“I play with these guys all the time.” I waved to a guy I’d gone to high school with then spun around and passed the ball back to Aleksandr. “Who invited you?”

“Your twin.”

“Excuse me?” I didn’t have any siblings.

“Landon’s brother, Jason. He looks just like you.” He nodded to the circle of guys juggling balls. The one next to Landon Taylor had dirty-blond hair very similar to my color, but I couldn’t get a good enough glimpse to see if we had more similarities.

“Not mad at me anymore?” Aleksandr’s question caught my attention in time for me to see him send the ball back to me.

I stopped it with my left foot. “I’m over it. I just want to finish out the month.” Which was true. I’d taken Kristen and Gram’s advice to heart. His prank could’ve been a hundred times worse. I could handle a few more weeks of his immature shenanigans.

“You’re going to get back at me by kicking my ass out there, aren’t you?” He nodded to the field.

“Scared?” I asked. I can’t be sure, but I think I puffed out my chest—chimpanzee-challenge style.

“Stand down, Berezin.” Aleksandr held his palms up in front of his chest. “I deserve whatever you give me.”

“It’s all in good fun, Sasha,” I said, rocketing the ball at him. He jumped, and the ball bounced off his broad chest and onto the ground near his feet.

I’d be using the Russian diminutive of his name in public from now on. If anyone noticed that Audushka, the diminutive he’d created from my name, sounded like a feminine care product, they could tease him because his sounded like a girl’s name.

Aleksandr kicked the ball. I followed it as it sailed over my head and dropped in front of Drew.

“Game on!” Drew yelled. He gave Aleksandr an evil-eye assessment. It reminded me of an overprotective father meeting his daughter’s date for the first time, just before telling the poor kid he had a shotgun.

“That’s English for, I’m about to kick your ass out there,” I said to Aleksandr, then turned my back and darted to the other side of the field.

I wondered if any of the guys knew he understood English. Not that it mattered. They probably just figured that even a foreigner could pick up curse words and soccer slang.

“Good luck!” Aleksandr called to my retreating figure.

“I’m not the one who’ll need it,” I sang over my shoulder. Confidence was so easy on the soccer field. Out here, I ignored the ridiculous way my heart pounded around him.

The group divided into teams in a quick, militaristic manner. I would be playing opposite both Aleksandr and Drew. In any other situation in my life, I would’ve been timid and nervous about not having a friend on my team, but this was soccer. On the field, I stepped out of my body and ignored my hypervigilant, overanalytical mind. On the field, I talked trash and kicked ass. If Aleksandr thought he could beat me at my own game, he’d better think again.

It was an intense and fast-paced match. I played center midfield for the first half, setting up one goal and scoring another. I’d railed through the defense without having to throw any elbows, as I’d expected. This group played no-referee soccer. No red or yellow penalty cards. The boys never took it easy on me, which I learned the hard way the first time I’d played with them and left the field with a set of bruised ribs. The injury taught me to defend myself better and I learned a few dirty tricks.

In the second half of the game, I moved back to play defense. Despite both of my team’s goals in the first half, Aleksandr’s team had scored three against mine. The score held at 3–2 through most of the second half. We didn’t have a time keeper, so the game would end when both teams decided we’d played long enough. And my teammates weren’t finished yet.

Jason, the dirty blond that Aleksandr had called my twin, had taken my place at center mid. He booted the ball up the field to catch one of our forwards on the fly. Drew sprinted between the forwards, intercepting the pass, and soon he was in our zone, dribbling the ball down the field with a burst of speed and intensity. He passed the ball to a teammate on his left without even a side glance. The ball went out-of-bounds off the foot of our defender.

As I walked backward toward the goal, I noticed Aleksandr was my man to cover. We jostled for position as his teammate got ready to throw the ball inbounds. If I did nothing else the rest of the game, I would not let Aleksandr beat me. It didn’t look as if Aleksandr would let me win either. Fair enough.

When the ball came sailing inbounds, both Aleksandr and I jumped up to head it. I planted my hands on his shoulders, hoisting myself higher since my five-foot-four frame couldn’t beat a six-foot-tall man to the ball. After smacking the ball away with a brutal flick of my head, it sailed up the field and into the possession of one of my teammates. He was gone with a breakaway.

“That was bullshit,” Aleksandr said between labored breaths, as we jogged together up the field.

“All’s fair in love and war.”

“Which one is this?” he asked, lips tilting upward.

“War,” I growled, watching the play develop at the other end of the field.

“I disagree.” Aleksandr raced up the field, leaving me in the dust. Literally. He’d kicked up so much dry dirt as he sprinted, I felt like Pig-Pen.

My teammate missed the breakaway, at which point many of the guys started calling for the end of the game. Aleksandr and I walked to the side of the field together. I took a long swig out of my water bottle and offered it to him. Drew and a few other guys came over as well, teasing and congratulating one another. A few guys slapped me on the back or rustled my hair, welcoming me back and telling me they missed me.

It was irritating how little they cared about messing up my ponytail. I patted my hair down as if my palms held magical smoothing powers.

“Are you getting a ride home with your friend?” Aleksandr asked.

“Yep.” I pulled on my warm-up pants.

“Hang out with me. I’ll drive you home.” Aleksandr dragged a tattered gray hooded sweatshirt over his head. On the upper-left chest, there was a small red flag with a yellow hammer and sickle below a star in the left corner.

“You know the Soviet Union is no longer, right?” I joked, rubbing the goose bumps on my arms beneath my warm-up jacket.

He looked down at his chest and laughed. “It was my father’s.”

“Daddy-o still stuck in the Soviet era?”

“No. He’s dead.”

“Oh my gosh, Sasha, I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to make fun of it.” The silly smile slipped from my lips—it had to, so my foot would fit in.

“It’s okay.” He grabbed both of my hands and tugged me to my feet. “It’s the most comfortable sweatshirt and it makes me think of Papa.”

“I understand,” I said. “I have an old softball shirt of my mom’s. The fabric is so thin, you can see straight through it now, but I love it.”

“Can you wear it to the next game?” The skin around Aleksandr’s eyes wrinkled with his smile.

“With anyone else I would be totally embarrassed right now,” I admitted. My brain jotted a mental note to wear the shirt next time I’d be around Aleksandr outside of the arena. Then I mentally smacked my brain upside the head.

“But not with me? Why not?”

“I’m used to your sense of humor.”

“Are you sure that’s it? Maybe you just want to parade around me in a skimpy top.”

His teasing, but true, comment struck a major embarrassment geyser, because I felt a burst of fire to my face. Drew interrupted our conversation before I mustered a weak verbal protest that Aleksandr would have never believed.

“Ready, Aud?” Drew asked. He jumped up and down to keep warm, and just looking at him in his sweat-soaked gray T-shirt and blue soccer shorts sent shivers through my warm, covered limbs.

I knew I should catch a ride with him, because staying with Aleksandr would get me into trouble.