by Raye Wagner
She jogged out onto the pitch, giving fist bumps and high fives to her teammates as she went. She was the only female on the team, and the smallest, but the other young men all appreciated her skill and talent. Even Brian had graciously surrendered his number 10 to her, telling her that if she played as well in a match as she did in practice, they would be unstoppable.
They ran drills first and then spent forty-five minutes scrimmaging, rotating players so no one got overly fatigued. They would take tomorrow off.
Ari and Chase had avoided each other outside of practice. Whatever the tethering connection was that helped them play so well together became an inferno in its force when they were alone. Neither of them said it, but they both made sure to not be alone together again. Still, Ari couldn’t help but seek him out, and she noticed he did the same. As if always aware of each other.
“Nice match, Ari!” Kai called. “I’ve never seen anyone but Chase do that Pele kick. And you totally netted it.”
He collapsed on the soft grass next to her.
She smiled at his reference to the bicycle kick and the best player in the history of soccer. “Thanks,” she said, reclining on the pitch. “One day, I’ll be able to dribble as well as him and you can call me Nutmeg.”
It was what her brother had called her years ago. Somehow it seemed appropriate that his doppelganger would call her the same.
The tethering connection burned deep in her belly as Chase sat down on the other side of her.
He smiled appreciatively at her and said, “Nice match.”
She both loved and hated that he made her feel so much. She shoved the intense emotions back, deep into a vault at the back of her mind. She needed to keep the mood light. Mostly, she wanted to keep him there. “If you want to call me Nutmeg, too, I guess that’s okay.”
Fire burned down her arm as Chase traced his finger over her skin. “I would never want to call you anything but Ari.”
“Well, as soon as you get over your infatuation with Chase, I’m going to ask you to marry me, Nutmeg.” Kai smirked as Chase whipped around to glare at him.
Ari sat up in shock.
“Why would you say that?” Chase challenged Kai as he gripped Ari’s wrist.
Kai only rolled his eyes at his friend. “Ari is amazing. She’s hot, totally talented on the field, patient, kind—”
“You’re just saying whatever comes into your head.”
Ari had to agree. Patient? Kind?
“No,” Kai said, contradicting them both. “She’s patient. She puts up with your moodiness, Nysse’s chatter, and my perfection. And as far as kindness, haven’t you watched her? She always gives that homeless man on the corner money every afternoon after practice. She helps Nysse with her homework, and she’s always the first one up to help Mom with the dishes. She’s kind.”
He’d seen all that? A sense of awe filled her as Kai spoke.
Chase clenched his teeth but said nothing.
“I know her.” Kai turned to her and winked. “And I love you.”
She smiled. There was no pressure in his declaration, and it wasn’t romantic at all. “Thank you.”
But Chase was not amused. “That’s not love.”
Kai waved away the words. “How would you know? Have you ever been in love?”
Chase narrowed his eyes. He swallowed once, then again, and his gaze flitted to Ari.
She waited, her heart fluttering like a caged bird.
“No.”
Kai raised his eyebrows but didn’t engage with Chase further. Instead, he turned to Aricela. “Have you ever been in love?”
If he wouldn’t acknowledge whatever was between them, neither would she. But she wouldn’t lie about her past either. “Once. A long time ago.”
Kai chuckled. “A long time ago? What happened?”
Chase released her arm as though she’d burned him. But he didn’t move away, not even an inch, and his gaze bored into her.
“He sold me.”
Kai started laughing, his innocent naivety echoing in his carefree laughter.
Chase touched her knee, and she pulled her legs in, her knees to her chest, like she could hold in the horror.
“Sold you?” Chase whispered. “Are you trying to be funny?”
She shook her head. “He and my brother. They sold me to Escobar, the leader of the Narcos in Xtepal. It was a way of gaining favor.”
Something deep within her bubbled up, a need to vocalize what had happened to her. That sharing it would somehow share the pain, that those she cared about, that cared for her, would be able to help her shoulder the burden, and that her anguish would lessen with their understanding.
Looking up at the fading day, she told them of her life before.
Aricela had been little when the Narcos first came to Xtepel. At first she didn’t even know there had been a change. Not for many years. And then her mother disappeared. Her father had told Aricela and her brother that she’d run off. Several other moms had run off at the same time. Aricela had cried for days—no, weeks—mourning her mother’s absence. She’d been twelve then.
In hindsight, she now knew the Narcos had taken her, or worse, her father had given her to them to improve his standing. As if she’d been a piece of property. But twelve-year-old Aricela only knew that her mother had left.
Her father joined the drug traffickers. She had no idea what he did for them. One day, he told her he had a new job, and he got a new car, and there were new clothes. But her father wasn’t the same. He was irritable and short, yelling constantly, and eventually he began to hit. It was the hitting that drove her away. The new shoes and pretty dresses didn’t make up for it. And after several promises that he would stop, she started sleeping at Imelda’s house.
Imelda’s mother had put her daughter in self-defense classes in Punta Laredo when she was a little girl. Three days a week, as soon as school was over Imelda and her mom would get on the bus to go into town. They wouldn’t get back until it was dark, sometimes well past bedtime, but by secondary school no one ever picked on Imelda.
