“You know what I mean.”
I sigh, knowing how frustrated he must feel. “Look. You’re going to get better.”
“It doesn’t feel like it. You said I would be out three weeks and it’s been three weeks.”
“No. We said that if you could wear a brace during the game, then you’d back in it. But as you know, if you wear a brace, you’re making your injury a target for the other players, and you know yourself it’s a target they will take. And anyway, so things are happening slower. We just keep at it. Every injury is unique.”
“You must be sick of me,” he mumbles.
For some reason, that little offside comment breaks my heart. “I could never be sick of you,” I tell him softly.
He shoots me a wary look and goes back to his exercise.
I watch him for a while, feeling his frustration across the water. Then I have an idea.
“Hey, this is going to sound weird, but a lot of clubs do it. Why don’t we try yoga?”
“Yoga?” he repeats with a scoff. “Do I look like I would enjoy yoga?”
“It’s not about what you’re enjoying. This isn’t a hobby. This is about getting you better and I think it could make a big difference.”
“We don’t do yoga at Real Madrid.”
“I know. I’ve mentioned it to Dr. Costa and he emphasized how you focus on weights, and that’s fine. It works. But other teams do use yoga and it works for them, too. I just think it would help your recovery. It’s worth a shot.”
He grows quiet. “I don’t know.”
“Are you worried about the other players seeing you?” I ask.
He shrugs. Or attempts to shrug, which momentarily puts his head below the water. He breaks the surface, his dark hair plastered to his forehead.
I’m laughing.
“Very funny,” he says, spitting out water. But then he’s grinning at me.
This beautiful boy. He never fails to take my breath away.
Watch it, the voice inside my head warns. But that voice sounds so very far away these days. Now that Alejo has stepped back in his, well, pursuit of me, I feel it coming from inside of me now.
A craving for his attention.
“I promise I’ll make yoga as fun as possible. And no one will see,” I add.
“When?”
“Why not tonight?”
He arches a black brow. “Tonight?”
“Just trust me. Come find me after dinner. Wear something flexible.”
That brow is still raised as he studies me. “You’re full of surprises, Thalia.”
I think I’m surprising even myself.
It’s hard to hold a yoga session in the compound when it’s the night before a game. Everyone is staying over, which means all members of the team are scattered everywhere. Right after dinner I go to the warm-up room, to the gym, to the physio room, to the game room, even the little cinema, and there are Real Madrid players everywhere.
But by the time Alejo knocks on my door, I have an idea.
“At your service,” he says to me with a bow as I open the door. He’s dressed in a black t-shirt and grey shorts which look fucking fantastic on him.
“Actually, I’m at your service,” I tell him as I reach down and pick up the yoga mat I keep in my room, handing it to him. “Let’s take this outside.”
“Outside?” He looks so thoroughly confused with his face scrunched up, it’s adorable.
“Yes,” I say, trying to bite back a smile. “We’ll go to the field. One that doesn’t have a bunch of your teammates scattered on it. Someplace quiet.”
Alejo doesn’t look so sure.
“Come on,” I tell him, pushing past him. “Be a man.”
I knew that would get to his machismo side.
“Fine,” he says, following me.
We head down the stairs and to the back doors that open onto one of the fields. This one is dark and empty, not used as often as the main training field, which is a replica of Santiago Bernabéu stadium, right down to the grass.
“I don’t think I’ve ever been out here like this,” Alejo says, looking around in awe. “It’s like a totally different animal.”
The field is lit up only faintly where we are standing from the lights of the building, but as we walk off across the field to the opposite side, it grows darker and darker until no one would be able to see us at all.
The moon is out, almost full, providing us with just enough illumination, and the air smells sweet, like grass and the night-blooming flowers that line the property. There’s a light, warm breeze, and every now and then there’s a roar of an aircraft from the nearby international airport. We stop walking and watch as the plane’s lights soar high into the star-spangled sky.
Alejo looks at me, and I see something simmering in his eyes. Maybe it’s the moonlight. Maybe it’s the last two weeks of unsaid words, of putting up walls, of trying very hard to pretend that something very big almost happened between us.
I give him a hurried smile and take the mat from him, unfurling it so it’s flat on the ground.
“Sit, legs straight out.” I gesture to it, trying to ignore the heat in my core, the flutters in my stomach.
He reluctantly tears his gaze away and does as I say.
“How does that feel?” I ask him.
“Fine,” he says.
“Okay, good. So what we’re going to do is work on modified poses so that you get all the benefits but at no cost to your knee.”
He glances up at me. “You sound like a yoga instructor.”
“Well, I was a yoga instructor once upon a time.”
“When?”
“Before I was hired by LA Galaxy. I worked part-time for the Seattle Sounders, just trying to get a leg up, pun intended, and I taught yoga in my spare time.”
“Has anyone ever told you that you’re impressive?”
I laugh. “Not enough. Okay, so you know what? Let’s start with downward-facing dog instead.”
If he’s not looking at me with those magnetic green blue eyes of his, then I can do my job a lot better.
