“That’s bullshit,” Ruby snarls, her eyes lit up. “You’re not old. I hate how this game is so focused on youth. Age brings so much more to the table.”
“You don’t have to convince me.” I love how protective and worked up she’s getting. I continue. “But mostly they are microaggressions, those tiny little digs that seem innocuous at first but cut you down over time. You can only be punctured so many times before you’re drained of blood. That’s what he does. He drains me. And if I ever have to be in the same room as him and Marco, which I often do, that’s when the cuts happen.”
What I want to tell her is what he said to me before the game the other day.
How he patted me on the back, pulled me in for a fake hug, and said, “I guess winning is everything when a man has nothing.”
That hit deep.
But they all do.
“I wish I didn’t know exactly what you’re talking about,” she says, putting her hand on mine. I wrap my fingers around hers and give her a squeeze. “My father is the same. Tiny little cuts that always go deeper than you think. After a while, you start to believe them too. That you’re a bad apple, useless and hopeless. Like a horse getting put down just because they can’t do what we expect them to do.”
I raise her hand to my mouth, kiss her knuckles, staring into her eyes. “At least you’re here and they’re there. Probably another reason why I’m seriously thinking about being traded. So I can get away.” I lower her hand into my lap and hold it. “And then what does that make me? As pathetic as my stepfather said, the man who runs away.”
“Hey, I ran away from my problems and look at me now,” she says, then her smile falters. “Okay, bad example.”
“Ruby, stop.” I hate how she beats herself up like this.
“I can’t,” she says softly. “I think I can trace my shadows all the way back to birth. They follow me, Luciano. They don’t leave, even when I do.”
“We all have shadows. Sometimes they get darker when everything else gets brighter. But we still have to live with them.”
“I just…” She turns her face to the Atlantic, the cold wind whipping back her hair. She closes her eyes, breathing deeply through her nose. “I just wish I knew what I was doing.”
“Ruby, no one knows what they’re doing. I guarantee it. You keep thinking that you’re this anomaly, but you’re not. You’re different in all the right ways, but the one thing you think you suffer from that no one else does isn’t so special. Sorry to say. We’re all a little lost on this planet, stumbling around on cascading years, trying to make sense of it all.”
She glances at me, her eyes glistening in such a way that it hurts my heart. “Then I don’t want to do it alone. I want to be lost and stumbling with you.”
Jesus Cristo.
I feel like the ocean comes to a standstill.
All I can hear is my heart.
“I would like that very much,” I manage to say, pulling her into me, like I’ve just realized how rare and precious of a gem she is. How much I can’t possibly let her go after this.
“I want to take you home,” I whisper into her neck. “Stay the night with me?”
She puts her hands on my face, lifting it to meet her eyes. “I’ll stay all the nights with you.”
I kiss her, a different need racing through me now, the need to express everything I’m feeling even though I don’t have the words. It doesn’t matter. My body can speak to hers. We don’t need a translator.
I get up and grab her hand, stepping over the wooden fence, then walking briskly back to the car, as if we’re running out of time.
Perhaps we are.
The drive back to Lisbon goes quicker than the way in. We don’t stop anywhere, we just drive, and it’s not long before I’m parking the car downstairs in my apartment’s garage. There’s an urgency to our step, and once we’re inside the apartment, I kick the door closed and practically maul her.
We are a writhing tangled mess of hungry lips and roaming, desperate hands as we make our way across the apartment to the bedroom, leaving a trail of discarded clothes behind. I’m so eager to get her naked that I rip her flimsy thong in two as we fall onto the bed, the satisfying tear reverberating in the room.
“I hope that wasn’t expensive,” I murmur, tossing it over my shoulder before I cover her body with mine, pressing her into the bed as I kiss her, my fingers wrapping into her hair and holding tight. I rub my dick against her, knowing how easy it would be to slide inside, but I want, need to take my time.
This feels different now, as if seeing her on that cliff, imagining the horror of losing her made me realize I can’t afford to lose her in any way. Sometimes she seems so wild and unrooted that I’m scrambling to take hold, like reaching for the string before the balloon floats away, never to return.
But she’s here now. She’s here beneath me, her skin soft cream, her lips feeling like sin. She’s here and she’s mine and I want her to lose control, to let go of the fears and let me in.
Let me stay.
I don’t even want to fix you. I want to ride your broken wings.
“I want you inside me,” she says, her words urgent, her hands on my face, pulling me closer.
“I’m getting there,” I whisper, though her words nearly send me over the edge. “Let me take my time with you.”
She lets out an impatient huff, her hands gliding down my back to my ass, shrugging me into her. Her
