Prologue #3
Brooke glances down, eyes roaming over the marks on Valeria’s skin, and she frowns. Maybe there’s still a way to save the night, to end this argument and melt into the softness that exists between them. Still, that sliver of hope evaporates as irritation darkens Brooke’s expression.
“God, you’re so sensitive,” she mutters. “I said I won’t do it again. Isn’t that enough? I’m sorry I accidentally hurt you. There. Happy?”
Valeria wraps her arms around herself, her posture collapsing. Feeling hollowed out and exhausted in a way she’s never known.
“Please, Brooke . . . ” Her throat tightens, the words trembling as they leave her. “Just go.”
Brooke lets out a laugh stripped of warmth, and the sound scrapes along Valeria’s nerves.
“Let’s talk at home,” Valeria murmurs. “I think we need a moment apart.”
Brooke stares at her, eyes narrowed. “You’re telling me to go?” She studies Valeria in a long, charged silence. Valeria wants to nod, to put her foot down for once, but she’s frozen.
“If I walk out of this room without you, we are done. You hear me? Done. I’m not fucking joking,” Brooke threatens, and it lands just as she meant it because Valeria’s airway constricts at the thought of losing Brooke.
“I’m sorry, baby.” The apology slips out like a knee-jerk reaction. “I just want to talk about this later, after we’ve both had a chance to calm down and rest.”
“Whatever. I’m done.” Brooke snatches her bag from the edge of the bed, and Valeria flinches, worried Brooke’s hands will find her again, but instead the door slams and the crack of it echoes through the room.
Valeria stays glued to the mattress, breath locked somewhere in her chest. A hundred words claw their way up—pleas, explanations, excuses—but none of them matter. Brooke is gone.
“I’m done” loops through Valeria’s mind mercilessly, and her heart tightens around the words.
She looks down at her wrists and shakes her head.
The scratches are small, and the blood is already dry.
A ripple of doubt moves through her. Maybe Brooke was right, and she overreacted.
Brooke hadn’t meant to hurt her. She knows that.
She knows Brooke wouldn’t intentionally cross that line, and now a flush of embarrassment creeps in for letting the moment rattle her so deeply.
Valeria hurries toward the door, hoping to catch Brooke, to call out, to apologize, to pull the night back from the edge. By the time she reaches the front entryway, Brooke’s car is already backing out of the driveway. Headlights sweep across the walls and vanish. She’s too late.
Tomorrow. Tomorrow, when she gets home, she’ll talk to Brooke. She’ll apologize, and they’ll sort this out, as they always do.
Valeria closes the front door gently, the click of the lock soft in the empty hallway, and walks back to her room. She picks up her phone, her fingers hesitating before she starts typing a message to Brooke.
Valeria 10:43 p.m.:
Drive safe, my love. I love you, and I’m sorry.
Valeria buries her face in one of the pillows, and the scent of Brooke’s cologne rises around her.
It’s the same scent that has steadied her and unraveled her more times than she cares to remember.
Tonight, she can’t tell whether it’s comforting or whether it’s twisting the knot of guilt in her chest tighter.
She should have gone with Brooke. She shouldn’t have let her walk out soaked in that much anger.
They have one rule, the one they never break: don’t leave each other angry.
Tonight, for the first time, they broke it, and the thought presses down on her as she stays curled on the bed, the faint trace of Brooke lingering in the fabric beneath her cheek.
The next morning, Isabella and Lily drive Valeria home. She can tell there’s so much they want to ask, but she doesn’t have the energy to relive it all right now, so she’s grateful Brooke forgot her headphones, so she can throw them on and avoid the conversation.
The moment Isabella pulls into the driveway, Brooke’s car isn’t where it should be. The spot to the left of their driveway is empty. A sharp panic rises before Valeria can steady herself.
Valeria pushes the car door open without a word and rushes inside, clinging to the hope that Brooke’s car might be in the garage.
She doesn’t usually park there, but she has before—and Valeria prays this is one of those times.
