Page 26 of Last Line of Defense

I freeze and come to a screeching halt in the middle of the living room. Damn intuitive people in this world, seriously.

“No. Not at all. You’re wrong.”

“You’re a terrible liar, Alicia. I can tell by your breathing when you’re cornered.”

“I swear there’s no one, Irina,” I insist, even though I’m fully aware that my voice sounds about as unconvincing as possible.

“Okay, let me rephrase the question: Is there someone on that team who annoys you and drives you up the wall?”

“It’s actually much worse than that,” I admit in a burst of brutal honesty.

I let myself flop back down onto the couch, stretching my legs out across the coffee table without a second thought.

“Irina, look…”

“Is it really that complicated?”

“Way too complicated,” I finally confess, staring at the ceiling. “It’s all very tangled up. But I don’t feel like talking about it right now.”

“Perfect, it’s a deal. I’ll go with you to that boring dinner. Besides, I won’t lie to you: I’m dying to see the face of the person who’s capable of making Alicia Puertas herself so nervous. It’s got to be a sight to behold.”

I close my eyes tightly and shake my head in amusement, though the smile won’t leave my face.

“Look, I’m going to hang up right now before I regret calling you.”

“Come on, stop being so dramatic. I’ll pick you up by car tomorrow at nine o’clock sharp. Send me your location. And do me a favor, Alicia: wear one of those drop-dead-gorgeous dresses of yours—something that’ll really make that mysterious person suffer the moment you walk through the door. Let them see exactly what they’re missing out on for not being brave enough.”

“See you tomorrow, witch.”

I hang up the phone.

I stare intently at the ceiling moldings, then shift my gaze to the abandoned game console, and finally check the time on the wall clock. I have plenty of time to regret this madness, to call Irina, cancel the date, and show up for dinner tomorrow like a mature, reasonable person. But I know full well that I’m not going to do it. Because the truth behind this whole story is much simpler and less elegant than it seems: I want to see, with my own eyes, the look on Clara’s face the moment she sees me walk into the restaurant on the arm of a hottie like Irina. I want to see firsthand whether she really doesn’t care who I’m dating. I want to prove to myself, out of sheer pride, that I, too, couldn’t care less about what she does with her life. Even though we both know, deep down in our souls, that that’s a complete lie.

I slowly sit up from the couch, stretching my muscles. If I’m going to make a huge mistake that complicates things at the club, I have to do it while dressed spectacularly well. I head toward the closet while a part of me—the wise part—keeps repeating on a loop that nothing I do is going to fix what happened in the showers. And it’s right. But this isn’t about finding solutions. It’s about wounded pride. About wild desire. About that absurd, selfish need not to be the only one caught in the middle of the sexual tension that crackles and flares up every time we look into each other’s eyes and the world shrinks.

10

Without a Uniform

Clara

Throughout my career, I’ve attended enough official dinners to know exactly how they work. They always follow the same pattern: the same insipid conversations repeated on a loop under the influence of wine, the same meticulously prepared speeches by executives in suits who confuse real leadership with spouting empty motivational phrases, and the same diplomatic smiles put on for show among players and coaches who, in far too many cases, can barely stand each other on a Monday morning outside the strict protocol of the locker room.

For me, it’s a pure and simple formality. Just another burdensome social and contractual obligation within the impeccable—and frankly exhausting—sports machine that surrounds professional soccer. Normally, I know how to navigate these kinds of events like a fish in water without leaving the slightest trace or arousing any suspicion whatsoever. I smile just enough in front of the camera flashes, say the bare minimum to the sponsors, and head home before I start feeling trapped by the general hypocrisy. It’s a simple task that doesn’t require me to step outside my usual self-control.

When I arrive at the restaurant, the bulk of the club’s coaching staff has already made its grand entrance. The establishment is, quite literally, the quintessential luxury venue that the board loves to use to show off: elegant without being over the top, decorated with warm lighting that softens the office squabbles, and featuring an outdoor terrace designed to convince anyone that life isn’t simply a series of questionable personal decisions.

I greet Lucía with a slight, knowing nod. Immediately afterward, I endure—like a champion—an unnecessarily long and tedious conversation with a sports physical therapist who now works for one of the country’s most famous sports magazines, and finally manage to slip discreetly over to the marble bar to ask the waiter for a glass of ice-cold white wine. I’m counting on the mild alcohol to help me weather the storm and get through the evening without any incidents I’ll regret the next day.

However, I suddenly realize that all my self-control is of little use when Alicia decides, on her own initiative and at her own risk, to turn the rest of the evening into a perfectly calculated and premeditated emotional ambush.

Alicia appears in the doorway of the restaurant as if the universe itself had decided to conspire to play a private, heavy-handed, and especially cruel prank on me. She’s wearing a black dress, seemingly simple in cut but criminally effective in the exact way it hugs her silhouette. Her chestnut hair—slightly golden beneath the lights—is worn loose, falling in perfect waves over her shoulders. She walks with that overwhelming confidence that defines her so well; that feline expression of someone who is fully aware of the chaos she causes and the emotional casualties she leaves in her wake.

And she’s not alone, of course. Walking beside her is another woman. She’s tall, possessing an almost insulting beauty, dressed in a passionate red ensemble that seems tailor-made to shatter anyone’s mental stability, topped off with a playful and dangerous smile on her lips. I watch them enter the dining room standing far too close together for my liking. At ease with one another. Displaying that natural, brazen familiarity that only arises between two people who share far more than just confidences and free time in their private lives.

My first instinctive thought is strictly professional and cold: Who the hell is that woman, and why hasn’t anyone told me Alicia had a partner? The second, unfortunately, is far less dignified and professional. Ah. Sure. Of course. Alicia turning a normal night into a global cataclysm. Seriously? Did you have to do this right here and right now in front of the entire staff? Did you really feel the urgent need to bring here, like a trophy, a woman who looks like she stepped right off the cover of an adult magazine? The third thought is even worse and makes my blood run cold: a burning, bitter, stinging knot of pure jealousy settles viciously in the pit of my stomach. I try to swallow and hold it back with all my might, but it’s impossible.

Hugo reappears beside me as if out of nowhere, holding his own glass between his fingers and arching one eyebrow toward infinity as he follows the direction of my gaze.