"Please."
"Why?"
"Because I—" He stops. Looks away. Looks back. "Because I need to explain. And you will not let me explain while you are working."
I come around the counter. My legs feel uncertain, like I'm walking on ice. I choose a table by the window—not the corner booth, never the corner booth—and I sit.
He sits across from me.
And for a long moment, neither of us speaks.
The café is so quiet. No espresso machine. No Gail barking out orders in the kitchen. No customers. Just the sound of snow hitting the window and the heating system clicking on and my heart doing something complicated in my chest.
“Thea...”
Something about the way he says my name makes my breath catch.
“No more pretending."
I nod.
“You’ve been avoiding me.”
I nod again.
“Why?”
“Because...” Just thinking of what I’m about to admit out loud makes my chest hurt. “What Kimberly said—”
“—is out of spite and jealousy,” he cuts in quietly. “And that’s why you should know none of it is true.”
“Is it?” I gesture at myself. At my coffee-stained shirt and my hair that's falling out of its
ponytail. "I’m not like her."
“If you were like her, I wouldn’t have had anything to count. I wouldn’t even care to count. And I certainly wouldn’t be driving across town every day just to have breakfast.”
Oh.
“Do you understand what I’m saying, Thea?”
I bite my lip hard. I think I do, but I’m still scared to admit this. “We’re just so different,” I say helplessly, and frustration flashes over his chiseled features at the words.
"I am not good with words. I am good with speed. With timing. With knowing when to
brake and when to accelerate. But this—" He gestures at the space between us. "I do not know how to measure it. How slowor fast you want me to move.” He rakes his fingers through his hair, and my heart stutters at the gesture. The lack of control in it is nothing like him.
"I grew up in a small village in Italy. Outside Modena. My father worked in a factory that made car parts. Brake pads. My mother cleaned houses for wealthy families who lived in the hills." He's not looking at me now. He's looking past me, at something I can't see. "We had nothing. No money. No connections. Just an old go-kart my father built from parts he found at the factory junkyard."
His words break my heart. Because it made me realize how I’ve been so blinded by my own fears...that I failed to even consider if his heart also bears scars from the truth.
"I started racing when I was six. Local tracks. Small competitions where the prize was fifty euros and a trophy made of plastic. I was fast. Faster than the other children. Fast enough that by the time I was ten, people started noticing." He pauses. "There was a man. A scout
for one of the junior racing programs. He said I had potential. He said if I could get to the training facility in Milan, he could get me into the program."
"How far was Milan?"
"Four hundred kilometers. Too far for my father's car. Too expensive for a train ticket." He looks down at his hands. "My parents sold everything. Our car. My mother's jewelry—her wedding ring, the necklace her grandmother gave her, everything. My father took a second
