“I think I hate it too.”
She gives me another soft smile. “Have you always gotten along with Marco?”
The question takes me by surprise. “What makes you think we get along?”
“For one, I’ve never seen you fight. And I assume you do because he’s your agent. How did that even happen?”
I give her a loaded look. “It happened because of my stepfather. He basically wanted Marco to follow in my footsteps but that never happened. While I was out at boarding school and Sporting Academy, Marco could barely even kick a ball. He had no athletic leanings at all, not like I did. Marco didn’t do well at school either. Barely graduated. Didn’t go to university. Didn’t care. He wanted to enjoy the lifestyle his father gave him, but he didn’t want to work for it.”
“So, your stepfather thought, I know, he can be your agent.”
“That’s pretty much it. I mean, Marco is young. Not much older than you. He has a lot to learn, too, but he’s coming around. He’s got the drive, which is good, but none of the heart. He doesn’t care about the sport, he cares about the sports stars. He cares about being seen in that crowd.”
“He wants to be you.”
I nod. It’s never easy to admit that truth.
“He does. And he doesn’t even know the real reason why.”
“Because he looks up to you.”
“I don’t know about that,” I tell her. “But I know my stepfather wishes Marco had what I have. I know he hates the fact that his own son, his real son, is my agent, and that I’m the one with the talent and the money and the career. In fact, the more successful I get, the more he despises me.”
She stares at me for a moment. “Wow.”
I shrug, pushing back on my feet a bit to move the swing. “It’s the truth. It’s the truth I’ve known since the day he walked into my life and told me to call him Tomás. Not Papá. Not Father. But Tomás. And I would never be his son.”
“He said that?” she says, her eyes wide.
“Not in those exact words. But yes. And then I was sent away to boarding school. My mother didn’t even shed a tear when I left. All she could think about was Tomás and Marco. I suppose…” I trail off, trying to put my feelings together. Sometimes they feel so fragmented, like some past version of myself shattered long ago, and I’m forever picking up the pieces. “I suppose she blamed me for my father leaving. Who knows, maybe it was my fault. What does it matter in the end?”
I stare straight ahead at a stand of oak trees, barely visible in the darkness, their leaves dancing in the light breeze. Even though it’s past midnight, all around us the city buzzes on, cars passing on the road, people yelling in their apartments, windows open wide to beat the heat. All of this and yet I feel quite alone with her, like we’re the only two people left in the world.
Silence throbs between us, the weight of my words hanging, and I glance at her.
She’s staring at me with a torn expression, the streetlights glinting in her eyes.
“What?” I ask.
She gives me a sweet, sad smile. “We are too much alike.”
“You’ve said this before.”
“I know. And it made you upset.”
“It didn’t make me upset.”
“Then I made you upset. You fired me. And then I didn’t see you or hear from you for weeks. Was I that easy to forget?”
Fuck. I twist my fingers over the chains of the swinging, trying to say the right thing. “I never forgot you.”
“Why am I only seeing you tonight?”
“Because we’re both busy.”
Because you’re screwing my brother.
“Why did you fire me?”
Because you’re screwing my brother.
“I would hardly call that firing you. You barely worked for me.”
“But you didn’t want me to do it anymore. Why?”
“Because…come on, Ruby. You know things were getting complicated.”
Her head shakes, a strand of dark hair falling across her eyes. “I don’t know. Tell me.”
I won’t.
I avert my eyes, staring at the ground.
“Tell me, please. I feel like I’m always left in the dark, like I live in the dark.”
I squint at her. “If you live in the dark, then you’re the brightest light there.”
“Don’t try and butter me up with poetry.”
“Butter you up? It’s true.”
“Then tell me more of the truth.” She twists in her swing so she’s facing me, wrapping her ankle around mine to keep her in place. “Tell me why this, and everything between us, is so complicated when it’s the only thing that makes any sense.”
Her eyes seem to glow in the dim light, locking me in place so that I can’t look away, even if I wanted to.
Part of me wants to, needs to. Part of me thinks that things are getting too dangerous, too risky, and that the longer she looks at me, the less control I’ll have. I feel like control is the only thing saving us right now.
But I don’t look away.
Because we do make sense.
We’ve made sense from day one.
“You know why,” I manage to say, licking my lips. Her eyes drop to my mouth and something carnal comes over them, a heat I feel in my dick, causing me to suck in my breath. “Whatever this relationship is between us, it’s…the things you feel around me, you should feel that around Marco.”
“What do I feel for you?”
“Why so many questions? I don’t know what you feel for me.”
“We’re just friends,” she says. “Right?”
Then she leans forward, grabbing the chains on my swing with both hands and pulling herself toward me, until her face is just inches away. I watch as her eyes search my face with something soft and tender and sweet, enough to make me dizzy.
“Tell me we’re just friends,” she says. “Tell me and I’ll go along with it.”
The world shifts on its axis, everything sliding out of place.
I could kiss her right now.
I could
