19. Adriana #2
“I need to feel like myself,” I say slowly. “Not the person my family made me. Not the person Rafael ignored. Not even the person you… care about. Just me. Whoever that is.”
“Okay.”
“Okay?”
“Okay. Then let’s figure out who that is.”
“How?”
He stands. Holds out his hand.
“Come with me.”
He takes me to the piano.
It’s in a corner of the living room, a beautiful instrument I’ve played a handful of times since I’ve been here. Always self-consciously. Always feeling like I was performing for an audience even when I was alone.
“Play,” he says.
“Play what?”
“Whatever you want. Whatever feels true.”
I sit down at the bench. Rest my fingers on the keys. They’re cool and smooth under my touch.
For a moment, I can’t think of anything to play. My mind is blank, crowded with everything that’s happened, everything that’s coming.
Then I stop thinking and start playing.
The music comes from somewhere deep. A piece I learned years ago and haven’t played since. Something sad and beautiful and complicated. My fingers remember the notes even when my brain doesn’t.
I play and I don’t think about Viviana. Don’t think about Rafael. Don’t think about my father or the scandal or the divorce or any of it.
I just play.
And somewhere in the music, I start to cry.
Not sobbing. Just tears, sliding down my face, falling onto the keys. I don’t stop playing. Don’t wipe them away. Just let them come.
This is grief, I realize. Not for Viviana or for Rafael or for the family that never loved me. For myself. For the girl who spent twenty-four years trying to be enough. For everything I lost and everything I never had.
When the piece ends, I sit there with my hands in my lap, tears still wet on my cheeks.
Enzo is beside me. I didn’t hear him move.
“That was beautiful,” he says quietly.
“I’m a mess.”
“You’re human.” He reaches out, wipes a tear from my cheek. “There’s a difference.”
I look at him. At this man who found me crying in his lobby and took me in. Who helped me burn my old life down and build something new. Who sees me, really sees me, in a way no one else ever has.
“Enzo,” I say.
“Yeah?”
“I need you to know something.”
“Okay.”
“Whatever happens, whatever I figure out about myself, whoever I turn out to be, I’m glad you’re here. I’m glad it was you.”
His face relaxes. Goes soft in a way I’ve rarely seen.
“Ana,” he says. And then he doesn’t say anything else. Just kisses me.
It starts gentle. Tender. His hands on my face, my tears wet against his palms.
Then it changes. Deepens. Becomes something urgent and raw, like we’re both trying to say things we don’t have words for.
He pulls me up from the piano bench. I go willingly, wrapping my arms around his neck, pressing myself against him. Needing to be close. Needing to feel something that isn’t grief or confusion or fear.
“Bedroom,” I manage between kisses.
“You sure?”
“I’m sure. I need…” I don’t know how to finish. I need you. I need this. I need to feel alive.
He understands anyway. Lifts me up, carries me down the hall, lays me on the bed like I’m precious to him.
And then we stop talking entirely.
What happens after isn’t like the other times.
It’s slower, and quieter, and somewhere in the middle of it I start crying again, not from sadness exactly, just from the sheer overflow of everything I’ve been holding all day.
He doesn’t stop. He doesn’t ask what’s wrong or tell me it’s okay.
He just gathers me in closer, like he can hold the pieces of me together with his own body, and we stay tangled up in each other until the light outside goes from gray to gold to gone.
After, we lie in the dark.
I’m on my side, facing away from him. His arm is around my waist, his chest warm against my back. Neither of us has spoken in a long time.
The tears have dried. The music has faded. The world outside keeps spinning, full of scandals and consequences and people who don’t know that everything has changed.
“Hey,” Enzo says quietly.
“Mm.”
“You okay?”
I think about the question. Really think.
“I don’t know,” I say honestly. “I thought I would be. I thought when Viviana got what she deserved, when the divorce went through, when all the pieces fell into place, I thought I’d feel like I’d won. Like everything made sense.”
“And you don’t?”
“No. I feel like… like I climbed a mountain and when I got to the top, there was nothing there. No view. No reward. Just more climbing.”
His arm tightens around me. “What kind of climbing?”
“I don’t know yet. That’s the problem.” I roll over to face him. In the dim light, his features are soft, unguarded. “Something’s changing. I can feel it. I just can’t name it.”
“Something between us?”
“Something in me. About us. About everything.” I touch his face. “I’m not unhappy. I want you to know that. Being here, with you, it’s the safest I’ve ever felt. The most seen.”
“But?”
“But I don’t know if safe is enough. I don’t know if being seen by you is the same as seeing myself.” I take a breath. “Does that make sense?”
“It makes sense.”
“You’re not upset?”
“I’m not upset.” He kisses my forehead. “I want you to figure out who you are, Ana. Even if…” He stops.
“Even if what?”
“Even if figuring that out means you need something I can’t give you.”
The words hang in the air. Heavy with things unsaid.
“I don’t want to leave you,” I whisper.
“I know.”
“But I might need… I don’t know. Space. Time. Something.”
“Then take it. Whatever you need.”
“Just like that?”
“Just like that.” He pulls me closer, tucks my head under his chin. “I’m not going anywhere, Ana. However long it takes, whatever you need to figure out, I’ll be here.”
I close my eyes and let the slow, even beat of his heart pull me down toward calm.
He means it. I can tell he means it. And that terrifies me more than anything else.
Because what if I figure out who I am and it’s someone who can’t stay? What if the person I become doesn’t fit into this life, this apartment, this man’s arms?
What if winning means losing him?
I don’t say any of that. I just hold on and breathe and try not to think about the ground shifting beneath us.
The revenge is over. The enemies have fallen.
But the real battle, the one inside me, is just beginning.