job at night. My mother took on more houses to clean. All so I could go to Milan."
My throat is tight.
"I was eleven years old," he continues, "living in a dormitory with twenty other boys, training six days a week, eating rice and vegetables because meat was too expensive. I would call home once a week—three minutes, that was all we could afford—and my mother would tell me about her day, and I could hear how tired she was. How much she was working. All for me."
"Santino—"
"I spent the next seventeen years racing. Go-karts, then Formula 4, then Formula 3, then finally professional racing. Getting faster. Winning more. Making money. Enough money that my parents could stop working. Enough money that my mother could buy back her wedding ring from the pawn shop." He finally looks at me. "I spent twenty-eight
years being very, very fast. And very, very good at it. And now I am thirty-four, and I am sitting in a café in Jackson Hole, and I do not know what comes next."
The silence stretches.
"My whole life has been about speed," he says quietly. "About knowing where the finish line is. About getting there first. But for the first time, I do not know where the finish line is. I do not know what I am racing toward anymore."
"Why did you stop?"
"Because I was tired." He says it simply. "Tired of the speed. Tired of the people who wanted things from me. Tired of beingSantino Aleotti, the driver, and never just—" He stops. "Just Santino."
"So you came here."
"I came here because I needed to be somewhere no one knew me. Somewhere I could be—" He makes a frustrated gesture. "Normal."
"And?"
"And I walked into a café. And there was a girl who looked at me like I was just a man who wanted breakfast." His eyes find mine. "You did not know who I was. You did not care. You just—you counted ceiling tiles and forgot the specials and dropped a coffee pot, and it was—" He shakes his head. "It was the first real thing that had happened to me in years."
Oh.
"So when that woman—Kimberly—when she said I was slumming it?" His voice has gone cold again. "She was wrong. Because you are the first person in a very long time who has made me feel like a person instead of a trophy. Instead of a name. Instead of something people collect."
I can't breathe.
"But," he continues, and his voice is quieter now, "I understand if you do not want that. If what she said—if it made you realize that this is—" He stops. Starts again. "I understand if you would prefer I find somewhere else to eat breakfast."
"Is that what you want?" The question comes out before I can stop it.
"No." Immediate. Certain. "But I do not want you to be uncomfortable."
"I'm not uncomfortable."
"You have been avoiding me for three days."
"Because I'm scared," I say, and the honesty of it surprises even me.
He goes very still. "Of what?"
"Of this. Of you. Of—" I gesture helplessly at the space between us. "Of wanting something I can't have."
"You think you cannot have this?"
"I think I'm twenty-one years old with a studio apartment and bald tires and a father in prison." The words come tumbling out. "I think you have trophies and sponsors and a life in Monaco. I think Kimberly was right. This doesn't make sense."
"My father worked in a factory," he says quietly. "My mother cleaned houses. I grew up with nothing. And you think I care about tires?"
"I think you should."
"Why?"
