Ofelia
Several years later...
“Did you hear, Ofe? Solo Baila is doing a competition around the U.S. to find talented dancers. The winner gets a million dollars.”
I looked at one of my dancers in the floor-to-wall length mirror and smiled in the middle of my stretch.
“Who knows if they’ll even come here.”
Solo Baila was a TV show that had taken the world by storm with its running two seasons. It discovered dancers from all walks of life in all genres. Each season brought with it new surprises and I found it vastly entertaining, but not something I’d be interested in trying out for personally.
I enjoyed my life as it was.
As messy as it had been, those days were behind Fabián and I. We’d fled to the U.S. together and started our lives from scratch. My final performance in Mexico had earned me a name for myself, one that had miraculously expanded to the states. Now, I ran a ballet studio and had found incredible joy in being a teacher.
When class ended, Fabián came sauntering in.
I smiled at him through the mirror, watching as he came up behind me and wrapped me tightly in his arms.
These past few years away from the Raven Brothers gang had changed him in so many ways. He was still that same dark and mischievous man I’d met with reggaeton pulsing in the background at someone’s party. Now that he dedicated his life to other things besides drug running, he seemed to breathe easier, happier.
Of course our years here had come with trials of their own. And even though we were far away from home, news still reached our ears.
Things had gotten far more dangerous since we’d left. The streets had been plagued with war. Criminals and gangs fought one another as well as the police and politicians that tried to crack down with stricter laws.
After my sudden disappearance, my papá had lost his reelection. He was still in politics, but my mamá had divorced him and he’d fallen off the wagon in the political world. I tried not to keep up with his life. The hurt he’d put us through was fresh, and sometimes it felt easier to forget the papá I knew, even with all the fond memories I had of my childhood.
Fabián seemed to feel the same way.
His own disappearance–as well as Julián’s–hadn’t gone unnoticed by the Raven Brothers. His family had been trying to find him, but we’d stayed hidden until they’d stopped. Even then, he hadn’t contacted his brothers.
The memories of our loved ones was an ache we both felt dearly, but we’d vowed not to let it get in the way of our happiness.
That happiness seemed diminished in Fabián’s expression just then, though.
He pressed a kiss to my neck and sighed. There was a haunted expression on his face that I wanted to wipe off with a kiss.
“I received news from home,” he said, his words solemn. Sad.
My body tensed. “Is everything okay?”
His fingers rubbed circles on my upper arms. “My father is dead.”
There was a pinch in my chest.
“Sebastián killed him.”
“Oh, Sebas...”
I hadn’t known his stoic brother well. In fact, he’d seemed to hate me on sight. But I knew, from the stories Fabián told me, that it was because he cared and feared for his younger brother. It hadn’t been personal.
Fabián admired him deeply, and therefore I cared about him as well. And I couldn’t imagine the trauma of murdering your own father. What had led him to that, and what he was feeling now that he had to live with that decision.
“He’s taken over the Raven Brothers. My father is dead and Sebas said we... we can go home if we want.”
He stared at me through the mirror, silence passing between us but so much said between those spaces.
Home.
We could go home.
I let out a breath and turned in his arms. Standing on the tips of my toes was an effortless movement. When we were the same height, I pressed a kiss to his mouth. “We are home.”
Fabián dropped his forehead to mine. “I was hoping you would say that, princesa. Because I like it here and I really don’t want to leave.”
Laughter bubbled in my chest. “Maybe just to visit, when it’s safe.”
He nodded his agreement. “Besides, I don’t think Julián will want to leave when he just got a new job.”
I bounced up and down on my toes with giddy excitement. “Really?”
He nodded. “He found himself a job on a rancho. One of those fancy ones. It’s called Los Corazones, or something like that. He’ll be moving onto the property in a few months.”
“That means we should have a goodbye dinner.” My mind started whirling with so many ideas and plans.
Fabián squeezed my waist. “He’s not going to want you to make a huge deal of it.”
“Psh, he’s family. He gets a goodbye dinner, and he’s going to like it.”
Fabián chuckled. “Whatever you say, princesa.” He pressed another kiss against my skin, and it said much more than words ever could. That single press of lips held our love and tragedies and happiness. It was our understanding, our past, present, and future. It was everything we were and everything we’d become. “Whatever you say.”
And Fabián took my hand in his and his darkness and my light merged like it had the very first time we touched and just like then, my heart swelled with the wonder that was love.
*The End*