“Nils,” I hiss, burying my face in my hands.
“That tow-headed motherfucker,” Enzo says through gritted teeth. “That stupid, arrogant little child.”
“How could he do this?” I breathe, “Just because I didn’t want to go on a date with him? What is this, high school?”
“This is bad, Ace,” Enzo says grimly. His jaw is set, his entire face stony with barely-contained ire. “This is really bad.”
As we roll up to the hotel, I spot another crowd of reporters waiting for us to arrive. Enzo squares his shoulders and kicks open the door of the town car, storming through the crowd as I dash along, trying to keep up. We duck into the hotel and are ushered upstairs at once. I barely even register how stunning our accommodations are, especially our two-bedroom suite. It must be bigger than the entire townhouse I share with Alec.
Thinking about my brother, and how disappointed he must be right now, brings a swell of shame crashing down on me. I sink down onto the couch in the suite’s living room, curling into a tiny ball as the tears finally arrive. I weep bitterly, angry with myself for doing so. But I can’t help it. This whole thing is too overwhelming, too embarrassing.
“Come here,” Enzo says, his voice hoarse, as he sits down beside me and pulls me into his arms. “Just come here and let me hold you.”
“Isn’t that what got us into this mess?” I sob, launching myself into his embrace all the same. “Letting you hold me?”
“I don’t give a shit about that,” he says, catching my face in his hands and forcing me to look up at him. “We’re gonna get on top of this, Ainsley. You have to believe me.”
“Why do they hate us so much,” I choke, “The media, all those people on the internet, even Nils and his friends—?”
“It doesn’t matter what they think, Ace,” Enzo says, kissing away the tears that spill onto my cheeks. But his kindness only makes me sob harder.
“I’ve never once been ashamed of anything I’ve done with man,” I weep, bracing myself against Enzo’s firm chest. “And I don’t want to start now.”
Before Enzo can reply, his phone begins to ring. We can practically hear the urgency in the ringtone itself. He pulls out the device and glances down at the screen, sucking in a breath.
“It’s a video call. From Siena,” he says warily.
“You’d better answer it,” I say, wiping away my tears as best I can. “We’re gonna have to talk it out with her sooner or later.”
Swallowing a sigh, Enzo sets the cell phone down on the coffee table. He frames us both in the video screen and answers his sister’s call.
“Hey Siena,” he says drily, resting his elbows on his knees. “How’s your day going?”
“Is it true?” she demands without preamble. Her voice is hard, her face stoic and set. I’ve never seen her so upset.
“I have no idea what’s being said out there,” Enzo replies, running a hand through his hair. “So I can’t—”
“Is it true that you two are sleeping together?” Siena cuts him off, her dark eyes blazing. “Is it true you spent last night shacked up in Rome and lied to me about it?”
For once, Enzo is speechless. He simply glances my way, and lays a gentle hand on my knee. I can almost hear the steam pouring out of Siena’s ears.
“That much is true, yeah,” Enzo allows. “And before you start getting all righteous—”
“This has nothing to do with being righteous!” Siena fumes, “This has everything to do with you not being honest with me. I expect this kind of shit from you by now, Enzo, the sneaking off, the omission, the shady behavior. But Ainsley...”
I have to blink away a fresh round of tears as Siena trains her gaze on me. She doesn’t even look that mad, just terribly disappointed. And that’s much, much worse.
“I’m sorry Siena,” I manage to say, “I should have just told you where I was going. I was just...I thought—”
“You thought I would have tried to stop you?” she demands, “You’re fucking right I would have! I know better than anyone that it’s impossible to keep something like this from the press. I would have told you that a good fuck with your teammate wasn’t worth ruining your entire racing career.”
“What do you mean, ruining—?” I start.
“I just got off the phone with the owners of Team Ferrelli,” Siena snaps, “They’re seriously considering cutting you from the roster, Ainsley. They don’t want to deal with this kind of shit.”
