25. Alejandro
Alejandro
People keep stopping us in the tunnel, in the hall, by the elevator—hands on my shoulder, palms slapping my back, grins that split their faces open.
Cameras flash and then vanish. Gael grabs me first, lifts me clean off the ground like I’m not a full-grown man and yells in my ear that I’ve finally outdone him.
“About time,” he says, eyes bright, and then hugs Bee like she’s already family.
Diego whistles; Niko pretends he’s crying, rubbing invisible tears with both fists while the whole bench laughs. Carlos takes Bee’s hand and bows like a ridiculous gentleman, then says he expects pastelitos at the wedding or he’s striking.
We climb the stairs to the players’ exit and it’s a blur of congratulations, and selfies.
The air’s thick with popcorn and cheap beer and something sweet I can’t place because everything smells like Bee now.
She stays pressed to my side like I'm her gravitational pull and not the Earth's crust. Every time I look at her, she looks back, and we smile so hard I feel it in my ribs.
Outside, the noise softens. Security clears a path to the player lot and finally, finally, there’s the car.
Bee leans into me the whole way, field lights still painting her skin in that stadium glow, the diamond on her finger catching every scrap of it.
My hands are shaking and I swear it’s not from the game.
We make it to the car and she turns, arms looped around my neck, mouth tipped up. I kiss her like I’ve been saving it for years. Her laugh breaks against my lips; I catch it and keep it. When we come up for air, she slides into the passenger seat and I circle the hood.
I start the engine. The AC sighs, alleviating the warm Miami air. I pull us into the stream of taillights while Bee stares out the window, then down at her hand, then at me like she can’t pick a favorite. “Fiancé,” she tries, and snorts. “Feels weird.”
“Say it again,” I tell her, because I like the way it sits in her mouth.
“Fiancé,” she says, slower this time, more sure.
“Again.”
“Fiancé.”
My hand slides over, palm warm on her bare thigh. She’s wearing a summer dress, soft cotton, legs for days. Her breath stops, her knees parting on instinct alone. “You’re going to get pulled over,” she says.
“I’m going the speed limit.”
“That’s not what I mean.”
“I know.”
Her laugh turns quiet, private. I drive one-handed because I’m a professional and because her skin under my fingers feels too right to let go.
She watches my hand crawl higher and doesn’t stop me. Her head leans back; she bites the inside of her cheek. I want to get home, but I also want to see how much of her I can unravel before we hit the gate.
“You’re proud of yourself,” she says.
“I am. You said yes.”
She reaches for my hand, links them, and then kisses the back of mine. “I would’ve said yes at eighteen if you’d asked.”
I glance at her and we both feel that ache that belongs to another lifetime. “I know,” I say, voice low.
“Good,” she whispers.
Traffic thins. The bay winks between buildings, beneath the setting sun. I drag my thumb along the inside of her thigh and her breath catches on the second beat. “Ale,” she warns, but it's not a warning at all.
“Sí, reina?”
“Home,” she says. “Now.”
“Sí,” I answer, and we don’t talk after that.
The house greets us with cold rooms and salt air from the terrace. The moment I lock the door, she’s on me, pouncing like an animal, mouth to mine and hands in my hair. We bump into a console table, laugh, and then the laugh breaks because urgency doesn’t like competition.
“Up,” I tell her, and she jumps, legs around my waist, fingers fisted in my shirt.
I carry her down the hall and into the bedroom like I’ve done it a hundred times and still can’t believe I get to keep doing it.
The bed catches her and we go down together, bracing on my forearms so I can look at her face.
The smile’s still there, shaky now, damp at the edges. “You said yes,” I whisper.
“I said yes,” she whispers back, and it feels like forever.
I kiss her the way yes deserves—slow at first, a thank you pressed into her bottom lip, a promise along her jaw, gratitude at the corner of her smile. My hand slides under the hem of her dress and finds the bare heat of her. She gasps, her hips tipping up like they’re trying to meet me halfway.
I want a million slow years with her.
But I need her right now, like oxygen.
“Tell me what you need,” I murmur against her throat, letting my knuckles graze where she’s already desperate.
“You,” she says. “You—you—you—”
“Okay,” I say, but I don’t give it to her yet.
I lift, pulling the dress over her head, the soft fabric skimming her skin.
I trail my mouth down the line of her collarbone, across the curve I know like my own palm.
She arches into it, the ring catching in my hair, her laugh breaking into a moan when my tongue traces the place that always ruins her.
“I love you,” I tell her, because it hits me so hard right now I can’t keep it in my mouth. “I love you in every sense, and in every tense of the word.”
