrow at me. “You know, you said that she always puts racing first, but I’ve spent time with her too, and that’s not what it looks like from here. She might just surprise you.” Chiara pats my knee and pushes up to standing. “And you need to surprise her with how well you can waltz at that gala. So get practicing.”

  She leaves me with that as she heads out of my room, shutting the door behind her. I pull my phone out of my pocket, calling Lorina. It rings twice before her voicemail clicks on, and my eyes pinch shut.

  Fair is fair, but it doesn’t hurt any less that she just rolled me.

  “Hi. I, um…” I can’t do this over voicemail. “I’m sorry I missed you. Call me back when you get a chance.”

  I hang up. Lie back on my bed and wait, tapping my phone against my chest. Get up with a sigh and put away my bag and clothes, my eyes continually glancing toward the dark screen. But the more minutes pass without my phone ringing, the more I know that Chiara’s right. I thought I had this under control. But I don’t. I so fucking don’t because I’ve been so pissed off at the injustice of everything I thought I was going to lose, I threw it all away before they ever actually took it from me, and—

  God, what the hell have I been doing?

  ***

  My tie is already bugging the shit out of me as I head outside and down the lit path into the sponsor gala, humidity settling thick through the courtyard of the hotel, right on the beach in Rimini. Angelo laughs loudly from the far corner of the tent, and it isn’t hard to spot Lorina in the crowd: talking with Frank and some sponsor rep I think works for Blue Gator.

  She gracefully laughs at whatever they said, her watercolor gray chiffon gown drifting in the breeze and her earrings sparkling against the white canopy, her curled hair draping over her very bare shoulder.

  She’s stunning.

  Which is exactly what I was going to tell her earlier, but she wouldn’t look at me when she came out of the bathroom—she strode straight out the door. She barely took my calls the whole time she was gone; it was always too early or too late, her voice drained like she’d left it all on the track, and I couldn’t bring myself to dump the truth of all my problems on her over the phone. But she hasn’t said a word since she got to the hotel with less than an hour to spare before the gala, her bags tagged from Munich.

  “Is that supposed to be convincing?” Santos sneers next to me.

  I glance at him. I didn’t even hear the asshole walk over.

  “Lorelai comes down, then you show up ten minutes later, and you think the sponsors won’t know you are staying in the same room?”

  I arch my eyebrow like that’s news to me. “You think we are staying together?”

  “Yep.” He grins, taking a smug sip from his glass.

  I nod, clapping him hard enough on the back that he chokes on his whiskey. “You are right. We are.”

  Shock ripples across his face, but Santos is the least of my concerns tonight. I look toward Lorina, and it’s not far, but my pulse rises with every step across the room. She immediately freezes when she sees me walking toward her, but I don’t care who she’s talking to or what they’re talking about. I don’t care who’s watching or what it’s gonna cost me—my contract included.

  I can’t wait another two hours to talk to her. I can’t
wait two minutes.

  I grab her hand and pull her away, Lorina stuttering to her manager, “Sorry, uh, excuse me.” I lead her to an open spot on the semi-crowded dance floor and pull her into me, ignoring Angelo scowling at me from the corner.

  Her body clicks into mine with an ease that’s been there since those country bars in Memphis. Thank Christ, at least this still works.

  “I can’t believe you just did that,” Lorina whispers harshly, though she still has a sweetly fake smile on her lips. “Not only was I in the middle of a very important conversation, but now, everyone is staring at us.”

  I check around, and she’s right: Santos and Giovanni are whispering, others nodding our way and a couple of cell phones making appearances. “Sorry.”

  “That’s a first.”

  God, I’m too late. I spin her out, then back in, Lorina following my lead but giving me a look like it’s not gonna work this time. I settle my palm on her lower back, just dancing with her for a minute and trying to calm myself under the scent of her perfume. It’s never changed.

  “What is going on with you?” she hisses.

