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“What? Of course, he wants me to be happy.”
“And you are happy here?”
She pauses. “Yes, very happy. But…”
“So, we make him see that,” I tell her, feeling her shudder as I kiss the curve where her neck meets her shoulder. “We show him how happy you are here. And then he can’t object to allowing you to be happy.”
“It’s not that simple,” she says, a little whine creeping into her voice. It’s followed by a moan as I kiss her collarbone, bending down the fabric at the very neck of her dress to do so.
“It’s this simple,” I tell her. “I love you, Liliana.”
There’s a long pause, and I look up to see that her eyes are shining. Not with awkwardness or embarrassment but with intermingled happiness and sadness, like she’s overjoyed and grieving at the same time.
“I love you, too,” she says. “I can’t imagine going back. Starting again. Being without you.”
“So, don’t,” I say. My fingers peel down the front of her dress a little more as I bend my head to lightly kiss and nibble her sensitive skin. “And if it has to come to it, then I’ll return home with you to Philly. Until you can come back, I’ll stay with you.”
“You would do that?”
“Of course.” I free her breasts from her dress, earning a moan of surprise and also of pleasure. “I will always be by your side.”
“Nico,” she says, half-heartedly pushing at my shoulders as if to make me stop. But when I pause, fingers just moments away from encircling her nipples, she can only groan and then push her chest out and into my waiting hands.
I have her dress down around her waist and her panties on the ground when her phone rings, making her fly away from me and grab it.
“It’s him,” she whispers, with a horrified look, tugging her dress up over her chest as if he would be able to see her when she answers.
I give her a teasing look and run my finger lightly over the mound of hair between her legs, intending to make her squirm – but at the look on her face, my blood runs cold instead.
“Oh, you got an earlier flight,” she says out loud, into the phone. “That’s great. I’ll see you in twenty minutes.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
Liliana
The sheer panic that I felt when my father told me he’s already here is everything I need to know. I can’t do this. I feel like I was just given everything I could ever have wanted, and now it’s being taken away.
He came at the worst possible time. Not only have I not finished packing yet, but I’m not even at the hotel. Because we chose to stay over the border to save money, it's a fairly long drive to get back there. The distance itself is short, but we do have to go through customs checks, show our passports, and all of that. And if there is a line, like there is today, it can take some time to get through.
I'm drumming my hand on the side of the car door, nervously wishing that we could speed up. But it's no use. Dad said he would only be twenty minutes - and it's been twenty minutes already. He's going to be back at the hotel any moment now, and then he will realize that I'm not there.
And when I do show up, with all my stuff in the trunk and Nico at my side, it's going to be fairly obvious that I haven't been staying where I said I was.
Of course, I knew that we would have to tell him everything if there was ever going to be a chance for this relationship to continue. But I thought we might be able to do it in our own way, in our own time. Instead, right now we're going to begin the conversation by revealing that I've been lying to him. That doesn't feel like the best way of going about things. My nerves are at a fever pitch, and I don't think I can take waiting any longer.
“We’re nearly there,” Nico says. I think he senses my anxiety. He reaches over and squeezes my hand, even while he keeps his eyes on the road.
I start as I feel a buzzing in my other hand – from my phone. It’s dad. He’s calling me. I feel my stomach rolling, and I don’t want to answer. But what else can I do? Feeling absolutely sick, I press answer and put the phone to my ear.
“Where are you? I’ve just arrived at the hotel, and you’re not here.”
“I’m on my way,” I tell him. “I was – I was in Monaco, so I’m just driving back.”
“Where are all of your things?”
I wince, closing my eyes. “I’ll explain when we get there, Dad, alright?”