It was when Imelda beat up Mateo after he’d shown up with new shoes at school that her mother disappeared. And then Imelda disappeared, too.
But Aricela was in love with Xavier by then, and Imelda was just one more disappearance. Naïve, she’d been so naïve. Xavier had shown up with new shoes, puffing his chest out with importance as he talked about the job he now had. And then Jude had new shoes, too.
The Narcos kept the girls in the barn. Like animals in pens. Imelda was there. And so was Izel from school. They’d been beaten, raped, manipulated, and tortured. And Aricela’s own brother and boyfriend had sold her to Escobar to climb the ranks.
But a young boy from school had set them free. He’d caused a distraction, killed the guards, and helped the girls go free from the pens. He’d tried to get them to leave, but Larissa, Imelda, and Aricela went to the house to get the other girls out, grabbing guns from the guards’ bodies on the way.
It was a suicide mission, and they should’ve known it. But their anger and hatred fueled them. They’d killed five Narcos before Imelda was shot. Larissa yelled for Aricela to stop, but she couldn’t stop. A fresh wave of vengeance had washed over her as she saw Imelda fall, and she’d charged the three Narcos who’d shot her friend.
She had no idea what happened to Larissa after that. She knew six more girls had gotten away from the camellos; she’d helped save six more. Every time Escobar hit her, she told herself it was worth it. The ratio of lives saved to lives lost… It was worth it. Eventually, the torture became too much, like he’d promised it would, and she knew she was dying. And then Larissa showed up again. Aricela had thought it was a hallucination, but Larissa asked if Aricela wanted to leave. She offered a way out, so Aricela took it.
It was the first time she’d ever said the words out loud, and the depravity and baseness of her previous life was shocking to her own ears. She closed her eyes, not wanting to see their expressions, t
he disgust she knew would be there. A single tear escaped, and she let her anguish seep out in that drop of moisture as it rolled down and dripped into the grass.
Chase stood, muttering something under his breath, and her eyes snapped open.
She didn’t want it to matter, but it did.
His eyes went from blue to coal black, and his dark anger radiated around him. He kicked at Kai, who yelped and backed away.
“That is not funny. Not even a little.” Without another look toward Ari, he stormed off across the field.
Weighty silence settled, but the void Chase had left remained.
“Holy crap.” Kai’s eyes were wide as saucers, and he scooted closer. “Are you for real?”
Ari nodded as she watched Chase’s retreating back. She’d bared her soul to him, and he’d rejected her. He’d left, abandoning her and assuming . . . She didn’t even know what he’d assumed. Maybe that she’d made it up? Like for attention. The idea was abhorrent.
“Oh man,” Kai whispered, shaking his head. “That will tear him up.” He closed his eyes, and when he opened them seconds later, they were filled with tears. “Come on. You better go talk to him.”
Kai stood and held a hand out to Ari.
A deep sense of foreboding settled over her, and she craved a few seconds of peace with her artavus. With a sigh, she grabbed Kai’s hand and let him pull her up.
After crossing the field in silence, Ari asked, “Are you going to give me anything? Some kind of warning?”
But Kai shook his head. “He needs to be the one to tell you.”
They got to the gym and opened the door to see three holes in the plaster wall. She could hear Chase, even out here, swearing as something crashed against the metal lockers.
“I’m going to go,” she said, pulling away. She would deal with Chase later. Maybe. Maybe it was better this way. If he couldn’t deal with hearing about what had happened to her, he definitely wasn’t going to be able to understand. Physical attraction wasn’t enough to deal with real issues.
She stepped back, and regret wound its way around her heart. She’d hoped Chase was different; she’d wanted him to be. Which was why she’d even bothered with the truth.
Kai grabbed her arm. “Don’t leave. Whatever you think . . . It’s not that. He should be the one to explain, but if he won’t tell you, I will. You deserve to know.”
Chase stormed out of the locker room and froze as soon as he saw her. His face was chiseled granite, and his presence radiated with the force of the storm raging within. His right hand dripped crimson onto the concrete floor, but his eyes glistened, spilling emotions far deeper than the few words that had carried out of the locker room.
Ari stared at him, the tears incongruous with the destruction she’d heard only seconds before.
“Right then. I’ll be going, now,” Kai said.
Ari heard him, but she couldn’t turn away from Chase.
Chase had become a statue, his gaze fixed above her head, his chest barely moving with his breaths. But the tears continued to roll down his face, dripping from his cheeks to his shirt, some spattering to the ground.
She heard the door click shut, and she stepped forward. “I didn’t lie. That’s what happened to me. If you don’t like it, I’m sorry. I can’t change it. But I understand if you don’t want to associate with me.”
His only response was to clench his fists.
Ari swallowed. Her instinct was to run. Not just run, flee. If she didn’t care, she couldn’t be hurt again. But even as she contemplated it, she knew it was too late. She already cared. Too much. “Kai said you had something you should tell me.”
When he said nothing, she sighed. She wished she’d never said anything. “Would you rather I go?”
