And when the door clicked shut, I sat down on the edge of the bed she had just left.
Her perfume clinging to the sheets, I fell back into them, deciding today was shit. I would try again tomorrow.
Smiling was second nature by now.
Not the real kind—the ones that creased your eyes and made your chest ache with something close to joy—but the practiced version. The one that felt like muscle memory. Easy. Effortless. Automatic.
It was what people expected from me, after all. The chill one. The funny one. The driver who didn’t take life—or racing—too seriously.
And maybe that was the problem.
I stood in front of the mirror in my hotel room, tugging on my team jacket, the embroidered Moretti Racing logo catching the morning light. The day’s schedule was already pinging on my phone, and Anna had sent a cheerful reminder about being “camera ready.” Which—in my head—was code for, ‘Be the version of you people like.’
“Big smiles today, Matty boy,” I said to myself.Gotta make ’em forget you’re running on three hours of sleep and a heart full of anxiety.
I ran a hand through my hair for the third time, fixing it again. I’d learned early on that people got uncomfortable when you weren’t smiling. They started asking questions. So I became the guy who filled the silence with jokes, with stories, with noise.
Laughter was easier than honesty.
Honesty was messy. It looked like 3 a.m. nights replaying races I should’ve won. Like the constant ache in my chest every time I wondered if I’d ever be enough—not just for the team, but for myself.
I’d made a name for myself in my rookie year. Fast, reckless, magnetic—the media’s favorite new toy.But the thing about being everyone’s favorite is that you can’t stop being it.
Can’t slow down.
Can’t mess up.
Can’t let them see the cracks.
So I smiled. I laughed. I told stories in interviews that made people think I was just some happy-go-lucky kid from the Italian countryside who lucked into speed and stardom. No one wanted to hear about the stress or the insomnia. About how, some nights, I woke up gasping from dreams of spinning out on a track I couldn’t escape. No. They wanted charm. They wanted easy. They wantedMatteo DeLuca.
And maybe if I said it enough—if I played the part long enough—I’d start believing it too.
I grabbed my phone, keys, and sunglasses. Another day, another performance.
When I stepped out of the hotel, the cameras were already waiting. Shouts of my name, flashes, smiles I didn’t feel but gave anyway. I waved, cracked a joke with a reporter, did that stupid wink that always went viral.
The crowd laughed. The cameras loved me. And somewhere behind all of it, I could still hear my heart pounding, whispering doubts of not being enough. Lately, the only time my head was silent was around Nicola. I was way too preoccupied trying to get her to like me. After our drunken night together, I might have made that part even harder.
I spotted her the second I stepped into the paddock.
She was impossible to miss—blazer perfectly tailored, sunglasses too big for her face, and her walk fast enough to make a grown man sprint just to keep up. Most days I’d call it a challenge. Today? She didn’t even glance in my direction. It had been one week since the gala, a week of me dreaming of her screaming my name.
I adjusted the collar of my racing suit and grinned, purely on instinct. Catching up to her, I cleared my throat and lowered my voice. “Avoiding me doesn’t erase the fact that you moaned my name loud enough to wake up half the damn hotel.”
Her shoulders stiffened for a fraction of a second. Blink and you’d miss it.
But I never missedher.
She kept walking, fast and clean, ignoring me like I was a fly buzzing around.
I fell into step beside her, not bothering to hide my amusement. But I needed something from her, needed a reaction like it was a drug, so I kept poking. “C’mon, don’t be like that. You’ll hurt my feelings.”
“Youhavefeelings?” she muttered, not even looking at me.
“Ouch,” I clutched my chest, feeling some type of way about the bite in her tone. “Right in the heart.” Some may have called me a masochist. They’d probably be right.
“I’m sure you’ll survive with your obnoxious positivity.”
