Page 63 of Offside Angle

I close my eyes for a second.

There’s a pause before he continues, and when he does, he sounds exhausted in a way I haven’t heard from him before. “She was so fucking good to me. And now I’m losing my friend too.”

That hurts.

For all the things I’ve wanted from Matteo since I came back into his life, this was never one of them. I never wanted him standing in a locker room feeling like everything around him was falling apart because of me.

“You’re not losing him,” I say. “He’s pissed. That’s not the same thing.”

“Yeah… maybe.” Matteo lets out a shaky breath on the other side of the door. “But you don’t know Cole. He’s everybody’s best friend until you cross him. Especially when it comes to Lena.”

He isn’t wrong.

I don’t know Cole the way Matteo does, but I know enough. I saw his face before he swung. That wasn’t teammate frustration or anger over the game. That was a brother who knew his sister was hurting and had decided Matteo was the reason.

And honestly, I can’t blame him.

“He’ll cool off,” I tell him. “Right now he’s angry for her, and you’re the obvious person to take that out on. Just give him some time.”

Matteo breathes out again, slower this time. Then I hear the snap of a towel being pulled from the hook and the quiet rustle of fabric as he starts drying off.

A minute later, the door finally opens and Matteo steps out.

He has a towel wrapped around his waist, his hair dripping onto his shoulders, and he looks completely exhausted. For a moment, I think he’s just going to walk past me.

Then he looks at me.

Whatever was drained out of him a few minutes ago comes rushing back all at once.

“So now what?” he asks.

I straighten away from the wall.

“You came back, you meddled, you kept pushing until everything got fucked up, and now my whole life looks completely different.” His eyes stay fixed on mine, angry and hurt enough that I don’t even think he knows which one he wants to be more. “Is this what you wanted, Santiago?”

That hurts more than I expect it to.

Mostly because there’s enough truth in it that I can’t just get angry back.

I did come back and push. I flirted when I knew it got under his skin, kissed him when I knew he was confused, and refused to let him shove what happened between us into some locked corner of his head and pretend it wasn’t there.

But this?

Lena gone. Cole throwing punches. Matteo standing in front of me looking like the last twenty-four hours took a fucking hammer to him?

No. I never wanted this.

“I wanted you,” I say, because there’s no point lying about that now. “I still do. And yeah, I pushed you. I’m not going to pretend I didn’t.”

His mouth tightens, but I keep going before he can cut me off.

“But I didn’t make you kiss me back, Matteo. I didn’t make you feel whatever you felt when you did, and I didn’t make Lena see something that wasn’t there.”

“It wasn’t your decision to make whether my life was enough for me.”

“No.” The answer comes easily because he’s right. “It wasn’t.”

That seems to catch him off guard.