Page 14 of A Follow-Through in Faking
“Of course not. You’re the last person on this planet I’d ever fall for.”
“Right back at you, Santi,” she says and shakes her head, wincing when the motion hurts something in her shoulder.
Without a second of hesitation, I walk around my kitchen island to get to her.
“Let me take a look at that,” I offer, but when I reach out to touch her shoulder, she smacks my hand away
“I’m going to head home. We have training in a few days. Don’t be late. I can’t have you slacking off on the first day.” Cata walks around me to grab her purse from where she put it on the counter earlier, slinging it over her shoulder. I notice she places the weight on her other shoulder, not the one that has been making her wince all evening.
She attempts to walk past me, but I grab her arm, tilting my head down as she lifts her chin so our eyes can meet. Neither one of us says anything for several seconds, but the tension of the moment builds in my chest until even my heart forgets to beat.
Her eyes staring into mine have a similar effect to what people say happens to Medusa’s victims. Cata may not turn me to stone, but she has me temporarily frozen in time and place, too swept up in her to remember what I wanted to say.
I pinch my leg with my free hand, regaining the ability to speak.
“We’ll win. All of it. This season will be our season and no one can take it away from us. I’ll be at the top of my game, and Iknow you will be, too. I have faith in us, Cata. You should have some, too.”
Her eyes soften a little at my words, but when she steps away to break skin contact, I know she still doesn’t trust me enough to allow me to touch her so casually.
“I would, but you’ve always been a little too eager to meet your goals to care about mine, Santi. Too eager to prove yourself, even if it was at my expense. There is a reason we don’t get along. We’ll go through this season, pretend we’re a happy couple to get the media off our asses, but then that’s it. You and I will never see each other again. We will be done,” she says, and I hate the way my body revolts against the very thought of never seeing Cata again.
And even though I feel this way, all that comes out of my mouth is a very simple, very stupid, “Fine.”
She leaves my place without another word while Tornado makes his way to the door, staring at it long after Cata is gone with his nose moving from side to side in that cute way I love. He turns to look at me before shifting his gaze back to the front door as if he wished she’d have stayed.
It terrifies me that I feel the same.
Chapter 7
Catalina
Thedayhasbarelystarted, but my mood’s already gone from happy to fucking pissed.
My dad, two sisters, and brother invited me to go on vacation before the season starts in a few weeks, but I had to tell them to go without me since Santiago and I have to bond by going on dates and training together. It made me hate him a little more, even if I know it wasn’t his fault.
Well, not entirely.
“What has you frowning so much, pretty girl?” Sage, one of my closest friends and fellow tennis players, asks right as I lower the barbell I was holding. She’s the only Canadian in our friend group, but she’s lived over a decade of her life in various parts of Europe.
“Yeah, tell us why the vein on your forehead is pulsing,” Vanessa, everyone’s favorite CEO, chimes in with her thick French accent, and I direct my full glare her way.
It’s all I can do to keep from laughing.
Ness ownsSpin, my biggest clothing sponsor. She’s the designer of all of my outfits, something she only does for me, so she’s responsible for always making them look like they should be worn on runways instead of tennis courts.
“She’s angry at the world for making her have to team up with the person she hates the most,” Charlie adds, and I nod in agreement.
“That’s partially why. Mostly, I’m frowning to hide the fact that I miss my family and can’t go see them soon,” I admit because I’ve always found it so easy to tell the three of them what’s going on in my life.
“Then I have something that’ll hopefully cheer you up,” Ness says, wiggling those perfectly shaped brows of hers at me as she steps toward where I’m jogging on the treadmill.
Not only is Vanessa the smartest woman I know, she’s also the kindest and one of the most drop-dead gorgeous. She’s short and super curvy with dark skin, her dark curls twisted into several braids, and light brown eyes that always reveal more of what she’s feeling than words could. She’s also the most fit person out of our whole group, despite not being a professional tennis player or athlete. But if we’re talking endurance, this woman could outrun me any day of the week.
Ness holds out her phone for me, showing me some designs for a new racket.
“I love that one,” I say and slow down my run to look at it more closely.
It’s white and berry-magenta-colored with a pride flag painted on the side. The head of the racket has a striped look that I like a lot, and she’s made the strings colored in a way that the letters CS are written in them. My initials. It’s very unlike what other companies do, but then again, other companies don’t have this amazing woman as a CEO.
