Page 33 of No Merciful Corruption

“Oh, but you certainly don’t have a problem with my knowing.” He parries back.

“I kept my business in New York so private you didn’t even know I was dating your friend of over a decade until you came over here and saw him for yourself.” I snap. “That one’s on you! And as for whatever girlfriends you’ve had⁠—”

“There are none.”

“Hook-ups, flirtations, whatever! I’m liable to kill someone so don’t⁠—”

“There were none, Dahlia. None.”

The room falls quiet.

“Wh—” I stumble over my own tongue. “I⁠—”

“Yes, we were…” he struggles to get the next part out. “We were broken up. I know that. But I couldn’t. I’m not angry you did—I never was—I just couldn’t.”

“Oh, well…that’s great.” I throw my arms up in defeat. “Now I just feel like a slut.”

He huffs and rolls his eyes. “Dahlia⁠—”

“Why didn’t you say anything?”

“Because I thought they were meaningless!” He explodes. “I thought you were angry and getting it out of your system. A mí qué carajo me importa con quién te metías, cuando yo sé perfectamente bien que a quien amas es a mí.” He stops abruptly to take in a sharp breath. “Or at least I thought it was me! I’m not exactly sure at the moment.”

“Alex—”

“And fine! Maybe I was arrogant. Maybe I made the mistake of thinking your heart belonged to me and that so long as it did, it wouldn’t matter what you were doing here. Because deep down, you’d still be mine.”

He drags his fingers through his hair and turns but there is nowhere to go. The way he disintegrates in front of me is unprecedented. His shoulders slump and his expression deflates. His eyes darken to a dull and lackluster shade I’ve never seen before—neither hazel nor brown. It makes my insides curdle and my throat tighten.

“Did Rian give it to you?” he asks after a long while.

My voice grows quiet. “It’s just a bracelet, Alex.”

It’s not just about the bracelet though.

What he’s trying to ask is if there’s something more.

SECOND CHANCE

Dahlia

“You didn’t answer me before.” His fists clench at his sides. “Do you love him?”

My legs move of their own volition and rush to close the distance between us, one foot tripping over the other.

“No. No, Alejandro⁠—”

“You said before you couldn’t accept how I betrayed you. Well I couldn’t accept that you had gone. I couldn’t accept that you had left me or that you were in New York actually building a new life for yourself without me in it and I was angry and envious and prideful because I thought you’d be—or at least I wanted you, I needed you to be as devastated as I was and I resented you for it so I held on as tightly as I could and in the end maybe I made it so much worse⁠—”

I fist my hands in his shirt and pull him forward. Lifting to the tips of my toes I press my lips against his and at the first tug of hesitation, I wrap an around his neck and refuse to let him pull away. I hold on, closely and tightly, until he finally surrenders to me with a tremor and a sigh of relief. His arms come around me and his hands press against the small of my back and the length of my spine as he joins us together. When the kiss turns salty with tears I can’t tell if they’re mine or his.

“I’m not in love with him.” I pull away only long enough to utter the words in bursts of desperation. “I love you, I’ve been in love with you all this time, I never stopped⁠—”

He glides his hand up the length of my spine where it settles at the nape of my neck and he tilts my head back to silence me with a kiss and I let him.

In the depths of the darkest, coldest winter of my life, summer blooms inside me at his touch. His arms around me feel like May in Barcelona, his scent like daylight and lemon trees on a roof top garden, all of it familiar, all of it home. It isn’t that being kissed by him makes me forget what we’ve gone through or decide they don’t matter. I’m reminded of why it does.

I decide in this very moment that I’m going to leave it all behind me. If he wants to—if he agrees—we can leave the last three years dead and buried. Take whatever good it gave us and return the rest to the dirt so that something more splendid and beautiful can grow in its place, like fertilizer for the earth.