Her hands frame my face. “Then show me,” she says, eyes dark and certain.
I do. I worship her.
I pull soft sounds from her and then sharper ones, a choked plea, a curse in Spanish that would make her students blush. She says my name like it’s the only word she knows.
She helps me undress, and I help her out of her underwear, her skin glistening beautifully beneath the cracks of moonlight that permeate the room, drawing me in further.
“Look at me,” I tell her, and when her eyes meet mine, it undoes me.
When I finally slide inside, we both go still because of how right it feels. I grip her fingers and press them into the pillow above her head, her ring glinting between my fingers.
Her gasp slices the air; mine follows. My body finds its rhythm—slow, relentless—each stroke a declaration that she’s mine, I’m hers, and nothing else exists.
“You're my home,” I tell her, not caring how it sounds because it’s the only truth I have left.
She pulls me closer like I’m too far and I’m not even an inch away. “Closer,” she moans. “Más. I need more.”
I fit more of myself to her, chest to chest, mouth to mouth, a line of heat from shoulder to thigh. It still isn’t enough.
That’s the thing about loving her, I always want more, even when I have everything.
“Look at you,” I say, not even sure if the words make sense, just sure that I need to praise what I’m seeing. “Perfecta. Mine.”
“Yours,” she says, and then the word breaks because I hit something that makes her forget language altogether.
I keep her there, right there, exactly where her body asks me to be, and I tell her everything with my hands and my mouth and the way I refuse to let her look away.
She comes apart slowly, beautifully, like a string of lights filling one by one until it’s all lit.
I hold her through it, then let myself fall with her, and the way her name leaves my throat is not fit for microphones.
After, we don’t move. Our sweat cooling. Our heartbeats trying to remember how to beat normally. She sprawls across me, cheek warm to my chest, her ring brushing my skin like a brand, a new gravity pulling me deeper into her. My hand draws a lazy line down her back in an earned silence.
“Fiancé,” she murmurs into my skin, testing the word again like she’s not tired of it yet. “You know that means you have to deal with me stealing your last bite forever, right?”
“Please,” I say. “You already do. I’m the one marrying into it.”
She laughs, a soft little sound that makes me want to freeze time and build my life around it. Her fingers play with the chain at my neck. “How dramatic would it be if I asked to keep the jersey you proposed in?”
“Very.” I tip my head to look at her. “You can have it.”
She lifts a brow. “You’re serious?”
“Completely. I’ll hang it next to the note you passed me sophomore year, the one you swore was poetry.”
“It was poetry.”
“It was three lines about my smile and a crooked doodle of a heart.”
“You still kept it.”
I catch her mouth with mine because it’s the easiest way to win. When we break, she props herself on her elbow and glances toward the terrace doors. The sky outside is clear, a thin breeze combing the palms.
“Come on,” she says. “I want to sit out there and pretend it’s not humid.”
I grab a shirt, but she steals it, saying mine are softer. I don’t argue because I like the way it looks on her—too big in the shoulders, just long enough to be scandalous. We take the throw from the back of the couch, step onto the terrace, and let the air hug us. Somewhere, a boat horn complains.
We settle into the lounge chair with her tucked between my legs, back against my chest, her toes under the blanket. She turns her left hand so the ring finds the light. I kiss her temple, then her knuckles one by one.
“How’s your fiancé?” I ask.
“He’s… tolerable,” she says, thoughtful. “Cocky.”
“Correct.”
“Ridiculously handsome.”
“Go on.”
“Too good to me.”
“Arguable,” I say, and tap her ring finger with my mouth. “I can be better.”
She goes quiet at that, the sweet kind.
“Tell me,” I say. “Wedding thoughts. Initial hot takes.”
“I get a say?” she teases.
“You get all the say.”
“You’ll regret that at dessert tastings.”
“Never.”
She twists a little to see me. “Winter,” she says, like she’s surprising herself with it. “I keep thinking… winter. Even if it’s Miami and the only snow is foam. Lights. Greenery. Cozy.”
“Done,” I say, no hesitation.
Her smile edges toward shy. “And a long aisle. Because I want time to look at you and not trip.”
“I’ll meet you halfway if you trip,” I tell her. “I’ll run.”
“You will not run in a suit.”
“For you, I will sprint.”
She turns back around, nestles deeper, satisfied. “Kids,” she says, like she’s tasting the word on purpose. “Plural.”
“Por Dios,” I say softly, and I swear I feel my heart crack a rib. “Sí. Two. Three. I’m not picky.”