Setting Boundaries
Valeria
“You came back,” Dante says against my hair.
“Yes.”
I stay in the safety of his arms for a few seconds before pulling back. I need to tell him what I decided in the car with Hugo. What I understood the moment I chose to come back.
“Even if I hate the idea of you having a child with her, that baby is innocent. He shouldn’t have to pay for his mother’s crimes.”
Dante nods without a word.
“But I need to know exactly where I stand. Do you want to build a stable home for your child? Because if that’s what you want, tell me now—and I’ll step aside. No resentment.”
He takes my face in his hands.
“You’re the one I want.”
His voice doesn’t waver.
“I know I don’t have the right to ask this of you,” he says. “I know it will be hard. But I want you in my life, Valeria. I want you to be my wife again. And I’ll find a way to make sure Bianca never crosses our path—that the only contact we’ll have with her will be about the child.”
“I need clear boundaries,” I say. “Boundaries you’ll respect, even under pressure. Because the pressure will come, Dante. She won’t let you go easily, especially now that she has leverage over you.”
“I hear you.”
Despite his words, I can’t help but feel uneasy. This child will give Bianca so much power. A power she won’t hesitate to use to hurt me or tear us apart. Will Dante’s good intentions be enough?
As if he senses my doubts, he adds:
“Here’s what I’m proposing, concretely: a co-parenting app for all communication about the child. No calls. No direct messages. No intrusion into our lives. She won’t set foot in our home.”
“And if she turns the baby against me?”
I know I’m getting ahead of myself. The child isn’t even born yet. The real decisions belong to a future we can’t fully anticipate. Manipulation won’t happen immediately—but some things are too important not to address now.
This time, his eyes harden.
“If she uses this child against us, then I’ll fight back. Without hesitation.”
There’s no doubt in his voice. No escape route.
He chooses me.
Despite everything. Despite the baby. Despite what it will cost him.
I lean into him, and we stay there in silence for a moment.
“Where’s Hugo?” he asks.
“He went back to have lunch with his parents. He wishes us both a Merry Christmas.”
I feel him smile against my hair.
That’s when I remember.
“Wait,” I say. “I have something for you.”
I disappear into the bedroom and come back with a small, carefully wrapped package. He takes it with curiosity, studies it briefly before opening it slowly, as if he wants to stretch out every second.
Inside is a transparent resin paperweight, ordinary at first glance. But engraved inside, with meticulous detail: the solar system.
His expression turns thoughtful.
“You remember,” he says softly.
How could I forget?
It was at the Palais de la Découverte planetarium, on an October evening beneath the star-filled dome, while the lecturer spoke about distances too vast to comprehend, that he first told me:
“Je t’aime.”
He had leaned toward me and whispered that no matter how far apart we might one day be, he would always find his way back to me.
Then he’d said the words that would stay with me for the rest of my life.
He places the paperweight carefully on the coffee table, as if it were fragile. Then he slips a hand into the inside pocket of his jacket and pulls out a small jewelry box, which he hands to me without a word.
“How did you even have time—”
“Open it.”
I do.
Inside is a pair of diamond earrings. But it’s not their brilliance that takes my breath away—it’s their shape.
Edelweiss.
My voice catches.
Our honeymoon in the Alps. Three weeks hiking the slopes, searching for those impossible flowers, coming back empty-handed every evening, laughing at our failure. We never found a single one. And on the last night, back in our chalet, he had pulled me into his arms and whispered in my ear:
“I don’t know why I was looking for a flower in the mountains when the rarest one is right here beside me.”
Back then, we believed nothing could ever separate us.
I return to the present, tears in my eyes.
“I had them made three years ago,” he says. “I kept them. Like all your jewelry. No one touched them.”
I understand what he doesn’t say aloud. Bianca never touched them.
I can imagine her jealousy. It must have driven her mad not to be able to touch them.
Back then, I didn’t think much of it when she asked questions about the gifts Dante gave me, the attention he showed me.
I hadn’t understood how much she coveted everything.
Not just him.
Everything we were together.
“Help me put them on.”
He obliges without hesitation. His fingers sweep my hair aside, exposing my neck. His lips trail a line of soft kisses along my skin.
A shiver runs through me. I tremble.
His smile lingers against my skin. He fastens the first earring, his concentration almost endearing, his hands slightly unsteady. Then the second. Then he straightens, brushes the back of my neck with his fingertips, taking in his work.
“You’re beautiful.”
I turn toward him.
I can’t tell you which one of us moves first—maybe it doesn’t matter.
The kiss is sudden, almost desperate. His ragged breath against my lips, the scent of his skin going straight to my head.
My hands slide into his hair and I pull him closer—as if even a few inches between us is too much.
Dante presses both hands into my back and crushes me against him, hard enough to knock the air out of me.
I feel every muscle in his body coiled tight, the urgency radiating off him.
Our kiss is starving—equal parts longing and fury, like we’re trying to erase in one fell swoop everything that tried to tear us apart.
He lifts me without warning. My legs wrap around his waist on instinct, my nails biting into his shoulders.
We stumble toward the bedroom, catching on the stairs, a tangle of muffled laughter and ragged sighs.
My fingers tear at his shirt buttons, I nearly rip them off, too impatient to feel his chest against mine.
Clothes end up scattered across the steps, dropped without a second thought. I don’t want any more barriers. Any more distance. Just his warmth, his skin, him.
When he finally lays me down on the sheets, the cool fabric against my back is a sharp contrast to the heat of his body pressing into mine. I feel his weight, his strength, the raw want that’s consuming us both.
He settles between my thighs, lifting me slightly to align us. The anticipation is almost unbearable.
And yet, despite the fever of it, despite the urgency, he stops. Right there, at the edge, his eyes searching mine.
“Yes?” he asks, his voice wrecked.
“Yes... come here.”
He enters me slowly, with a tenderness that nearly undoes me, as if he wants to memorize every sensation, every breath, every shiver.
We both moan, pleasure and desire intertwined.
It feels so good.
I feel whole, finally.
Locked together, we stay motionless for a moment, eye to eye, letting this reality catch up with us.
Then, slowly, he begins to move.
His thrusts are deep, demanding, driving me straight toward an implosion.
I feel every movement of him inside me, every burning friction.
It’s almost too much… and yet I surrender to it completely.
And as the pace quickens, as his hips accelerate, he crushes his lips against mine. He isn’t kissing me anymore; he’s devouring me.
We make love with an urgency laced with tenderness—as if our bodies wanted to make up for everything words had failed to repair.
And as ecstasy seizes us simultaneously, I realize with absolute clarity that, for the first time since coming back from the dead, I’m no longer imagining survival.
I’m imagining a future.