Finally he blinked and turned his head to stare down at me, a strain of softness in his hard eyes. He swallowed and said absently, “It says…it says that I have been photographed on the Barcelona beach with someone who is not my wife. It says that we were spending a few days in the city and they are wondering if Isabel and I are getting a divorce. They added, if not, we will be after this. They didn’t mention Chloe Ann, thank god.”

“Is that all they said about me?” I asked. “That I was just someone that is not your wife?”

He stared at me, worried.

“Mateo,” I said, “I have a right to know. I can handle it. If you don’t tell me what it says, I’m just going to find it online and Google translate it.”

He still stared at me, his Adam’s apple bobbing as he swallowed.

“Fine!” I said, and I turned and ran across the empty road over to the apartment. I was sure Mateo would have yelled at me to stop, but he was still standing there, staring at nothing, the magazine in his hand. He had gone catatonic with rage.

If it had been anything else, I would have stayed and helped him, brought him inside. But this involved me too much and I hated being lied to.

I burst into the apartment and opened up the laptop on the coffee table. I did a quick search for Diez Minutos and started clicking through the magazine, searching and searching until I searched for Mateo Casalles.

There it was, the first story to pop up, the picture of Mateo slapping my jiggly ass. And the way the search engine displayed the results, the story underneath it was the one I had read back in Las Palabras, the one of him and Isabel at the restaurant.

I breathed in deeply, my eyes flitting between the two stories, me with my tits hanging out, the skimpy bikini I got from H&M, all pale skin, wild hair and ink, playing in the surf with a man fifteen years older than her. Then there was Isabel with her elegant short blonde hair, mature yet beautiful face, classy dress, hand in hand with her sharp-dressed husband. I knew exactly how it looked, and therefore knew exactly how this would play out. I didn’t even need Google translate for that. I was the trashy young thing on the side. The homewrecking slut who broke up a marriage between an ex-football star and semi-royalty, leaving their younger daughter in the wake.

I was worse than the other woman. I was Jezebel, waiting to be thrown to the dogs.

I knew right there that we were doomed. We always had been.

The worst part was that this whole paparazzi thing caught me unaware. It wasn’t like Mateo was being called for interviews or had photographers normally following him around or fans outside his door. To me he was just Mateo, not this ex-football star, so I never even thought about any of that in our day to day lives. Only occasionally would something remind me of it, say a clip of the Atletico team on TV or on rainy days when Mateo walked with a slight limp. Otherwise, I had lived in a bubble, totally unaware that he was someone really important.

I sighed in frustration and steeled myself against what I was about to read. I clicked on the article about us and hit Google Translate up on the top.

It turned out that what Mateo said was more or less true. He just left out a whole bunch about me. Mainly, that I wasn’t just “some other woman,” but according to Google translate, a wanton young girl who seemed a very unlikely match for someone as respected as Mateo Casalles. They also added there probably wouldn’t be much respect for Mateo after this, though what older man hasn’t thought about having a mistress half their age.

These fucking magazines were just as bad as the ones back home. And though I sympathized with celebrities with the way they were treated on gossip sites, I still read the stories eagerly. I never in a million years thought I would be the subject of one of them.

The thing is, I wasn’t sure how many people in the country cared what an ex-football star got up to, but this magazine apparently did. Shit was about to hit the fan in a major way, if it hadn’t already, and I had no idea what to do to prepare for it. I was not only humiliated and embarrassed but goddamn terrified of what this would do to Mateo and I. I felt like my heart was receiving tiny fractures that would one day lead to a break.

Eventually, Mateo came back into the apartment. I turned away from the computer, numb to the core, and eyed him warily. The magazine was gone, probably in the trash somewhere, where it belonged. He looked as terrible as I felt, though it seemed the anger that had overwhelmed him had left and now he just looked lost and defeated.

“Vera,” he said, his voice hoarse, as he slowly came toward me. He dropped to his knees right in front of me, lacing his fingers with mine. He rested his head on my thighs for a few moments, eyes pinched together, breathing in and breathing out. He looked so small at my feet, so meek. It unnerved me deep inside, making me feel unstable.

