19. Valentina
19
VALENTINA
T he breeze stirred my hair as I sat with an iced coffee on my usual bench. The weather was almost too perfect, which meant there were people everywhere, hanging out on blankets spread across the emerald grass, walking dogs, and jogging. Kids shouted and laughed while waiting in line for the carousel. Somebody was playing music somewhere, and the happy beat left me swinging my foot after I crossed my legs.
I wouldn’t say this out loud to anybody since I knew how it sounded, but there were times when I felt more at home on a bench across from the Central Park carousel than anywhere else.
Sometimes, I liked it better here during gloomy weather. I would put on my raincoat and sit here alone with my thoughts and talk to the baby who only existed in my head. Good thing I didn’t feel super low today. Troubled, torn, but not super low. The sight and sound of so many other people enjoying a beautiful day didn’t feel like a blade to the heart the way it sometimes did.
Spotting a little girl with dark brown pigtails, I thought, She looks like I’ve imagined you would look if you ever had the chance. You would be much bigger than her now, almost ten years old. What would you like to do? What would you be good at? I wonder all the time. Would you be creative? Artsy? Would you play an instrument, or would you rather play sports? Not that you would’ve had to choose. I would have encouraged you to do anything you wanted. No limits.
Before Rose announced her pregnancy, it had been a long time since I came here to talk to Chloe. That was what I’d named her in my head. My beautiful girl. I didn’t forget you. I will never forget you. But sometimes… it’s easier to carry you quietly in my heart and try to move on. I thought I had, really, I did. I was wrong.
I needed to. There was no way I could live otherwise.
The icy coffee was a treat, cooling on a warm afternoon. I sipped it, sighing, wondering where to start putting this behind me. Evan, our past, our present. How could I ever move on when I’d never be able to avoid him for long? How could I have been so careless, getting involved with him again?
The week since the wedding hadn’t done much to ease the burning, raging anger. It wasn’t him I was angry at—not anymore. It was me. I knew better. That hadn’t stopped me. I was a child who couldn’t be told the flame would burn my skin. I needed to hold my hand over it and find out the hard way.
What was it that caught my attention? Was it the scent of cologne I would know anywhere floating my way on the breeze? No, I would feel him anywhere, no matter what he was wearing. Something inside me had always been able to sense him.
Taking a deep breath, I turned my head slowly until I found Evan standing a few benches down from where I sat. He was dressed like so many people walking past in both directions, wearing a T-shirt and jeans, his hands sliding into his pockets once my attention landed on him.
My heart stuttered. Why was it so impossible to let go of him? My blood hummed, and my body went warm, all because he was within my field of vision. Weariness I’d spent a week trying to ignore settled over me like a heavy blanket. What I wouldn’t have given if he would only hold me, soothe me, piece me back together.
“What are you doing here?” I asked. I would have stood and might even have walked away if it wasn’t for the trembling that spread throughout my body when I saw him coming. But I didn’t trust myself to get up from the bench without falling flat on my face.
“I thought I might find you here.” He stood yards away, under the shade of a graceful tree, but even at a distance, I recognized the way his eyes shone with what might have been tears. What was this about? “I’ve come over here the past few days, waiting around, hoping I’d see you.”
“You didn’t,” I deadpanned. “Tell me you’re exaggerating.”
“I haven’t gotten a word out of you in a week. Going to your apartment would’ve been a waste of time. For all I knew, you would have called the cops. We didn’t exactly end things well last weekend.” Shrugging, he added, “What else could I do but hope you still came here?”
The idea of him wandering around here, hoping to see me, did funny things to my heart. Don’t do this. For once, don’t make it that easy . “You found me. Congratulations.” I crossed my legs, folding my arms, doing everything I could to protect myself. My body was one thing, but my heart? It throbbed with every beat, threatening to burst out of my chest. “I come here to be alone. ”
“You don’t have to be. I could be here with you. I… I want to be with you.”
“When it’s convenient for you? When I tear you a new one, and you feel like you have to do something to work your way back into my—” A pair of little girls ran past, squealing over something, and I thought twice about my choice of words. This wasn’t the place.
“That’s not what I’m trying to do.” When I sighed, rolling my eyes, he groaned. “I swear. This isn’t about that. I made so many mistakes. I always knew I did, and I never had the guts to come clean and tell you everything I was thinking and feeling.”
“You still haven’t found the guts,” I reminded him. Because fuck it, if he was going to invade my privacy this way and think he suddenly understood everything because he found me sitting on a park bench, I was determined to stand my ground. “What are you thinking and feeling? What were you thinking and feeling back then that you couldn’t tell me about?”
He looked pained, and I was glad. Let him be. Let him feel a fraction of what I’d carried all this time. “I was… shocked,” he gritted out.
