I got to my feet and said a prayer under my breath while I marched toward the net-less, lopsided goal.
“Don’t let me down, Flabby!” Eli yelled.
I shook my head at him as I walked backward, mouthing and pointing “This is your fault.” I was going to end up bald. I fucking knew it.
The first person to come up to do a penalty kick was Mason. He winked at me as he got into position. “I love you, Flabbers, but this ball is going in.”
“Shut up and kick.” I waved him on, ready to get this over with.
“Your wish is my command, my bride.” He then blew me a kiss.
I only just barely managed to deflect the ball a half-inch with the tips of my fingers when he nailed it. His team was screaming from the sidelines while Eli and Gordo hollered at me for missing. Dickwads.
Freddy on our team went next and managed to score. Nerves stirred my stomach, but I pushed them aside and focused on what I needed to do as I walked back to the goal.
Next on the opposing team was Julian, who didn’t talk any shit and simply went for the shot. The ball went up high and I was too short to reach it.
“Goddamnit! Why aren’t you taller?” Eli’s bellow came out at the same time I yelled in frustration with myself.
Miles, on my team, went last and scored.
Carter came up behind me and squeezed my shoulder. “Gaby, I won’t be mad at you if we lose.”
I patted his hand and smiled sadly. “Thanks, remember you said that later on, okay?”
The last player to kick was…
Sacha.
He smiled over at me as he took a dozen steps away from the ball and got into position. “You ready to lose?”
I crossed my eyes and nodded. “Bring it on, Sassy Pants.”
He raised an eyebrow before smiling huge. “You said it,” he replied, getting into position.
Sacha’s goal: getting the soccer ball into the goal.
The ball's goal: breaking my damn face.
It wasn't really Sacha’s fault the ball curved at the last minute and that my hands were in the air when the ball got intimate with my chin.
I'd never gotten into a real fight before, and I suddenly realized why. Getting hit in the face was… not cool. At. All. I know for a fact I squealed, grabbed my chin with both hands and possibly wailed, "Why would you do that to me?" before collapsing to my knees on the ground.
Sacha—as I quickly learned—was a jackass. I could hear him laughing as he ran up to me, getting down on his knees somewhere close by. The hysterical laughs coming from my brother and his friends were background noise I couldn’t ignore.
"Gaby, oh my God, I'm so fucking sorry!" Sacha’s unmistakable voice was at my ear, both horrified and amused at the same time somehow. "Are you okay?" A hand landed on top of mine and another clasped the back of my head.
"No!" It was the truth.
My face.
My face was broken.
He had the nerve to laugh harder, wiggling closer so that his bare, dirty knees pressed against my own bare, dirty knees. "I'm so sorry."
Him practically giggling didn’t make his apology totally believable.
I'm not sure how long we sat there, me squeezing my eyes closed with my chin between my hands, Sacha holding my hands in one of his and the back of my head with his other. It took everything in me not to cry because seriously, my chin was throbbing so bad my brain hurt. Even my teeth felt rattled. When the urge to cry finally managed to pass, I blinked up to see those translucent eyes peering at me in concern. Isaiah, Carter and Gordo were standing behind the man who had just kicked a ball at my face, visibly worried.
"Let me see," Sacha said gently, prying my hand away one digit at a time. Once he prodded with his fingers and made me wince, he let his hand fall to his lap.
“Are you all right?” Carter asked, palms cupping his knees, his face pink and distressed.
I nodded over at him, still holding my face and telling myself grown women didn’t cry from humiliation.
“Are you sure?”
I nodded again.
He didn’t look convinced. “I’ll go grab you some ice, okay?”
Yeah, I didn’t hold back my sniffle. “Thank you, Carter.”
Sacha patted my back. "Let's go sit over there, Princess." He stood up first, holding his hand out for me to take. After pulling me up, he led me toward one of the benches nearby. “I’m sorry,” he kept repeating, smiling more than he should have, but I could tell he felt remorseful at least. If it had been either of my brothers who’d done that, they would have been on the floor dying laughing.