“And how do I do that?” he asks.
Right.
I hold out my hands and help pull him back to his feet.
Then with my hands still on his forearms, his very strong, muscled forearms, I push him back so he’s standing at the end of the mat.
I then go right beside him and demonstrate how to do a downward dog, which is pretty much your body shaped like a jackknife, and one of the easier poses.
He attempts to do the same, except his lower back is arching.
“You need to have a flatter back,” I tell him, and when he doesn’t seem to quite get it, I get up and go over to him. I place one hand on his lower back and one hand on his abs and pull up gently.
Damn these abs are the definition of washboard.
I shake the thought off, but my hands still have work to do.
I correct his hamstrings.
I correct his shoulders and arms.
Then I tell him to breathe through it.
“Am I not breathing?” he gasps, trying to look up at me.
“No. Not really. You’re not yoga breathing.”
He starts huffing and puffing, exaggerating, and in the moonlight I can see his face going red.
“Okay,” I say slowly. “So, yoga breathing is the opposite of hyperventilating.”
I then try and get him to walk his feet up slowly to the front of the mat, then gradually rise up halfway and come down in a fold.
That also doesn’t go so well.
“No, you’re not folding,” I tell him.
“I am, too. I’m folded like a paper airplane.”
He protests in such a way that I have to laugh. I think he’s a lot like me; he gets frustrated if he doesn’t get things right the first time. It’s probably why he’s so good at his job and why I’m not so bad at mine.
Still, I come up right behind him, my hips pressed against his ass, and reach down his sides,
making sure his knees are bent as his arms come to the sides of them.
“This is an extremely sexual position,” he says.
I bite my lip and smile. “Not when I’m doing this to you.”
“I mean in general. You’re giving me ideas.”
I pause. “No, I’m not.”
“I didn’t say I was talking about the two of us,” he says.
Hmmmphf. He’s got me there.
I don’t say anything to that, lest he call me out for being presumptuous.
“Okay, last one. Inhale, connecting breath and movement, stretch long as you come back up,” I tell him.
To his credit, he gets that right.
“Next, touch your toes together but keep your heels apart, and then go into a deep bend of the knees until you’re in chair pose.”
He does it as far as his brace will allow but doesn’t put up his arms and starts to rock backward.
I quickly reach over and grab his arms, pulling them up and out in front of him for balance, and the strength of his abs does the rest.
“See, you’re getting it,” I tell him. “Don’t forget to breathe.”
He scowls at that.
“So, people actually do this for fun?”
“Yes,” I assure him. “Fun but also to destress. You learn how to breathe. You learn how to connect to your body. You learn how to be grounded and flexible. All of those things are extremely important for an athlete like you.”
I run him through a few more poses and then make him sit down on the mat, almost cross-legged but not quite, his back straight, chin level, hands upturned on his knees. Then I sit down on the grass right in front of him and go into lotus pose with ease.
He stares at my tangled limbs with wide eyes. “Can I just watch you do the poses instead?”
“This takes practice. I don’t even want you sitting cross-legged because of your knee. Next time I’ll bring a prop so that you have a little more support.”
“Next time,” he says.
“Yeah. Next time. I’m making this a part of your therapy. Believe me, this will help. And most of all, it’s going to help you deal.”
His gaze sharpens. “Deal with what?”
“Being a professional football player.”
“I can deal with that.”
“Can you?” I ask, squinting at him. In the distance, another airplane takes off. “Because you’re injured, which is part of the job, and earlier you seemed to be quite angry at that fact. You think the team is losing because you’re not there. Whether that’s true or not, that’s a lot of weight on your shoulders.”
He stares at me for a moment, and I prepare for him to say something macho and dismissive. But instead he swallows thickly. Nods. “Si. Maybe it would be good for me.” He pauses, looks like he’s about to say something. Then doesn’t.
“What?” I prod.
He licks his lips, eyes resting on the turf between us, the short blades lit by the moon. “I guess I haven’t been myself lately.”
“It’s normal.”
“Do you think…do you really think yoga would help? With…you know, issues?”
“Of course,” I say softly. The whole moment has turned soft, with Alejo talking about something I’m not even aware of. This isn’t just about his knee.
God, how I want him to open up to me.
I want to know the man behind the eyes. Behind the easy smile and jokes and that body of sin.
So I continue to sit there.
I wait for him to be ready.
The night air fills with crickets and humidity.
“My father died when I was young,” he eventually says.
Oh.
That’s where this is going.
“I saw that in your record,” I say, my heart pinching at his admission. “What happened to him? It didn’t say.”
“He hung himself. And I saw him.”
My chest sinks. I immediately lose the pose, shoulders slumping with the weight of his words. “I’m so sorry, Alejo. I am…so, so sorry. I had no idea.”
