2. Chapter 2
Mariana
Dom stands in front of me. Chuckling. Tall, slightly bigger at the shoulders and torso than he was in college.
Narrow hips. Dressed in clothes he wouldn't have worn back then— a soft-looking suede jacket over a black shirt, black trousers, and black shoes.
Expensive, from the looks of it. A far cry from the trainers and hoodies he preferred when I knew him well, or the soft, worn shirts I stole from him and then had to get rid of.
His hair is shaved, though it has some length to it. His beard is trimmed close to his jaw.
Good Lord, as mouth-wateringly handsome as he was years ago.
I don't get to enjoy it. Not even for the sake of nostalgia.
My heart is jammed in my throat, and my hands have gone cold.
When Cora found me this job, having to see Dom again was the only reason I ever doubted moving here for a year.
With him finally in front of me, I'm staring but I can't drag my eyes away.
An old, bitter irritation coats my mouth. I welcome it. Anger is the only emotion capable of keeping my anxiety at bay, and I really, really don't want to deal with my apprehensions, when simply sharing space with Dom seems to fill my heart with memories. I cannot look their way.
Good thing I've practiced this meeting a hundred times in my head.
"Okay. Wow," he says. "What the hell is that?"
He gives me a friendly smile. It may be the echo of whatever made him laugh, or at least that's what I hope it is. It looks just like he did when we met— a bright, confident grin designed to pierce through my defenses. If that's the case… yeah. Unbelievable.
We messed up too badly to pretend we're good.
"What are you doing here?" I ask.
"Cora invited me. Now you. How does one acquire one of those?"
I glance at it. My sister gifted me this cockboard in honor of my divorce— a reminder of my promise to sleep around some now that I'm single. She joked I could use it during the party to make a declaration of my singlehood, and turn the gathering into a welcome and divorce celebration.
Be proud of your choice to go on a dick tour, sis, she said.
I frown. "Never mind that."
I go down on my haunches and put it away in the cupboard behind me.
There's no world where I'd display a cockboard in front of people I don't know well, working peers or not.
I am here to develop a backbone, and to prove that I have a plan and I can make it happen.
Even if it's years later than I thought.
And that may include rediscovering who I am, when I let the masks I've hidden behind fall off.
But I haven't shaken off all of my parents' careful training, and I can't be so crude as to present company with literal wood.
I shake my head and cross my arms at Dom. "I didn't think you'd come. I've been in and out of the team's building for weeks. You've been avoiding me."
"You've been avoiding me." His smile softens. Not in a tender way, but because it's lost power.
"Why would I avoid you?"
Surprise takes away his smile altogether.
His nostrils flare. "You hung up on me last time we talked. It wasn't a great conversation, if you remember?"
His tone is cold. A little sarcastic.
I grind my teeth. "I remember well. Maybe better than you do. You were drunk."
"I wasn't drunk," he says through stiff lips.
"You had been drinking! You said so."
"I. Wasn't. Drunk. I had only a couple of drinks that night."
"You still shouldn't have called."
"Yeah, well. I'm sure there are things you regret about what happened between us, too."
My breathing quickens. That old anger and hurt tint everything in red.
I let it coat my skin. I cherish the way it cloaks any nerves I might have had.
This is not going how I imagined it— an acerbic conversation that proved hate isn't the opposite of love, but disinterest is.
Instead, it's vinegar being poured down my throat.
"Things that I regret?" I manage. "You called me a year after we broke up to ask me to call off my engagement."
His jaw clenches. "You got engaged before I could do anything about it!
Can you imagine what it was like getting signed and getting swept up in moving and bringing my mom and mi abuela with me and, in the middle of all that chaos, finding the time to look you up— just in case there was a chance— thinking I could finally fight for us— only to find you were going to marry some fucking British royal? !"
I fist my hands at my side, until my nails dig into my palm. I'm breathing as if I were sprinting, and my heart beats like it believes we are.
Dom and I were so young. So in love. So different, and destined to break up.
I learned early in life that nothing lasts forever, except the people that raised you.
Moving from city to city every two to three years, with no constant other than parents who loved me and demanded excellence from me in equal measure.
Standards as high as the Andes mountains, and expectations as sharp as the tallest peaks.
I wanted to go to England to run the family's foundation once I got my degree.
I promised I would. Falling in love with Dom and changing my plans was simply not in the cards, never mind what ending that relationship did to my heart.
The fact I met a handsome guy a few months after landing in London and things escalated quickly afterwards…
to the point I eventually agreed to marry him and leave my dream job for promises that didn't deliver…
well, those are all decisions I own. I get to judge them.
It's on me to fix all these mistakes and reclaim the future I want.
What Dom thinks about all of that can't add to my remorse list.
I stomp toward him. "How dare you? You want me to think about what it did to you?
What about what your call did to me? We knew we'd break up after I graduated.
I believed you when you said being together could be the love story of our lives, even when we knew it had to end after a few months.
Something to remember with tenderness forever, you said.
Or did you not mean that? Did you tell me that only so I would agree to date you? "
We're alone in the kitchen, surrounded in monochromatic white, to the point everything disappears but Dom. We're in an empty box bathed in cold, harsh light. Nothing but him and his angry eyes, and the fight burning in my chest.
Underneath, something raw lives. Vulnerability and a neverending unease in dire need of protection.
I wall up.
"What a fever dream of a romance," I say.
"Intense like the sun, burned out just as fast. We fell so hard but, hey, we were so mature.
We ended on such good terms. I told myself we had to be proud of each other, for what we had, what we did— I tried so hard to protect those ten months together in my mind.
In my heart. A little shrine to the love we had.
But no. You didn't say a thing when I cried and told you I had a plane ticket.
'We knew this would happen,' you said. Then went and changed your mind a year later? Is that why you called me?"
At first I couldn't believe it. I was half-asleep at eight in the morning, after yet another social function the night before.
It wasn't every day that a handsome young man with a very distant claim to the throne got engaged to a New World heiress, after all.
I thought I was seeing things, when I grabbed my vibrating phone to see Dom's name on the screen.
The first thing he said— don't marry him. I still love you.
Followed by a few teary questions on my part, and growing desperation on his. Before I hung up with a broken heart and cried for an hour. Until my mom came into my room, worried I hadn't gotten up yet, and hugged me while I told her everything.
It wrecked me. For three days, I didn't get out of my bed.
My mom found a million ways to push me to be rational.
To remind me that Dom and I were not together long enough to know the kind of commitment it takes to be in a relationship long-term.
That a successful marriage is about a common goal and compromise and, if Dom and I had broken up already— technically more than a year earlier, mind you— then we had already decided we didn't want that kind of future together.
But Henry and I— we had goals together. We were committed to each other. We were making both our families so happy, and would do wonderful things together. Hell, with his family, I could even go political and change things at the systemic level after a few years.
I believed her. She had the experience to back it up, married to my dad for so long already, pursuing plans they promised each other from the start. So I blocked Dom's number, and followed the map laid out in front of me.
Only it didn't work, and I failed at that too.
Now I'm the weakest link in my family, not knowing where I fit, but determined to find my way once and for all.
The walls around my faults grow twice as thick. I need to keep frailty at bay.
"Are you not ashamed?" I ask the man standing in front of me, all this time later.
"Ashamed?" He moves closer to me, anger pulsing all around him, even as he holds himself still. "Why should I be ashamed of telling you how long I hoped we'd find our way back to each other?"
"You knew what it would do to me."