Page 87 of Yours, For Now

Thoughts of what I might do when the game ended and could talk to Lina distracted me enough, that our captain punched me playfully on the shoulder, and called me out to get my head back in the game.

I did my best, but when the whistle blew at half time, I couldn't get to Lina fast enough.

"Hey." Sweat dripped down my temple, and I used the bottom of my shirt to dry it. It bought me a second to figure out what to say next, while I half-hoped she would take the lead.

She did, her eyes quickly lifting from my midriff to my eyes. "Lucía insisted I come cheer for my boyfriend."

My heart fell to my knees, at the thought Lucía had forced her to come somehow. "Oh. Well. Your cheering still needs work, but maybe that's good, considering."

"I wanted to see you, too," she added. I searched her eyes to see more of what she meant by that, but she glanced at Lucía. The latter stood with Rodrigo, their arms around each other some distance away. "How long is your break?"

"Fifteen minutes. You want to talk about something?" My lungs still hadn't fully returned to normal, and I took a deep breath.

"Yeah. But maybe we should wait until after the game?"

That didn't help my lungs recover. "Did something happen with your family? Are you okay?"

"Nothing happened with my family. Nothing new, anyway."

"With the contract? We're still waiting for the finalized signatures and then we start with the final proposal, right?"

"We're signing tomorrow and everything else is on time, too. No, I want to talk about what we agreed to during the weekend—"

"C'mon, Gabe! We need to discuss a plan of attack for the second half."

I lifted my hand in the general direction of Mario, our Captain, whose call interrupted Lina and I. I told him to wait with a gesture of my hand, without looking at him. "I have to go—" I told Lina— "but can you tell me quickly?"

"Gabe!" Mario insisted and I lifted my index, to ask for one more minute.

My eyes never left Lina. "Don't leave me hanging. I'll be too distracted."

"Why do you have to be so cute?" she asked. Instead of saying more, she went up to the balls of her feet, put one hand on my chest, the other around my neck, and kissed me.

When she released me, I made several attempts to say something, my mouth doing something weird that undoubtedly made me look like a fish.

She smiled. "Go. More later."

"More kisses?"

"Gabe!" Mario insisted. "I swear to God."

"Go," she said, made me turn around, and went as far as to slap my backside.

Nothing had changed since the weekend, except my willingness to be proven wrong. Would Lina show me I could have it all?

"Looks like my favorite prima may have decided to mend things with her boyfriend…" Lucía sat next to me, after sending her real boyfriend back to the game.

I faked a sigh. "He looked too hot running." I shrugged. "And I like him too much."

Liked him enough, in any case, to be weak for him for the next week and a half, if he was okay with that.

"I knew it!" she exclaimed. "You didn't lookbetter off as friendson Saturday."

"Doesn't mean we're going to stay together." I bit my lip. "It just means that it works right now."

"If it's working, why would it stop working?"

"We're too driven. Work is more important than—" I was going to say each other, but that was wrong; it lodged in the pit of my stomach with a wave of nausea. I couldn't say it. Work wasn't more important than Gabe, it was just extremely important right now. I cleared my throat. "Look. You know how hard it is at the office, right?"