Chapter 4 #2
He swallows. “No. I’m sorry. That came out wrong.” His voice lowers. “What did it say?”
I debate keeping it from him a little longer.
He said we’d take a break if this cycle failed. That was why I hadn’t woken him when the nurse came, or when the clinic called, or demanded to know how he’d slept through something this important.
I didn’t want to hear him say it.
Not today.
Not when I understood his exhaustion and resented it in the same breath.
But I’ve never liked lying to him. Not even by omission. Honesty is one of the few sacred things we promised never to withhold, even when the truth hurts.
“It was negative,” I breathe. “The clinic called later and said the same thing.”
Saying it aloud makes it real. Final.
I blink hard, chasing away the burn in my eyes.
Xavier drags a hand over his mouth. “Fuck.” Color drains from his face as he glances at me. “I’m sorry, amor. I’m sorry I wasn’t there when you needed me most.”
A knot forms in my chest, making my breath stutter.
“You were supposed to be,” I whisper.
“I was.” His throat works, his gaze fixed on the road. “And I failed you. Today. Last night. God knows how many times before that.” His voice roughens. “ Lo siento , amor. For all of it.”
“It’s okay.” I am too tired to argue. “We still have options. Dr. Moreau said it may be time to discuss IVF.”
A muscle jumps in his jaw. “IVF?”
“Yes.”
“What happened to taking a break, Yara?”
“I’m not doing that.”
He nods once, a jerky motion that fails to hide the frustration carved into his face.
“You promised me,” he says through his teeth. “You said you would stop doing this to yourself, amor. Why are you going back on your word? ”
A spark of anger flares in my chest. I turn to him. “Stop doing what? Hoping?”
He grimaces. “Stop torturing yourself.” A brittle edge cuts through his voice. “Por Dios, Yara—how many times do we have to go through this before you realize—” He shifts in his seat, then forces the words out. “It’s not going to change.”
A fist closes around my heart, tight enough to steal the next breath from me.
No.
He can’t mean those words.
“You don’t know that,” I snap.
Outside, the coast is a dark blur. Inside the car, everything is painfully clear: I’m hurt, and he’s hurt, and we’re tearing at each other because we don’t know what else to do.
“Maybe it will change,” I add. “Maybe IVF will finally work. Next month. Next year. Maybe one day, I’ll get pregnant.”
The word hangs between us.
His face twists, and I see the pain swirling in his eyes.
“You don’t listen,” he rasps. “You never listen. I told you, we can have a good life without—”
He stops, biting off the rest. But I already know how this ends.
"Without a child," I finish for him, spitting the words out. The truth of it, the idea of a childless life as a good life, tastes bitter. "Maybe you can live with that. But I—"
"You think I don't want a baby too?" He cuts me off. His eyes flash in the dimness, and suddenly the car feels very small. "You think I'm not grieving every single time you are?"
“Then why are you so ready to give up?” My voice trembles, and I hate it. “Why does it feel like I’m the only one still fighting for this? For us?”
The car races around a bend a little too fast, and he eases up on the gas with a curse.
His throat works, and when he answers, the rawness in his voice cuts through me .
“This isn’t easy for me.” He isn’t shouting.
Not quite. But there is more force in his voice than I have heard in years.
“Watching you wake up with hope in your eyes just to watch it get crushed again kills me. Watching you blame yourself. Hate yourself. Tear yourself apart because your body won’t do what you keep begging it to do.
” He drags in an unsteady breath. “I can’t keep watching you disappear into this.
You have no idea, Yara. No idea what I’m trying to save you from. ”
The words pour out of him in a rush, hot and anguished. They hit their mark; I feel them like physical blows, because he's right. I don't know what he's been trying to save. Lately, I've been so consumed by my own pain that I never stopped to wonder how he was coping with his.
"What are you trying to save?" I ask, and it's not a challenge now, but a plea. "Tell me."
His hands tighten on the wheel. For a long moment, the only sound is our breathing and the steady drone of tires on pavement. Finally, he exhales, and the fight drains out of him. "I'm trying to save you ," he croaks. "To save us."
My heart hitches. In the darkness, I can just make out his profile—the proud angle of his nose, the hard line of his jaw—and I see it tense as he continues, "I can't... I can't watch you destroy yourself over this, Yara. I am scared, terrorized, of what this is doing to you."
I open my mouth to respond, but he isn't finished.
“I’m terrified of losing you,” he admits. “I almost watched you die once, remember? I can’t do that again.”
A lump rises in my throat, threatening to choke me.
