Except he knew how to survive, to thrive when things went wrong. She didn’t. She couldn’t go through losing him again. “Because I’m not the person you think I am.” Look at how she had run from her mother. “Because we’re too different. We couldn’t cross that distance once, how will we now?” With that she started walking to the door.
Chapter Thirty-Two
Rico was next to her in a minute, his arms around her, his lips in her hair. This entire morning had felt like trying to hold on to her as she slipped away. But he would hold on until his arms fell off. He no longer knew how not to.
“Distance? You call what’s between us distance? This connection is distance? We’re the same person, Ash. We’re practically inside each other.”
For a second her body went slack as she gave in to the urge to lean back into him. But then she groaned and held herself apart.
How could she not see? She was in his breath, his bones. Without even touching him she filled him up from the inside out. When they touched, there was no him left. From that first day when he had stopped that ball from hitting her. From that day he had never been the same, and he knew she hadn’t either. There had been no him, no her, only them.
A tortured laugh hissed out of her. She turned around and something in her face made him let her go and step back. The entryway to the suite was too narrow. They couldn’t go too far from each other. A bloody metaphor if there ever was one.
“Our connection didn’t matter before, and it matters even less now.” She pressed herself into the wall behind her. “It’s the other things. Our lives, how the world has been to us. That’s the distance that’s too far for us to reach across. I mean, look at you. You’re one of the greatest athletes of our time. You’re on magazine covers, Rico! You’re on calendars. Grown women drool over you. Grown men weep when you score a goal. And I’ve barely left my restaurant in ten years.”
“This is about my work? About the way I look? You think I care about any of that? You see the way women look at me, but you don’t see the way I look at you? I can’t look away from you, Ash!” He leaned back into the front door, a desperate move.
The black of her irises was so wide and deep, so clear he could dive into it and disappear. “Your eyes . . . for twelve years your eyes have haunted me. The way they look at me, all the way into me, the way they make me feel like I’m home, finally. Sometimes when you look at me the way you do, I can’t move, I can’t breathe, I can’t feel myself as separate from you. How can you do this? Those years we spent together, how can you call them false?”
“I’m not. They weren’t. But you met me when you were grieving, when you weren’t yourself.” Her voice hitched as though she’d just figured out some big Eureka-moment truth. “Oh God, even now you’re vulnerable, in pain, grieving the loss of work you love.” She pressed a hand to her mouth. “That explains so much.”
He pushed his hands through his hair. He’d grown the bloody thing out because he’d been so lost after losing her that he hadn’t remembered to cut it. After his first big win for Sunderland the rubber band holding it back had broken and he’d shaken it out, and the action had become a post-win ritual, a talisman for the fans. “So what? So something in the universe knows to bring me to you when nothing else works. Isn’t that something? Only you, Ash. Why isn’t that enough?”
He hadn’t felt this lost, this helpless in a very long time. He was seventeen again, fifteen, with no one. If she walked away from him again, he’d have no one. “You know my greatest fear? It’s that I’m not . . . that I’m not separate from you. That this being half of myself is what I’m stuck with for the rest of my life, because I don’t know how to be whole without you. It’s why I found my way back here, to you, because I couldn’t stand to be that way anymore. Why isn’t that enough?”
She swallowed as though it hurt her throat to do it. Had she not just been in that room with him? In that bed? Wasn’t she tired of this, of fighting to stay away from him? For so damn long.
“Because you know how to heal, and when you do, you’ll walk away. You did once.”
“What? You threw me out. You let someone convince you that I wasn’t good enough for you. First it was my being the boy who lives in a housekeeper’s quarters, now it’s being the man on a calendar. Do your father’s words really mean so much that nothing else matters?”
A ravaged sound tore from her throat. Their past would never leave them alone. A million storms passed in her eyes.
“Ash, please, please say what you’re thinking. Don’t shut me out.” He reached for her. But she shook her head so violently he pulled back.
“That’s what you think of me? That I bought into that nonsense my father believed? That’s who you think I am? Or was it just easy to damn me like that so you could move on and leave me?”
“I’m not the one who left you! You walked away from me. You chose him.”
Yes, he had ignored what she’d asked. Just that once.
I do not want you to meet my father, Rico. Please. Let me take care of it.
But her father had called and left a message with his aunt. Tell him to come see me. Tell him if he tells Ashna, he’ll regret it. She’s underage, having him thrown in jail won’t be hard.
Wow, he’s all grace and warmth, Rico remembered thinking with all the cockiness of an eighteen-year-old. He hadn’t believed the jail thing. Ashna would kill someone before she let that happen. His aunt had been terrified, but Rico had been sure he’d charm the man once he met him. So he’d gone. At the appointed time, as though his girlfriend’s father were a judge and Rico had a hearing.
You think Ashna will go against our wishes? Our daughter doesn’t do anything we don’t approve of. Why do you think she never brought you home? She’s a princess, you’re a bastard. Does she know that your mother was your father’s whore?
Even now the words made Rico want to wrap his hands around the man’s throat and squeeze the life out of him. He didn’t care that he was Ashna’s father.
Then your daughter’s going to be with a bastard. Because try what you want, Ashna and I are going to be together.
The man had gone red in the face. Spittle had flown from his mouth. He’d issued his challenge with absolute faith: Try bad-mouthing me to her. She’ll drop you like the garbage you are.
He had been rummaging in a drawer while shouting obscenities at Rico when the door flew open. What are you bellowing about now, Bram? A tiny woman in a sari had pushed her way into the room and Rico had pushed his way out, done with this bullshit.
Your daughter is a whore like you. That’s what I’m bellowing about. Those were the last words Rico remembered hearing.
Ashna had found him underneath the bleachers. Angrier than he’d ever been in his life. Your father’s a sick asshole. How can you stand to be around him?
He’s my father, Rico.
And that explains so much. I don’t think I can deal with him for the rest of my life.
What are you saying? Are you leaving me?
Without waiting for an answer, she had run out of there. Had she really believed that’s what he’d been doing? Leaving her because he hated her father?