CHAPTER 41 #2
Lidia trembles visibly, and I can see how she’s fighting not to completely break down.
“Then why did you lie to me?” she whispers, her voice breaking. “Why did you let me trust you? Why did you make love to me and make me believe we were okay? Why did you hide from me that you had a partner!?”
The question cuts right through me, mercilessly. There’s no possible defense, and I know it.
“Because I was a coward again,” I confess, and the tear I’ve been holding back for a while finally rolls down my cheek.
“When I saw you… everything I’d been burying for years exploded all at once.
Everything. Your eyes, your voice, the way you looked at me…
it took just one night for me to realize that I’d never stopped being yours, that my heart was still beating for you even though I tried to deny it. ”
She laughs. It’s a broken laugh, full of sadness.
“How nice of you to say that now, after everything you’ve done,” she murmurs ironically.
“I’m not trying to make it sound nice, Lidia,” I reply honestly. “I’m just telling you the truth.”
“The truth would have been to tell me that before you kissed me back,” she retorts, and her gaze hardens slightly.
“Yes.”
“The truth would have been not sleeping with me while someone was waiting for you in London.”
“Yes.”
“The truth would have been to choose me, to have told me the truth from the start, and to have spared me from getting hurt again.”
I look at her and feel that, even if I live a hundred years, this guilt won’t go away. It will stay there, like a scar that will remind me of the stupid mistake I made and what I lost.
“Yes,” I repeat, my voice heavy with regret. “You’re right about everything, Lidia. I have no excuses.”
She wipes her tears away angrily, as if she’s annoyed at crying in front of me.
“So, what do you want from me now?” she asks, and the question hangs between us like a precipice neither of us wants to look over completely. “Do you want me to forgive you and pretend nothing happened?”
There’s no room for rehearsed phrases or perfect speeches, only for the truth. That truth hidden in my heart.
“I want you to know that I love you,” I say, and my voice trembles a little.
“That there hasn’t been a single day since I lost you when I haven’t regretted with all my soul what happened.
That my relationship with Ingrid was real, yes, but she didn’t give me what you gave me, what you give me.
Because what I feel for you is unlike anything else.
It never has, and I doubt it ever will.”
I take another step toward her and am now close enough to see the moist glisten on her eyelashes, to smell that soft citrus scent that’s so uniquely hers.
“I don’t want to ask you to forget what happened tonight,” I clarify carefully.
“That wouldn’t be fair or honest. I don’t want you to forgive me just because I’m crying or because I say a few nice things to you under these golden lights.
You don’t deserve something so easy, Lidia.
You deserve the whole truth and as much time as you need to decide if it’s worth it. ”
Lidia lowers her gaze to the polished wooden floor. Her chest rises and falls rapidly, as if she’s struggling to breathe.
“So, what do you suggest?” she asks, almost without a voice, almost without strength.
I force myself not to touch her, even though I’m dying to hold her and erase all the pain with my hands.
“I want you to give me the chance to prove to you that this time I’m not going to run away,” I reply with all the conviction I can muster.
“That I’m going to return to Spain, to be by your side.
That I’m going to do things right, even if it costs me everything I have.
Even if it takes you months, years, to believe me again.
Even if you shut the door on me a thousand times and tell me you can’t handle it. ”
She slowly lifts her head, and for the first time since this conversation began, I don’t see only anger in her eyes. I see fear. The same fear I carry inside me.
“I don’t know if I have the strength to go through this again,” she confesses, completely broken. “I don’t know if I have the energy left to try again, Barbara.”
“I’m not asking you to decide today,” I say, and my voice cracks a little. “I’m just asking you not to completely shut the door on what you know exists between us. On that something that’s always been there, even when we were hurting each other.”
Lidia stares at me for a long time, in silence. Then she takes a step, just one. Close enough to stand right in front of me, so close that I feel her trembling breath against my mouth.
“You know what the worst part is?” she says, with fresh tears streaming down her cheeks. “That I still love you. And that makes me so angry…”
I close my eyes for a second because that confession hurts and, at the same time, acts like a balm on an open wound.
“It infuriates me too that I loved you so badly,” I whisper, my heart in my hand.
Lidia gently shakes her head, as if trying to break the spell that has always bound us together—that invisible thread that pulls us toward each other even when we’ve given up all hope.
“From now on, I don’t want you to kiss me, or touch me, or promise me things you can’t keep,” she asks in a low voice, and my heart stumbles inside my chest.
I nod slowly and look at her as if she were letting me breathe for the first time in hours.
“This time I’m not going to promise you anything,” I tell her tenderly. “I’m going to prove it to you with actions, day after day, even if it’s the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life.”
Lidia holds my gaze for a long moment, and even though she doesn’t smile, even though she’s still broken inside, even though nothing is fixed yet…
she doesn’t shut me out. She stays by my side, and for someone who’s been running from herself for years, discovering that the woman she loves is still capable of staying—even with her heart in pieces—feels too much like a miracle.
A miracle that makes me believe that maybe we can still find our way back to each other.