I shift my grip on his hand so our fingers lace together, my other palm curling around the smooth bump of his bicep under the soft fabric of his jacket. I play along, doing my best to sound sincere. “That’s awful.”
He nods, pouting dramatically, and he’s so cute that I almost feel bad for him—almost. “We crossed the finish line, and the asshole takes off his helmet.” My pulse speeds up as Massimo peeks at me, his eyes growing scandalized. “It is a girl.”
“You don’t say…”
He winks, continuing our walk along the beach as the moonlight rains down, and I’ve missed this version of him. The hopeless romantic he hid behind deathly tattoos.
“Long brown hair, twisted into a braid over her shoulder,” he says, his voice low and reverently nostalgic. “Smooth skin, eyes gold like fire. She is the most beautiful girl I have ever seen, and she races moto. Moto,” he says as though he can’t believe it. “And she beat me. I had no words for this.”
Everything in me is so entranced watching him talk about us meeting, I don’t even care when a wave surges up, water tickling my feet and ankles. Screw the dress and the gala and everyone and everything except this moment, sponsors and contracts and all.
“So this girl,” he says, quiet yet starting to smile, “she looks at me, and she wrinkles her nose like I am a bug. She flips her braid over her shoulder, then walks away with her helmet under her arm, an American flag painted on top.” Heat flames my skin when he leans closer, whispering, “This was the first time ever that I forgot to breathe.” He pulls back, grinning brighter than I’ve seen from him since Memphis. “I am in love.”
I melt fully and completely, letting his arm go to hug him around his middle. His arm comes around me, squeezing my shoulder as he drops a kiss to my hair.
So much for Germany, a voice in my mind whispers, and I bat it away. Not now. Not yet.
Tonight, Massimo comes first.
“Now, I remember the words of my papà,” he says, somehow continuing to walk even as I refuse to let go of him. “If this is the woman, she will make me angry, and she will make me afraid. So I wait and see.”
“Oh God…” I chuckle, knowing I did exactly that.
Massimo chuckles too, but his is nearly silent. “Many years, this girl and I, we race together. Over time, I find that my papà was right. This woman is strong, but she is also dangerous, reckless, and she scares me with how little she values her safety. It scares me how much I am worried for her. And now,” he says, softer, “I am supposed to show her the worst of me.” He slowly shakes his head, and my heart sinks for him. “I did not want to do this. We had already argued many times, this girl and I, and I worried that if I was to do more, she would never love me.”
My temple falls against his shoulder, and I have no idea how a guy who seems to see straight through me can’t see it: how much I love him, have loved him, for longer than even I wanted to admit it.
“But I did not have a choice,” he says. “I had faith in my papà, in his wisdom, so I did as he said. I showed her my pride, my anger, and I told her awful things. They were the truth, but they were not sweet.”
Right now, I can’t seem to remember a single harsh word he’s ever said to me. Even if I could, it wouldn’t sound the same. Everything now has to be refiltered from the truth that he was given the absolute worst advice ever from the person he trusted most.
“It is easy to love a man who is all nice words and soft kisses,” he whispers. “I have those things in me, but this woman, she would need to know what I am capable of if she is to love me. So for many years, I was the worst of me. And always, I waited. I waited for this woman to see me, to know what I have done and why. But this woman, she did not understand. And she did not love me.”
I tighten my jaw to keep it from quivering, because I know what’s coming, and I don’t want to hear it. I want to go back and rewrite history where I wasn’t stubborn, he wasn’t on a mission to make me see his worst, and everything would’ve been different from the beginning.
“She hated me.”
The words drop from his lips like a detonation.
My feet slow to a stop, the regret so heavy, I can’t even move. Massimo stops and looks at me, his brow furrowed in concern at the goose bumps on my skin that have nothing do with my bare shoulders and everything to do with all the ways I’ve hurt him.
He quickly shrugs off his jacket and drapes it around my shoulders, the leftover heat from his body soothing into mine. I’d rather have him, but maybe there’s hope. That tonight, he won’t stay away on the far side of the mattress, endless space between us. That maybe, maybe, he’ll be with me. Hold me and let me hold him, and we can try again.
He lifts my hair from the jacket collar, letting it rest gently against my shoulder. “I worried that maybe this would never change,” he says quietly. “Maybe my papà was wrong, and I was ruined to love her forever.”
He sweeps his thumb across my bottom lip, and the words are right behind it—I should’ve told him already. But when it comes to telling him how I feel, the things I want, and the future I see for us, I’ve been the worst kind of coward.
It felt like more power for him to wield over me. One more way for him to crush me. But now, it sounds like freedom. And no one deserves to be free more than Massimo.
As soon as he’s done telling me his secrets, I’m telling him mine.
“Then, something happened,” he says. “This woman, she crashed her moto. She has crashed before, but this…” He shakes his head. “This was different.”
My heart races, terrified to hear the answer only he can give. “Why?”
He tilts his head like he’s considering that, then he retakes my hand, this time covering it with his other so mine is cradled between his palms. Like he knows how hard it is, even now, for me to talk about the wreck. How scared I still get sometimes, and how the nightmares have never really stopped. What I never expected was that he has them too.
