Chapter Thirteen
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
N INA WALKED QUICKLY away from the garage until she found herself wandering along the path that lined the empty racing track. She didn’t even know where she was going, she just needed her body to move so that her mind could work through her own confusion. A hand landed upon her shoulder and she spun around with a squeak. Tristan stood before her, his face a mask of pain.
‘You’re running away without even allowing me a chance to explain?’
She could have said yes, because she needed time to think, to try to understand why he would have lied to her about her own brother’s actions and how he’d come to be their team owner. But instead she felt the embarrassing build-up of tears in her eyes. ‘You lied to me.’
‘I was waiting to tell you myself,’ he began, then stopped. ‘I’m sorry. I wanted to tell you so many times, believe me. But apart from the legal agreements we signed, I also wanted to give your brother time and privacy to recover, as he’d asked.’
‘I just don’t understand any of it.’ She shook her head. ‘You knew you were lying to me about my brother. And yet you still kept it from me. You knew that he planned to come back once he’d recovered and take back the helm of the company himself, and yet you were about to let me accept a deal from Accardi and leave Falco Roux!’
‘I would have told you before you took any deal from that licentious old man. Even despite the non-disclosure agreement I made with your brother, I intended to find a way to tell you the truth before you actually left Falco Roux. I only signed Apollo for the rest of this season, thinking it was the right thing to do for the team. I assumed your brother would want to make the decisions about his own drivers when he took over again.’
‘You can see why I find that hard to believe, right?’
‘That’s fair.’
‘None of this is fair. I’m so sick of this. I’m so unbelievably sick of having my future decided upon by men who have assumed all the power behind my back. I’m so sick of working so hard all the time and ending up right back where I started. I trusted you.’
He took a step towards her, closing the space between them. ‘You can still trust me. I made a mistake. Regardless of the NDA, I should have told you sooner, I see that now. But your brother insisted that you not know. Don’t let this ruin what we’ve started between us, Nina. I meant it for the best, to try and help save your family company. I want to make this work. Us. I want to earn your trust back and show you just how serious I am about never breaking it again.’
She bowed her head, wanting that explanation to be enough. But deep inside her, something had split apart at his deception. He’d known far more about Alain than he’d admitted. He’d known he was only caretaking the Roux company until Alain was better. He’d seen how upset she’d been about being forced out of a main driver’s seat, and, despite him erroneously thinking that signing a more experienced driver for the rest of this season was the right thing to do, he’d done nothing to reassure her that it wouldn’t be for ever. He’d lied by omission, but still it was like a knife to her heart.
‘Don’t let this come between us,’ Tristan pleaded, his voice tight. ‘Don’t walk away from what we’ve started to build together, Nina, because I know you feel it too.’
‘We both know that this was just a performance,’ she whispered.
‘It’s not,’ he growled. ‘Not for me, anyway.’
‘No, Tristan, I’m not looking for you to placate me or lie for my benefit any more. I know exactly what this deal was when we entered into it. A sham to hold your mother off a little longer. A PR exercise to raise the company’s profile with fans. It’s just I wasn’t expecting to feel so...affected.’
‘That’s good,’ he rasped, taking a step closer.
‘Is it?’
‘I mean...it’s good to know I’m not the only one living in torment.’ He reached out to touch her, then paused as if rethinking the movement. ‘We spent every single day of the past two weeks together, you in my bed, learning about one another and it still wasn’t nearly enough for me. I have absolutely no idea where I stand with you. Yet, my mother took one look at us together and immediately knew the truth.’
‘What is the truth?’ she asked shakily.
‘That I’ve fallen in love with you, Nina,’ he said, his voice rough, and his eyes trained intently upon her. ‘I’ve fallen in love with everything about you and I want this fake engagement to be real. I love your focus, your ambition, your willingness to fight me at every turn... And of course your body and your ability to drive me wild with just a look.’
Nina’s breath caught in her chest; she could hardly believe what she was hearing. ‘But the deal, the rules. Your secrets and lies...’
‘Forget the rules, forget everything. I thought I was doing the right thing all along, but I think I was only trying to fool myself. I realised in the moment I saw you hit that wall, that nothing I felt for you was simple. I think I fell in love with you that night, holding you in my arms while you monologued about your favourite movies. I’m so sorry I didn’t tell you about the company, but I can’t go back, Nina...only forwards.’
‘You might think you’re in love with me, but you barely know me. If you did, you’d never have lied to me.’ She shook her head, taking a few steps away. Her heart was hammering in her chest so hard she was surprised she still stood upright but she needed to have this conversation with him. She needed him to understand. ‘You’ve been put under a lot of pressure by your mother to find someone to love. And with your ex getting engaged to your cousin, that had to have hurt you.’
‘This isn’t about any of that.’ He took a step closer, an expression of desperation on his face. ‘Look, I can see now that this was a lot to put on you so suddenly. With Alain here, and after learning what I did, maybe we should wait to talk until later, once you’ve had time to think about it.’
‘No.’ She pulled her hand away from his, and hated the immediate look of hurt in his eyes. ‘Waiting isn’t going to solve any of this, Tristan. We’ve got so tangled up in the haze of the past couple weeks I don’t know which way is up any more. I don’t know what is real and what is fake and what is simply induced by spending time with your wonderful yet slightly dramatic family, who I adore.’
‘They adore you too,’ he said hoarsely.
‘Please, stop. I can’t think straight with you looking at me this way.’
‘Sometimes thinking straight is the least helpful thing we can do. Not everything can be made logical and clear-cut, Nina. Sometimes a person comes storming into your life when you least expect it, bringing parts of you back to life that you didn’t even realise were dead. Let’s do this for real, let’s get married and build a life together.’
