Catalina Villalobo, a 21-year-old Mexican grad student, meets 30-year-old F1 driver Carlos Sainz by chance in Barcelona. Their chaotic banter sparks into undeniable chemistry, but as playful encounters turn serious, the public scrutinizes their age...
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Barcelona never really slept, but at four in the morning, the city glowed with that strange, golden hush between night and dawn. Catalina Villalobo stumbled out of the club doors with her friends Lory and Jackie at her side, their heels clacking against the cobblestones and their laughter carrying down the narrow street.
Catalina had ditched her heels halfway through the night, holding them by the straps in one hand and a half-empty bottle of water in the other. Her messy black hair clung to her damp forehead, eyeliner smudged into smoky streaks that only made her blue eyes look sharper.
"Cat," Jackie slurred, steadying herself on her shoulder. "Tell me again why we left when the DJ started playing Bad Bunny?"
"Because you nearly died doing your fake twerk," Catalina said flatly, her Mexican accent thick and unbothered. "You almost crushed Lory's ankle."
Lory wheezed, clutching her phone. "I was trying to get it on video!"
"You're always trying to get shit on video," Cat muttered, rolling her eyes but fighting a grin.
The three of them wandered toward the train station, the early-morning air cool and sticky, the streets dotted with other stragglers from clubs. Catalina walked a little ahead, scanning the shadows out of habit. She wasn't the type to get sloppy drunk — she liked having her wits about her, liked knowing she could handle whatever came up.
That was when she saw him.
A guy leaned against the wall near the entrance of the metro station, phone in hand, head tilted down. Tall, broad shoulders, dressed way too put-together for four a.m. He looked up as the girls approached, and his dark eyes caught hers for a beat too long.
Catalina narrowed hers right back.
He had that polished look about him — hair neatly styled, sharp jawline, expensive sneakers that hadn't seen the chaos of a club floor. Definitely not a local stumbling home drunk.
And he was staring at her.
"What, dinosaur?" Catalina blurted, voice echoing across the empty square.
The man's eyebrows shot up. "Excuse me?" His accent rolled heavy, that unmistakable Madrid-Spanish lilt that instantly made her smirk.
She exaggerated the sound back at him, wagging her finger. "Ehhx-cuuse me," she mocked, stretching the vowels. "Mírame, I am a Spaniard, too fancy for four a.m."
Jackie snorted. Lory immediately whipped out her phone.
"Dinosaur?" the guy repeated, looking somewhere between confused and amused.
"Yeah," Catalina said, deadpan. "You look old as hell. What are you doing out here at four in the morning? Shouldn't you be, I don't know, icing your back? Drinking chamomile tea?"
