If someone told me I was superglued to Óscar's hand right now, I'd believe them.

As the night progressed, the clouds outside cleared to reveal the most beautiful stars I'd ever seen. The band stopped playing and was replaced with a DJ, and the faster-paced music or the late hour brought in at least three times the people, crowding the dance floor with strangers. No one can see anyone else.

I have no idea where Carla and Bianca and the rest of them are, and honestly I don't care. I'm just dancing so hard I can't feel my jelly legs anymore, so I'm clinging to Óscar for support.

"Can I ask you something?" I have to press up onto my toes and shout into his ear to make sure he hears me, and his hand instinctively presses into my waist as I do. The warmth spreads through me, searing my already scorching skin.

"Anything."

There it is again. I don't think I can feel my legs.

"You might regret that," I laugh.

"I won't," he says simply. "Go ahead." He pulls me into him and twists to the left just in time to avoid an angry woman making a bee-line for the door.

"Can we go outside for a few minutes?" Suddenly I'm nervous about asking, but he just nods and guides me through the narrow spaces of the dance floor until we're out on the beach under the stars.

"Better?" he asks, draping an arm over my shoulder.

I can only nod, swallowing the lump in my throat. But I need to know if he means this. I need to know if I'm just another girl in a headline or if... "Tell me about your childhood," I say, looking out over the ocean so I don't see his response. "I mean, tell me what it was really like."

His deep breath is audible even over the waves crashing against the reef and the group of teenagers playing an aggressive game of dominoes on a nearby table.

"I don't even know where to begin," he whispers, and I catch him looking at me before returning his gaze to the stars. "I was taken from my family at a young age."

"You were taken?"

"That's how it felt. Porfirio found me playing in a local field outside the public school I attended. We were off school because the teachers were striking but I had nowhere else to go. Anyway, he found me there and asked me where my parents were, but they were both working. They were always both working until..."

"I know," I whisper. His dad leaving is a well-documented sore spot with him in interviews. I admit to having done more research than I should have in the last few days. Whoever put the internet in my pocket did not know me well.

"Well, anyway, he sat outside the little house we lived in until my parents came home—his ostentatious car was really asking for it, but people mostly left him alone. Anyway, when my parents got home and found me awake there was a brief argument in which I tried to explain the strange man who had approached me."

"And what did they say to that?" I ask, looping my own arm around his waist and pulling him closer.

He responds by pulling me closer into his side and guiding me down the beach, away from the bustle of the band dance behind us.

"They never let me get it out, just sent me to bed and said we'd talk in the morning. But I wasn't even half way to my bed when the knock at the door came. I still remember the tune of it all these years later, rapping with uneven beats like a drummer missing one of his drumsticks."

"So he just told your parents he was taking you?" I ask. "I can't imagine they would just be okay with that." His mother, unique as she is, definitely doesn't seem like the kind of person who would just let her children go without a fight. She seems to love them, in her way.

"You don't get it," he sighs. "We didn't have a choice. I was the whole family's ticket to more than half a cup of rice for supper. To a house with a roof that was able to withstand even the slightest rain. I was... I was the only way out for all of them. I had to take it."

"Did you want to?"

"Did six-year-old me want to be a fútbol superstar?" he laughs. "Of course. Who didn't?"

I look up into his eyes and see the hurt and anguish I've come to know so well. Maybe it's the breeze or the dancing or his hand drawing circles on my bare waist, but I gain enough courage to ask, "And now?"

His eyes meet mine as we walk through the sand. "Now I'm very glad to have pulled my family up to a better place," he answers. "And I struggle every day with how to do right by all the people in this country who can't do what I did. To make sure I'm paying the people I employ. To, just, make the most of this blessing."

"Is it a blessing if it cursed you like this?" I blurt out before I have time to second guess myself. "To always be worrying? To be responsible for a whole family at six years old?"

"What was the alternative?" The way he asks it, like it answers my question, sets me on edge.

"I can see that," I admit. "Truly, I can. You've done so much for them. But I wonder if there wasn't a better way to do it. I mean, to take a six year old child away from his family? You were given far too much responsibility at such a young age, and taken from the only support system you ever knew."

"I wish there had been, Lorena. Sometimes I wonder what it would have been like to grow up with parents. The instructors and employees at the academy did their best, and I know it's not the same but it's something."

He takes a breath and I don't dare speak, feeling if I do I'll break the moment before he tells me what he needs to. "But, Lor... I can't say I'm upset with the success I've achieved. I don't want you to feel like my life was hard. I don't need anyone's pity. I have so much."

"I just wish you'd been able to be loved," I say, unable to meet his eyes. I'm getting dangerously close to letting him see me. "I wish there was a way to go back in time and show six-year-old you what a real parent looked like. Sometimes I wish there was a way to go back in time and show me the same thing."

"You didn't have a great childhood either?" His brows knit together.