Out of my peripheral vision, I could see Eli arguing with Mason and Julian. By the time we made it to the bench, my brother was gesturing wildly and pointing in my direction.
“Are you sure you’re okay?” the man sitting next to me asked, his entire body angled toward mine.
I went back to holding my face. “Yeah. I’m okay.”
“Positive?”
I nodded.
“I’m not joking. Are you sure?”
I gave him the same answer. I was fine. Mostly.
The corners of his mouth pulled down just slightly, his eyes roaming my cheeks and jaw. After a minute of silence, he smiled gently at me, his dark eyebrows slightly rising. “That was pretty fun though, wasn’t it?”
“Yeah,” I sniffed again, “until you tried to break my jaw.”
“It was an accident!” He frowned, reaching over to put his hand on the top of my head gently. “I am so fucking sorry, I can’t tell you how shitty I feel. Do you want to hit me?”
I shook my head.
The corners of his mouth twitched up again. He was still fighting laughing no matter how bad he felt. “I really do feel awful. I can’t believe that happened.”
I made sure he watched me as I rolled my eyes but smiled afterward. “It’s all right. It isn’t the first time I’ve had a ball kicked at my face.”
Sacha had this expression that was a perfect mix of a frown and a smile. “If it makes you feel any better, you kicked my ass a few times on the field.” We both looked down at him. Brown and green splotches covered his shirt and shorts, and I swear there was even some mud tangled in his leg hairs. If he weren't so handsome, he'd look like a homeless person. "You play pretty fucking dirty."
I just shrugged at him. What was the point in denying it?
"Will you forgive me?"
"No." I frowned and blinked at him from the corner of my eye. "Yes."
Carter came jogging up to us a moment later with an ice-filled plastic baggy. “Here you go,” he said, handing it over.
I thanked him and took the bag; my hand had barely left my chin when both men hissed. I froze in place. “Is it that bad?”
Carter said “no” at the same time Sacha grimaced and tipped his chin down just enough for it to be counted as a nod.
He didn’t even try to bullshit me. The “yes” that came out of his mouth was loud and clear.
Ah, hell.
Chapter Seven
I saw the cinnamon roll first—of course I did—before I saw the long masculine finger pushing the small plastic plate my way. I didn’t need to look up to know whom it belonged to. I closed my book slowly—this week I was on The Story of Edgar Sawtelle—and set it down on the merch table.
Sacha stood there, still in his everyday clothes though the doors were about to be opened any minute. His face was contrite and hopeful and way too sweet-looking to stay pissed off at. “Eli told me they were your favorite,” he offered.
Cinnamon rolls weren’t my favorite; they were Eli’s. I was more of a glazed donut kind of girl. But I didn’t tell him that, and I didn’t make a face either, mostly because it would hurt too much. The truth was, everything ached, but it was mostly my face that bothered me. I once worked with a woman that never smiled because she said she didn’t want to waste the collagen in her face. Back then I didn’t understand how the hell that even seemed like a sensible idea but wi
th the way my face was hurting… yeah, I was keeping my facial expressions to a minimum.
“Thank you,” I thanked him like a mature woman that wasn’t hung up on the huge bruise on her jaw because I really wasn’t. It’d been a total accident. Plus, it wasn’t like I hadn’t had worse done to me.
My brand-spanking-new haircut, on the other hand, was a different story.
Subconsciously, my fingers began reaching up to touch the section of my head directly above my right ear, until my brain reminded them that there wasn’t hair there anymore. There was fuzz. There was fucking fuzz where my long hair used to be. Twenty-four hours ago, my merch buddy had taken clippers to part of my head.
Carter had become the chosen one because I trusted that he wouldn’t have an “accident” that would lead the clippers across my eyebrows. Also, obviously, because he had experience shaving the back of his own head like a boss every week. In the time since the haircut, I’d rationalized that there were worse things in the world than having a third of your head shaved. Like root canals. Cancer. Charley horses in the middle of the night.
