“You don’t…” Asa’s voice was oddly gentle, before he pressed his lips together, clenched his jaw, and let out a small yet heavy sigh. Slowly, his eyes met Carmen’s.
Her heart skipped another beat, but it hurt a little this time around.
“You don’t have to explain,” he eventually said, his voice quiet yet audible over the shouts and loud conversations around them.
Carmen didn’t realise she’d been holding her breath, until he’d spoken those words and she exhaled what seemed like all the air she had left in her lungs.
“Oh?” It fell past Carmen’s lips sounding like a surprised question than an acknowledgement.
Asa’s gaze shifted to the grounds in front of them, and Carmen followed his line of sight. Both of them watched a very familiar figure, who was as tall as Asa but with a slightly larger physique, move around the field like a graceful predator who was on a mission to own the night.
“I get it now,” he murmured, his eyes still following Hunter’s movements on the field, “you love him, as I once loved Isla.”
Carmen was holding her breath again, but this time she didn’t seem to know why.
“I…I—yeah.” She looked away just as Asa’s eyes landed on hers once again, and she resumed toying with her soda can.
The minutes ticked by after that, and when Carmen realised that Joyce wasn’t back yet, she swept the stands and then spotted her a few rows down, speaking to a few other familiar faces.
Asa shifted in his seat next to Carmen, catching her attention.
“Once, uh, once Wyatt or Lyra comes back, just let them know I left, yeah?” he asked, not facing Carmen fully, but tilting his head in her direction to show that he was addressing her.
Carmen’s stomach sank to her feet. “You’re leaving?” She couldn’t help but ask, somehow managing to conceal the disappointment in her voice.
Asa stood up, slipped his phone into one of his pockets. “Yeah. I was actually supposed to get dinner after the game with Wyatt and Lyra. But I’m not feeling up to it anymore. Just let them know; I’ll drop them a text anyway.”
“Say something say something say something goddammit say something just say anything,” she frantically thought. “No no no no don’t say anything don’t make yourself look like a fool—
Say something say something tell him how you feel say anything just open up to him, Carmen—”
“Asa, wait!”
Asa was just about to step down to the row of seats below the one they were on, when Carmen leant forward in her seat and shot her arm out, wrapping her fingers around his arm and tugging it.
He stopped dead in his tracks and his eyes snapped to hers with the speed of lightning, then dropped to his hand where her fingers were making contact with his skin.
“Shit shit shit what are you doing you idiot, you absolute idiot,” she chided herself.
Carmen quickly pulled back her hand and self-consciously cradled it with her other palm, tapping one of her feet nervously against the ground.
He was staring at her with a mixture of hesitance and confusion, those warm eyes of his, questioning and curious.
“I, uh, I—I would actually—” she tried to say. Oh for God’s sake, Carmen, she told herself. “I mean, what I’m trying to say is that…that it’d be nice if you, um, if you could stay.”
The pause that followed her words was the loudest silence ever, and the shouting and screaming from the stands faded away to nothing.
“What?” Asa blinked, his forehead creasing as he continued to stare at her.
Carmen placed her palms on her knees and prayed he didn’t see the way she gripped them so tight in order to steady her erratic heartbeats and faltering breaths.
“I said…” she began slowly, “that I’d like you to stay.”
Something like surprise flickered in Asa’s eyes but he covered it up quickly. The slight tremble in his voice when he uttered the next words however, he wasn’t so quick to conceal. “You do?”
There was a pang in Carmen’s chest, right where her heart resided. “Well, I don’t want you to leave.”
He turned his body around to directly face her. “Which one is it? You want me to stay, or you don’t want me to leave?”
She knew what he was asking, and they weren’t the same thing.
Did she want him because she chose to have him, or did she want him simply because she didn’t want to deal with an empty space he’d leave behind?
Carmen looked into his eyes, saw his guard up, and then lifted her lips into the softest of smiles. “I want you to stay.”
Something in Asa’s posture seemed to soften, a very subtle gesture, but Carmen was drinking in all the little things. Then he stepped back up and settled into the seat next to her.
“Well, I guess I could put up with the rest of the game for tonight,” Asa remarked with a casual shrug of his shoulders, sparing a glance at Carmen briefly before looking away again.
“I suppose you could,” she murmured back, her eyes watching the players move around the field as it began drizzling and a ghost of a smile graced her lips.
62.
Just One Night
“You actually understand what’s going on?” Asa asked after fifteen minutes or so of silence.
When Carmen looked at him in confusion, he gestured towards the game being played in front of them.
“Football?” she asked, a corner of her mouth lifting into a smile. “Yeah, used to watch it a lot back when I was a kid.”
He nodded, humming in acknowledgement and then shifted his gaze back to the field.
A few beats of silence passed before Carmen turned her face towards Asa and picked up the conversation. “Wait, do you mean that you