  I bring her closer, telling myself to go slow. To take my time and memorize everything about the way she feels in my hands. “You have been gone, cara,” I whisper. “And I have missed you.”

  “Oh, I’m cara now, huh?” She rolls her eyes. “That’s convenient.”

  I keep my palm light on her waist as I cradle her other hand in mine, but everything in me is screaming. How did I let it get this bad? “If you are angry with me, then let us go upstairs and talk about it. I do not want to fight with you at a place like this.”

  “I’m not leaving when we just got here, and I’m not angry,” she whispers. “Just tired of the emotional whiplash.”

  Emotional what? “What does that mean?”

  “It means you can’t just call me ‘cara’ when this is the most you’ve said to me in weeks.”

  I look at her, but she won’t meet my eyes, and even though there’s a room full of people watching us, I can’t see a single one of them. “I talk to you. All the time.”

  Her hand rises from my shoulder for a moment like she waved at someone, then she lowers her voice. “You ask what time zone we’re in or if I’m hungry, sure, but you don’t tell me how Dario is doing in school. You don’t ask what I think about Taryn possibly coming to MotoPro if MMW expands beyond Superbike or what it’ll mean for us if the rumors are true about the women’s division. You don’t ask about my family or the ranch. Hell, you never even sent my dad those pictures of your father racing in the fifties you promised you’d show him.”

  “I did send them,” I tell her. “Copies of every single photo I have. If he did not tell you, this is not my fault.”

  “Yeah? Well, it’s not like you told me either. Or considered I may want to see them.”

  She’s right. I didn’t.

  “It’s fine,” she mutters, shifting her hand on my shoulder, but the weight is wrong, like she’s not really touching me. She’s just acting like it. “They’re just pictures. But when I have to find out the truth about your family—about Gabriele—from your best friend instead of you…”

  My eyes fly to hers. She knows?

  “Yeah,” she says. “But that was after I found my helmet hidden in your room.”

  I barely contain my wince. Of course she found it.

  “And when you won’t even go for a run with me, much less out to a movie or to dinner, it’s pretty obvious that you’re just…you’re not in love with me anymore.”

  The words are so wrong, it takes everything I have not to stop dead still.

  “And I get it. I really do,” she says. “People grow apart; it happens. But you used to be honest with me, Massimo. You used to tell me the truth, and I—” She blinks a little too rapidly, shaking her hair back from her face. “I asked you not to break my heart, but I should’ve known you’d do it anyway. So you may as well just get it over with.”

  She looks away, and my hands are shaking, my heart pounding, but there’s nothing to say once she’s finished. No way to tell her that her pain is wrong or that I didn’t cause it when I did.

  This is my fault.

  I’ve hurt her so much more than I ever knew I was capable of, because she trusts me to tell her the truth, and I haven’t been honest with her. Worse, I don’t have anyone else to blame. Angelo might’ve made his threats, but I made all the decisions without ever bothering to ask what she thinks, and I can’t take the secrets and the lies anymore.

  I drop her hand, tightening my other arm around her waist and leading her off the dance floor.

  “Where are we going?” Lorina asks, her voice rushed as she checks over her shoulder, then looks to me. “We can’t just leave. People expect us to be here.”

  “They will get over it.”

  “Mas—”

  “I need to tell you something,” I say, ducking us out of the side of the tent. “But not here.”

  Chapter 22

  Lorelai Hargrove—September; Rimini, Italy

  I don’t know how tonight can get any worse. Tears bite at my eyes as I let him lead me out of the canopy, hopefully before we make more of a scene. I glance toward the tent, but none of the other gala guests are watching us, still chatting in the hotel courtyard. Thank God the paparazzi were banned from entering so they’re none the wiser of the headline they’re on the verge of writing.

  I can see it now: “Still No Mercy for Wreckless.”