He took a step in my direction, then another. When I braced myself, sitting up a straighter, he paused. “I was scared shitless. All of a sudden, I saw every plan I ever had for my life dissolving. I could hear my dad in my head, reminding me how irresponsible I was, telling me I was lucky he could give me a safety net. I didn’t want his safety net. And I didn’t want your father cutting my balls off for getting his daughter pregnant.”
“You never thought to ask me what I wanted to do about the baby,” I reminded him. It was like sticking my finger in a wound and wiggling it around, stirring up as much pain as possible, but this was the only way to get through it. After ten years, I wanted to get through it. No, I needed to.
“I know. For what it’s worth, you didn’t give me the chance.” He held up a hand when my mouth fell open, shaking his head. “I’m not blaming you. But you did run off before I could fully process the news. You didn’t give me a chance, and I punked out and didn’t call you because I was sure you didn’t want to talk to me. I thought I destroyed everything to the point where I couldn’t make it better.”
He sat on the bench beside mine, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees, staring at the carousel. “I don’t know. I guess it was safer that way too. Easier in the short term. I told myself if you wanted to keep the baby, you would tell me, and we would work it out. Every day that passed, I waited for that call. And then you did call, and you told me…”
I finished for him, “Told you it was all over.” The memory of that call was clear, sharp as a knife. “Which I’m sure was a relief.”
“I was an eighteen-year-old guy who just found out his life could keep going the way he planned. Of course, it was a relief.” He turned to me, and now a tear rolled down his cheek. “And I was too ignorant and immature to imagine what it did to you. I assumed it was a relief for you the way it was for me. You wouldn’t have to sacrifice anything either.”
As much as I didn’t want to accept that, it made sense.
“I’ve never been great at guessing what people are feeling,” he admitted, running a hand across his cheek, catching the tear that had escaped. “And even now, I’m not much better than I was at eighteen. If you had told me what you were thinking and feeling, I would’ve come back to be with you for as long as you needed. I want you to know that. I need you to know that. I know… it’s easy for me to say it no w…” he scoffed, waving a hand, “… but it’s the truth. I would have. I loved you. You were the love of my life, Valentina.”
I drew a hitching breath, tears spilling over my lashes. Here we were, sitting in public, blubbering like idiots. Yet we were closer now, fully clothed and sitting feet apart than we had ever been in our most intimate moments. This, right here, was real intimacy. Vulnerability. Sharing what mattered.
“Dammit, I still love you.” His voice was low but filled with intensity that sent a tingle down my spine and spread certainty through me. “I understand you might never be able to return that love, and I don’t blame you. But I’m here now. I’m here for you. If you need help processing things and dealing with your feelings, I want to help in any way I can. You don’t have to do it on your own. Not anymore.”
Emotion tightened my throat and made my eyes leak again, harder this time. If anyone passing happened to notice us, they would probably think we were breaking up.
“I’ve felt alone for so long.” I brushed a tear away, but it was only followed by another. “And that’s partly my fault. I was too proud to tell anybody what happened. I wouldn’t have told Aria if she hadn’t found me like she did. There’s another side of the coin I didn’t think about back then. I painted myself into a corner by keeping it all to myself. And I obviously gave you the idea I got over it like it didn’t matter.”
“I should have known better,” he insisted in a voice heavy with sorrow.
“You couldn’t have.”
“I’m sorry. So sorry.” He got up and moved to my bench, giving me space rather than smothering me. “I’ll never stop being sorry for everything. All the mistakes, all the time I wasted telling myself what we had back then wasn’t real. The lies I fed myself so I could get over you. Get over us. You were so… extraordinary in every way. I couldn’t imagine you felt anything real for me.”
“Are you kidding?” A laugh burst out of me, and it felt good. “I was crazy about you. When it seemed like you were in a hurry to get away from me at college and I never heard from you, I convinced myself it was stupid to ever fall for you in the first place.”
“But you did fall for me?”
The hope in his voice melted what little was left of the ice I tried to build around my heart. Reaching out, I caught what was left of the moisture on his cheek. “Yes. Hard. Completely.”
He caught my hand, turning his face toward it to kiss my palm. “And now? Please tell me I don’t have to live without you. I don’t know if I could handle it. I will do everything, whatever you want, to make sure I never make the mistake of losing you again.”
All it took was him opening his eyes and gazing into mine. I never stood a chance, did I? I loved him then. I loved him now. If I hadn’t known it before today, all it took was the tears he’d shed to lift the veil from over my eyes. Now, I could see clearly.
“Of course, I love you,” I whispered. “You idiot. What do you think?”
He burst out laughing, and before I knew it, I was in his arms where I belonged. Where I could finally set down the burden I’d been carrying long enough that I’d gotten used to it. Breathing was easier without weighing me down.
“I’m never leaving your side.” He kissed my cheeks, my forehead, and my nose until I giggled helplessly and hoped nobody was watching too closely. “You’re never getting rid of me.”
