They rode in silence that would have been companionable if not for the electricity arcing between their bodies. Too soon they turned into a sports complex and pulled under a portico. A valet jogged up to them.

“I’m not staying,” Ashna said to the eager young man, who did a double take when he saw Rico and ran to open his door.

Rico thanked Ashna and walked away as the boy chattered to him. There was almost no limp in his step, and something about that made her heart twist in her chest.

Circling the driveway, she went down the palm-lined road, and was almost out the gate when a phone rang in her passenger seat. It wasn’t her phone.

Just like that, it was clear what that look on Rico’s face had meant.

She pulled over and answered.

“Ashna?” Rico said with all the casualness of a bad actor. “Sorry, I forgot my phone in your car. You don’t mind bringing it back, do you? Oh, and could you bring it inside, please?”

Her heart skipped as she maneuvered the car back to the parking lot and went inside. What oh what was the man up to?

The receptionist led her through the lobby and in through a door. The smell was the first thing that hit her. Leathery sweat and turf. The too-bright lights of the indoor soccer pitch made her blink. The smell, the lights, all of it spun together, making her stumble.

A woman’s soccer team seemed to be practicing. Or mobbing Rico. Suddenly they parted from around him and someone tossed him a ball. Rico spiked it up on his good knee, then made a header right into the goal. The cheer that went up was deafening.

His gaze sought her over the cheering heads, not a doubt in his eyes that she was watching. It would have been easy enough for her to hand the phone off to someone outside, but he’d asked her to come inside and known that she would do as he asked. He waved her over, but her feet wouldn’t move. It had been too long since she had set foot on turf.

He waited. Everyone turned to her and she found her feet moving.

“Your phone.”

He ignored the phone she held out. “Their keeper has the flu.”

The air in her lungs contracted. What did he think he was doing?

He held up his hand and someone threw him a ball. He offered it to her.

Her hands trembled to reach for it. Her feet trembled to step back.

“It’s this one time.”

“Your phone.” She picked up his hand—the one not holding the ball—and pushed the phone into it. The spark that shot up her arm as their fingers touched didn’t surprise her. Being around him was being submerged in sensation, there was no point fighting it.