“They can’t do that!” Enzo roars, “That’s discrimination. Furthermore, that’s fucking bullshit. I’ll call them myself and tell them—”
“Not so fast brother,” Siena goes on solemnly, “They’re thinking about cutting you too.”
A long, heavy moment of silence descends, threatening to swallow us all. Enzo stares, unseeing, at his sister’s face on the screen. He’s still as stone, his expression unreadable. With herculean effort, he manages to wrench his jaw open long enough to speak.
“What?” he spits.
“You’ve been totally unreliable lately, Enzo,” Siena says bluntly, “Disappearing whenever you want, never giving us any notice. And now this—?”
“This team. Is my entire life,” he growls.
“I know that,” Siena says, clearly in agony.
“I won’t be cut from the team my father built from the ground up,” Enzo continues, his voice rising to a low roar. “Do you hear me? I will not let them do this.”
“They have to make up their own minds about it,” Siena presses on.
“Fuck that. Fuck them!” Enzo says, springing to his feet. I pull myself to the far end of the couch, suddenly afraid of his rippling strength.
“You need to calm down,” Siena shouts, “Thrashing a hotel room and flipping off the press isn’t going to help!”
“Oh, I’m going to do much more than that,” Enzo snarls, snatching up the cell. He brings the device close to his face, staring his sister straight in they eye.
“Don’t do anything rash, Enzo,” she cautions, “You need to be careful—”
I shriek as Enzo hurls his cell phone at the wall, where it shatters into a hundred little shards. He rampages on in a blind rage, flipping over the coffee table, kicking in the glass lamp, punching violently at the wall. I leap to my feet, running to put as much distance between us as possible. Never could I have imagined that Enzo was capable of this kind of destruction. He’s always had a temper, sure, but this...This is something else entirely. It hits me with a sickening pang, that I’m actually afraid of him.
He finally comes to a halt, standing among the wreckage he himself has caused. His cut chest is heaving, his every muscle straining with exertion. His dark eyes are almost black, his teeth bared in a menacing grimace. Gathering up all of my courage, I take a step forward, hand outstretched toward him.
“Enzo?” I whisper, “Enzo, look at me...”
His face swings my way. For a moment, it honestly looks as though he doesn’t recognize me. He draws in a deep, shuddering breath, lost in frantic thought. Just as I take a second step forward, Enzo turns on his heel and marches toward the door.
“Where are you going?” I ask frantically, running after him.
“I’m going to fix this,” he says gravely, not even bothering to turn around.
“We need to talk about how we’re going to handle this,” I insist, catching his elbow.
“No,” he bellows, wrenching his arm out of my grasp. “I know what I’m going to do. What I have to do.”
“But what—?” I plead, as he yanks open the door.
“Just stay here,” he commands, looking back at me. There’s so much pain in his eyes that I actually stagger backward. “Just stay here, and let me go.” And just like that, he storms out of the room, slamming the door behind him.
I stand in the middle of the hotel room. Confused, humiliated, and totally alone. In a stupor, I fish my phone out of my pocket and dial the only number I can think of.
“Alec?” I whisper,
when the call goes through, “Could you come pick me up?”
Chapter Fifteen
Minutes blur into hours, and hours into days. The moment Alec rescues me from that lonely Manhattan hotel and all but carries me back to our home in Brooklyn, I find myself falling into a state of bewildered disorientation. I lose track of time completely, slumbering and waking at all hours, forgetting to eat, wandering around our townhouse in my dad’s sweater like a deranged sleepwalker. I’ve heard a post-breakup slump, but this something else completely.
But then again, what happened between me and Enzo was not some run-of-the-mill breakup. Our falling out was made infinitely worse by the interference of the media and our team alike. Hell, I don’t even know if he’s mad at me, or through with me, or hopelessly pining for me. Since he stormed out of that hotel room, I haven’t heard a peep from him. Or Team Ferrelli. It’s been radio silence since I arrived back in Brooklyn. And despite the saying about no news being good news, that’s certainly not how it feels right about now.
In fact, it feels like shit.
