“There was a security guard waiting for me. Your stepfather was there too. I guess I made a bigger impression than I thought.” I glance at him. He is glued to my words, breathing hard. “I guess I forgot to tell you what else I told him. I told him I was in love with you.”
His eyes fall closed. “Ruby…”
“I told him I was in love with you and that you were the bigger, better man.” Tears are starting to pool in my eyes again. I sniff. “I told him that because it’s all true. But it was too much for him. I poked the bear. He knew I was there illegally. He threatened to have me deported.”
Luciano shakes his head, just barely. Eyes still closed. “No,” he whispers fervently. “No.”
“He gave me a choice. He said I could leave and never come back to Lisbon. Leave you behind. Never tell you the truth.” I exhale shakily. “Or he would call the authorities and I would be deported back to the US. I had a choice and right there and then I had to make that choice and I am so sorry. I am so fucking sorry Luciano, that I made the wrong choice. I should have gone back to the US, I should have told you what happened. I would have seen my mother. I could have kept in contact with you.”
He opens his eyes. They’re glistening with so much anger and agony as he stares right into my goddamn soul.
“Why didn’t you tell me this?” he asks softly. He sounds so broken.
“Because I didn’t want to,” I admit. “I wanted to tell you the truth. I wanted to tell you I loved you and I would have never ever left you if I didn’t have to. But if I told you about what your stepfather did…I was so afraid of what would happen to you. I was so afraid it would break your relationship in two, for good. That it would make things worse for you after that. I didn’t want to ruin your life, Luciano. And I have prayed that maybe my leaving was something you would understand and that you’d get over.”
He runs his tongue over his teeth and looks away, a fist flexing at his side.
“I never got over you,” he says roughly.
It hurts. It hurts to know how much I’ve hurt him, and yet there’s something inside me changing, like my heart is swelling and swelling, begging to become whole again.
“Do you hear me?” he says, taking two steps toward me until he’s right here in front of me and all I see is him, this wall of man, the man I used to know, used to love, the man I could so easily love again. “I never got over you.”
I raise my face to meet his eyes. Eyes brimming with pain, fixated on my mouth.
Kiss me, the thought snakes across my brain in an arc of fire. Please kiss me.
“I never got over you either,” I manage to say.
The intensity in his eyes makes my stomach drop, and I’m doing everything I can not to reach out to him, hold him, touch him, even though his head is inching closer to mine with each breath he takes.
The gap between us closes.
His face, inches from mine, enough that I can see the threads of auburn in his brown eyes, enough that I’m engulfed in his smell, his heat, his presence, his everything.
“Ruby…” he says, his tongue running along his bottom lip, and now I’m staring at his mouth, wishing he would consume me. That livewire of tension crackles between us again, just as it always did, and I want to cut that cord with a kiss, let the sparks fly.
But his eyes pinch closed and he suddenly moves back. “I have to go.”
He turns around and starts walking off across the square, and now I’m having déjà vu.
I quickly run after him. “Where are you going?”
He keeps walking, the look in his eyes is one of pure vengeance. “I have some shit I need to figure out.”
I reach out and grab his arm, trying in vain to pull him to a stop, but the man is such a fucking beast he won’t slow down.
“Luciano, please,” I cry out. “Please stop, please talk to me.”
“We’ve done enough talking.”
I give him one last tug and then I give up.
He walks away.
“Luciano!” I yell after him.
He doesn’t turn around.
Twenty-One
Luciano
“You know there’s such a thing as a vacation, captain,” Alejo calls out as he steps onto the pitch, dropping his bag of gear on the ground.
I give him a half-smile, the most that I can muster. “I figured it wouldn’t hurt to keep our skills up.”
He walks over to me, ball in his hand, looking around him. “It’s just us here?”
We’re at Valdebebas, Real Madrid’s state-of-the-art training ground where we spend most of our days. Except now, everyone is supposed to be on vacation for the summer until we start regular practices in August. It’s not unusual for any of us to come here to stay in shape in the meantime, but we normally come by ourselves, since most of the team is scattered around.
“Guess I needed someone to talk to,” I tell him.
“I figured as much.”
He tosses the ball toward me and I bump it up with my thigh. We pass the ball back and forth like this for a while, using our legs, heads, shoulders to keep it going. Alejo waits patiently for me to come out with it, but I’m still trying to make sense of things without getting impossibly angry. I figure working with the ball, practicing control, will keep me centered.
Finally, I say, “I saw Ruby the other day.”
“Ah,” he says with a knowing smirk. “I knew it.”
“Not like that,” I tell him. “She met me at a bar, to interview me.”
“And you were okay with that?” he asks, twisting to kick the ball up