Dreams that cause him to wake up in a breathless rush, sitting up straight and staring into the darkness for a long, long time before he finally lies down, clutching me to him. He won’t tell me what happens in them, but I know. I’ve always known.
He starts walking again, my hand cradled in his and the surf rising higher with each new wave. “Her moto came after her in the crash, and it hit her in her helmet.” He clears his throat, looking down and his voice unsteady. “For a long time, she lay very still in the dirt, and I thought her neck was broken. I thought she was dead.”
God, there it is. Just like I worried it would be, and I can’t imagine how paralyzing that would be: to see him crash the way I did.
Massimo’s jaw pops and flexes as his eyes lift and skitter over the ocean.
“Hey,” I breathe. He tries to smile at me, but it’s filled with the pain of the memory. “She’s okay now.”
He nods. “They, um, they took her to hospital.” He clears his throat again, his voice strengthening. “I followed. I decided that if she was alive, then I must tell her the truth. I must tell her what she is to me.” His right hand replaces his left, his fingers lacing through mine as his other arm winds around my waist, holding me closer to him. “I will tell her how she is in all my dreams,” he whispers. “I will tell her how beautiful I think she is, and that I see she is like me: she has pride, and she has anger, and I love her for this. She is my Tigrotta.”
I can’t resist smiling at the nickname I’ve missed most over the past weeks.
“I also see that she is sweet, and she is soft, and I love this too. I waited for her to wake up.”
The reality of the memory crashes hard into the fantasy he’s weaving. Because when I woke up, I accused him of being there only to gloat over my crash.
I didn’t see. I didn’t want to, and he was trying so hard, and I was such an ass.
“But when her eyes opened, she was afra
id,” he says. “She was sad and crying, and I decided that I could not tell her this now. She needed me to be strong for her, not to change the rules when she was lost.” He takes a deep breath, squeezing my waist. “She asked me the question, and I did not tell her the answer. I left.”
I look away from him, ashamed. All he wanted was to tell me he loved me, and I ruined it, for both of us. Everything could’ve been different from that one moment if I’d just listened. But I never listen. I always do what I want and never consider the consequences until it’s too late. Like how many times I’ve broken Massimo’s heart out of nothing more than the fear he’d break mine first.
Massimo slides me in front of him so his chest aligns with my back, his arms coming around me. I grip his hands desperately, locking them against my chest, terrified of all the decisions I’ve yet to make. All the ones that might break him too.
I’m so tired of hurting him. I can’t stand it, not after all he’s been through. And for the first time, I understand exactly why Taryn dropped two and a half million dollars to shovel horse stalls with Billy instead of living rent-free in a high-rise condo in Munich alone.
I just have no idea if I’m going to have the guts to make the same call when it comes down to it, after Valencia.
“After her crash, she was different,” Massimo tells me, his voice brushing over the collar of his jacket and tingling down my neck. “She was in pain and had anger and fear in her heart like a sickness. She crashed again and again, and this sickness, it grew.” He hugs me tighter, his lips settling on the back of my shoulder. “I tried to be both: be strong, be the worst. But sometimes, I could not do this, and I failed.”
I peek over my shoulder at his last word, Massimo gently turning me around the rest of the way to face him.
His eyes search my own, his fingertips tender on my jaw as the surf rushes over our bare feet. “I had shown this woman who I am, what I am capable of. She knows me. What she did not know is how I feel. So…” He takes a deep breath like he’s gathering the courage all over again. A flash of him appears in my memory, timidly walking around the corner from his hotel bathroom, very purposefully not wearing a shirt and simply watching me, waiting for my reaction. “I told her. For the first time in ten years, she knows.”
There’s no way to resist kissing him. Just once, softly, because I can’t imagine how scary that must’ve been for him: to reveal his true feelings after all that time. After all the pains he’d taken to hide them.
When I pull back, he rolls in his bottom lip like he’s savoring the taste of me. Then his voice drops. “This knowing, this was difficult for her, because I am not what she wanted.”
I suck in a breath. “Massimo, no! I was surprised, that’s all. I never really considered—”
“I am not a hero.” He shakes his head, his nose wrinkled like I’m the one who’s cracked. “I am not the prince in a fairy tale. I have monsters in my soul, demons on my skin.” His face falls further, guilt plaguing his features as the words descend like a confession. “I have yelled at her, been cruel to her. I have watched her crash and not stopped to help her.”
I swallow, looking down. He could’ve skipped that part.
“But this woman I love,” he continues, “she is brave. And despite all these things, she gave me a chance. She did not know if she loved me, if she could love me. That was okay.”
I glance up, surprised to find the start of a smile on his lips.
“I asked her to let me love her, and she said yes.” His face breaks into a wide grin, and I’d almost forgotten how mesmerizingly beautiful he is when he’s this happy; it’s been so long since I’ve seen it. “Now, I love her more than ever. Now, I can tell her. I can show her.”
I can’t help but smile, a blush dusting my cheeks. “You’ve shown me quite a bit.”