Nina closed her eyes, wishing she could trust this. Trust him after what he’d done. He’d just said he loved her. She’d dreamed of hearing those words from his lips. She wished that she could simply take his hands and throw herself into his arms, throw caution to the wind. She could just imagine it now: a big white wedding, his entire family would be overjoyed. The media would love it. A whirlwind romance... Just like the one she’d grown up as a product of.
Her mother had married her father in the eye of a media storm, never as happy as when she was the centre of attention. Every step of their relationship had been scrutinised and followed until her mother had become unrecognisable. Her father had walked away from his marriage and children unscathed, unchanged by the media’s opinion, which had largely been aimed at her socialite mother and her supposed sins. Could she do that? Could she trust that whatever this intense connection with Tristan was, she wouldn’t be swallowed whole by it?
Her aunt Lola’s words rang in her ears.
‘Only trust yourself, Nina.’
‘I can’t,’ she whispered, squeezing her eyes tight as if hoping, if she tried hard enough when she opened them, all of this might have just been a bad dream. But it wasn’t, and she eventually opened her eyes to see Tristan staring at her as if she were a stranger.
‘You can’t?’ Tristan shook his head. ‘Or you won’t?’
‘I struggle with trusting people, Tristan. I didn’t have the same loving family upbringing as you but I know that relationships can be hard to maintain. And if they start out based on lies and deceit—however well meant—what does that say about our future? We’ve only been together for a short time, and most of that was just for show.’
‘It might have started that way, but these past couple of weeks have been real,’ he urged. ‘Just give us a chance.’
‘I can’t.’ She felt her entire body shake from repressing the tears that threated to spill from her eyes. ‘I’m sorry.’
Tristan wondered how things could go downhill so quickly. For the past two days he’d been hopeful that Nina might understand why he’d done what he’d done, and had been imagining proposing to her all over again. This time for real. But here she looked at him as though he were a stranger. He should have told her about his deal with her brother sooner, he knew that. But he’d signed that NDA in all good faith, and the longer he’d waited, the deeper the lie had become. And now, seeing the hurt on her face, he wished so hard that he’d done everything differently.
No business deal was worth her pain. Nothing was.
‘Even if you had told me the truth right from the start...even if we’d got past all of it, do you really think we would ever have worked as a couple?’ Nina closed her eyes, and his chest tightened as he saw a single tear snake from her eyelid down across her cheek. She had never cried in front of him, he realised. She held herself together so tightly, never showing weakness, rarely allowing anybody a glimpse underneath the surface armour to the tender vulnerability beneath.
But over the past few weeks he had slowly dug beneath that armour. She’d let him in , damn it—and look how he’d rewarded her trust. Not for the first time since they’d met, he felt like the world’s biggest bastard and he reached up with a shaky hand to brush away her tears. She let him touch her, but he knew by the stiffness in her shoulders that it was not an indication of forgiveness. She had told him she struggled to trust, had she not? She had cut people out of her life for far less than this. She burned bridges because it was easier than allowing people a second chance to screw her over again.
‘Tell me how to make this right,’ he growled, refusing to admit that he had irretrievably broken whatever fragile thing had begun to blossom between them. Refusing to give up on them, even if she was already fading away from his grasp before his eyes.
The silence that stretched between them felt as if it went on for hours, every second ticking down like grains of sand. When she finally spoke, her voice was barely a murmur and her eyes were far away.
‘Tristan, this would never have worked out anyway. It was only ever meant to be temporary. Maybe this is what I needed to hear today, to stop feeling this foolish hope.’
‘Hope is good,’ he rasped, holding himself still as she pulled free from his arms.
‘Sometimes hope is just prolonging the pain of something that was always inevitable. We’re so different. You’re handsome, outgoing and charismatic and I’m...a plain workaholic ice queen.’
She raised her hand to silence him when he immediately rushed to deny her words.
‘It’s taken me a long time, but I like who I am. I like being obsessed with fast cars and metrics and studying engines until my eyeballs hurt. I like the danger too, Tristan. None of us would be in this career if it didn’t give us a thrill. You can barely stand the thought of my job. You flinch every time I mention getting behind the wheel again. Your fears are real and so valid and I feel like—’
He flinched at the hitch in her breath as she paused, shaking her head.
‘I feel like if we use hope as the glue to see where this goes, we will only hurt each other very badly in the end. I don’t want to hurt you. But is it any better for me to twist myself into smaller pieces, just to keep you comfortable?’
Tristan closed his eyes at the harsh truth in her words. Yes, his fears over her dangerous career were vast and definitely had the potential to pose an issue between them. But was it fair for her to use it as an argument against them together when she hadn’t even given them a chance?
‘No.’ He shook his head. ‘I don’t accept that, Nina. My fears, while legitimate and a hurdle, are something that I can work on because I would choose to work on it for you. That’s what you do when you love somebody. You grow, you change, you choose to put eachother first.’
‘Maybe I’m just not built that way.’
‘We are not born knowing how to trust. It’s something you have to learn to do, just like being in love. And I think you do love me, but you’re angry and afraid to take a chance.’
Her jaw tightened, and her eyes briefly met his. She made no move to refute his words and for one wild moment he thought she might jump into his arms. He prayed she would.
But just as quickly, he seen her shut down once more as she shook her head sadly and looked away towards the deserted racing track.
‘Okay,’ he said softly, cold seeping into his bones despite the balmy evening air. ‘I won’t stand here and beg, if you’ve already made up your mind.’
He felt the last fragile slip of hope slide through his fingers as he took a step backwards and she didn’t make a single move to follow him.