No Right of Reply #2
The afternoon descends upon the hotel, shrouded in a blanket of utter physical exhaustion.
After dinner with the whole group, several of the girls insist that we go down to the hotel bar, where the resort has thrown together a small private party with music for the team.
Honestly, I’m not in the mood for noise or parties.
My knee is throbbing and hurting way more than it should, and my head is a total mess.
But in the end, I go downstairs and let myself get swept up in the crowd, because staying cooped up within the four walls of my room means spending hours on end thinking about Clara, and that’s only going to cause me more problems and make me lose my mind over her even more.
The bar is packed, filled with soft pop music, warm neon lights, and a hubbub of overlapping conversations and loud laughter.
The atmosphere is pretty relaxed. Several of the players start dancing near the cocktail bar while Hugo, who’s in a corner, pretends to look the other way so he doesn’t have to watch Irene guzzle mojitos.
I just plop myself down on one of the leather sofas farthest from the entrance, a small bottle of mineral water in my hand, and try with all my might not to look for Clara. A total failure on my part.
I spot her almost immediately at the other end of the room, chatting animatedly with the rest of the coaching staff.
She’s laughing out loud at something Lucía just said, and that damn sight strikes me as strangely irritating.
Clara rarely lets her guard down like that in front of people, and suddenly discovering these fun, down-to-earth sides of her makes me want even more to get to know every single version of her.
Irene appears out of nowhere and plops down next to me on the couch, holding two cocktail glasses of a suspicious color.
“Here, take this. Even though it’s a nonalcoholic cocktail, it’ll do you a world of good. You look like you really need it.”
“Thanks,” I murmur, taking the glass and taking a long swig of what turns out to be a cloying cherry syrup with more sugar than an entire bakery. “May I ask what you’re doing sitting here? Shouldn’t you be out on the dance floor giving it your all?”
“No way—I’d rather have a front-row seat to watch you devour Dr. Valle with your eyes.”
“Shut it, will you?” I whisper, giving her a nudge with my shoulder, though I’m totally unable to hold back a silly grin.
Around midnight, I decide I’ve had enough and return to my room completely exhausted.
The hallway on the hotel’s third floor is shrouded in deathly silence, and the muffled sound of my footsteps on the carpet allows me to hear the weary rhythm of my own breathing.
I swipe my key card through the lock, open the door, and freeze in the doorway.
On the white bedspread lies a small white paper bag that wasn’t there when I left.
I frown in confusion, walk slowly closer, close the door behind me, and look inside.
I find a blister pack of strong anti-inflammatories, a new elastic knee brace, and a folded piece of paper.
I recognize Clara’s firm, neat, elegant handwriting even before I start reading the first line:
“Partying until the wee hours isn’t exactly doing your knee any favors either. Please take this right now and get some damn rest. See you tomorrow.”
I slowly sit down on the edge of the mattress, holding the piece of paper between my fingers, and a huge smile slips out before I can stop it.
It’s total nonsense and utterly absurd, but the simple fact of knowing that she’s been thinking about me and looking out for me while I was downstairs trying to find a humane way to get her out of my head…
drives me completely crazy. Because Clara, despite her fears and her barriers, is still watching my every move and still looking out for me from the shadows, even if she has to keep her distance from me.
And the real drama here is that I no longer know what I want most from her—her naked body on top of mine, everything else, or both.
I let out a slow breath through my mouth and run both hands roughly over my face.
I can’t keep up this charade for even one more night.
I can’t spend hours lying awake staring at the ceiling, imagining what it would be like to kiss her in every corner of this hotel, or picturing her lips slowly tracing the line of my neck, or desperately longing to cross the hallway, burst into her bedroom, and lose my mind and my senses between her legs.
I jump up from the mattress, overcome by a rush of adrenaline, and exactly ten minutes later I’m riding the elevator down to the hotel’s indoor pool area, wearing an oversized Ravenhill FC sweatshirt thrown over my pajama shorts.
The area is practically deserted at this hour.
All I can hear is the soft, rhythmic echo of the water moving beneath the dim, bluish glow of the ceiling spotlights.
The enclosed space smells strongly of chlorine and cleanliness, and the temperature contrast with the cold outside causes the huge glass windows to fog up slightly.
I walk up to the water’s edge, and it’s at that very moment that I realize I’m not the only person awake in the hotel.
Clara is sitting on the other side of the pool, barefoot, her legs dangling and her fingertips skimming the surface of the water.
She’s wearing exactly the same clothes she had on tonight, and I wonder—in a rather silly thought—if by any chance she’s read my mind from a distance.
She jerks her head up at the sound of my footsteps, and her expression changes in an instant.
I see the initial surprise, the tension, and finally that unmistakable flash of pure desire she can’t hide pass through her eyes.
“Wow, I had no idea there were other insomniacs wandering around this hotel at this hour,” I murmur, closing the distance between us with slow steps.
Clara slowly pulls her feet out of the water, letting them drip over the edge, and wraps her arms around her knees for a moment, watching me approach.
“I could say exactly the same thing,” she shoots back in that characteristic tone of hers. “May I ask what you’re doing awake? Is your knee keeping you from getting a wink of sleep, or is there something else keeping you up?”
I let myself sink down next to her on the pool’s tiled floor, reducing the space between us to just a couple of centimeters.
“Well, to be honest, it’s a little bit of both,” I admit, lowering my voice so the echo doesn’t carry too far. “Although that pesky little note you left on my bed didn’t exactly help me fall asleep either, Doctor.”
She lets out a deep breath through her nose that almost sounds like the start of a stifled laugh.
“They’re just some basic remedies,” she defends herself, looking straight ahead. “I was worried you’d spend the night awake because of the pain—that’s all.”
I turn toward her, leaning on one hand, and focus all my attention on the sparkle in her eyes.
“Oh, really? And may I ask if it’s a common habit of yours to leave personalized notes in the rooms of Ravenhill FC players?”
Clara gently shakes her head, but her eyes remain fixed on mine for what feels like an eternity.