Page 9 of No Darker Temptation

Karina steps out of the dressing room, footsteps hesitant, as she comes up beside her mother. “Maybe we should get going.”

“Tia, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it that way. I’m just…hurt.” It’s the first time I’ve admitted as much allowed and the confession takes something from me the moment it leaves my lips. Whatever control I may have had over my emotions before dissipates the moment I blink and feel the wetness along my lashes. “When Kay gets married everything is going to be different. Don’t you think I know that already? Everyone around me is growing up and moving on and I just feel…stuck. I feel alone. Neither of you can understand that because you have your own families and partners. I don’t have anyone.

“Being over there was a fantasy. A summer vacation that lasted longer that it should’ve. You have no idea how much it hurt to come back to reality. To be reminded of what life was like before I met him,” I say. “But I had goals. Dreams. Ambitions. And I’m sorry if this hurts your feelings but I am not going to let myself be sidetracked by a man like you and Mom were. Neither of your marriages were functional and if my mother was still alive, she’d probably still be fighting with my father all the time. And I don’t expect you to understand me but I do expect you to have enough compassion and self-awareness to not make me feel worse.”

Tia Paula hesitates on the balls of her feet before eventually meeting me on the couch, where she delicately folds herself into the corner seat. Reaching out, she rests a hand on my shoulder. “Sé que…a veces puedo ser un poco dura contigo. But it’s only because I love you. And I’m trying to do for you what I know your mother would have if she was still here.”

“But that’s the point, Tia. She’s not here!” I tell her. “Because she cared more about my father than she did about me. Her obsession with him superseded everything else. Like being a mother.”

“That isn’t fair. You know your mother, she was…there were other things wrong. Things she never got help for.”

“All the more reason she should’ve left my father. Being with him made her worse. He was like a walking trigger for her.” Before I can drag my hand across my wet face and ruin my makeup, Karina sits cross-legged on the floor in front of us and extends a tissue. I take it. The second she smiles up at me and squeezes my knee, I break down completely.

All the tears I’ve denied myself the pleasure of releasing the last few weeks, rush out of me without restraint. I’m assaulted by the fiery ache at the back of my throat and the tightening of my lungs. Tia Paula wraps her arms around me and Karina rests her head on my lap, squeezing my legs tightly.

“I fell in love with him,” I cry quietly into the now soaked tissues sticking to the palms of my hands. “I didn’t mean to but I did. And now I’m afraid.”

“Afraid of what?” Tia whispers.

“Of how my life will change now that he’s a part of it. I don’t know what to do.”

“Is that why you left?” Karina asks gently. “Because you were afraid?”

It takes a while for me to find the right answer—one that doesn’t include kidnapping and murder. “Do you remember that afternoon we were on the phone and Alejandro came into the room? You were helping me pick out an outfit for dinner.”

Karina nods.

“He must’ve overheard more than I thought he did because he pulled me aside afterward and we talked for a long time.” I sniffle and crumple up the tissue she gave me as Tia Paula pushes back the hair from my face. “He told me I needed to go home. I didn’t understand at first—I told him I wanted to stay with him but he said I couldn’t. He said he needed me to be sure.”

“Sure of what?” my aunt asks.

“Of him. His life,” I muse aloud. “The family business is in Barcelona and so are his brother and sister. He can’t leave, even if he wanted to, and so the one who’d have to do the rearranging would be me. I get why he did it,” I amend quickly. “But that doesn’t mean it hurts any less.”

“So did you guys break up? Are you trying long distance?” Karina asks.

“I don’t know. I don’t know what we are. He told me I had to stay until after your wedding,” I tell her. “And if after your wedding, I still wanted to be with him, he would come get me.”

“Come get you?” Tia Paula raises a brow. “Sounds like a prince in a fairytale. Will he ride into the reception on a white horse too?”

Despite myself, I laugh and so does Karina.

“Why after the wedding, hm?” my aunt inquires. “That seems like an odd ultimatum.”

“He didn’t want me to miss anything with Karina. Maybe it was his way of alleviating some of the pressure? That way I didn’t have to choose between either of them. The door is open for whenever I choose to walk through it.”

Say I do decide to go back to Spain. I’d be uprooting my entire life and it may not be much but it’s still mine. My little apartment with its mixed-matched treasures, my job, my education. The future I very carefully and meticulously planned is slipping through my grasp faster than I can grab it by the tail and bring it back. And with terrifying, astounding clarity I realize maybe I don’t want this anymore. Maybe that little apartment and the part-time job and the graduate program I’d placed all my bets on are no longer part of the future I thought I’d always have.

But do I want to move to Spain? It feels dangerous to me, too akin to the unhealthy dependency my mother had on my father. He was the provider and the one who kept the family afloat, regardless of whether he and my mother were going through one of their breakups. That financial dependency coupled with her obsession with him fed into the volatility between them. In Spain, I wouldn’t have anything that’s mine. I can’t speak the language so I wouldn’t be able to get a job right away, which means I’d probably have to live with Alejandro. And that’s if he even wants me to. Not to mention the language barrier also gets in the way of enrolling in a different graduate program so I can forget about applying to a school there and then I’ll be just like my mother, trapped, financially dependent, in love, jealous, obsessed, sick⁠—

My phone pings, cutting through my train of thought. I reach into my pocket and check the notification.

Alejandro: It’s been busy today but I’m so proud of you—couldn’t forget to tell you that.

Karina takes the phone from me and I let her. Both she and my aunt read the text a thousand times before looking at me. “Well…at least he seems very much in love with you.”

It’s more than just love. There’s also his lifestyle to consider. It’s dangerous, violent, and criminal. But I say none of those things.

Instead, we all sit together for a long time and when Karina squeezes my hand, I squeeze back.