He ran a hand through his hair. “I just want her to laugh again. Like she used to. When we were kids, she was always the brave one.”
“She still is,” I said quietly.
He looked at me then.Reallylooked.
The air shifted again, heavier now. Warmer. Threaded with tension but no longer sharp.
“You’re good with her,” I added, looking down at Gianna who was fast asleep, because I didn’t know how not to say it. Matteo with Gia was enough to make any girl’s heart do summersaults. It was sickening.
His gaze softened. “She’s my favorite.”
I rolled my eyes. “Charming.”
“I have my moments.”
We sat in the silence that followed, full of things neither of us knew how to say.
Eventually, I reached for another fry. Our fingers brushed.
I should have pulled away. Rolled my eyes at the sheer ridiculousness of it, he probably placed his damn hand there on purpose. I should have said something sharp, maybe, or tossed in one of my usual jabs to keep the distance exactly where I liked it.
But I didn’t.
I just let it happen. His fingers were warm. Steady. Not lingering, not purposeful. But the contact left a spark in its wakethat crawled up my arm and lodged somewhere stupid, like my throat.
He didn’t say anything either. Just let me steal the fry.
The glow from the hotel room was soft and gold, shadows curling around the corners. Gianna was a little bundle of sleep on the couch, her stuffed bunny tucked under her chin.
“I used to think,” Matteo said, voice quiet now, “that being a good brother meant protecting her from the world.”
He exhaled, leaning back against the couch.
“But lately…I don’t know. I think maybe it’s about standing beside her when she faces it. Not stepping in front all the time.”
I glanced at him. He was looking at Gianna again, his jaw tighter now. There was a kind of grief in his eyes I wasn’t ready for.
“Is that why you wanted her to come on the road for the rest of the season?” After summer break, when Matteo had returned with his sister and niece in tow, he told everyone on the paddock that they were a part of the racing family and to look out for them.
He nodded, rubbing the back of his neck. “Yeah. I thought maybe if she saw the world again—saw herself in it—she might start to feel like she could take up space again. Not just survive, but…breathe.”
There was a thud in my chest. A slow, aching resonance with what he said—a part of me that recognized the weight of trying to be okay for everyone else and forgetting how to be okay for yourself.
“She’s lucky to have you,” I said, and I meant it.
But Matteo shook his head.
“She’s the one who saved me first, you know? When I was a dumb kid with a bad attitude and no real direction. She kept me grounded. It reminded me who I was.” He paused. “Sometimes Ithink I drive the way I do because I’m always chasing the version of myself she believed in.”
I studied him, lips parting, because I didn’t think I’d ever heard him talk like this. Not the cocky, swaggering Matteo DeLuca the world saw. Not the one who called me princess just to get a rise out of me. This version was quieter and more open in a way I hadn’t seen. Everything felt like a performance with him because he was all charm. Seeing that sadness linger, feeling it in his words, it struck something deep in my chest, pulled at a damn heart string. Because that picture I kept of him made me not like him. But that man in front of me was different. Like I was seeing him for the first time.
“You’re a better man than you pretend to be,” I murmured, seeing the cracks of someone who also put on a mask for the world.
His gaze snapped to mine, and I immediately regretted saying it. Not because it was untrue. But because the look he gave me in return felt like an unraveling.
Matteo leaned forward, elbows on his knees, eyes still locked with mine.
“Why do you hate me so much, Nicola?”
