by Marian Tee
Tears stung her eyes, and she asked again, “Tell me why you’re here now.” So you can leave and I can stop hoping for what you can never give me.
He took a deep breath, telling himself she was right to demand a straightforward explanation, and wasn’t that what he had come here to do?
“I came here to apologize,” he heard himself say tonelessly. “I never imagined I could hurt you the way I had, and if I could do it all over again, I wouldn’t.” She had been shaking her head the moment he started talking, and he said in a fierce undertone, “I mean it, Vivi. I never want to hurt you again.”
She smiled sadly. “Because you can’t handle the guilt?”
He didn’t return her smile, but all sorts of emotions swirled in his gaze as he said, “No.” Holding her eyes captive, he said flatly, “I never want to hurt you again because I love you.”
Vivian paled.
“I knew it the moment you left---”
Vivian started to shake her head. “Stop.”
But he still continued in a hoarse voice, “And I know I will always love---”
She placed her hands over her ears. “Stop!” Tears started to run down her cheeks, and she knew it was no longer possible to stop herself from crying, not with her heart aching so hard like it was about to crack open, the way her own voice cracked as she pleaded, “Just stop…okay?”
“I can’t. Because what I said is true. I will always love you.” Unable to stop himself, he took the seat next to her bed and inching it forward, he took hold of her hand. “Vivi, I love you…” Forcing himself to ignore the way she struggled, he brought her hand to his chest. “And I’m sorry for everything, Vivi. I’m sorry. If there’s one thing I can only make you believe, then it’s that I’m sorry and I would never want to hurt you again.”
She didn’t answer, only stared at him while her pain manifested itself in the tears that flowed endlessly down her cheeks.
“Let me make it up to you,” he said in a fierce undertone. “Give me a chance to make up for the hurt, let me love you---” She tried pulling her hand away again, but he held on to it more tightly, pressing it hard against his chest so she could feel the way his own heart was racing for her.
“You were right, you know,” he said hoarsely. “I was a coward. A liar. I did ask you out that day to celebrate three months of being married to you, but then Rafe told me that he believed I was in love with you, and for that one moment I let my fear of the past repeating itself get the better of me. So I hurt you to protect myself---” He swallowed. “And it was the biggest mistake I’ve ever done.”
Bringing her fingers to his lips, he kissed them, whispering, “Please come back.” Seeing her shaking her head drowned his entire world in despair, but he couldn’t let himself give up, saying doggedly, “Please.”
“Luca, let go,” she whispered.
But he didn’t seem to hear her. “Vivi, Please.”
Her lips trembled. “Don’t beg, Luca. Don’t do this.”
He moved out of the chair and dropped to his knees in front of her.
Oh God.
“Luca, don’t---”
“I no longer know how to exist without you loving me, Vivi. I am nothing without you. So please---” His own voice broke. “Come back. Take me back. Please---”
She covered her face, unable to bear the sight of Luca kneeling and humbling himself for her. “I’m sorry, but I can’t,” she choked out. “Because now y-you’re not the only coward in this room. It hurt too much when you told me you found someone m-more appropriate---”
A sob escaped her, and he turned ashen at the sound. “I’m sorry,” he said hollowly, but even he knew it could never be enough.
Her hands fell slowly from her face. “I’m sorry, too,” she whispered tremulously. “But I can’t ever survive that kind of pain again, Luca. Even now, it hurts, and I’ve tried everything---” A lump formed in her throat as the memories burned painfully in her mind. “Everything, Luca, I tried everything to forget you, but I can’t. Every night, I lie awake in terror, not wanting to sleep because I know I’ll probably d-dream of you again, and it’s t-the s-same scene over and over.”
The devastation in her eyes as she spoke crippled him, and self-loathing filled Luca’s heart as he finally realized just how much he had hurt her.
“If I leave you now, if you really never see me again,” he heard himself ask, “will it honestly make you happy?”
She didn’t answer him, only stared at Luca with eyes that were almost empty of everything but defeat.
“Will it, Vivi?”
She whispered, “No. But I can live without being happy. It’s all I knew before. What I can’t ever face is the chance that I’ll be hurt again.” She forced a smile. “So it’s okay. It’s enough.”
But Luca knew it was not okay. It was not enough. She deserved to be happy, but he had taken that chance away from her. And now it was up to him to make things right.
Luca slowly came to his feet. “I have a proposition for you.”
Her entire body jerked at his words.
“If you truly want me to stop bothering you, then I need you to agree to something.” Taking a deep breath, he said, “I want you to come back to live in our house.”
She shook her head. “I don’t understand.”
“I want you to live there until you’re…okay again---”
“Luca, I don’t think it’s possible---”
He cut her off again, saying, “You don’t have to worry. I’ll be moving out, and it will just be you and Eula.”
She paled. “What are you saying?”
The eyes that met hers were devoid of emotion, and so was Luca’s tone when he said, “You deserve to know happiness again, Vivi. I know I can no longer give you that, but my daughter can. Because you miss her, do you not? You love her, and you know she loves you like you are her own mother.”
She could barely wrap her head around what he was suggesting, knowing how much his daughter meant to him. “Why are you doing this?” she asked brokenly. “Eula’s everything to you---”
“She is. I love her with everything in me---” His gaze met hers. “And it is the same way that I love you.”
Ah.
Breathing deeply, he said in a tightly controlled voice, “If you agree to that, I’ll have papers drawn up and you will never see me again.” Shoving his hands deep into his pockets to control the urge to reach for her one last time, he continued, “And you must not worry about how this will affect my relationship with my daughter.” His lips twisting, he said, “Rest assured you are not the only clever one here. I would never have suggested this if I thought it could adversely impact my daughter in any way. But I know Eula, and Eula knows me. She will never think I abandoned her, and I will make sure that she understands this is not a permanent arrangement.”
