“Good thing you have the show, then,” she said with the kind of look Rico hadn’t thought he’d ever see her give him again. “You get to win another thing.”

Another laugh escaped him. “You don’t sound overconfident at all!”

Her answering laugh was only slightly embarrassed.

“I meant what I said earlier, Ash. You’ve been great on the show. It’s been amazing.”

“Thank you. It’s been . . . It’s . . . Rico, you have no idea. I . . . I still can’t believe I did it,” she said, as if in a trance.

All those memories of her guarding the goal that Rico had buried deep rose to the surface and wove into the sight of her on the pitch today, flying at the ball, tentative only for minutes before giving it everything.

“I can’t believe I played either,” she added quietly.

“You did it,” he said. Words he had said to her more times than he could count.

No, they couldn’t just be decent to each other. She wasn’t just a girl he’d dated in high school. She was everything. He’d been an idiot to think otherwise. He wanted that Ashna back. The one who had screamed at the ball and played like her life depended on it. The Ashna who kicked butt in the kitchen, even when it wasn’t easy for her. The Ashna who saw him exactly as who he wanted to be.

“Do you really think we can win?” she said more lightly.

“My father loved to say that winning was inevitable if the idea of losing was so painful you couldn’t bear it.”

“I know.” She turned into his hotel’s driveway. “You have to play like your life depends on it.”

He touched her hand on the gear shaft, needing the contact. “Winning really is that simple: you have to want it enough to hold nothing back. Most people spend a lifetime trying to understand what it takes. But that’s all it is. Single-minded love and tenacity.”

She pulled under the columned porte cochere and turned to him. “That doesn’t sound simple at all.” She released the gear and turned her hand in his, as though her need to touch him was as strong as his.

A lock of hair freed itself from her bun and fell across her cheek.

At long last, gazes locked, he did it, he reached out with his other hand and slipped her hair behind her ear. “That’s because there’s another piece that complicates it.” His thumb stroked the delicate shell of her ear and she trembled. The earth beneath them trembled. “Fear. The hardest part is to acknowledge how badly you want it and to stop being afraid of getting it. Because sometimes you lose because you can’t bear the idea of winning something you think you don’t deserve.”

She closed her eyes and he watched her, both hands holding her.