Chapter 4

Bryce

Viola left. She didn't glance back at me as she marched toward the door.

I never imagined our reunion could turn out this messy and dramatic.

I actually spotted her at the gala a long time before this moment. When I walked into this room, I caught the smell of alcohol right away. At first, I thought some obsessed fan had snuck in to pry into my private life. Then I recognized her high heels under the bed.

My heart tightened fast. Why was Viola inside my room? I had no clue what to say to her. I decided to act like nothing strange was going on and take a shower to calm myself down first.

I never expected Vivian to show up out of nowhere. I had turned this woman down so many times already, but she still kept coming after me. I hoped Viola would not get the wrong idea.

Yet the second I watched her storm out in anger, I knew she had misunderstood everything. She must have taken Anne for another one of my lovers.

The room suddenly felt overwhelmingly empty.

I should have tried to explain myself to Viola. But I could not make her stay, and I also could not run after her with nothing but a towel wrapped around me. If paparazzi took pictures of me looking like that, Anne would lose her mind long before the whole world blew up over the scandal the next day.

Anne was my cutthroat manager, and the toughest woman I had ever met. She hated it most when I got tangled up in gossip with women. Every time this kind of trouble popped up, she would lecture me on and on, and she could be far more nagging than my own mother.

Still, this was not something I could control. I never made a move, but my admirers kept throwing themselves at me one after another. Honestly, it wore me out. They treated every rejection from me like some kind of playful tease. I truly had no idea how to get out of this mess.

She'd come over to go over media strategy for my upcoming charity foundation launch.

Anne strode straight inside. If there was any woman unrelated to me who could look at my naked body without a flicker of interest, it was Anne. I thought to myself, if I didn't bring her such big profits, she would have given me the boot ages ago. I was just like a perfect commercial product for her.

She snatched my dress shirt off the floor and tossed it my way. "Put some clothes on. We need to talk."

I caught the shirt, pulled it on, and stared at her with feigned innocence.

"Bryce, you cannot keep carrying on like this. Do you have any idea how much work it took for me to clean up that mess when the supermodel snuck into your place and got those bedroom photos?"

"She broke into my house. If I'd been home and armed, I would've been fully within my rights to shoot her."

Anne was clearly unamused by my dark humor. "And what about this time?"

"She walked into the wrong room."

"The wrong room? You honestly expect me to buy that ridiculous excuse? But as your manager, I am obligated to point out that the woman who just stormed out of your room is Viola Hayes. Lead anchor for Sports Network Tonight."

"You know who she is?"

Anne rolled her eyes.

"Bryce, it is literally my job to know every single person holding a microphone in sports broadcasting," Anne said, still rolling her eyes. "She's sharp and ruthless.Everybody knows it! All those smooth moves athletes trot out just don't work on her. And she just bolted out of your hotel room looking like she wanted to kill you."

"She doesn't want to kill me," I said, though the memory of her stomping hard on my foot ten years ago suggested otherwise. "We… have history."

"History." Anne sighed. She pulled out a chair, sat down, and gestured for me to take a seat across from her. "Define history. Did you date her? Ghost her? Crash her car?"

"I grew up with her brother. We've known each other since we were kids."

I kept the critical truth locked inside. She'd confessed her feelings for me once, and I'd been an arrogant bastard who shattered her heart.

What she had no way of knowing was: none of those cruel words had been what I truly felt.

The second she stepped into my field of vision, I stopped being myself.

Everyone said I shined brightly like the sun. But she was like a soft cloud. The moment she drifted across my sky, all my radiance faded away.

I was confident and articulate in front of anyone else. Yet whenever I was with her, my mind went completely blank.

I felt so small in front of her. I tried to be as proud as I usually was, but I acted as an arrogant jerk.

The stupid things that tumbled out of my mouth always sounded harsh and vicious. I was exactly like the heartless antagonist from a teen movie crushing a girl's pride.

Maybe I hid behind those cruel lines to bury a truth I refused to acknowledge. I had inappropriate feelings for the little girl next door, my best friend's little sister.

I ought to want flashy cheerleaders, the fiery and gorgeous blondes. I should not be having desires for this quiet sweet girl. In particular, the girl was my best buddy's little sister.

"And you broke her heart?" Anne had obviously pieced together the rest.

My lips parted, yet no sound came out. It was agony to admit I'd trampled the pride of a girl who'd bared her heart to me. Seeing her storm out furious just now, she must have jumped to conclusions about Anne and me. She had to think I'd just been shamelessly flirting with her. Old wounds stacked on top of this fresh insult. She probably never wanted to lay eyes on me again for as long as she lived.

I was such an asshole.

"Figures. Set your catastrophic love life aside for now." Anne held out a stack of documents toward me.

"Sports Network Tonight wants you for an interview." She tapped the manila folder. "They're offering an exclusive. A fullhour primetime sitdown. They want to cover your retirement, the rumors that you're buying a race team, and your foundation."

I shook my head right away.

"No. I've told you this before, Anne. I'm done with this whole circus. I retired to escape the cameras. I refuse to sit inside a studio and let some journalist carve apart my private life just to boost ratings."

"This isn't about your personal life, Bryce. This is about the foundation. If you want this charity to succeed, if you truly hope to move the needle for youth programs, you need public visibility. You need investors. An exclusive interview on the nation's biggest sports network is the fastest path to both."

"They don't care one bit about charity. All they care about is who I'm seeing, why I really walked away from that fifty million dollar contract, and whether I've got some secret grudge against that new Ferrari kid. It's always the same garbage."

"Then you control the narrative," Anne challenged, leaning forward. "You set all the ground rules. We dictate what questions are off limits. But you have to do this, Bryce. You can't vanish into the shadows and still expect the world to keep caring about your career."

Every word Anne said rang true. Still, that was not what weighed the heaviest on my mind.

I stared down at the folder, my thoughts racing. I imagined Viola was sitting across from me, microphone in hand, ten years of bottled up anger simmering inside her, demanding answers on live national television. She would tear me to pieces, lay bare every single flaw, and most likely savor every single second of it.

Yet when I pictured her as brilliant, uncompromising image, a strange hot thrill coursed through my chest. I did not crave soft questions from reporters terrified of losing their press credentials. I craved the fight. I craved that fire.

Most of all, this gave me a good reason to see her again which she could not run away from.

"I'm not doing it," I said, my voice deliberately flat.

Anne sighed. Deep disappointment showed on her face, yet she was not wholly surprised. "Bryce, be reasonable..."

"I'm not doing it," I repeated, locking eyes with her. "Not unless Viola Hayes asks me herself."

Anne froze, her brows drawing tight. "Excuse me?"

"You heard me. If Sports Network Tonight wants this exclusive, tell their producer I will not meet with anyone except Viola Hayes conducting the interview. Viola has to come to me. In person. To pitch the interview."

Anne stood staring at my back for a beat.

"You're playing an extremely dangerous game, Bryce," she warned cautiously. "If you two really have that kind of history, putting her in a room with you while she holds the power of media is a huge risk. She could destroy your reputation."

I smiled. The image of Viola, cheeks flushed, seething with rage as she pulled away from me, was burned into my memory.

"Let her try," I murmured.

"You are nothing but trouble. If you weren't so devastatingly pretty and a five-time F1 champion, I would've fired you ages ago."

"Oh, pity," I shrugged and said in a teasing lilt. Anne was so used to my antics that she could not even bother getting properly angry.

But her expression turned more serious.

"Just a fair warning. Be careful around her. She is the slipperiest and hardest host to manage. Don't walk straight into her trap."

I could not deny Anne's words stirred something in me. I thrived on challenges, on track and off.