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EDIER
A good mancarves his heart out for love and monuments get resurrected in his honor. Poets write sonnets, and that hollow space is filled with idolization and respect.
A bad man does the same and he gets the silent treatment, from Manhattan all the way to Teterboro Airport, New Jersey. There are no monuments for me, just a hole in my chest the size of Texas.
Her AirPods have been jammed in her ears the whole way to negate the misfortune of ever hearing my voice again. Her arms are full of Dog now, not me, and I know I’ll be losing both of them today.
She hates me. I get that. I’ve taken her life and everything she’s fought so hard to build for herself and thrown it away. She thinks I’ve betrayed her, but I can’t lose her.I can’t fucking lose her.
I’d rather have her hate with a pulse, than her love with just a memory.
Santiago’s private jet is waiting for us on the asphalt, glinting white in the rising sun, with that familiar gold scorpion motif stinging the aircraft’s tail. He came as soon as I told him about her declining health. The rest isn’t important. That’s for me to handle, not him. Right now, she needs her family around her while she gets her lupus under control.
After that, I’ll be coming back to claim her.
She doesn’t have a choice. Even if it takes me ten days or ten years, I’ll be turning that hate back into love. Then, she’ll wear my ring and have my children. It’s been our fate from the beginning, and no goddamn curse orbrujeríais ever going to derail that.
I stop the Ferrari twenty meters out from the jet. We sit there for a moment, listening to the whirr of the engine’s cooling fan. We’re back in the ocean again, right before I kissed her, only this time the sharks are circling.
Ripping her AirPods from her ears, she goes to open the door.
“Stop.”
She freezes. “I have nothing left to say to you, Edier. Go be with your ghosts. You need them more than you need me.”
She’s already halfway to the jet, trailing Dog, by the time I catch up with her. Hissing out a curse, I spin her around, the words I’ve kept prisoner inside me for so long finally rebelling. “I said fucking ‘stop’!”
“Get off me!”
“Never,” I snarl. “Not until you hear this.” I grab her chin to stop her turning her head away. “I have loved you for more than half my life, Ella Santiago. I have loved you from the moment you sat down on that beach next to me when I was eleven years old. I have loved your light, your passion, your talent. You own it all,Mi Cielo. Most of all, you own me.”
Her eyes widen, but I’m not done yet. Not even close.
“You see me, the same way you saw me back when we were kids. It’s as if you knew I was drowning, as if you knew I was a damaged, messed-up boy who walked around with a razor blade in my back pocket waiting for the chance to end it… But you changed that. You changed my life. You burned so fucking bright you made me forget my own pain, and all I’ve ever tried to do from then on is protect you.”
She’s crying now, her tears streaking her cheeks and onto my fingers. I can feel the black eyes of her father slithering over me as he descends from the jet.
“Grayson, get your fucking hands off her.”
“Stay out of this,” I snap back, not even looking at him.Let him see me bleed all over this asphalt for his daughter.If this is the last chance I have with her, I’m not leaving until I’m done.
“You made me want to live when I was trying hard to die, Ella.” I let my confession settle with her for a moment. “They say love is blind but it found us in the darkness. They say love hurts but if it’s done right, it’s fucking agony.” I move in closer just to feel her heartbeat against mine. “Don’t think that this was an easy decision for me. Don’t think I didn’t sit there on the floor while you slept in my bed searching for any other way but this. I knew the price I’d have to pay to keep you safe, but the other price wasn’t an option.”
“We could have figured—”
“No,” I say roughly. “My past is coming for me, and it’s not taking hostages. I made a promise a long time ago. I thought it was dead, but it got resurrected. Now, I need to burn it, and finish it.”
“Your other ghosts,” she guesses.
“The biggest ghost of all.” I pull back to look at her one last time, committing every perfect inch of her face to memory. “You need to go… Your father’s waiting.”
I nod at Santiago who’s hovering close-by, stony-faced, looking like murder would be the kindest thing he could do to me right now. Then, I turn, and I walk away, fighting a path through an invisible snowstorm. Every footstep feels unnatural. My chest is about to explode.
“Edier, wait!”
She’s coming after me. A meter out, she’s dumping her bag on the ground, and then my arms and mouth are full of her. I’m lifting her up in the air and she’s wrapping her legs around my waist and that beautiful sanctuary of hers is snaking around my neck. I breathe her in, and I never want to exhale again.
“I love you too, and I hate you. I hate that you won’t let me be there for you,” she gasps out. “But don’t think for one minute I’m getting on that jet without you swearing forever to me, Edier Grayson. Swear it!”
