Chapter 66
sixty-six
It’s well after midnight when Abuelita shakes me awake.
I snap to, jerking upright in the plastic waiting room chair, ready for some sort of emergency. Instead, Abuelita smiles. A twinkle lights her dark eyes.
“Julieta,” she murmurs, almost sounding… soft. “ Vamos . Tu tienes un hermano .”
Blinking sleep from my eyes, I follow her down the familiar stretch of hallway I spent the better part of twenty-four hours pacing. In the third room on the left, we find Lucia.
Gone is the petrified, stammering girl I spent the day consoling and advocating for. In her place, a small but radiant woman holds a white-swathed bundle to her bare chest. Her cheeks glow a deep rose when she spots me on the threshold.
“Juliet,” she whispers, and then smiles at me for the very first time. “Do you want to see?”
It absolutely floors me how much I want to meet him. My gaze locks on the little bundle as some unknown force pulls me across the room. “ Sí .”
Abuelita hovers behind me, watching as I stand at Lucia’s shoulder and peer down at the tiny face pressed to her breast.
My heart swells as my eyes sting. “He’s… perfect.”
It’s the only word for him. My baby brother—with his head of velvety black hair, his rumpled, rounded features, and the tiny rosebud lips quivering while he dreams.
“You want to hold him?” Lucia offers, beaming. “Here.”
He doesn’t so much as stir while his solid warmth settles into my bosom. I shift his weight, finding that I know exactly how to cradle him. While warmth sluices through my center, I trace his tiny, sweet cheek with the back of one finger. The motion tickles him—his little lips reflexively pull up in the world’s smallest half-smile.
And I’m done for.
Finished. Utterly enchanted.
“ Ay Dios mío ,” I whisper. I love him .
The instant devotion leaves me dazed, staring at his little face in wonder. Abuelita sets her hand on my shoulder and runs the other over my baby brother’s hair. “He look likes you did, Julieta .”
Instinctively, my arms hold him closer to me. “He’s my brother,” I announce to the room, sniffing back tears and lifting my chin. “ Of course he looks like me.”
He nuzzles into my chest with an adorable snorting sound. I feel like my heart may burst out to touch him. And I realize, all at once, that I would do anything for him.
“ Es un amor imposible, no ?” Abuelita says.
It is an impossible love .
And, yet, so very real.
Tears slip down my face. I feel behind me for the nearest chair and lower myself into it while I stare down at this little miracle, love bursting through my entire being.
The impossible love—so deep and real and sure and true … it makes every other truth obvious.
Because, in all honesty, I’ve felt this way before. Not exactly the same—less warmth, more heat; less sudden, more surprising—but an equally unparalleled sensation. For one other man. For my man.
And, finally… I’m not afraid of it anymore.
The words spring out of me, like a tight coil someone finally released. “I love him.”
A hundred memories flood my mind. Graham’s intense black gaze plunging into me the first time we kissed, imploring me to stop him. His consternation as he offered me the red handkerchief in the stairwell. The ludicrous slippers he pulled off effortlessly.
The night I came to his apartment and he asked me to dance with him, just so he could hold me for a moment before we took our clothes off. His possessive, attentive love-making—always about me, even when it was for him. All the times he seemed to know just what I needed, even when I didn’t.
His generous heart. His hands massaging my feet, scrubbing my dishes, holding my head between his palms as if my mind contains some mysterious treasure only he can see.
Those quick, feral grins. The way he tries to leap to action the second anyone he cares for needs help.
So many memories. Moments when, deep inside, I knew .
I love him.
I’ve loved him so much, for so long, that it is mortifying to realize how utterly clueless I was not to recognize it.
How could I have ever tried to leave him? Why?
Because he decided to blow up his life to protect…
His baby brother.
I beam down into my own baby brother’s sweet face and realize I’d do the same thing for him. Today. This very moment. In half a heartbeat.
Abuelita begins clucking in Spanish, muttering about my father, lamenting how her son turned out to be such a “gutless pig.” Lucia catches my eye and shoots me a questioning glance.
“She is…” I start, searching for the right words while my eyes trace the baby’s sweet features again. “She wonders how my dad could ever miss this.”
Lucia’s gaze snags on her son. Her expression remains tranquil while sadness fills her eyes. “He is afraid of us,” she states simply.
“What?”
Lucia shrugs one shoulder, the sluggish gesture betraying her exhaustion. “When I heard the stories about your father and mother, I was worried. I thought I’d fallen for a man who couldn’t love. But, then, he could . He loved me very much. Easily, actually. I was surprised by that…”
It hurts to listen to her. My heart aches for Mami. But I’m also intrigued. I always assumed, like Lucia did, that my father just couldn’t love anyone because he was too selfish…
What if that isn’t quite right?