He raised his head and his brow was wrought with sorrow. “I am so sorry, Vera,” he said softly. “You have no idea how sorry I am.” The way his voice cracked made my soul ache.

I gripped his hand tight. “It’s not your fault.”

“Yes it is,” he said. “I asked you to be a part of this.”

“You didn’t ask me to be a part of this,” I told him adamantly.

“Yes, I did. I wanted you to be a part of my life. I wanted…you. I never thought about the consequences, how they would affect you. I didn’t think much about anything. I was so caught up in finally having you, here in my life, by my side. I didn’t think.” He kissed my hand and gazed up at me. “I’m still not thinking. Vera, you make me mad, you make me crazy.” He shut his eyes again and spoke, his lips brushing my fingers. “Love is like a thief, it robs you of all thought and logic, and all you have left is a heart that you can only pray is strong enough to survive the rest.”

Goddamn it, even in the face of all this scrutiny, his passion never wavered.

“Please don’t leave me,” he said quietly, his eyes imploring mine.

Something inside me crumbled. “Why would I leave you?”

“Because,” he said slowly. “I can see it in your eyes. That you’re afraid.”

“I’ve always been afraid, Mateo,” I said. “From the very moment I met you, I’ve been afraid. But it doesn’t mean I’m leaving.”

“This isn’t fair to you,” he said, as if not hearing me. “I thought we were safe in Barcelona. I didn’t think anyone would notice or care. I was wrong because I didn’t think and that mistake has cost us dearly.”

I sighed and stared down at our hands. Just how dearly was this going to cost us? Isabel was going to find out now, his friends would know. What he tried to keep hidden—me—that was all going to be in the open now. It wasn’t just Mateo’s fault, it was mine too. I had known we had to lay low for a little bit longer, that we had pushed our luck already, that it was only a matter of time. I had just hoped and prayed that when we were found out, that it would happen after he was granted joint custody, after he had his rights to see his daughter.

“What do we do now?” I asked, looking at him again.

He gave me a sad smile and a subtle shake of his head. “I do not know. In the past, I have gotten mad at the publications. You know, when I was young and doing stupid things that I would never do again. But it never got me anywhere and I am not sure it will now. I can try.”

I shook my head, knowing that fighting the tabloids was always useless unless it was something extremely slanderous. The magazine was not presenting anything as fact—just speculation—so there was nothing illegal about it.

He exhaled, long and hard. “I guess the only thing we can do is wait.”

“You could tell Isabel,” I said. “Before someone else tells her.”

He winced. “Yes. But there is that chance that perhaps she won’t find out at all.”

I gave him a look. “Really? If that’s what you believe, then you’re going to be in for a rude awakening.”

“I don’t know what I think,” he said. “Let’s just see what happens tomorrow. We have the party. I will tell her after that.”

“Oh god, the party,” I cried out. “What will they all say?”

He squeezed my hand. “Vera, please, they will say nothing, and if they do, it won’t be anything bad. These people were all there, they all know. They have their own battles to fight.”

I leaned back onto the couch, utterly exhausted. This kind of shit served me right, especially after such a fun and frivolous trip as Barcelona. We had pushed our luck and we didn’t care because we just wanted to be with each other. But the truth always has a way of getting out.

And now we were still together, but having to deal with the truth: that our love affair wasn’t as pure as we wanted to believe. That good intentions meant nothing. That we chose each other despite the consequences and now they were ours to pay.

That night we lay in bed together. We didn’t make love, we just held on to each other in the dark, wrapped in our bodies and the madness of our own minds.

“Remember what I asked of you,” he murmured in my ear as we were drifting off to sleep.

“Hmmm?”

“Promise me you won’t give up on us.”

I won’t, I said, though not out loud. I was too afraid to say it, in case it didn’t end up being true.

* * *

The next morning we hadn’t heard much about the scandal. There were no phone calls from Isabel or anyone disgruntled. A part of me thought that maybe we were going to sneak out of this one, that everything was going to be okay. The other part of me thought that the net was just waiting to drop, preferably when we were relaxed and unaware.