Their eyes were locked together, turning them into one being, indecipherable from each other. One gaping, stubborn void.
“All I know is that I would do anything to have another moment with my mãe.” As that truth left his mouth, another truth solidified through him. He would do anything to have another chance with Ashna.
She reached out and touched his hand. He watched their hands as they came together. Before she could pull away he turned his hand and wrapped his fingers around hers, his hold ravenous with need. Everything outside of the intertwining of their fingers ceased to exist. For the first time in as long as he could remember, Rico fell into himself. Breathed.
“Maybe your energy is better served in understanding the wound rather than wishing it wasn’t there,” he said.
A car honked and Ashna started. The traffic was moving. Sliding her hand out of his, she joined it. They were a block from his hotel.
“You’re very wise today,” she said, forcing a smile into her voice.
The feel of her hand lingered in his. He pressed it into his chest, leaned back into the seat, and closed his eyes. “Maybe it’s the meds. Better wise than loopy. Or are they the same thing?”
“What were you thinking, not taking pain medication after a surgery like that?” The intimate scolding in her voice was even more potent than her touch.
“I like to be present. It’s become . . .” He opened his eyes. “Essential. It’s part of the game.”
“So, the game, what happens next?” she asked.
The road before them was lined with taillights, an endless frozen constellation impatient to move.
“Nothing.” The word sounded as final as it was. “That’s retirement, I’m told.”
“What do other retired players do? Coaching? Broadcasting?”
His pai had coached after retirement. “I don’t think that’s my path. I was lucky with my career. I only ever had to worry about my game, about winning. That’s what I miss, the singular goal, the high of achieving it.” He felt winded by all they were sharing. He hadn’t discussed retirement with anyone. For all his love for his team, it just wasn’t the kind of thing they talked about. But letting her see the emptiness of it, right now that felt essential.
“Good thing you have the show, then,” she said with the kind of look Rico hadn’t thought he’d ever see her give him again. “You get to win another thing.”
Another laugh escaped him. “You don’t sound overconfident at all!”
Her answering laugh was only slightly embarrassed.
“I meant what I said earlier, Ash. You’ve been great on the show. It’s been amazing.”
“Thank you. It’s been . . . It’s . . . Rico, you have no idea. I . . . I still can’t believe I did it,” she said, as if in a trance.
All those memories of her guarding the goal that Rico had buried deep rose to the surface and wove into the sight of her on the pitch today, flying at the ball, tentative only for minutes before giving it everything.
“I can’t believe I played either,” she added quietly.
“You did it,” he said. Words he had said to her more times than he could count.
No, they couldn’t just be decent to each other. She wasn’t just a girl he’d dated in high school. She was everything. He’d been an idiot to think otherwise. He wanted that Ashna back. The one who had screamed at the ball and played like her life depended on it. The Ashna who kicked butt in the kitchen, even when it wasn’t easy for her. The Ashna who saw him exactly as who he wanted to be.
“Do you really think we can win?” she said more lightly.
“My father loved to say that winning was inevitable if the idea of losing was so painful you couldn’t bear it.”
“I know.” She turned into his hotel’s driveway. “You have to play like your life depends on it.”
He touched her hand on the gear shaft, needing the contact. “Winning really is that simple: you have to want it enough to hold nothing back. Most people spend a lifetime trying to understand what it takes. But that’s all it is. Single-minded love and tenacity.”
She pulled under the columned porte cochere and turned to him. “That doesn’t sound simple at all.” She released the gear and turned her hand in his, as though her need to touch him was as strong as his.
A lock of hair freed itself from her bun and fell across her cheek.
At long last, gazes locked, he did it, he reached out with his other hand and slipped her hair behind her ear. “That’s because there’s another piece that complicates it.” His thumb stroked the delicate shell of her ear and she trembled. The earth beneath them trembled. “Fear. The hardest part is to acknowledge how badly you want it and to stop being afraid of getting it. Because sometimes you lose because you can’t bear the idea of winning something you think you don’t deserve.”
She closed her eyes and he watched her, both hands holding her.
“We’re here,” he said needlessly. She opened her eyes—intoxicated from their touching—and found him again, mirroring exactly how he felt.
Her gaze moved past him to the valet who rushed over to get Rico’s door, then backed away when he saw them. Ashna untangled her hand from his. He dropped a kiss on her fingers before letting go.
“Thanks for the ride, Ash.” He got out, attempting grace, but only managed it because she had cared enough to help him.
She might’ve been influenced by her father, but her feelings weren’t fickle, and she wasn’t a coward. Maybe that was the reason why she let those she loved have their way. To use that love to pull her in opposite directions was to tear her in half.
He turned around and leaned into the car window. The need to go back to her, to press his lips into her hair, her eyelids, any inch of her he could have was an inferno. But she had to want that enough to come to him herself, free of anyone’s influence, even his.
Every piece of him might feel like a puppy ready to follow her to the ends of the earth, but their only hope was a love that felt balanced, that didn’t need constant validation. That was only possible if they both believed in it and believed themselves worthy of it.
“Thanks for . . . for today, Rico.” Her eyes, were limpid pools of longing, and yes, fear.
“Talk to your mother, Ash. Give her a chance. Maybe you’ve missed things. Maybe you can’t see them because you’ve let someone else’s thinking influence you.”
Some of the softness left her eyes. “Thanks. Even if I were influenced, she’s never done anything to disprove that opinion.”
He pulled away and she drove off, leaving him with the sense that there was something they both hadn’t said. Something that was essential.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Maybe you should come stay with us,” Mina said in the way Mina had of saying things to influence you without sounding managing.
“What you’re trying to say is that I should give Ashna some space.” Shobi paced Bram’s kitchen, while Mina sat primly on a barstool at the island.
It had been weeks since Ashna and she had argued. It had also been weeks since they had said a word of consequence to each other. Shobi had considered pushing her, but Ashi’s shutdown mechanism was so hard and quick, she didn’t have it in her to let it topple their fragile truce.