I can't tell him about my mother and her chasing money and her many many relationships. I can't tell him why I've avoided men and money. He's only here for a few more days and I'll never see him again. If I'm going to do this, it's just fun. He doesn't need me piling it on.

But he's shared so much of himself, I feel I owe him something. So I take a deep breath and thread my fingers through his, resting my head on his shoulder.

"I've always wanted someone to just love me more than they love—" I can't say money. I can't say it out loud because if I say it out loud it might be true. I want so desperately to believe he would say he cares for me more than money, but I know we haven't known each other long enough for that to be true.

He doesn't say anything, just stops walking and pulls me in closer, wrapping his arms around me and kissing the top of my hair. We stand there, staring out at the stars over the ocean, and I feel safe. All I want to do is give this man all the care and thought he didn't get as a child. But I have no idea how to do that.

Or even if I should.

Finally, I settle on snuggling my face into his shirt and whispering a half-truth.

"I want to show you the joys of being a child. I wish I could show us both."

"Maybe I could show you," he whispers. "There's something. Somewhere..."

He's babbling, hands secure around my waist like he's afraid I'm going to leave.

"It's okay," I whisper, stepping back just enough to look up at him. The moonlight illuminates his perfect face and I'm dumbfounded. There's nothing else to be said. Unless my heart can speak directly to his, I'm sure I'd make absolutely no sense.

His eyes scan my face and he draws his lip between his teeth, squeezing my hips with his strong hands. I'm only one small step away from...

"God, I want to kiss you, Lorena."

I want him to kiss me too. I don't think I've ever wanted anything more. But I can't get the words to leave my mouth.

A moment passes.

And then another.

His face grows stricken and he looks down.

"Sorry, Lor. I shouldn't have said it, maybe, but I just..." he runs a hand through his beautiful thick black hair. "Can't stop thinking about you and I'm shit at relationships. Honestly I'm just shit at them and you deserve better. I'm leaving in a few days and you'll never see me again and—"

For the first time in my life I don't think; my feet come unglued and my hands find his face. Holding his head between my hands, he finally stops talking and lets my eyes search his.

His hands tentatively move up to my waist and I push myself into him, a flutter of excitement rushing through me when the move has him swallowing hard and letting his eyes wander across my lips.

We're drawn together, the ocean breeze circling around us and keeping everything else out. I'm this close to kissing my childhood crush and current sworn enemy.

"Do you think you'd want to kiss me if you weren't leaving in two days?" comes out at the last second before our lips touch. I couldn't get away without asking too many questions. Thought I was going to escape it for a second but NOPE.

He wets his lips and looks down at me with an intensity I haven't seen before. "Do you think you'd want to kiss me if I weren't leaving in two days?" His hands dig into my hips like he's trying to keep me at a safe distance even though he's dragging me ever closer toward him.

"You know what I think, Óscar?" Our lips are so close my words escape right into him. "I'd want to kiss you no matter what."

I don't know who moves first or how I get there, but I'm wrapped up safe in his arms, unbearably connected to every part of him that's possible in the middle of the beach. His warm lips press into mine, gently deepening the kiss, and his hand grasp the fabric at my waist.

His hair is tangled around my fingers, giving me that little bit of control of his pressure and angles and I can't stop myself from pulling him into me until we're both gasping for breath.

"I can't let you go," he whispers between my gasps, pressing his lips to mine in quick pecks between the words.

I should say he has to. I should push him away. But I can't.

"I can't let you go either."

And there it is, hanging heavy like glue between us.

"Don't think about it," he kisses me again, lifting me onto my toes as he pulls me in impossibly closer. "Just let me have tonight. Can you give me that?" His voice is a soft whisper telling me I'm in control.

He's frozen, neither of us drawing breath. I keep my eyes closed and try to think, but I don't need to think. I've been thinking of nothing but him since I laid eyes on him and I want to kiss him again. I want to do more than kiss him. I want to let him take me out tonight and just...

"You can have tonight," I whisper back. "But I can't promise anything else."

"I'd never ask you to," he says, but his eyes say he wants to. And that's exciting. But terrifying.

"So, where are you taking me?" I ask, letting my eyes meet his for the first time since I tasted his lips. His gaze is soft, a sparkling kindness holding onto me in a way no one ever has before.

I'm fucked. There's no going back from this. But at least, at the end of it all, I'll have had tonight. It could be worse.

"Right now I'd like to kiss you again," he says, pausing for my response before closing the space between us again and pulling me right off balance into a dip in the middle of the beach, only the light beat of the band dance to accompany our precarious dance.

"Come with me," he says, pulling me to standing. "I have something to show you."

"What is it?" I ask, trying to get my bearings back.

"Something from my childhood," he says with a smile. "I think you'll like it."

I think I will, too. I think I'd like the ocean if it was Óscar who was taking me.