“Maybe one day,” he says, pulling me close enough to drop his forehead to mine, “she will love me too. Maybe not.”
My heart sinks. “Massimo—”
“Remember,” he cuts me off, “I love this woman for her fire.” He pulls away, taking my hands and walking backward, leading us back toward where we started. “And for the good parts of me, I deserve her. I think I can be what she deserves,” he says, turning to walk beside me. “I can be good to her. I can be strong for her. There are bad parts of her also.” He squeezes my hand with a wink. “And I deserve that too. But I can walk through her fire and still live. I think this could work, for always.”
Warmth melts through me, and I glance up at him. “Really?”
He nods. “For many years, I loved this woman before I told her. I will love her all the years after. But there is a problem.”
No, no problems. I’m sick of problems. Back to loving me forever. The end.
“Because of her crash,” he says, “when I thought she was dead, there is now a chance she will no longer race moto.”
I wince, looking down at the footprints in the sand we made only a few minutes ago, not yet washed away. I don’t want to think about that right now. I can’t.
“She will leave and go home to America forever.”
“Please stop,” I whisper.
“Or maybe she will still race moto,” he continues, “only now she will ride for Superbike, and when I am in one place, she will be in another. I do not know.”
I try not to flinch, no idea how much he’s put together surrounding my last-minute trip to test in Germany. Chiara said he was visibly upset when he found out I’d left. That he had wanted to come after me until she stopped him, like I asked her to do. She also said he’d apparently paid off Gabriele that night, which is where he’d been all day.
I’m not mad about it anymore, but I only got to the hotel barely an hour before tonight’s gala, and we haven’t had a chance to talk about any of it. Not that I’m sure I know what I’d say. I don’t have any answers for him, only more possibilities that don’t even guarantee we’d be able to stay together if the worst happens with Dabria.
Massimo doesn’t ask if his suspicions are correct. He only takes a heavy breath, then says, “What she does not know is that now there is a chance that even if she keeps her moto and stays in MotoPro, I may lose my contract, and then, we will still be apart.”
My heart crashes from my chest into the beach, and I whirl toward him. “What?”
There’s no way I heard him right.
He’s not in danger. I am.
And then, it just clicks.
“Yaalon.” He swallows, the words thick like he’s struggling to get them out. “They are angry with me for loving her, because to them, we are supposed to be enemies. Angelo thinks—he knows—I have wanted this woman to win more than I have wanted it for myself. And so he said to me: I am not to tell her anything about my moto. I am not to let her into places where our team names are different. He tells me I have to choose.”
My head is reeling, and I just…I don’t know why I didn’t realize it sooner. Why he always catches me before I go into his garage, leading me the other way. Why he keeps cutting me off during races like he doesn’t care who finishes before him, as long as it’s not me.
Chiara was right. And I didn’t listen.
My hands come up to cradle his jaw, my voice broken with fear for him. “Why didn’t you tell me?” I whisper.
He scoffs like the suggestion is utterly ridiculous. “She had enough fear in her heart. She did not need to worry for me. And I know that if Yaalon could say these things to me, if they could make these threats, Dabria could make them to her. But I cannot be in the middle of this choice for this woman. I cannot be another threat. She loves moto, more than anything, and I have to make sure she has her dreams. I have to make sure that if she loses them, it is not because of me.”
I have no air in my lungs. He…he pushed me away because he was trying to protect me? That’s why he’s been the way he’s been? Avoiding me, a
bandoning me…
He’s been making it look like we’re not together. Not just for him but for me too.
As I search his eyes, I can’t wrap my head around the mess of it all, all the wrong things he’s done for all the right reasons. The decisions he made and the burden he put on himself without ever asking if it was necessary. If it was the choice I would’ve wanted him to make.
But he never asks. He just decides.
“So after years of battling,” he continues, “making this woman angry and trying to prove who I am and finally telling her I love her, she is going to be taken away from me. And there is nothing I can do.”
I pull my hands from him, because now, I get it. He’s been pulling away from me because he made his decision. He chose racing over me. And the fact that he thinks I would’ve chosen the same for us… God, it hurts.
I turn and lengthen my strides away from him, ready to run anywhere this conversation, this reality, isn’t happening. The things this means, what I’m going to have to do, and the places I’ll have to go just to have a chance of one day getting over him.
I’ll never be able to come back to Italy.
He’s instantly behind me, grabbing the crook of my elbow and spinning me toward him. “My papà, he told me I would love this woman,” he says, his grip desperate as his hands move to my shoulders. “He did not say she would love me back, and he did not say I would get to keep her. Just that I would love her.”
I’ve got about three seconds to get out of here before I start bawling. I won’t let him see me cry. Not tonight. Not ever again.
He ducks his head, catching my eyes in the darkness of moonlight as his hands slide up to cradle my jaw. “So I must be ready for when she leaves. I must decide what she will leave with knowing. And so to this woman, this woman I love more than anyone, I say this: If you love me, do not tell me. Not until the end.”
The little bit of air I’d managed to hold onto bursts from me in a strangled sob, my emotions such a mess that I can’t decide whether to be more shocked or heartbroken. “What?”
Wreckless Page 30