Page 50 of Last Line of Defense

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.

“No, I don’t usually do that with anyone, to be honest,” she admits in a whisper. “But you’re impossible, Alicia, and I always have to remind you of things.”

I chuckle softly, low in my throat, and look away for a moment at the reflections on the water.

“So, in the end, it turns out I’m the only one to blame for you being glued to that tablet and so utterly fixated on my every move?” I ask, feeling a wave of incredibly pleasant warmth rush through the center of my chest.

“You’re entirely to blame, yes,” she replies in a much more subdued, hushed voice. “Basically because both you and I know full well that you’re a fool who never pays the slightest attention to any medical advice.”

“That’s not true,” I retort, wrinkling my nose like a spoiled little girl—completely entranced as I follow the movement of her lips while she speaks. “If I don’t, it’s only because I love getting your attention all the time—or haven’t you figured that out yet?”

“How incredibly unbearable and self-centered you can be? Yeah, I realized that on the very first day.”

“No, not that, smarty-pants,” I correct her, moving my face a millimeter closer to hers. “That it drives me crazy knowing you’re still taking care of me and watching over me as if I were the only patient on your schedule when you have a whole team of twenty-two girls who need your medical attention.”

“That’s because you’re by far the one I worry about most at the club,” she confesses suddenly in an intimate whisper, barely daring to look me in the face. “And because… because even though I try with all my might to keep my distance and be professional, with you I just can’t help it, Alicia. Every time I see you strain that knee… I swear it hurts right here,” she adds, unconsciously bringing a hand to the center of her chest, right over her heart.

A thick, intimate, deathly silence settles between the two of us in the middle of the pool area. All we can hear is the rhythmic murmur of the pool water, our own breathing, and the soft hum of the hotel’s ventilation system. It’s that same unbearable, magnetic tension that seems to grow exponentially every time we’re completely alone together.

“Your knee must have hurt like hell, right?” Clara finally says in a low voice, glancing at me out of the corner of her eye. She doesn’t say it as a medical question, but with an empathy that disarms me.

I study her profile closely, admiring the perfect curve of her jaw and the softness of her skin under the spotlights.

“What’s going on? Do you have superpowers now too, diagnosing my pain from a distance without even touching me?”

“I can do that just fine with you,” she replies, turning slowly toward me, and that sentence carries such an intimate weight and double meaning that it makes the hair on my arms stand on end. “I’ve learned to read the way you move and the way you suffer. You should have warned me this morning before you started training.”

“There were so many things I should have done this morning,” I murmur, fixing my gaze on her lips, “like not going down to the hotel bar, like not looking at you so brazenly in front of the staff… or like not coming down to this pool knowing full well I ran the risk of someone seeing me.”

Clara turns her head fully toward me, and her dark eyes shine with a feline intensity in the dim light surrounding us.

“So may I ask why you came, then?”

“Because I couldn’t stop thinking about you for even a single second, Clara,” I admit suddenly, feeling my pulse pounding loudly in my ears. “Because now that everyone’s demanding we maintain a professional distance, the only thing I want is to get closer to you. And because I naively thought that the cold water of the pool would somehow help me shake that crazy idea out of my head—the one about sneaking into your bedroom and waiting for you, completely naked, between your sheets.”

She takes a deep breath through her mouth, parting her lips slightly, and her long fingers gently brush against mine on the damp edge of the pool.