Don’t cry.
Security guards and other personnel dotted the hallway. I shook a few of their hands and let them give me pats on the back. I sniffled to myself, letting the disappointment flare through me again. I knew I’d be fine. This wasn’t the first big game I’d lost. Unfortunately, it was one that had taken months to work toward with so many obstacles along the way, and with Kulti so predominant in the process, it seemed so much more painful than usual.
If only I’d done better. Been the player everyone expected me to be.
“Schnecke.”
I jerked to a stop and glanced up. Making his way toward me from the opposite end of the hall was the tall lean figure that I wasn’t sure I wanted to see yet. There were other players walking ahead of me, and he ignored them as they tried to speak to him. He didn’t even pay them a second glance, which was unbelievably rude, but it made me shake my head when I was fighting for my dignity. I couldn’t even wrestle up my Big Girl Socks.
Kulti stopped the second he was about a foot away. His big body was solid and unmoving, and his face that perfect mask of careful control that didn’t give me a hint of what was going on in his big German head. It only made me feel more awkward, more uncertain, more frustrated that we hadn’t won.
Setting his hands on his hips, pulling his shirt tight against his pectoral muscles, he blinked. “You have two options,” he explained, sizing me up. “Would you like to break something or would you like a hug?” he asked in a completely serious tone.
I blinked at him and then licked my lips before pressing them together. We’d lost and here he was asking me if I needed to break something or if I needed a stinking hug. Tears pooled in my eyes, and I blinked more and more as my throat clogged up. “Both?”
His facial expression still didn’t change. “I don’t have anything for you to break right now, but when we leave…”
It was the ‘we’ that got me.
The ‘we’ that convinced me to throw my arms around his waist and hug him so close later on I’d wonder how he managed to breathe. He didn’t even hesitate wrapping his arms around the tops of my shoulders, his head tipping down so that his mouth was right by my ear. “Don’t cry.”
The tears just poured out. My frustration, my disappointment, my embarrassment all went right for it. Every insecurity was present. “I’m sorry,” I told him in a watery voice.
“For what?”
Oh my God, my nose was running faster than I was capable of keeping up with. My heartbreak right there on display. “For disappointing you,” I forced myself to say. My shoulders were shaking with suppressed hiccups.
His head moved, his mouth edging closer toward my ear. Those big muscular arms tightened around me. “You could never disappointment me.” Did his voice sound strange or was I imagining it? “Not in this life, Sal.”
Yeah, that didn’t help at all. Jesus Christ. My nose turned into a running faucet. “Is this real? Are you real? Am I going to wake up tomorrow and see that the season hasn’t even started and these last four months have been a dream?” I asked him.
“It’s very real,” he said in that same strange voice.
What a wonderful thing and a very sad thing at the same time.
I could hear footsteps getting louder around us as they echoed in the hallway, but I couldn’t find it in me to give a single microscopic shit who was approaching and what they would think.
“I really wanted to win.”
His answer was to rub my back, his fingers sliding beneath the thick straps of my sports bra.
“I hate losing,” I told him like he didn’t completely understand, pressing my face deeper between his pecs. “And they think I don’t care that we lost. Why would someone think I’m a robot?”
Kulti just kept right on rubbing, his fingers cool and rough on my damp skin.
I sniffed. “And now you’re stuck here, and I didn’t even win. I’m so sorry, Rey.”
His fingers burrowed even deeper under my sports bra, the seams popping in protest of what he was doing as his palm lay flush against my skin. “You aren’t going anywhere without me.”
Say what? I reared my head back enough to look at his face, indifferent to how much of a wreck I had to be. “But you told—“
Kulti’s face was gentle. His eyes were brighter than ever. “I have so much to teach you, Taco,” he said with a flick of his eyebrow. “Unless you have something in writing, there would never be proof of an agreement to begin with.”
This ruthless shit. I should have been shocked that he lied to Cordero, but I wasn’t. Not at all. I laughed but it was one of those laughs that you let out so you didn’t keep crying. “You’re such an asshole.” But I loved him anyway.
His mouth tipped up, just barely. “Ready to leave?”
I nodded, cleared my drowning throat and took a step back. “Let me get my things first. I don’t want to be here anymore.”