Chapter 37 – Alana
Chapter
Thirty-Seven
ALANA
After that night together, where he showed me exactly how much I enjoyed both my doors being taken, I didn’t see Alejandro for several days.
We’ve spoken briefly on the phone. I’ve picked up from Hugo that he’s super busy, but we haven’t been awake and in the same room for so long now.
It makes my heart hurt. At the same time, I also know he is under pressure.
I will not add to his burden. I try to keep busy with work, I do yoga, I help Lucia with a few school projects.
I even start some online Spanish lessons.
I don’t sit around crying, but I do miss him, terribly.
Half an hour ago, though, I heard his car pull into the driveway. The doors slam, and he shares a few incomprehensible words with someone. Jacob, maybe.
I was lying awake in our bed, burning with the need to be with him. Not just for sex, but for the simple pleasure of being with him. I never feel complete when we are apart. I don’t know if that makes me pathetic or very, very lucky.
I sit up in bed, my once sleepy eyes now wide. He’s home! After spending so many hours at the hotel, he’s finally home.
I wait for him to join me. I glance at my phone to check the time. When he doesn’t appear immediately, I’m fine with it. Maybe he’s grabbing a drink or a snack. He’ll be here soon. But when half an hour passes and the door still doesn’t open, I start to wonder.
Eventually I get up, throw on a robe, and wander through the house. I’m as quiet as I can be so I don’t disturb Lucia.
First I try the kitchen, but it’s in darkness, apart from the eerie light cast by the wine fridge. I frown and go to his office. This is the first time he’s been home at a normal hour in days, and he goes straight to his office?
I find the door slightly open, and I stare through the gap for a few seconds.
He doesn’t know I’m here, and he looks like he’s in another world.
He’s sitting at his desk, his laptop open but being ignored as he stares into space.
There’s a glass of rich amber liquid in his hand, and a half empty bottle of Scotch in front of him.
“Alejandro. Are you okay?” I ask quietly as I slip inside the room and close the door behind me.
My voice seems to snap him from his trance, and he blinks up at me.
He looks completely exhausted, bone-deep tired in a way I’ve never seen him before.
He still hasn’t found his father’s attacker, and while Mateo gets stronger and healthier every day, Alejandro seems to be deteriorating.
The guilt and responsibility weigh so heavily on him.
It’s as though he’s so wiped out he can’t string a sentence together.
I step towards his desk. “Why don’t you come to bed and try to get some sleep?” I suggest.
“Sleep?” he snorts before knocking back the remaining whiskey in his glass. “And just how the hell am I supposed to sleep, Alana, with everything that I have to deal with?”
“Okay. Just rest then. Come lie with me. We don’t even have to talk. You can’t carry on like this Alejandro. You’ll make yourself ill.”
He laughs bitterly. “And you think anyone cares about that? Do you think my enemies give a shit if I don’t sleep, don’t eat, don’t rest? Because they don’t sleep, princesa, and that means neither do I. You have no idea the pressure I’m under…The responsibility to protect everyone!”
I gulp back a flare of anger. He’s right, I don’t know everything, and that’s because he hasn’t shared it with me.
We had a conversation about this, but he’s now retreated so far into it that I’m a bit part player standing at the sidelines.
Perhaps that’s a conversation we need to have again, but not right now.
Now, he needs me to love him and care for him. I just hope he lets me.
“You don’t have to protect everyone,” I say softly. “That’s not all on you.”
He looks at me like I’ve grown two heads. “What?” he growls. “Of course it is! I’m now the head of the Montoya family, which by definition means it’s all on me. Did you forget what happened while I wasn’t here, Alana? While I was in New York chasing you around?”
I shake my head. Of course not, and I still feel guilty.
“Well, in case you need a reminder, my father was almost killed. Now, I have you running around LA and refusing to stay in the house, my father’s would-be murderer still at large, and even a pregnant teenage girl to worry about.
What else am I supposed to do, Alana, but work twenty-four hours a day to try and keep a handle on it all? Sleep? No!”
“Let me help then, Alejandro. Tell me what I can do to make this better for you.”
“Help?” he scoffs. “How can you help when you are part of the problem?” he slurs his words slightly. He’s actually drunk. I don’t think I’ve ever seen him drunk before. He enjoys his whiskey and a wine or a beer, sure, but he’s not a heavy drinker. He doesn’t like feeling out of control.
Now, though? He is definitely drunk.
“I’m starting to think my father was right all along, that this might have all been a stupid mistake,” he says bitterly. “Love is far too much trouble for a man like me. It makes me vulnerable. Weak!” He spits out the last word in disgust.
I know he’s upset and he’s had too much whiskey. But that still hurts. The way he looks at me hurts. Is that all he sees now, when his eyes roam my body? A burden, a responsibility? Yet another thing on his to-do list?
“Are you saying you regret marrying me?” I ask, feeling the sob catch in my throat. I probably shouldn’t have said that. As my grandma used to say, never ask a question if you don’t want the answer.
I wait for him to reassure me. To snap out of his funk and realize what he is saying.
He doesn’t reply. He stares at me instead, unblinking, his face devoid of emotion.
Like a machine, not a man. My sadness starts to turn to anger.
I’ve done everything I can to make this work.
I’ve ignored my own needs, and I’ve tried to fit into his world.
Now he sits there and looks at me like that? Like I’m nothing to him but a mistake?
He might have been drinking, but sometimes, I know, people are at their most honest when they’re under the influence. They lose their inhibitions and say the things they really mean.
“If either of us has regrets, don’t you think that should be me?
” I snap, unable to contain my emotion. “I was the one ripped from everything I’d ever known.
I’ve done everything I can to make a life and a home here.
I’ve done everything I can to make a life with you.
My whole world has changed. I can’t even leave the goddamn house without an armed escort.
I never see you, and I spend my days feeling like a spare part nobody needs. And you’re the one with regrets?”
He stands up so fast that I flinch. He pushes his chair back before striding right past me, angrily throwing the door open.
“Where are you going?” I ask, horrified.
“To the hotel,” he barks. He doesn’t linger even a second. Just turns his back on me and leaves.
I watch him walk away, then sit down on the chair. It’s still warm. I reach out, touch his glass. That’s all I have left of him. Now he’s angry, furious in fact, and going back to the hotel. The place where he took all of his other women before me.
The thought that he might seek comfort in the arms of one of those women tonight forces itself into my brain. No, I tell myself. He wouldn’t do that to me.
Still, I feel terrible. He is angry and drunk, yes.
But maybe it’s more than that? Maybe he really does regret marrying me?
Maybe our honeymoon period is officially over?
It certainly feels like it is. Have I been a complete fool to think that I could hold the attention of a man like Alejandro before some other woman catches his eye again?
An easier woman, one he doesn’t love or need to protect.
Because like he said, love makes us weak.
And there are few things my husband hates more than feeling weak.
I shut down his office, distract myself clearing the glass and putting away the whiskey. I’m tempted to pick up where he left off, but having a hangover in the morning won’t help.
I wander back to bed and lie awake in the dark.
My stomach churns. All I want is for him to climb into bed beside me and wrap me in his arms. I don’t know why I said that, about being ripped from my old life.
My old life was nothing compared to the one I have with him.
Despite everything that’s happened, despite his cruel mood, the only place I have ever felt myself is with him. He is my home.