“Who said I wanted to?” I asked, smiling through my happy tears before a kiss said everything I couldn’t find the words for.
It was dark when we reached my apartment, the day melting in the face of everything we had to say to each other. An afternoon spent strolling Central Park hand in hand had turned into dinner, with neither of us wanting to break the magic we had wound around ourselves.
Now that the truth was out there—our feelings, the past, everything that had been keeping us apart—what happened after we stepped through the door and closed it on the rest of the world was inevitable.
Our bodies crashed together, and like always, I was swept up in the moment—being close to him, touching him, sizzling in the heat of his caress. But there was something more to it now. Something so deep, I was almost afraid of the intensity. I had to fight the urge to hide from him when happy tears filled my eyes.
There was nothing to be afraid of. I knew it when our mouths met and he wrapped his arms around me, pulling me close enough that I could feel his heart pounding away. I knew how he felt because mine thudded so hard it made me dizzy. That could have been the effect of his touch—gentle but full of promise. We had been here before, so many times. Only this time, there was the prospect of forever involved.
“I love you.” His breathless whisper in my ear made my tears spill over. We had almost missed this. I locked my arms around his neck and pressed my face against his shoulder, overwhelmed, weak against the power of those words and what they meant.
He loved me.
I was the love of his life.
He was the love of mine.
I didn’t have to be afraid anymore. There was something joyful about giving myself to him, melting against him once he backed me against the door, holding me in place with his body so his hands could run all over me.
“I can’t wait to do this for a very, very long time.” He chuckled softly, finding my mouth again, stroking my tongue with his until I was completely under his spell. I would’ve done anything he asked. I would have given him anything so long as he never stopped lighting my body and soul on fire with his skillful touch and his deep, searing kisses.
When he started sliding my cardigan over my shoulders, I did the work for him, letting it fall on the floor so he could rain kisses over my bare skin, dropping the straps of my sundress, dragging his lips over my shoulders and across my chest while his hands worked their way up my thighs. His mouth moved lower, his teeth catching the top of the dress and pulling it down, inching it over my breasts until they were bare. My back arched when he molded them in his hands, lifting them to his lips, kissing them almost reverently. The pleasure was just as hot and consuming, but the urgency was gone. In its place was tenderness.
“You’re so perfect,” he grunted out between laps against my skin. There was nothing for me to do but run my fingers through his hair and lose myself in him as he went lower, finally pulling down my thong to press hot, breathless kisses against my mound .
“And this.” His already deep voice dropped in pitch, his breath against my shaved skin driving me wild. “I could live on this.”
It was like he wanted to prove himself. The next thing I knew, he draped my right leg over his shoulder and buried his face in my pussy.
“Oh, God, Evan…” The back of my head touched the door. My eyes closed, all of my awareness narrowing down to the place where his tongue touched me. It was unspeakable, the pleasure, so good it almost hurt, so good there was nothing I could do but stand and let him claim every inch of me.
Soon, my needy whimpers were louder than his deep grunts. His tongue worked me to the point I could only hold onto the back of his head as the tension broke, replaced by wave after wave of warm, sweet bliss.
I was still trembling by the time he stood, pulling off his T-shirt and dropping his jeans and boxer briefs to his knees. His rigid cock pressed against my stomach when he leaned close, touching his forehead to mine.
“I love you.” He lifted my leg, this time draping it over his hip before driving himself into me all at once. The sensations that had only started to fade came back in full color, even stronger than before. I dug my nails into his firm shoulders before he took my wrists and pinned them above my head, holding me in place as he moved, taking me in slow, deep strokes.
“Mine. Mine always.” His dark eyes searched mine as he spoke and filled and stretched me, taking me to the edge. “Say it. Tell me you’re mine.”
“Yours.” With pleasure wiping out almost every conscious thought, that was the one thing that remained. “Yours, always.” There was something so right about saying it, about letting go and handing my heart, my life, and my future to him. No more fear. No more regret.
Nothing but the satisfaction of taking him inside me and feeling him lose control one stroke at a time, one kiss at a time. “I’m gonna come,” I whispered in his ear, gasping when he responded in a flurry of quick, sharp strokes.
“Come for me. Let me feel you tighten around me,” he urged.
It pushed me over the edge before I knew what was happening, my teeth sinking into his shoulder to muffle my scream. I was still gasping in surprise when Evan let go and filled me with a rush of warmth, then almost fell against me.
My fingers ran through his hair while I laughed softly. “Did I wear you out?” I asked, kissing his temple before he lifted his head.
“Not even close.” His eyes narrowed, a smirk tugging the corner of his mouth. “Only resting briefly before round two. And three.”
“You’d better be careful,” I warned while my body tingled at the idea. “I might start getting used to this.”
His smile lit my heart. “How do you know that wasn’t my plan all along?”