A/N: Hello chicas! So, you all seem to be curious to know who he is right?! I was going to reveal his identidy in this chapter, but I decided to torture you guys for a bit longer! Yes, I'm mean lol So here it goes the update, hope you all like it. And I really want to know who you girls think he is! Comments= love 
Chapter 2
"Back and forth that voice of yours keeps me up at night.
Help me search to find the words that eat me up inside."
Sleep has fled and her dark eyes are open as if to see something. Dawn unfolds like a scroll unfinished, being presented with new feelings every minute. Inside the sepulchral silence of the night, she is invited to look in and see him. It is as if the mirror reflects in her soul every moment saved in her heart.
She hears the sound of the city outside her window and stretches back lazily, closing her eyes to imagine some of the amazing sights of the city she loves so much. Madrid, in all its majesty, is stretched out outside. It?s been a long time since she?d properly visited the city she can now call her home, for at least a while. Being in Spain again, after five years living in Buenos Aires, makes her remember of what her life use to be before everything fell apart. Unfortunately good memories are followed closely by her obvious mistakes, and everything she?s been desperately trying to leave behind is coming back to haunt her.
And tonight, her entire life had been played right in front of her eyes, and these unwanted feelings came back all at once. Of all the other places he could hypothetically boast of having been, he had to move to the same city she did. It is almost as if destiny is playing with them, punishing her for all the bad decisions she?d made, and making her finally pay for it.
She stares at the ceiling, wondering how she has come to this. She is not even twenty-four years old, and for nearly half her life, one man has led her down this path. She remembers a time when they were happy, so long ago in the past but she still recalls all the good moments they shared. The way the words, "Te amo" were always rolling off his tongue, smooth as silk and sweet as honey, all the days and nights spend at the beach or a trip to the capital, picnics in the backyard and Saturdays at the amusement park. She remembers the little poems stuck in her mailbox and the yellow roses, her favorites, delivered to her class room, the cards always signing in his bold, masculine script, "Su admirador secreto."
For he was a secret she kept from her father, he always had been from the very first stolen kiss to the first fumbling toward ecstasy. Her father never liked him and he never made a point on hiding it. Everybody else knew about him, but none of them ever dared to tell her papa about it. She knew back then that he would do anything to split them up if he had the chance. And he did. He found out her weakness and used it against them, changing their entire lives and destroying what should?ve lasted forever.
She remembers him, quiet and shy, confident and sweet, a naïve but learned boy bordering on man whose golden heart warmed her with just a simple smile or joke between close friends. And still she had been drawn to it like a moth to a flame. All the happiness she felt during the years they were together is now reduced to painful and bitter regrets.
Regret for the taste not felt. For the stories not created, for the laughs not given, for plans that never happened. Sorry for the emptiness. Sorry for the time, previously free, that now runs like crazy and unprepared, caught by a clock. Regrets that only memories stayed, regrets for eyes that closed and never opened.
Can she still see the world she dreamed about? Can she still dream with a heart that long ceased to be hers? In how many worlds she will have to live to understand what happened? Yes, her story was written upside down.
**
It was her. He was a hundred per cent sure that the girl he saw in the stands was Maria. His Maria. It had to be. She was standing nearly half a stadium away from him but he knows her face too well to confuse with somebody else?s. In every single game during the past five years his eyes scan the crowd searching for hers. And tonight he found them. Her bright dark eyes locked with his for a fraction of second and that was enough to sweep his off his feet. His heart skipped a beat while noticing that she hadn?t changed a thing. She was still the same girl he fell in love with all those years ago. Same long black hair, same tanned skin, full lips, and beautiful nose. Seeing her felt like a punch in the stomach and all of a sudden there wasn?t enough air for him to breathe and his mind stopped functioning. She disappears from his sight as fast as she came, and what happened after is nothing but a blur to him. Was she real? Or was his delusional mind creating what his broken heart was desperately craving to see?
Later that night he is lying on the laminate flooring of his new apartment, the moonlight pouring in through his living room window, casting rays across the floor. He has a photo album spread out in front of him, and he is flipping through it, examining each picture for a moment, before moving on, barely giving any of them any real thought. He smiles at a picture of him and his brothers, when he had been sixteen and they were spending the day at the beach. His papa loved to spend Sundays afternoons with his three boys near the sea, swimming and chatting and playing football while their mama watched. He flips over the page, seeing a picture of him and the entire family reunited around the Christmas three. He only lingers for a moment on that one, before flipping the page again.
But when he catches sight of the next picture, he feels that familiar drop that always seems to take place in his stomach every time he sees one of these painful reminders of his past. It is a picture of her at her high school graduation; to be more specific, her and him. They both looked so happy, and were dressed up, wearing smiles that you could only get while having one of the best days of your life, and while being in the arms of someone who loved you, and of someone you loved. He smiles softly as he examined the long red dress she had been wearing; he always thought she looked good in red, especially when wearing his national team shirt. Her long black hair had been curled into ringlets that fell down until the curve of her back, while a butterfly clip pinned a section of hair back off of her face. She had been smiling one of the most real smiles she had ever worn in her entire lifetime. Maybe it was because high school was over with. Maybe it was because it was her graduation night. Or maybe it was because her boyfriend of nearly four years had been standing behind her with his arms wrapped around her waist. Her head had been leaned back against chest while his chin was resting at the top of her head, and they'd been smiling.