  Massimo’s quiet on the short walk toward the beach, the long stretch of sand thankfully deserted, apart from the umbrellas and chairs permanently set up. A wave crashes ahead of us, and my breath catches in my throat at the moon reflecting on the water. It’s so torturously beautiful, everything else infinitely more terrible by comparison.

  Chiara was right about him, but she was wrong about me. No matter what I do, I can’t break through that wall, that mask. I’m not Wolverine. I’m not even Tigrotta anymore.

  But she was right about something else too: I’m in love with him.

  Despite the fights, the anger, the coldness between us, I’m listening with my eyes and seeing with my ears, and I’m totally in love with the jerk who hasn’t once asked me to sacrifice anything for him. Who, some days, I want to sacrifice everything for. It only makes everything that went down in Germany a million times more complicated, but I can’t think about that now.

  He turns us off the lit path and toward the rest of the beach, pausing to take off his shoes.

  “It’s too late to go swimming, and I’m wearing a dress.” I pray he doesn’t hear it when my voice cracks. If he does, he doesn’t mention it. He only crouches down and takes my ankle in his hand. I nearly fall, having to scrabble for a grip on his shoulder, the rich fabric of his death-black suit more than a little slick. “Massimo—”

  “When my papà was sick,” he interrupts, his voice quiet in the darkness as his hands slip my high heels from my feet with expert care, “he told me that one day, I would meet a woman so beautiful, I would forget to breathe.”

  I swallow thickly in the sticky, salty air, Massimo rising with an easy smile. It calms my nerves a little when he takes my hand again, walking us toward the surf that’s coming in with the tide, close enough to our path that the sand is soft and cool, but water doesn’t touch the hem of my dress.

  “He told me that I would know this is the woman I was going to love because not only would she be beautiful, but she would be difficult.”

  Something warm seeps through me, healing little scrapes and cuts, soothing almost everything. It’s a wondrous kind of comfort, hearing him say that again when there’s been so much silence between us lately.

  “She would ask me questions I would not want to answer,” he continues. “She would make me angry, and she would make me afraid. I thought no, this will never happen
to me. But my papà, he told me that when I found this woman, and when I was sure I loved her, I must do this one thing…” Massimo looks at me, his steps slow and calm through the surf, but the intensity of his gaze sends a shiver down my spine. “I must be the worst of my heart.”

  I flinch. “What?”

  Massimo’s eyebrow arches, but there’s also a smirk in the edge of his lips. “He said I was good, yes, but there was also bad in me. Monsters, demons in my soul that will try to win: pride, vanity, greed. It is these demons that make me Centauro, same as it was for him. And so, when I found this woman, I was to show her my demons. He told me: if she was the right woman, she would love me anyway.”

  I can’t do more than blink at him, my heart broken for the little boy who heard this. To tell your son he’s so evil, no woman would accept him unless he did that… I don’t know if I’ve ever heard anything more screwed up.

  “My papà died when I was thirteen,” Massimo says, “and for many months, I thought about what he said. After some time, I decided that he was old, sick, and it was not possible that there was any truth in this. I chose to forget it.”

  “Okay…” I drawl, not quite sure where he’s going with this. I don’t really care—he’s talking to me. In full sentences. He could be reciting the latest soccer stats for the Roma team he loves and I can’t seem to muster any affection for, and I still wouldn’t care, as long as he just keeps talking.

  “When I was fifteen…” He pauses to shift us farther into the beach when a wave crashes a little too close for comfort. “I had my first real moto race. I went to Blue Gator. I thought yes,” he says, animated, “I will win this race, and everyone will see how fast I am.”

  A smile pulls at the corner of my lips, starting to see the connection he’s drawing.

  “I go and begin to race,” he says, “and there is a problem. On the track, I find I am racing against an asshole.”

  I bite my lip, a blush rising in my cheeks.

  “He pushes me hard in the turns, flies past me on the straight, forgets to see the braking markers and goes too fast to be safe. This asshole wins this race, and I was so angry. Everyone saw me lose the first time they saw me.”