Page 54 of Clean Point

He glanced up at me, and for a moment, I wondered if he was thinking about it too. The doorway alcove. The rain having soaked us through to the skin, our bodies pressed together. He cleared his throat, looking back down at the cat. ‘We didn’t have much growing up, but it didn’t matter. I had tennis. I didn’t need anything else.’

‘You started young, right?’ I could see the pictures in my head. A tiny Nico, the racket half the size of him.

‘I was six when I went to my first training camp. I’m not sure I remember doing anything else.’

‘How did you get into it?’

‘What is this? Twenty questions?’

I leaned over, elbowing him, the smile that had curved onto my lips out of my control. ‘Just trying to get to know my mixed partner. Make sure he’s up to scratch.’

‘You mean you didn’t google me beforehand?’ His tone is dripped in sarcasm, but it raised a good question.

I answered his question with one of my own. ‘Did you Google me?’

I hadn’t. Had I considered it? Of course. But I knew from what the internet had to say about me, that the truth about a person could be stretched.

He shook his head. ‘I didn’t feel I had to. Everything I had to know about you, I already either knew, or I’d learn it from you.’

‘But see, if you had Googled me, you could’ve found out about my annulled marriage with a billionaire and secret love child with his father.’

He paused, his eyes assessing as his lips pressed into a thin line. ‘I’m not sure if you’re joking or not.’

I waved him off, relaxing backward as I let my head roll back, closing my eyes to let the sunlight warm my skin. ‘You could read about it. Doesn’t mean it’s true.’

A momentary, easy silence fell between us, and when I cracked an eye to look at Nico, I found his gaze slowly grazing up my body, the length of my neck, the lump in his throat bobbing as he swallowed. His attention snapped to my face when he noticed me watching him. I thought back to that night. A stray raindrop rolling down his cheek, and how his stubble felt under the pad of my finger as I wiped it away. The tension that pulled me close to him in the already cramped alcove, the storm of grey in his eyes. How would it feel to reach out and touch him again? How easy would it be to shatter everything?

‘I was given my first racket when I was four,’ he started, answering my original question. ‘Apparently, I’d been a violent child and Dad thought this would give me an outlet. Turned out I was an angrier child than they’d anticipated and could hit a ball at top speeds by the time I was ten. I became obsessed, wouldn’t miss watching a slam, and dreamed of winning Wimbledon. I turned pro at sixteen and won my first open by eighteen.’

I blinked once, my throat dry. This part, I’d never had to Google. ‘And that was …’

‘That was the US Open,’ he said, with a gentle nod, his eyes still assessing mine. ‘Against Matteo.’

It was fifteen years ago, but that game had changed my life; both of our lives.

I bit my lip as I rolled the admission around, my brain like a ball. ‘I remember that match.’

His eyebrows popped up as his eyes widened. ‘You were there?’

I nodded. ‘In his box.’

‘That’s weird.’ His nose crinkled and my stomach was full of butterflies, the usual sting of the memory erased.

‘It is what it is.’ I shrugged, my toes digging further into the sand as I admitted, ‘I watched that match back a lot.’

‘Really?’ His jaw was slack, a goofy grin curved at the edges of his lips. I nodded, choosing not to mention that the primary reason it was on was because Matteo was obsessed with finding that one incorrect step that led him to lose everything, the missed opportunity that topped the entire tower of cards.

That was the reason it had been played over and over, but I’d watched it over and over for him. The way he played. The way he moved across the court and caught all of Matteo’s tricks, unravelling all of his confidence, and reducing him down like no other player had before.

It was David vs. Goliath, and David had walked away triumphant.

‘It stuck with me. He was always unbeatable, at least as far as I had known him to be. Until you walked onto that court, cocky—’

‘I was not cocky,’ he interrupted with a bemused smile. ‘I was eighteen, going up against the biggest name in tennis. I threw up in a trash can before I went out.’

‘Seriously?’

He cocked an eyebrow. ‘Wouldn’t you?’

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