If someone had of told them moments before or after that photograph had been taken, that they weren't going to last much longer after that, they would have laughed in your face. They would have told you to get the facts straight; that they loved each other and that wasn't going to change. Hard as everyone tried, no one had ever understood their complex relationship. Nobody ever understood how they could always know what the other was thinking or feeling without even being in the same room. They were in their own little world. They were in love, and nothing that anybody said or did could change that.
But something had changed that. Something had finally torn down the barrier that separated them from the world. After a four year relationship, they had called everything off. He had never explained the full story to everyone. He had told most people that they had grown apart, and while no one really believed this, he had grown to accept this answer; the truth was too painful and too complicated to explain; and yet, for them, it had been very simple. He had been offered the chance of a lifetime, the opportunity to play in one of the best clubs in the world, and she couldn?t follow him. Both of them made the wrong choice. They knew that they could never be happy without each other and still he chose his career and she chose her family. But that does not chance the fact that the breakup had been bitter. It had involved a lot of cruel words, a lot of tears, and a lot of yelling, on both sides. He had tried until the last minute to convince her to leave with him, and she?d tried to explain why she couldn?t and that her father would probably killed them if she did. It?s been five years since they broke up, and it is still too painful to talk about.
Letting his eyes fall closed he let his mind feel her, remember her, as if she is sitting there with him at that very moment. Her smell was unique and it fills his nostrils, and he can almost forget she isn't really there?almost. The same thing can be said of her baby soft skin. He can feel his hands stroking up the soft pillar of her arm, and hear her bell-like laughter. Soon her breath is on his neck, and her voice is in his ear?
"Do you love me, amor?" There is a smile in her voice and his own lazy half-grin paints his face as he listens to her next words, "Say it, you know I love it when you say it." Her long nails tickle the bare skin of his arm.
"How do you ask?" he teases lightly.
Her breath is warm as she laughs again, "You know I don't beg."
His smile widens into a dirty smirk, "We both know you do."
Her hand slides with familiar grace up his chest and he feels the cool palm sneak around the back of his neck before delicate fingers tangle in his hair. No words are spoken, but he knows the way she pleads more than anyone else on the planet.
Her lips are warm and the sweetness of her mouth is an elixir he can not help but crave, so he moans into her mouth as her wicked tongue decides to come out and play. His mind swims as their bodies press closer, a planet of limbs and a rain of kisses, of soft skin and wet tongues. Every time she makes him feel, his mind cries out in protest. Every time he sees the way she worships his body, his reason flees him; and every time she says she loves him more than life itself, his heart dies a little death.
His smile becomes soft and he opens his eyes. Eighteen. The way he will always remember her. And then he recalls the words he was supposed to say.
"I love you." It comes out, a voice he knows so well yet with happiness he can hardly remember.
He sighs and runs his thumb across the photograph, before closing the photo album sadly. He will never quite get over everything that had happened. He loved her more than he ever thought it was possible to love someone, but he could never bring himself to understand her family and the power her father had over all of them. For him he was just a stupid young footballer that had nothing to offer to his daughter.
Every time he allows himself to remember her, and remember their relationship, he wonders where they would have been today, had things gone differently. She would?ve been there today, as his wife, watching his first game for Real Madrid with their child in her arms.
?You?ll play for Real Madrid one day. And I?ll be there when it happens. Te prometo.?
As he replaces the photo album in his box of old belongings, he pulls out a small black velvet box. It is a bit dusty, but he blows the dust off, coughing slightly. He opens up the box to reveal something that he still can't bring himself to throw away. The diamond engagement ring he had given her still looked as new as it had five and a half years ago. He takes the ring out and twirls it between his pointer finger and his middle finger, sighing. Flipping the ring over, he glances at the inscription that etches on the inside of the ring in cursive. The lettering was small, because there had been a lot to fit, but he can still read it perfectly fine.
'El amor conquista todo?
He remembers his exact words when he had slipped that ring on her finger, shortly after she had accepted his proposal.
'It's a good thing I love you so much, porque esto es para siempre," he had told her with a tiny smile on his face. He had believed his own words back then. He had honestly thought that she was ready to give everything up for him, that she had chosen him over her family. He mentally slaps himself for being so stupid and naive.
He rolls onto his back and sighs, nostalgia hitting him like a slap to the face.
He manages a sad smile as he glanced at the ring again and speaks in a voice lower than a whisper.
"I guess our forever didn?t last?.
"And when we've been through all the pages; we just start again ? we just start again.
...'Cause there's nobody else in the world that could love you, any more than I do."