Chapter 7
Chase closed the distance in one stride. “No,” he said, his voice rough with emotion. “Please stay.” He scrubbed at his eyes with the hem of his shirt and then reached for her hand. “We should talk.”
He wrapped her small hand in his, and his ravaged features settled into a calm sadness. He pulled her forward into a hug. He held her for a long moment, his chest heaving, but eventually his emotions waned, and he pulled back. Still holding her hand, he led her out the door and back to the pitch.
Chase was silent the entire time until they settled onto the grass facing one another.
Reaching out, he brushed the hair that had escaped her braid, pushing it behind one ear, and then said, “My mom was an addict. I never knew my dad. I don’t know if he stayed with her for one night or one year. I have no memories of him. My sister, half sister, was four years younger than me. Things were never stable, but my mom’s parents always took her in when she’d hit bottom, so we always had somewhere to go.”
He paused to wipe his eyes again, struggling with his emotions. He reined them in and then continued. “My grandparents died a few years ago in an accident. What little they had, she blew through in a matter of months. By then I was old enough to understand what she was. But Crystal—” He cleared his throat. “She was only ten, and she thought parties were parties. She always told my mom she wanted to go.”
Ari stared at Chase, willing his story to have a happier ending but knowing his reaction could only be caused by the worst kind of pain.
“I didn’t know. I didn’t understand what that would mean.” His eyes filled, and he choked on a sob. “How could a mother do that?”
Horror washed over Ari, dumping its icy revulsion, the dreadfulness of his meaning sinking into the pores of her soul. She’d thought the depravity she’d experienced at the hand of her brother and Xavier could never be equaled.
“They found my mother in an apartment four days later. She’d overdosed.” He looked up at the sky. “Crystal’s body was with her.”
Ari didn’t have to ask what had happened. She’d seen what men like that could do. She’d believed that the wanton degeneracy was only a problem in her country, but that had been willful ignorance.
She crawled over to Chase. Kneeling before him, she wiped the tears from his face and whispered, “I’m so sorry.”
He sat up and tilting his head, he gazed down at her. “No, Aricela. I’m sorry. That first night, I pushed you because I wanted you, but I never asked. I took with the same selfish greed as those bastards. I swore I would never be like that—”
“Shh,” she said, putting her fingertips to his lips to stop the self-condemnation. “It wasn’t like that. You didn’t take anything, not even a kiss.”
His look was filled with self-reproach. “You and I both know—”
“No,” she whispered. “You don’t know.”
He had no idea. Whatever he thought was only his imagination mixed with guilt and mortification over what had happened to his sister. But he didn’t really know.
Shame colored his cheeks, and he dropped his gaze. “I’m sorry.”
She stared at him, compassion and tenderness driving her to touch him. “Don’t.”
“You must hate me,” he mumbled.
Not even close. Aricela sighed. “When I left Xtepal, I thought I was leaving it all behind. The pain, the torture, all of it. But it’s impossible.”
She thought of all the runes she’d tried in an attempt to forget, but they didn’t work on her now that she was Immortal. They would work on him. “If you could forget, would you really want to?”
“Yes.” He’d snapped the word out as if there was no other answer.
But it was an instinctual answer, and she let the weight of it settle so he could appreciate the meaning behind it.
Several seconds later, he sighed, and his shoulders sagged. “No.” He studied her, and his hands followed where his gaze touched her. He traced her face, then dropped his hands to her shoulders, stroked down her arms, and gripped her waist. “If I forgot, it would be like she never existed.”
He dropped his forehead to hers. “But knowing it, what happened to her, haunts me every day.”
He pulled back
, just far enough to brush his lips where his forehead had rested seconds before. “How do you live with it? Doesn’t it bother you?”
The sun dipped in the sky. The bright light of day had faded into the blushing glow of mauve and azure. Ari collapsed into the still warm grass and looked at the first pinprick of stars in the east. Todos los días. “All the days.”
Dozens of stars appeared, clusters of them like shards of broken glass glittering in the darkness.
“It’s like my soul has shattered into a million pieces and all of eternity won’t be enough to fix it.” She closed her eyes. “No one will ever want the fragmented ruin that is left.”
She could feel him. The heat of his body looming over her. And for the first time, she ached with desire for him. Not just attraction, not just because he was another person, but because it was him . . . Chase.
He straddled her, brought his body closer to hers, bracing his weight on his elbows, and whispered, “I lied earlier.” He traced his nose up her jaw to her ear. “I was scared, and I didn’t want to admit it in front of Kai.”
Her heart raced, and she clung to his arms. “What are you talking about?”
His breath was warm on her neck, and he brushed his tongue over the edge of her ear, pulling the lobe into his mouth, his teeth grazing the tender skin. He released her earlobe, breathing heavily. “I wanted you to be the first to know.”
She turned toward him, her lips brushing his cheek. And then their breaths mingled.
Chase wet his lips, his stare fixed on her mouth. And then he brought his gaze back to her eyes. “I’m in love with you. With your shy humility, your patience, your willingness to sacrifice for those you care about. If your soul is splintered into pieces, it’s not because it’s broken. It’s only so you can share your beauty with more lives, and one little sliver of your goodness is enough. You are enough, Ari.”