Chapter 27 #2
Valeria wants to tell her, wants to answer, but she can’t answer. Her pulse starts thundering in her ears, and she lies there, breathing quietly—her mouth dry and a burning behind her eyes. It’s ridiculous, she thinks. How old fears know their way around her body, like they never left.
Camila doesn’t press. She must hear something in Valeria’s silence, because instead of asking again, Camila sits up beside her, mouthing “I’m going to go,” before kissing her cheek and gently closing the door behind her, probably trying to give her privacy.
The thought alone makes something ache in Valeria’s chest. The contrast is sharp enough to sting.
Brooke never gave her that. Every phone call had been interrogated, every text scrutinized.
Privacy had been treated like secrecy, and secrecy like guilt.
Valeria had learned to brace for it, to shrink under it.
But Camila . . . trusts her. Instinctively. Without conditions.
“Well,” Brooke says lightly, like she’s commenting on the weather. “Wow. You actually picked up.”
Valeria’s heart pounds like a trapped bird against her ribs, and a cold sweat breaks out across her forehead.
“I didn’t think you would,” Brooke continues.
Valeria closes her eyes and sits up, leaning back against the headboard, grounding herself. She swallows hard, trying to suppress the panic in her chest. “It was a mistake,” she says, voice small.
There’s a pause, and Valeria can picture Brooke thinking, calculating.
“What do you want, Brooke?” Valeria asks, not wanting to be on the phone longer than necessary.
“I . . . wanted to check on you,” she says, in a soft and careful tone—the same gentle cadence she used to ease Valeria’s worries, soothing her into a made-up sense of safety.
“Brooke,” Valeria says in an exhale, “you shouldn’t be calling me.
” She rubs her face with her free hand. The last thing she wanted was to start her morning with Brooke’s voice in her ear, Camila in a different room, probably preparing for the worst. She hasn’t had coffee yet, and she needs it, strong and black, to jolt her system and get Brooke talking faster so Valeria can hang up and find Camila.
“If you’d just listen—”
“I’m hanging up,” Valeria says, but she doesn’t.
She should. Every part of her knows she should, but her thumb hovers over the screen, frozen, like her body is stuck in some old muscle memory of giving her one more second. One more chance. One more whatever.
Brooke takes the silence as an opening.
“I didn’t call to fight,” she says, tone smoothing out into something practiced. “I . . . I miss you. I stopped by your apartment earlier, but you weren’t there.”
Valeria closes her eyes and exhales slowly, her muscles tensing. She’s fishing. Trying to find out why Valeria isn’t home at. She looks toward the digital clock on Camila’s nightstand—seven in the morning on a Sunday.
“Don’t,” is all Valeria says.
Where she’s hanging out is no longer Brooke’s problem, and she won’t be made to feel bad about it.
“I mean it,” she murmurs. “I miss you.”
“Brooke, please stop.” Her voice doesn’t shake, but it’s softer than it should be, almost broken. She can’t handle this right now. It’s too much, her heart aches, and the headache that was brewing earlier is now raging while a knot of pure dread tightens in her stomach, making her feel nauseous.
Brooke knows how to crack her open. She doesn’t even have to try.
Her “I miss you” lands like a hook, sharp and nostalgic.
She hates that about herself. Hates how quickly her body reacts before her mind can catch up.
The softening in her limbs. This is her normal with Brooke.
Brooke is calling to tell her she misses her, wants to see her, and is confusing Valeria out of the calm she’d felt before folding into her, only to do this all again in a few months.
But she’s done with this, should have been a long time ago, but now, with Camila, with everything between them being so steady, so unexpectedly gentle, it feels obvious in a way it never did before.
With Camila, there’s no whiplash. No disappearing acts disguised as “space.” No late-night apologies that sound poetic but change nothing. Camila doesn’t make love feel like something Valeria has to earn, chase, or decode.
Valeria stares at her phone, thumb hovering, and realizes she needs to choose—not between Brooke and Camila, but between chaos and peace. Between repeating a familiar pain and protecting the quiet she’s learned to love.
She exhales, long and slow, and lets the phone go dark.
“I miss you, baby,” Brooke says again. Valeria’s vision blurs at the edges, the room seeming to swim as the pressure behind her eyes intensifies.
“Brooke, we’re done. We broke up months ago. I don’t need this right now. I’m happy.”
“You know you and I are never done,” Brooke laughs, but it’s not her usual one; it’s sadder, breathier, and Valeria’s chest tightens instantly at the words.
“We are Brooke . . . please, don’t make this harder.” And that’s when Valeria finally hangs up. She doesn’t process the movement—doesn’t think through the decision. It just happens, instinct taking over before doubt can stop her. The moment the call ends, she feels a rush of exhaustion.
Silence from Brooke doesn’t last long, though.
Brooke 7:04 a.m.:
I’m meeting a client near your place tomorrow. I’d love to see you.
A slow dread creeps into her chest as she reads the message, and she tosses her phone aside and pulls her knees to her chest, wrapping her arms around them, swallowing against the sudden urge to cry.
It’s infuriating how Brooke can drag her back into the lowest parts of herself with nothing more than a call.