His forehead was as smooth as ever. Kulti looked more calm and collected than I’d ever seen him. There was no trace of anger or frustration on him. He was somber and serious and terrifying. “No. You mean so much more to me, and you know it.”
I opened my mouth and closed it, and suddenly I couldn’t be in the tiny car with him any longer. I needed out. Out. Right then. That instant. I needed to get out. Fresh air, I needed fresh air.
So I did just that. I got the hell out of the car and slammed the door closed behind me. I crouched down on the ground with my head in my hands. I was on the verge of having either a panic attack or a shit attack; I couldn’t decide which. My heart was hammering a mile a freaking second and I was just squatting, trying to convince myself not to die from a sudden heart attack at the age of twenty-seven.
This was like the best dream and the worst nightmare all wrapped into one beautiful package.
I hunched over more and pressed the heels of my hands into my eyes.
The sound of the passenger door opening and closing warned me that my temporary peace was about to come to an end. Seconds later I felt the one and only man—the cause of why I losing my mind—drop down in front of me. His knees hit mine as his hands came to rest on my shoulders, giving them a light squeeze.
“Why are you telling me this now all of a sudden?” I croaked.
His hands stroked down the line of my upper arms to stop at my elbows. “I won’t be the reason your career is blemished,” he explained.
The reason my career was blemished?
Oh.Oh. I’d been the one to say it from the very beginning: it didn’t matter what anyone else thought as long as we both knew we hadn’t done anything. I could go to my grave knowing I hadn’t done any fraternizing with my coach. Oh my God.
“I wanted to wait until the season was over. I didn’t want to rush you. A few months are nothing compared to the rest of my life,schnecke.” Kulti nodded, his eyebrows hitching up a quarter of an inch as recognition hit me. “You have no idea what the day of your concussion did to me.”
His face tipped down as his expression turned grave. “I thought your neck was broken. It was the most frightening thing I have ever experienced. Franz called and asked how myschneckewas doing.
“My schnecke. My little snail, do you know that’s what it means? It’s a term of affection in my country. My love. My snail. I don’t want to waste more time. I have nothing to hide and neither do you.”
I tilted my head back, my throat completely exposed as I sighed in desperation. “Please don’t say stuff like that.”
“It’s the truth.”
“No, it’s not. We’re friends. You said I was your best friend, remember? You can love me but not be in—“ I couldn’t say it. I shut my mouth and gave him an exasperated look.
“I can and I am. When you love something you do whatever you need to do to protect it, isn’t that right?” He tilted his face down, making sure our eyes were meeting.
All I could manage to do was stare and hyperventilate.
He nodded, his big hands kneading my arms. “You’re supposed to say, ‘Oh yes.’”
I could feel my lower lip trembling as his thumbs rubbed the tender part in the crook of my elbow. “You’re delusional.”
“I’m not.” Kulti tipped his head down, eye to eye like he’d been with me when I’d woken up from my concussion. “Understand, I would wait for you however long you needed me to, but I hope you don’t ask me to wait any longer than the end of this season.”
Panic made my throat tighten. This was all too much. “I have a choice in this. I don’t know—”
“You know, Sal. It’s why we fight and make-up. Why we’ll always fight and make-up. You were the one that said to me that you fight with the people you love the most, remember? You and I fight all the time, see?”
Those big hands left my thighs and before I could wonder where they were going, they landed on my cheeks. In a split second, he tilted my face just slightly down and we were eye to eye, his breath on my face. Those amazing hazel eyes were closer than they’d ever been.
Then he kissed me. Unexpectedly, out of the blue, sudden as a heart attack.
The dream of a teenage Sal and the dream of twenty-seven-year-old Sal, became one.
Reiner Kulti, my German, my pumpernickel, pressed his lips to mine. The same lips I’d kissed a minimum of fifty times on the posters that had once been on my wall. His mouth was warm and chaste, pressing, pecking, one, two, three, four times. He kissed one corner of my mouth, then the other.
Holy mother of God, I was a sucker for those corner kisses.
I opened my mouth just a little and kissed him back. Our kisses were a little more open-mouth than closed. Five, six, seven, eight times he let me press my lips to his. He let me be the one to kiss him back. Nine, ten, eleven times, right under his lips, on a chin that hadn’t gotten the memo it had been shaved that morning.
His breath rattled in his chest as he pulled back, eyes closed, mouth firm and tight.