As soon as she steps into their house, she freezes; blankets lie crumpled on the floor that weren’t there when they left, papers are scattered across the living room, and a picture frame sits shattered on the coffee table.
Valeria picks it up only for her heart to drop as she realizes it’s a photo from their trip to Hawaii last year, torn cleanly in half.
She breaks into a run toward their bedroom, hoping against hope that she’s misreading everything.
The moment she pushes the door open, that hope evaporates.
Brooke’s colognes and lotions are gone from atop the dresser.
Drawers hang open, and some of Valeria’s clothes are thrown across the floor.
She struggles to take a breath. Her chest tightens, a solid grip squeezing her lungs.
Each inhale is shallow, a desperate gasp for air that feels just out of reach.
She moves toward the closet, bracing for what she’ll find. Brooke’s side is empty. Bare hangers sway slightly, as if disturbed only moments ago. In the bathroom, the counter is stripped clean—her toiletries gone.
Brooke left.
Valeria’s knees give out, and she collapses onto the floor in a sob that tears through her before she can swallow it down.
Even as all the muscles in her chest tighten into a painful fist, she fumbles for her phone with shaking hands and calls Brooke, clinging to the faint hope that this is all a mistake, that Brooke will answer, that something can still be done, that she can still fix this.
The call goes straight to voicemail.
She tries again and again, but each attempt is met with silence.
Brooke’s name flashes and disappears as Valeria’s calls are forwarded.
Her fingers tingle as panic rises; a mild static spreads from her fingers to her palm and up her wrist as she keeps dialing, until the truth settles in.
Brooke is screening her calls. Eventually, her hands fall still, and she stops trying.
A moment later, Valeria’s phone releases the soft chime she set for Brooke, and Valeria taps it open before the sound fades.
Brooke 8:56 a.m.:
Please stop calling. I’m so angry at you, I’m the only one who ever gets hurt here. I don’t know if I can forgive you anymore. Maybe when you finally understand how much you’ve broken me, we’ll see if there’s anything left to save. You wanted space, I’m giving you all of it.
Valeria stares at the message until the words blur, swallowed by the tears gathering in her eyes.
Her hand trembles as she presses it to her lips, trying to keep herself together while her soul feels like it’s being torn cleanly in half.
Her chest tightens as if invisible hands are cinching a cord around her heart.
The first few weeks after the breakup—though Valeria didn’t think you could even call it that, because it was more of a ghosting than anything—she called Brooke so many times.
Left her so many messages that she used up all the space in Brooke’s voicemail until she couldn’t leave any more. Brooke ignored every single attempt.
For months, Brooke’s key stayed on the hook by the door, untouched. Valeria stopped checking her phone for Brooke’s name sometime in late winter, after the silence grew heavier than she could handle.
In early spring, when Valeria finally accepted that Brooke wasn’t coming back, she packed up all her things and moved out of the home they’d shared for three years.
Even though she hated it, moving into her own space helped Valeria accept that she had to try to move on—even if she didn’t know where to start.
At the encouragement of Clara, Alejandra, Isabella, and Lily, Valeria went on a single date six months after her breakup with Brooke.
The restaurant was loud in all the wrong ways; the clinking of glasses and laughter felt overwhelming.
Her date—Ava—was nothing short of wonderful.
Ava talked, smiled, and flirted, trying to engage Valeria.
Valeria, for her part, did her best. She nodded when she was supposed to, answered when she had to, tried to flirt back, but the weight in her chest kept growing until it tipped her over.
Halfway through their meal, tears came without permission.
She excused herself too late, her voice already breaking, and cried there at the table, humiliated and hollow.
In that moment, the truth landed with brutal certainty.
This was her life again. Sitting across from strangers, pretending to be open to something new while knowing exactly who held her heart, and who probably always would.
Brooke was ingrained in her soul to a degree Valeria could still barely comprehend.
The date ended early, and by the next morning, the idea of dating was tucked into a deep drawer in her mind that Valeria didn’t intend to open again any time soon.
