Furia(44)

Diego grabbed my hand and pressed it. “One day it could be, Camila.”

“It sounds stupid, but I want to play.”

“And you will, Cami.” He unknotted the red ribbon, his good luck bracelet, from his wrist and tied it around mine. “You have to keep fighting, even if you’re hurt now,” he said. “Come back stronger. You’re doing it on your own. Here I was, thinking I was coming back to rescue you, and you’re becoming your own savior.”

I held his hand. “Is that why you came back? To rescue me, Titán?” I’d meant to sound playful, flirty, bantering, like always. Instead, my voice was deep and hoarse. I couldn’t stop looking at Diego’s lips.

He leaned closer, and just like that, we were shoulder to shoulder. I traced a finger over his barrio tattoo, and he lowered his forehead to mine. Tentatively, I put my hand on the nape of his neck. His skin was hot under his curls.

The music played on in the background. I took a deep breath, about to jump into one of Paraná’s whirlpools. I wouldn’t resurface the same.

I leaned in first. My mouth was soft and hot on Diego’s.

He kissed me back. A shuddering breath escaped us both, and he pulled away. Although clouds covered the night sky, I could see the Southern Cross and the whole Milky Way reflected in his eyes. I took hold of his worn-out sweatshirt and pulled him back to me. He closed his eyes, but I was afraid that if I closed mine, I’d miss something. Soon I couldn’t fight the urge anymore. I let the whirlpool take me. I didn’t even know how to swim. My eyelids dropped.

Diego wrapped an arm around my waist. Before I knew it, we were kneeling on the sand, facing each other, the blanket bunched up around our legs, the mate knocked over and forgotten. La Furia met her equal in el Titán. The latent goddess inside me pulled at her bindings until she snapped them. Together, we held on to this boy who’d come to wreck my world.

My mouth moved down to his neck; skin recognized skin. His hands burned against my back, climbing up, up, up.

In a lucid second before I took off my jersey, I remembered we were out in public.

Nothing would happen to Diego, but if someone saw us like this, the consequences for me would be dire. I’d break my mom’s heart. I’d become a hated tool in my father’s hands. Roxana would think I’d given up on everything I’d worked for.

“Te quiero,” Diego said in my ear, trying to catch his breath.

With my hands on his chest, I gently pushed him away. “Don’t lie to me.”

“If anyone’s a liar, it’s you, Furia. Who taught you to kiss like this?”

Like I would ever tell him he’d been my only one. I laughed. “Who taught you?” I teased him back.

In reply, he kissed me again and again and again.

“My knees are killing me,” he said when we broke apart to breathe. He fell back on the sand but didn’t let me go. He pulled me up onto his lap, his arms wrapped around me. His heart beat hard against my back.

“In La Juve, the mister always says life is a bianconero business. Love is black and white; there’s no in-between. Camila, I’ve loved you all my life. I can’t pretend I don’t. Not anymore.”

He turned me around and kissed me again, softly this time, like we had all the time in the world, like he wasn’t leaving the next day.

But he was.

“What are we going to do?” I asked, my soft voice an echo of Furia’s desperate cries.

“I have a plan,” Diego said. With every sentence that left his mouth, I said yes with a kiss. He pulled me down on the sand while raindrops baptized us as they fell from the pregnant clouds.





18





Eventually, the rain chased us away. Diego helped me get back to the car. The moment by the river was already gone.

We carried our shoes, the mate things, sand, and something else, a link that made me hurt every second I wasn’t touching him.

Thunder shook the car. Diego looked at me, his curls plastered to his forehead, goose bumps covering his strong arms. His sweatshirt must have come off at some point.

I looked at the clock on his dashboard. “My parents are going to kill me.”

“I’ll come up and tell them the truth. I mean, it’s not like they won’t have guessed. I told them I came back for you.” Diego kissed my forehead.

Vestiges of the old Camila climbed out of the smoldering pile of senselessness that couldn’t quite bury her.

Somehow, I wiggled out of his arms. “Wait,” I said. “We’re not telling anyone.”

“But why?”

Diego knew my parents, but would he understand if I told him about the fight with my dad the night we’d gone out? Or my mom’s warnings the morning after?

“Diego, I . . .”

Say it, say it, la Furia chanted, echoed by my drumming heart.

But I couldn’t say I loved him. If I did, I’d be defenseless, and I was afraid that I’d do something we’d both regret forever. The girl Diego said he loved was the strong one, the winning Camila, the one with a future she was forging for herself. The one who was still fighting. If he rescued me, if I quit for him, I wouldn’t be the girl he loved. I wouldn’t be myself.

He let me sort out my thoughts and pushed a button on the console. Soon, heat warmed my seat.