It’s Wednesday night before I feel myself coming to. The fog of despair and doubt is lifting somewhat, at last. Waking up from a late afternoon nap, I see that the sky outside my window is lit up with the pinks and oranges of an autumn sunset over Prospect Park. This is my favorite time of year, here in our little corner of Brooklyn. And despite everything that’s going on, I feel my heart warming a couple of degrees every day I spend at home with Alec.
Slipping into a pair of thick woolen socks, I pad downstairs into the kitchen. Our fridge is blessedly stocked with beer, as usual, and I grab a cold one before heading out into the backyard. As I step through the sliding glass door, I see that Alec had the same idea—he’s already sitting at our weathered patio table with a newspaper on his knee and a beer in his hand. He glances up at me with a smile and pats the seat beside him.
“Hey Sleeping Beauty,” he says, taking a swig of his beer. “Have you finally decided to join the world of the living?”
“I’m gonna take a crack at it, anyway,” I sigh.
As I take a sip of my beer, something catches my eye on the sports page of Alec’s newspaper. It’s a picture of my old FullSpeed Racing manager, Bruce. I snatch up the rag before my brother can stop me and read a snippet of the article accompanying the picture.
Vaughn’s ex-manager, Bruce Martinez, says that FullSpeed Racing was given no say in her sudden departure. “We were blindsided, absolutely,” Martinez says of Vaughn’s flight to Team Ferrelli. “But I guess that, as a woman, she felt she had to cash in on the whole sexy-lady-driver thing before her looks went.”
I toss the newspaper across the yard, seething. Alec raises an eyebrow at me as the pages flutter onto the patio.
“That fucker,” I grumble, taking a long swig of beer. “He couldn’t give a shit about me while I was driving for FullSpeed. Now he wants to piggy back off my bad press?”
“Of course he does,” Alec shrugs. “That’s how this goes. People are going to pile on you until there’s a new story for them to exploit.”
The world certainly has been running wild with this “F1 Vixen” angle. I know you’re not supposed to read the comments or your own reviews, but I haven’t been able to help but peek at what’s being written about Enzo and me. The consensus seems to be that I’m not a real driver. That Ferrelli only hired me as a publicity stunt. That I’ve been distracting Enzo and keeping him from his job. That I’m Enzo’s kept woman, and my being on the team is a personal favor he called in. One report even claimed that I’d hypnotized the owners of Ferrelli with, and this is a direct quite, by “bodacious ta-ta’s”.
I have to give them points for creativity on that one, at least.
“How am I supposed to fix this?” I ask Alec, picking at the label of my beer bottle. “Who’s going to take anything I say seriously now?”
“They probably won’t,” Alec says, looking up at the colorful sky.
“Ouch,” I wince, “A little sugar coating wouldn’t kill you, bro.”
“Sugar coating may taste sweeter, but it’ll still rot you in the end. The truth hurts,” he says. “Right now, it’s your word against the world’s. That’s not a fight you’re going to win. What you need to do is show them that you’re not just a pretty face. That you deserve your place on Team Ferrelli.”
“How am I going to do that if I can’t get near a damned racecar?” I ask.
“That...is a very good question,” Alec sighs, sipping on his beer. “And not one that I have an answer to.”
“Ferrelli is talking about letting me and Enzo go,” I say quietly.
“What?” Alec exclaims, “They can’t do that.”
“Sure they can,” I shrug, “I’m a new hire as it is. And Enzo’s been inconsistent, professionally speaking, since his father passed away. We’re both on the chopping block.”
“Jesus,” my brother breathes, “I didn’t realize things were so dire. What does Enzo say about all of this?”
“Hell if I know,” I shrug, “He disappeared a few days ago, and I haven’t heard from him since. I don’t even know where he is. Something’s got to give, Alec. I have no idea how to move forward with all of this.”
Alec reaches for my hand and gives it a comforting squeeze. “I know this thing seems insurmountable now,” he says softly, “But just wait. A way forward is going to fall out of the sky when you least expect it.”
