Chapter 4
DIRTY AIR: TURBULENT AIR REDUCING DOWNFORCE BEHIND ANOTHER CAR
Dario’s flat in New York City smells like citrus cleaner and expensive whisky.
Unlike Christin’s retreat in Saratoga Springs, it feels too polished, like nothing is allowed to linger. Then again, it holds no evidence of my ruin. I sought out its emptiness, believing it could hold the weight of my emotions.
It wasn’t the first time today I’ve been wrong.
I step forward into the kind of luxury I’ve been surrounded by my whole life, where I find him leaning against his kitchen island, drink in hand.
His expression is edged with fury. He’s already verbally chastised me, expressing his disgust over the fact that I was an arse of epic proportions.
I mutter, “I haven’t seen you this furious since you lost qualifying at Circuit Paul Ricard in 2018. ”
Letting my bag slide off my shoulder, I fold in half, bracing my hands on my thighs.
My breath is ragged. Dario offered his place when I said I couldn’t be alone.
“We have a flight to Nevada in two days. I want my eyes on you to make certain you board the damn plane.” But I think he’s regretting that decision.
“You look worse than I thought you would,” he remarks.
“I’ll be able to drive the bloody car.” My voice is devoid of emotion.
“That’s not what I meant.”
I toss him a glare that should leave skid marks on his soul. His expression doesn’t even register the slight. I snarl, “I’ll be fine.”
He takes a slow sip of his drink. “You look like your world has ended.”
That’s because it has. The thought whispers through my mind. I rub the heel of my hand against my chest. My body feels…disconnected. Like my heart and brain have taken a hiatus. “I can’t believe she’s gone.”
Dario doesn’t react immediately. Just watches me with a quirked brow. “What did you expect?”
“That I’d have a chance to explain?”
“Explain what? Your girlfriend overheard you saying you thought she couldn’t handle being in your life. You created your entire fucked up situation.”
I stare out at the city, jaw clenched so tight it aches. “She asked me if I meant it.”
“And?”
“I didn’t answer.” Couldn’t. I physically couldn’t speak.
Dario exhales slowly. “Anything else?”
“I followed her orders and left.”
“So, you didn’t try to explain anything?”
I shake my head no.
Dario succinctly tells me how he feels about my actions. “You absolute idiot.”
It’s not shouted. I think I could handle it better if it was. “I know.”
“Do you?” He sets his glass down with a sharp clink before pushing away from the island. “Because from where I’m standing, you’ve just blown up the best thing in your life for no visible reason.”
“There was a reason.”
“I’d love to hear it.”
I drag a hand down my face before admitting, “She means too much.”
“That’s the goal, Leo. That’s what letting another person into your life means!”
“Not for me.”
Dario’s incredulous expression turns sympathetic.
I’m not certain what’s worse. I turn away from him.
For a second, I consider not saying it—trying to keep the past buried where it belongs—but it’s already caused my world to implode.
“You know about my past. Who I am.” I don’t add who I came from, but it’s implied.
His brow furrows. “Yeah.”
“You know I grew up knowing exactly where I stood—secondary. Dismissible.”
“Because, as I’ve said before, your parents were, and are, assholes.”
I wince. “Apparently, so am I.”
“That’s an understatement.”
My mind floods with how unwelcome I felt in the place I should have been able to call home. “Growing up, I can’t remember a time when I felt accepted. If it wasn’t people, it was events—”
“Or your parents’ expectations?”
“Exactly. My brother was the center of it. Always. Tutors. Riding lessons. Dinners where he sat beside my father while I existed somewhere in the background, preferably out of sight.”
“Lots of families favor one child over the other,” Dario points out carefully.
“This wasn’t favoring. After a certain age, the only expectation was for me not to soil the family name.
For all intents and purposes, they stopped being my parents.
Until I could take care of myself, you know it was nannies and staff who ensured I went to school and that I ate. To my family, I didn’t exist.”
Dario knows more about my past than anyone else, but he’s still surprised by my blunt revelations. “Why didn’t you ever say anything before?”
“I was taught early on not to speak about my problems. Even with the people who ‘raised’ me. Then, it didn’t matter. I was no longer welcome there.”
“You’ve never answered this. After you left, did no one ever come looking for you?”
“No. Never.” I rub my hand across my heart. “What I said to you about Christin was the same bitter words they once directed at me.”
“What do you mean?” Dario asks, his remaining anger draining away.
