All she wanted was to rise up on her toes and touch her lips to his again and again. But now he knew. Suddenly she couldn’t tell what it was that shone in his eyes, love or pity.

Then she remembered the loathing in his eyes after he’d met Baba. It came crashing down on her. All of it. He had seen who she was when it came to her father. And the first glimpse of it had made him run.

Who are you, Ash? How can you stand being around such a horrible person?

When she hadn’t been that girl—the one on the pitch, the one in the kitchen—he hadn’t wanted her.

“I have to go,” she said, unable to breathe.

“What? Why?” His eyes grew wild at the idea of her leaving. She knew exactly how he felt.

Except he knew how to survive, to thrive when things went wrong. She didn’t. She couldn’t go through losing him again. “Because I’m not the person you think I am.” Look at how she had run from her mother. “Because we’re too different. We couldn’t cross that distance once, how will we now?” With that she started walking to the door.

Chapter Thirty-Two

Rico was next to her in a minute, his arms around her, his lips in her hair. This entire morning had felt like trying to hold on to her as she slipped away. But he would hold on until his arms fell off. He no longer knew how not to.

“Distance? You call what’s between us distance? This connection is distance? We’re the same person, Ash. We’re practically inside each other.”

For a second her body went slack as she gave in to the urge to lean back into him. But then she groaned and held herself apart.

How could she not see? She was in his breath, his bones. Without even touching him she filled him up from the inside out. When they touched, there was no him left. From that first day when he had stopped that ball from hitting her. From that day he had never been the same, and he knew she hadn’t either. There had been no him, no her, only them.

A tortured laugh hissed out of her. She turned around and something in her face made him let her go and step back. The entryway to the suite was too narrow. They couldn’t go too far from each other. A bloody metaphor if there ever was one.