Almost a year after their breakup, slowly, so slowly she didn’t even notice, Valeria thought about Brooke less and less until she didn’t take up any space in her mind.
It’s as if Brooke could sense it, because right as Valeria finally felt she had healed and moved on, Brooke popped right back into her life.
Valeria was convinced Brooke had forgotten entirely about her. Still, there she was, standing outside the vet clinic, with Valeria’s favorite flowers in hand and a sheepish grin on her face. Nose and cheeks rosy pink from the cold November air.
“Hi,” Brooke said with that same smile that had always melted Valeria.
“Hi,” Valeria replied, out of breath as her chest split open from the intensity of her emotions. Joy, relief, longing, anger, loneliness—all of them crashing together so fiercely it hurt.
In some deep part of herself, Valeria knows she should feel angry, that she should march straight past Brooke and never look back, but the moment Brooke’s blue eyes find hers, it’s as though the whole world rights itself again.
She’s here, and it’s all Valeria can seem to focus on.
All the lonely months and all the nights she lay awake aching for Brooke vanished in a heartbeat.
Suddenly, she feels so silly for ever thinking she could move on.
“You look great,” Brooke says, almost shyly. “I’ve missed you.”
Before Valeria can think better of it, her body bypasses all the “stops” her brain is yelling, and she rushes forward, stumbling over her feet, folding right into Brooke’s arms, clinging on to her with everything she has.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered into the curve of Brooke’s neck, taking a greedy inhale of her cologne. One Valeria doesn’t recognize. The realization springs tears that sting the corners of her eyes. She hates how much of Brooke’s life she’s missed out on this past year.
Valeria holds her tighter, hoping this hug will somehow let Brooke know how much she missed her, how much she regretted not leaving that cabin with her all those months ago.
Brooke presses Valeria closer, and she’s thankful for her warmth, a warmth her body knows as if it were her own. It’s an anchor Valeria thought she’d lost forever, and it makes the ache in her chest that much stronger.
“Shhh,” Brooke soothes, her hand sliding up Valeria’s back in slow circles. The gentleness is too much for Valeria to handle, and the dam inside her breaks. Tears slip free, streaking down her cheeks and onto Brooke’s dark peacoat.
“I’m sorry I made you choose,” Brooke says between her own sobs. “And then . . . I left you. I swear, I’ll never do that again.”
“I know,” Valeria chokes out through a tight throat, and she means it, despite the voice in her head screaming at her to walk away.
For a time, that trust seems to hold. They drift back into each other’s orbit as if nothing ever snapped, fingers finding familiar hands, lips melding into old rhythms. Months blur into something soft and heady, and everything between them tastes of relief.
It’s sweeter than Valeria remembers, intoxicating in a way that makes her stop questioning how frail it all once was.
But trust is fragile, and Valeria’s is about to be shattered.
Being with Brooke again felt like slipping into sunlight after a long winter.
Every laugh, every kiss, every moment beside her filled Valeria with a dizzy kind of happiness she thought she’d lost forever.
Just like at the beginning of their relationship, they stayed up late talking about nothing and everything, bodies intertwined.
It felt like starting over. Valeria told herself over and over that this time would be different—that they’d learned, that their explosive arguments were behind them.
But little by little, the shadows began creeping back in.
It was nothing major at first; the cracks started small. It was in the way Brooke’s eyes shot to Valeria’s phone when a message flashed across the screen. How Brooke tensed any time Valeria went out with the girls without her, or out in general.
At first, Valeria ignored it. She told herself not to overthink, not to ruin what they had with her paranoia. Valeria trusted her, but the knot in her stomach kept tightening, pulling at her in moments when she should have felt safe.
Despite her best efforts, just a few weeks after everything felt perfect, they were right back where they’d always been, trapped in the same miserable loop of arguments.
Brooke picking apart every little thing Valeria did, and Valeria too worn down to fight, and too afraid of the loneliness she’d felt without Brooke to do anything about it.