I hesitate because saying it means it exists somewhere other than my memories. “There was one night—not too long before I left the estate and met you.”
“What happened?”
“Big dinner. Investors. People who mattered.”
Dario scoffs, “You handle those like a pro.”
The side of my lips curve. “I’d spent weeks learning everything I could about the deal. I thought if I knew enough, I’d show my value by contributing. I garnered my courage and offered an idea.” My head pounds as the memory surfaces.
“And?”
“My father didn’t even look at me. Just…flicked his hand at me before throwing me out of the room. I can hear him now, ‘Enough, Leo. You’re not wanted here.’”
“Jesus Christ!” The exclamation bursts from him, raw and furious.
“Every single guest heard it, yet they pretended they didn’t.
” I regroup before rounding out the story.
“I didn’t just leave the room, I checked out.
It wasn’t long after that I left the house with a bag.
Caught a train to London and ran into your team at a local pub right before you won the British Grand Prix.
I’m eternally grateful one of the blokes—the American—recognized me from when he dated one of my nannies years past.”
“Let me get this straight, in the ten years we’ve been friends and working together, no one has reached out to you? Not even your parents’ servants?”
“Not in the ten years since I’ve been gone. I mean, why would they? If my presence meant nothing to them, my absence shouldn’t either.”
“You weren’t raised in a home. You were in a prison,” Dario snarls.
I shrug. “It’s all I knew.”
“It explains a lot.”
“Does it?”
“You were barely an adult when we met,” Dario reminds me.
“Old enough to understand.”
“Understand what?”
“That I could disappear. After all, I wasn’t indispensable.” The words hang between us. “I learned—very early on—being invisible doesn’t protect you; it just gets you shat on. To be of value to people, you have to prove your worth, over and over.”
“This doesn’t explain why you hurt Christin.”
“With her…” I shake my head, struggling for words. “She was never about what I had to prove. She never made our time together about results or expectations or whether I was performing well enough to justify my place.”
The words come faster now as I finally unburden myself. “People—love—isn’t something I know how to handle. I can control the track. My performance. No one’s ever loved me just for being me.”
“That was why you spewed that garbage. Fear?”
“Yes.” The admission lands between us. “Being with her…it terrified me because what if she came to the same conclusion? That I’m not enough? That I never was worth her time?”
Dario stares at me like I’ve lost my mind. “So, you self-sabotaged your relationship—whether knowingly or not.”
I look away. “She deserves better than someone who is bound to disappoint her the way I do everyone else.”
“So, you tore her down first.”
“Not intentionally,” I protest.
“You called her dismissible, Leo. Have you ever forgotten what that felt like?”
My chest tightens painfully. “No.”
“Congratulations. You spent the last decade trying not to be like your family and in one fell swoop became the people you ran from.” Dario steps closer, his voice intense. “You have to apologize. You don’t get to use your past as a justification to destroy someone else.”
The words hit harder than anything else he’s said. I recognize the disappointment emanating from Dario. My voice cracks when I choke out, “She recited everything I said. She was trying to control herself, but I know exactly what it did to her.”
“Yet, you still didn’t take it back.”
“No.”
“Why?”
“Because I couldn’t speak. I froze!”
I move to the window, staring out at the city as it blurs slightly at the edges. “She told me to leave. She was just…done.”
“Understandable, but bad.”
Pressing my hand flat against the glass, I try to ground myself. “I thought I was ready for what it meant to love her.”
Dario gives it to me straight. “You weren’t ready if you couldn’t give her all of yourself, Leo. And I bet she has no idea about any of your past.”
“You’re right.”
“Normally, I’d be thrilled to hear that.”
I rest my forehead briefly against the glass, closing my eyes. “I don’t know how to fix this. I don’t know if I can.”
“Maybe you can’t,” Dario says. I sense a hesitancy in his words, which makes me turn around and face him. “But that doesn’t mean you don’t try if you’re given the chance.”
A bitter laugh escapes me. “You think she’ll even listen?”
“I think you’re asking the wrong question.”
“What’s the right one?”
“Whether you’re ready to stop letting your past dictate your future. If you can’t do that, then stay away from her. If you can, then give her the chance to make her own decisions. She’s a grown woman, Leo!”
I let myself absorb the truth.
I didn’t push Christin away because she didn’t belong in my world.
I pushed her away because I’ve known my entire life I don’t.