Of course I remember. How could I ever forget?
He had been there through all of it.
My coach filled in the pieces I had no memory of.
How Xavier vaulted the barricade the second I went down, climbing into the ring while everyone else was still frozen.
How he dropped to his knees beside me, half-mad with panic, shouting my name.
How he refused to move when the medics rushed in, hovering so close they had to physically drag him back to make room for the stretcher.
How he ran alongside them all the way to the ambulance, ignoring the concrete, the broken grit, everything beneath his feet. How he stumbled more than once, but never slowed. Never stopped trying to keep up.
Xavier barely ate. Barely slept. He sat beside my hospital bed for days in the same clothes, his hand wrapped around mine while the machines breathed for me and decided whether I lived or died.
I never questioned after that where I belonged.
In some ways, that was the beginning of the slow, suffocating fear that has wrapped itself around our lives ever since.
Maybe that’s why I keep trying. Because I want to prove that we’re still capable of creating something beautiful together. Because when boxing was taken from me, I needed something else to live for. Something that was ours.
I don’t know if that makes me foolish.
All I know is that loving him has always meant refusing to let go, even when it hurts.
The fight drains out of me. My shoulders sink back into the seat, fingers loosening from the death grip I had on my dress.
Xavier’s hands stay locked on the wheel, eyes fixed on the road. He looks less like a man arguing and more like a man bracing for impact.
We lapse into silence. The city thins out around us until it is just darkness and the low hum of the engine, the world strobing past in brief flashes of streetlight across his face, glinting off the gold band on his finger.
My gaze lingers on it.
I turn my own wedding ring with my thumb.
“You’ve been so busy these past few months,” I say at last. “And yesterday… I know why you weren’t there. I’m not trying to punish you for that.” The memory hurts all over again. “But I waited for you, Xavier. For hours. And you didn’t call.”
Xavier closes his eyes briefly, his throat working as he swallows.
“I know,” he says softly. “I don’t have an excuse for that either. I’m sorry, Amor.”
“You said your cousin flew in from Madrid after her father’s funeral.” His gaze flicks to me, startled that I remember. “I was half-asleep, Xavier, not absent.” My fingers lace together in my lap. “Wasn’t he one of your uncles? You made it sound like he had nothing to do with you.”
“Right.” His brows knit together. “He was my uncle. Distant, but still family. He had cancer.” He clears his throat. “I didn’t tell you because you already had too much on your mind. I thought I was sparing you by staying silent. I see now I was only shutting you out.”
My heart twists. Even now, he’s trying to shield me, in his own misguided way.
I take off my glasses and wipe at my cheek with the back of my hand.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper. “I’m sorry you went through that alone. I’ve been making everything about me when you were hurting too.”
“No, amor,” Xavier breathes. “You had every right to be upset. I should have told you… I just didn’t want to see you cry anymore.” He releases a hollow, humorless laugh and shakes his head. “Look how well that worked. All we’ve done tonight is make each other cry.”
A weak chuckle slips past my lips, tangled with a lingering sniffle. “Yeah,” I admit. “We are a mess.”
The corners of his mouth lift. “ Un desastre, ” he agrees. A disaster.
We share a glance, and despite everything, I see a faint warmth in his eyes, a hint of the wry humor that used to flow so easily between us. I hold onto it like a lifeline.
So what if my husband has been distant enough to make me call his company like some insecure wife, with cameras hounding me on days I’d rather sink into the ground?
I knew what I signed up for when I married him. The money. The attention. The scrutiny. The price of loving a powerful man. Everything will not always be rosy. He isn’t perfect. Neither am I.
Get it together.
Up ahead, two familiar stone pillars rise on the left, half-hidden by bougainvillea. Between them, the iron gates stand open beneath the watchful eye of two security guards in dark suits.
One of them steps forward as we slow, then recognizes Xavier’s car and waves us through.
Beyond the entrance, the driveway to his parents’ estate cuts through the trees. The villa’s lights glow in the distance, silhouettes of parked cars scattered along the gravel.
We’re late.
As we approach the house, I set my sunglasses on the dashboard and smooth my dress, tucking a loose strand of hair behind my ear. My pulse is still jumpy from all the crying, and I can’t stop wondering if my makeup is a mess.
Xavier curses under his breath. Instead of continuing toward the villa, he veers off into a small alcove beneath a stand of jacaranda trees and kills the engine. The spot is tucked away from the main drive, screened by branches and vines.
The sudden quiet is deafening; even the air feels trapped between us.
He doesn’t move.
Neither do I.