Both of our heads turn as we hear a knock at our front door. I raise my eyebrows at Alec, amazed by the timing of the sudden interruption.
“You get it,” I tell him, sinking back into my chair, “I look like something that belongs on the underside of a rock.”
“Probably UPS or something,” he mumbles, “I’ll be right back.”
I reflect on Alec’s words as he goes to answer the door and know in my heart that he’s right. But how am I going to do the work of convincing the world that I’m more than a token chick in a man’s sport? How do I present them with a new, gift-wrapped story to cover? My wonderings are scattered as I hear two sets of heavy footprints crossing the kitchen. We don’t usually invite the mailman in for a beer here in Brooklyn. So who’s...?
“What the hell...?” I breathe, leaping up from my chair as Enzo appears at the sliding glass door. Alec stands behind him, his thick arms crossed. I look back and forth between their faces, waiting for someone to explain what’s happening.
“Hey Ace,” Enzo says, his voice gruff, “Are you gonna offer me a beer or what?”
“That depends,” I say coolly, pulling my dad’s sweater tightly around my body. “Are you going to stick around long enough to drink it, or disappear in a cloud of smoke again?”
“I’ll let you two have a second...” Alec says, “You call me if you need me, Ace. And no funny business from you, Mr. World Champion. I mean it. Oh, and again, it’s such an honor to meet you.” My brother’s inner fan-boy shining through momentarily.
My brother lumbers back into the living room as Enzo steps down into the backyard, taking a look around at our humble abode.
“So...your brother’s a charmer,” he says flatly.
“He’s just being protective,” I shoot back.
“I understand,” Enzo nods, “I’m a big brother too, you know. And this is your home.”
“It’s not exactly a villa,” I say defensively, “But it suits us just fine.”
“I like it,” Enzo says, his smile strained and anxious.
“Did you really want that beer?” I ask crisply.
“God yes,” he admits, shoving his hands into his pockets.
I hurry past him into the kitchen and crack open another beer. My hands are trembling like mad. What is Enzo doing here in Brooklyn? Where the hell has he been? What, exactly, does he propose we do now? I take a breath and calm myself. Best to let him do the talking for the moment. He’s the one with all the explaining to do, after all.
“Thanks,” he says, accepting my proffered beer, “
I’ve been in a constant state of needing a drink since...You know.”
“Oh, do I ever,” I reply wryly.
“Will you let me explain myself?” Enzo presses, reaching for my hand.
“That would be a great start,” I reply, snatching my fingers out of his grasp. In truth, my body is aching for him to hold me. But my mind won’t allow it just yet.
“OK,” Enzo sighs, shoving a hand through his jet black hair. His scruff is more pronounced than ever, his dark eyes intense and brooding. How can I still find him irresistible, even in the midst of all this? I suppose the heart wants what it wants, international tabloid scandal or no. “I know I could have handled this whole thing a lot better. I just want to put that out there first. I shouldn’t have run off without telling you where I was going. I shouldn’t have left you by yourself. I’m so sorry, Ainsley. These past few days must have been horrible for you.”
“They were,” I inform him crisply.
“If it makes you feel any better, they were hell for me too. Being away from you was the last thing I wanted, but I had to go into damage control mode as soon as possible. My place on Team Ferrelli has always meant everything to me, and it’s still damn important. But what I’ve realized through all of this is that your place on the team, your future, your happiness...I couldn’t have that ruined on my account. I had to figure out a way to get us out of this.”
“I’m not your fucking damsel in distress, Enzo,” I cut him off. “I didn’t need you to go riding off into the sunset on your own little spirit quest. I needed for us to take this on together.”
“I know,” he says, shaking his head. “I was so stupid not to realize that right off the bat. I can’t do this without you, Ace. We’re teammates, after all.”
“Is that all we are?” I ask, my voice ragged with held-back tears. “Just teammates?”
Faster Dirtier (Take Me...#5) (A Team Ferrelli Novel) Page 14