He gives a little shrug, looking away, the moonlight reflecting in his eyes, which are watering slightly, breaking my heart. “I was young and I took my brother to the beach. My father was a drunk and a gambler and he had gotten fired, so my mother told us to leave. She said he would come home angry. We stayed out for as long as we could and I figured…” He closes his eyes for a moment, breathing hard. “I figured we could come home and he would be passed out or something. I didn’t expect…I didn’t expect to see him like that. I still see it, some nights, when I close my eyes. Like it happened yesterday. And yet, everyone, my mother, my brother, they pretend like it never happened so I have to pretend that it never happened.”
I see a single tear spill out beneath his eye and that’s enough to get me crawling over to him and wrapping my arms around his shoulders. I hold him tight, pressing my face into his arm, letting him know that I’m here.
And…my god.
Even though I’m the one hugging him, trying to console him, this is the first time I’ve actually had intimate physical contact with someone. This is the first time I’ve put my arms around someone in so long. It’s been forever since I’ve had this kind of contact.
Fuck me.
I’m lonely.
I am so terribly lonely.
The realization hits me like a frying pan to the face and now a few tears are escaping my eyes, a sob building up in my throat.
Shit.
“You don’t need to cry for me,” Alejo manages to say, his voice choked, and he pulls away, sliding his hand up against my cheek and raising my face to look at him. “It’s okay. I’ll be okay. I’ve gotten this far.”
I don’t want to tell him I’m not just crying for him. I don’t want to admit how lonely I am, that there are things in my past that I’m having trouble dealing with too.
That I’m not sure if I’ll ever feel whole.
“I know you’ll be okay,” I whisper as he runs his thumb under my eyes, wiping away the tears. His lashes are long and wet and gleaming, and he’s just so raw and real and beautiful.
He has some kind of power over me that’s going to be my downfall.
This man is going to destroy you.
But wouldn’t it be a beautiful way to go?
“I guess your yoga really does work,” he says, managing to smile.
Our faces are inches apart.
His gaze is dropping from my eyes to my mouth, his hand cupping my face.
He’s going to kiss me.
I can’t breathe.
I need to stop him.
I don’t want to stop him.
But then he stops himself. He suddenly pulls away and manages to get to his feet before reaching down and pulling me up beside him.
“Well, what do you say?” he says quickly. “I think we should call it a night. I’m already feeling it in my thighs.”
I’m pretty sure that’s a lie because he has thighs of steel and what we just worked on was like yoga for babies, but I let it go. Something has him spooked.
I mean, he won’t even look at me.
“Okay,” I say feebly and reach down to fold up the mat.
Alejo is already walking across the field.
“Hey,” I cry out, running up beside him. “You could wait for me instead of leaving me in the dark.”
“The moon gives you enough to see by,” he says without turning around.
I reach out and grab his arm, pulling him back to a stop.
“What’s wrong with you?” I ask. “What just happened back there?”
His eyes follow the path of an airplane flying overhead, the lights reflected in his eyes. “Nothing.”
I punch him lightly on the chest to get his attention. “No, it wasn’t nothing. Are you ashamed of showing emotion in front of me?”
He looks at me quizzically. “No. Why would I be?”
“Then why are you like this suddenly?”
His chin raises. St
ubborn. “Like what?”
I gesture to his face with a swooping motion. “Like this. One minute I thought we were having an intimate moment, and the next you got up like your pants were on fire.”
“They are not on fire,” he says calmly.
“It’s an expression.”
“Never heard of it.”
“Alejo…”
“What do you want me to say?” he says, his eyes burning now. “Do you want the truth? The real truth, even if it will make you run away?”
“I won’t run away.”
“I call bullshit on that. You know what bullshit is in Spanish? This.”
“Just tell me.”
He shakes his head and turns to move, but I step in front of him.
“Tell me,” I demand.
“Fuck, now you’re the persistent one,” he says to me.
And suddenly his hands are grabbing my face.
Fingers pressing into my cheeks.
“This is the truth,” he growls.
And then he kisses me.
He kisses me.
His lips are pressed against mine, hard and violent, full of force and passion before they grow soft, just enough for his mouth to meld against my mouth, a slip of his warm tongue caressing me until my stomach dips and my world starts to spin.
I moan into his mouth, my legs feeling weak, my hands reaching for his arms, trying to stay up, trying to grab on, hold on.
Before I can completely give in, he pulls away.
Our breathing is ragged and hard.
Sweat rolls down my brow.
His eyes search mine, heavy-lidded, brooding, practically smoldering in intensity.
“I was going to kiss you,” he says thickly, licking his lips. “And I knew you wouldn’t have liked it. I knew it would have pushed things over the end. I knew I could have lost you. So I didn’t do it.”
He lets his hands drop. “I wish you hadn’t made me tell the truth.”
Then he walks off again.
And I let him go.
Standing on the middle of the field, I watch him go, his form growing bright as he enters the lights of the building and disappears.
Around me another plane takes off into the starry sky, but my heart is beating louder than the jet engines. I don’t hear it.
He kissed me and my world started over.
A blank slate.
Erasing the past.
Creating a future.
The Younger Man: A Novel Page 12