I’d gotten off easy.
The words that had come out of Julian’s mouth once we’d all piled back into the tour bus after my near facial reconstruction went along the lines of, “We decided you don’t have to shave all of your head since… you know,” he pointed in my direction, tracing the shape of a circle with his index finger.
He said it as if I should have gotten down on my knees and kissed their feet for making such an accommodation.
Then he added, “Are you sure you don’t need to go to the hospital?”
Realistically, I wasn’t surprised. If anything, I was surprised they weren’t going to make me V For Vendetta my scalp. Fortunately, Eli wasn’t on the opposing team, otherwise I’m sure he would have petitioned for them to shave off my eyebrows too… maybe even said something about shaving my upper lip to be a smart-ass. When they buzzed off all of Carter’s beautiful, long black hair without him batting an eyelash, I tried to calm myself down. Eli grumbled through his entire cut but did it. Then the rest of the guys went through with their shaves with only minor complaints.
Was I going to be the one to pitch a fit when everyone else went through with it? Nope.
All I heard when I sat down in the chair they’d set up outside the venue, the clippers connected to an extension cable, was Mason asking Carter, “Can you do this?”
To which Carter answered, “Yup.” Then he paused before asking, “Gaby, do you want a mirror so you can see what I’m doing?”
“No.” Absolutely not. “Just remember how much I like you, okay? Remember.”
And that was how I ended up with what they jokingly called the ‘Viking Girl’ haircut. One-third of my hair was shaved off above one ear, from my forehead to all the way to the back of my neck. All in all, it could have been worse but still. I wasn’t that vain but a girl’s hair—whether it’s short or if it’s long—is her hair. I hadn’t suffered through those painful hair ties with balls at the ends as a kid for nothing. Plus, it wasn’t as if I had fine cheekbones and a long face. On a good day, someone might say it was heart-shaped.
“I’m really—” Sacha started again, bringing me out of my memory of the day before.
“It’s fine,” I assured him, watching his face as his eyes went over the big reddish-purple spot that reached from my chin to halfway up my jawline on the way to my ear.
He frowned but plopped his butt onto the corner of the white table, hands on his lap. “I feel like shit.” Those gray eyes drifted down to my chin, the wince on his face was more than noticeable.
“I promise it’s okay. I know it was an accident.” I smiled at him that was all lips, ignoring the twinge of pain coming from my jaw. “You aren’t on my hit-list.”
Sacha blinked very seriously. “Who’s on it?”
Wiping my hands on my shorts, I tore a piece of cinnamon bun off. “Mason—”
He nodded, understanding off the bat why I’d put Mase on the list. He’d been way too eager about making sure my head got shaved.
“I’m still on the fence with Freddy for missing his shot—”
That time, Sacha shrugged.
“And my brother.” Definitely my brother.
He bit the inside of his cheek. “I thought he was going to try and fight me after I kicked the ball at you.”
Yeah, that made me laugh. “I’m surprised he didn’t high-five you or try to give you a hug.”
He paused.
And the pause said it all.
I opened my mouth. “He did, didn’t he?”
To give him credit, he nodded, a sheepish expression on his face. “He gave me a hug and said he owed me a drink.”
I would call my brother a traitor-ass-bitch if I didn’t know Eli any better than I did. But I did, and if he’d gotten all bent out of shape in my honor, I would have asked him if he was dying or something.
On the other hand, it wasn’t as if Sacha knew how ruthless he was. “I should have smothered him with a pillow when I had the chance, I swear.”
Sacha cracked a big smile as I tore off another piece of cinnamon roll and ate it. “You said he’s only a little older than you?” I nodded. “You’re the youngest?” I nodded again. “I’m the youngest of five by a lot. It’s a baby thing. They still call me Sasquatch.”
My mouth gaped for a second before I remembered there was bread inside of it. “Sasquatch?”
“Sasquatch,” he confirmed. “They’ve called me Sacha maybe twice in my entire life. The rest of the time is ‘that damn Sasquatch’ or just ‘Sasquatch.’”
