Page 94 of Out of Control

“She’s different,” I whisper but it holds no weight. How can it when the things I did in my past, the things I did to try and make me feel worth something, were fucked up too?

“You’re goddamn right she is and you’re nowhere near good enough for her.”

“Tell me something I don’t know,” I snap at him. “But isn’t that for Sofia to decide?”

“Not when you’ve convinced her that you’re a stand-up—”

“I haven’t convinced her of shit. She’s a grown woman who has her own life, her own goals, her own fucking feelings, but it seems she’s so goddamn busy managing everyone else in your family that you seem to forget that.”

“I don’t forget shit. Don’t tell me how to be with my sister.”

“Why not? You seem like you do a good job of telling everyone else how to be. When’s the last time you asked her how her gallery was going? When was the last time you asked her anything about herself other than where she is to help with your mamá or papá?”

“That’s none of your business.”

“No? Because I’m the one at the gallery with her, painting and putting displays together. I’m the one trying to help her procure art to showcase. I’m the fucking one there when she’s exhausted from your parents and pleasing your grandfather, not-fucking-you.” I straighten my shoulders and step back into him. I’ve found my even footing and I’m goddamn good and well with it. “You talk a good game. You talk about respecting women, about not wronging them, but it doesn’t seem you respect the one who deserves it the most.”

“You don’t know shit—”

“But I do. I know someone needs to stand up for your sister and if it isn’t going to be you—like it should be after she’s had your back all these years—then it sure as fuck is going to be me.”

I take a few steps back.

“Like me. Hate me. I don’t give a fuck what you think of me, but your sister, she deserves better than the both of us, and it seems only one of us is trying to fix that.”

This time when I walk away, he doesn’t follow me.

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

Sofia

“You okay?” I ask, the response on the other end of the line slow to come.

“Yeah.” A sigh. “I’m fine. You?”

I nod and look around the crowded airport as I wait for the shuttle to take us out to the private jet. “I’m okay. I’m sorry . . . for everything.”

And what that everything is, I have no idea.

I saw Cruz run after him. I saw the door shut. I heard the muffled shouting between the two. And after that, nothing. Chilled fucking silence.

“Don’t be,” Rossi says. His voice is a soft rumble through the line that I want to crawl into and wrap around myself. “This is on me. All of it. Cruz knowing. The race. The fight after. Things you don’t even know about. This is on me.” For a man who just took a podium, he sounds like he just got the shit kicked out of him.

“I don’t blame you. At all. Please know that.”

There’s a pause that eats at me. “I’m a lot of things, Sofia, but perfect isn’t one of them. I’ve made mistakes. When I was younger, when I was first on the circuit, fucking yesterday if it really matters, but this time spent with you? It wasn’t one of them. Please know that.”

“Ollie . . . why do you sound like . . .” Like you’re ending this.

“I don’t sound like anything. It’s important for me that you know that is all.”

“Okay. I hear you. I understand you. I . . .” I wish you were coming with me. “I wish I were going back home with you.”

“You are going home,” he says, referring to my flight home to Spain for our once-a-month family dinner at the villa. “Enjoy your time.”

“Rossi.”

Don’t hang up yet.