Lucia continues. “He didn’t start acting distant and strange until I got closer to our due date. Finally, one day, I realized: he was terrified .”
The hairs at the back of my neck stand upright. My arms automatically tighten around my precious hermanito . “He was?”
“He always said he loved me ‘too much,’” she mumbles, as if still confused by the words. “And when he wouldn’t stop saying it, I realized he meant he loved me too much to stay . That’s when I knew he would leave me, the same way he left you and your mom. It was my own fault—I knew the stories, but I thought I was different.”
It never made sense to me. If he originally loved my mother as much as she loved him, why did he abandon her? If he loved me, why did he drift in and out of the fringes of my life instead of remaining a central fixture? If he loved Lucia, why did he drop her off at the hospital and run for the hills?
Now, I wonder: was it really because loving any of us paralyzed him with fear ?
A horrifying thought occurs to me. After spending my entire life working to make sure I didn’t end up like my mother, did I somehow wind up like my father instead?
I left Graham… because I love him?
Too much .
And that petrifies me.
Abuelita catches my eye. Her solemn expression tells me she’s understood every word Lucia says. And, moreover, she agrees .
Her dark-brown eyes bore into mine. “Is normal. Being afraid. But the courage is rare.”
At seven a.m., a delivery arrives.
Just as I start to panic about showing up for work in yesterday’s clothes—and if I should show up for work at all, actually—Marco knocks on the door.
Lucia just finished nursing baby Andrés. They both sleep under Abuelita’s watchful eye while my primo sweeps into the room with his arms completely full of flowers and bags.
He lays four floral arrangements out on the table in the corner, along with two shopping bags. When I raise my eyebrows at him, he raises his right back.
“Everett,” he reports, nodding at the bags. “Had it all waiting for me this morning at Grayson’s. Clothes for you to wear to work, he said. And shoes.”
I sigh . My pinchao does like to dress me. It might irritate me if it didn’t turn me on. “And the flowers?”
Marco points to the happiest arrangement—a collection of yellow roses and sprigs of green. “That’s from Grayson and Ella, for Lucia. The rest are from Everett. The blue ones for Lucia and the baby, the white ones for Abuelita, and those?—”
He gestures to a lovely collection of red ranunculus and fuchsia orchids… perfect for Valentine’s Day.
“—are for you.”
Of course they are . The flashiest of the group, all elegance and bold, sensual color. How very Graham Everett.
I love them.
Without an ounce of grace, I rip into the first bag I touch and pull out a gorgeous crimson bustier, trimmed in handmade black lace. Marco’s expression darkens. A second later, I unearth a completely professional red dress—intended to go over the lingerie.
“I truly cannot decide whether I need to kick that guy’s ass or not,” my cousin mutters.
I smirk, recalling our first meeting in the elevator. “Join the club.”
“At least you got a good swing in,” he grumbles, crossing his arms over his black T-shirt. He jerks his chin at the bed. “The baby’s… good?”
Dios mío .
Men.
“He’s perfect,” I report. “Did Abuelita tell you they’re moving in with your mom? I guess all of them are getting a place together.”
Marco nods. “My mom is in heaven. She went baby shopping yesterday for, like, six hours.”
That sounds like Tía Esme. I chuckle. “I think it will be good for her to have a new baby boy to dote on. Since you’re, you know, thirty .”
He rolls his eyes, but cracks a reluctant smile. “So you are going in today? I know Grayson texted you to tell you that you didn’t have to, but he asked me to reiterate the offer.”
Honestly, I’m dying to get back to work. I feel unsettled without it. Plus, I need to get the lay of the land now that my boss is gone. Will Grayson hire someone with more experience than Dominic to replace him? Or—dare I hope—perhaps even a woman?
“I want to go in,” I decide. “Can you drive me?”
He shrugs. “Sure. But it’s only four blocks away.”
I pull out the Christian Louboutin box with a grimace. “Yeah, but these are six-hundred-dollar shoes.”
His expression twists. “ No joda? Damn. Leave it to Graham Everett.”
My heart gives a pang. He may not be the Graham everyone has come to know if he can’t figure out a way to keep G&C Capital and all the profits he’s earned. He’d still be my pinchao , but still. His company, his livelihood…
But there’s only one way to help him keep it all. And that would involve explaining everything to Grayson, who…
…who already knows , I realize. He knows about us now.
I bolt upright in my chair. “We need to go.”
Marco looks at his phone. “Not until eight-thirty.”
“No,” I snap, snatching my new outfit out of its bag. “We need to go to Grayson Stryker’s. Now. I have to talk to him. Right away.”
I know exactly what to do. How to save Graham. To show him that he means more to me than anything else. But I only have a few hours to get it done.
Sensing my urgency, Marco stands and starts toward the door without hesitation. “I’ll make the call.”