“Girls or boys?”
“Four sisters.” He shook his head as if having a flashback of going through something traumatizing with them. “They were the same way with me as Eli is with you.”
“They used to take craps and purposely not flush the toilet?” I asked with a snort.
Sacha grinned, raking a hand through the longer hair at the top of his head. His tattoos popped against the pale skin beneath the wide bands of ink striping the length of his arm. “Just as bad; they’d leave their tampons all over the place. When I was really young—my oldest sister is almost fourteen years older than me—they’d put dresses on me and tell me that our parents named me Sacha because I was really a girl.”
Somehow I managed to hold back the snort rising through my nose and keep my features even and serious as I asked, “What you’re trying to tell me is that you’re not a girl?”
He stared at me. “Remember when I told you I thought you were funny? I changed my mind. You’re not.”
All I could do was just smile despite the pain that shot through the lower half of my face.
The effort he was putting into not laughing was completely obvious, especially as he raised his dark eyebrows. “Don’t think I didn’t hear you call me Sassy either before you pushed me on the ground.”
What was I going to do? Deny it? “Ask me how many regrets I have?” I didn’t wait for him to answer. I made a circle with my thumb and index finger and held it up for him to see. “Sassy Sacha.”
Before he could reply, a voice I was way too familiar with filled the empty Dallas venue. “GABRIELA!”
“It’s my mom, run,” I whispered under my breath as I leaned to the side to spy the woman who never let me forget how hard it had been to carry twins for almost nine months. On one side of her were my dad, Rafe and two nieces. On the other side of my mom was Eli with his arm around her, our oldest brother Gil and my other niece.
I put my hand up and waved, mentally bracing myself for the shit storm that usually went hand in hand when the entire Barreto family was together. Insults, wedgies and yelling were essential parts of a family that was half Brazilian and half Italian.
“You don’t remember you have a mom?” my mother yelled over at me as the whole family kept walking across the venue in my direction.
“Like I could forget!” I hollered back at her with a weak smile.
&n
bsp; She visibly shook her head at the same time my dad flashed me a grin and a silent wave. While my parents were great and you could tell that they loved each other, a lot of times, I wondered how they made things work for them the last thirty-eight years. Mom and Dad were polar opposites who frequently disagreed on everything from what car they should take to church, to whether the lawn could go another week before it needed to get mowed or not.
Rafe’s two daughters screamed, “Aunt Gaby!” a second before they took off running. I made sure that Eli saw my smirk at our niece’s reactions since we were always arguing over whom they loved more.
Izabella and Heidi, four and six-years-old, shrieked until they were five feet away when they suddenly stopped… and gawked.
It wasn’t either one of them who verbally reacted to my makeover.
It was Gil. “What the—,” he glanced down at his daughter, “you-know-what happened to you, Demi?”
My siblings, Gordo and Mason really brought out the worst in me. I stuck my tongue out at him. “The important question here is: why do you even know who that is?”
He tilted his head over at the reserved nine-year-old by his side. “Disney Channel all day every day.”
It was the loud smack of a palm meeting flesh that had me glancing over at Eli, who was holding the back of his head with both hands, scowling at Rafaela. “What the hell was that for?”
The second oldest Barreto kid, when in reality she had always seemed to be the most mature, scowled at her little brother. “Why would you do that to her?”
“I didn’t do that!” Eli frowned, edging closer to our mom who was fussing at Rafe for hurting her baby boy.
“Did you fall again?” That was our dad that asked.
“Again?” Sacha whispered under his breath, and I couldn’t help but poke him in the side.
What really got me about the question was that they either expected Eli to be the culprit or my own clumsiness to be the cause of blame.
“We had our Soccer Death Match yesterday,” I explained, walking around the table so I could hug the entire clan, wincing every time one of them touched the side of my body that had taken the brunt of the impact when Sacha had tackled me playing.
Rhythm, Chord & Malykhin Page 8