body, but I don’t want just your body, Thalia. I want your fucking soul. I want to take it and keep it and mix it up with mine until it burns between us like the sun. That’s what I want from you.” I pause, trying to swallow the sadness in my throat. “At the very least, give me your heart.”
Her eyes start to water, and she looks away. “You can’t make those demands of me.”
“I know I can’t,” I say softly, reaching out to touch her arm, suddenly so afraid that this is the end. “I know I can’t, but it’s how I feel. I can’t lie about what I want from you.” I take in a deep, shaking breath. “Please. I don’t want a break. I don’t want this to end.”
“It’s not ending,” she says, walking toward the door, holding her arms across her chest, looking very small. “It’s just for now. Please, you have to believe me, to trust me on this, okay? Let’s just put us on the back burner for the next few games, just so you can prove yourself to the team again.”
“I won’t let tonight happen again.”
“And I won’t let this fall on my shoulders again. You’re far too good of a person, of a player, to ever have to go through what you did tonight. You need to rise up, and fast, and erase it so everyone can move on. You had a bad game, but so what? It will be easy to explain. But if it happens again…I don’t want to be the reason why the game you love turns against you. I couldn’t bear it.”
I watch as her shoulders slump, her hand moving to the door knob. She shoots me a weak glance over her shoulder. “I wish you could understand, but this is truly for the best.”
“I wish you could understand,” I tell her, “and believe me when I say that I won’t let it happen again. It was a mistake, and I lost my head. I don’t want to be distracted either. But that doesn’t mean we have to stop.”
“It’s just for a week or two,” she says. “That’s it. If we can survive that, we can survive anything. I promise you that.”
I’m not so sure about her promises.
All I know is that she’s opening the door and walking out, and I feel like someone has slammed a vise around my heart, slowly bleeding me dry.
I stand there for a moment, trying to breathe, trying not to feel everything all at once, the world threatening to crash all around me.
There’s another knock on the door.
Maybe she’s changed her mind.
Maybe she’s come back.
It’s happened before.
I answer the door without looking.
Mateo is standing on the other side, still in his black suit from the game.
“Can I have a word with you, Alejo?” he asks, his voice cool and collected, but there’s tension simmering in his eyes.
This is definitely a night where I shouldn’t be answering any doors.
“Sure,” I say with an air of defeat, because I know this isn’t going to be very good either.
Disappointing Mateo is something I desperately try not to do. I want his approval, I want to do well by him, and tonight, there was no such thing. Tonight I failed him.
“I don’t know where to begin,” Mateo says, putting his hands behind his back and rocking back and forth on his heels. “I really don’t.”
“Can we start with me saying I’m sorry and that it won’t happen again?”
He cocks a brow. “You can say that, sure. But that won’t change anything.” He takes in a deep breath. “Alejo, what happened to you tonight?”
I shrug, trying to play it off. “Had a bad day, I guess. I didn’t sleep well last night.”
“No, no, I don’t think that was it,” he says. He starts to pace around the room, hands behind his back, much like he does in his technical area on the pitch. But maybe with fewer arm gestures.
“I don’t know what to tell you,” I say.
He comes to a stop and stares at me, his chin raised high, an eerie calm in his eyes. Mateo can be extremely intimidating when he wants to be. “Do you want me to tell you what I think happened? You can feel free to correct me if I’m wrong, but I’m not so sure that I am.”
“Okay,” I say, sitting down on the bed.
“I think that earlier, when Thalia was upset about what the press was saying about her, you