She whispered shakily, “You don’t have to do this.”
He shook his head. “You’re wrong, Vivi.” His voice was painfully gentle. “I have to do this, and there is nothing else except this. I love you, always remember that even if you can never believe me. I love you, and I will do everything to make you happy again.”
They stared at each other.
And he wanted to beg her one last time, Take me back.
But he couldn’t.
He wouldn’t.
“That’s it, I suppose,” he said roughly. “I wish you a happy life, Vivi. You deserve nothing else.” And then he swung away before he made things awkward for her again by succumbing to the urge to grovel at her feet.
She watched him walk away, both her mind and heart too battered to make immediate sense of everything. Even now, a part of her couldn’t believe in him, couldn’t make herself risk getting hurt again by believing in his words.
But then she thought about what he was giving up---
Eula was everything to Luca, the one person that he would risk everything for, even to the point of hiring a wife that he believed Eula would need.
And
yet---
He was giving his daughter up for Vivian.
“Wait,” she whispered. A part of her expected him to punish her the same way she had ignored him calling out to her that last time. Even as she started to cry and hope and despair warred inside of her, she was half-expecting him to keep walking away from her, even just to teach her a lesson.
But he did none of those.
When he turned towards her, she couldn’t help crying harder, because he did so with such a lack of grace that it was just not like Luca Valencia at all. And when she heard him say hoarsely, “What is it, cara?” she could no longer stop crying.
But this time they were tears of joy.
Because looking at him, seeing the pain he had tried his best to hide from her so that she wouldn’t feel guilty---
It freed her.
To forgive.
To forget.
And to love him again.
Luca came to stand in front of her. “What is it, Vivi?” His own voice was rough with emotion.
She reached up for his face with both hands. “I love you.” He jerked, and she laughed and cried even as she drew his head down. “I love you s-so much.” And this time, she whispered it against his lips, just before his mouth suddenly pressed hard on hers and his arms wrapped around her body.
A powerful shudder racked his body as she kissed him back, and his arms tightened around her.
Pulling away, he stared into her eyes so that this time she would know that his words came without any strings attached and that everything he had to offer was hers.
“I love you, Vivi.”
She laughed and cried again, saying, “I love you, too, but it d-doesn’t mean I w-won’t punish you for the hell you put me through.”
He kissed the top of her head, murmuring hoarsely against her hair, “Anything you wish, cara.”
“Good,” she whispered against his chest. “Because I want the mushiest monthsary date ever, to make up for the last one.”
His shoulders rocked with silent laughter, but his voice was tight with emotion as he told her, “You have my word.”
Epilogue
Saturday. She could feel it in her bones. Today was going to be the most romantic day ever, since today was that day. When she opened her eyes, she fully expected to see a spectacular surprise awaiting her, like maybe rose petals thrown all over the room, or a love letter on the desk---
But there was none of that.
Their bedroom looked exactly the same, and there wasn’t a sign of any kind of surprise.
A thought occurred to her, and she immediately checked under her bed, but again she saw nothing. Ah, maybe he had hidden something in her closet.
Hurrying out of the bed, she padded barefoot towards the walk-in closet she shared with Luca and threw the doors open one by one. But again, everything looked exactly like it should.
Telling herself that maybe Luca had a bigger and more romantic surprise in store for her, she took a quick shower and then raced to the kitchen to prepare Eula’s lunchbox. There was still no sign of Luca anywhere in the house, which finally forced her to ask the housekeeper if she knew what time Luca had left.
“He was in his study when he received a call, Mrs. Valencia. It appeared quite urgent as he left soon after.”
When she took Eula to school for her special classes, Vivian noticed the way the other parents were glancing at her more curiously than usual. Maybe her name or Luca’s had found its way to the tabloids again, she thought. The last crazy rumor had him linked to a Hollywood starlet while another report made it seem like she was having an affair with a baseball athlete behind Luca’s back.
And that was just because someone had overheard her agreeing with Maggie about the same athlete being cute, she thought ruefully. The first time she had read the blind item about her, it had embarrassed her to no end.
“He’s eighteen,” she had exclaimed to her husband, utterly aghast that reporters could be so sleazy and link her to someone so much younger.
Lucas had drawled lazily, “How can I be sure that this is not true, Vivi?”
“Stop teasing me,” she protested.
“After all, you did say that he was cute.”
And that was when she had noticed the glint in his eyes and realized that her billionaire husband was actually jealous of a boy almost half his age and nowhere near as beautiful as he was.
Just remembering the memory made her giddy, and Vivian was tempted to pinch herself. Even now, she couldn’t believe that such the smallest things could make her husband feel jealous over her. It boggled her mind, really, how someone like Luca could even think she had any reason to stray.
She was still smiling when she reached the limousine, where she saw the chauffeur waiting for her. About to call out to him, she noticed him staring up at the billboard across the school with a look of wonder on his face and curiously glanced up as well.
Her jaw dropped.
A CCTV-produced photo of her and Luca at the photocopying room filled up every inch of the billboard, but then there was the caption below---
I fell in love with my wife when she was working as a cleaner and she simply thought of me as the guy who did some photocopying.
“Oh my God.” She didn’t know whether to laugh or cry, but then she saw more parents staring at her from the school. She hurried towards the limousine and practically dove inside it. When the chauffeur closed the door and got to his seat, she asked him quickly, “Do you know where Luca is?”
“At the office, Mrs. Valencia. Shall I take you there?”
“Yes, please.”
“Right away, ma’am.” As they turned around the corner, the driver cleared his throat. “You might or might not want to look at your left, ma’am.”
“Why?” But she was already turning her head to her left as she spoke---
Her jaw dropped again.
It was a second billboard, and this time it was of their wedding, with Luca still wearing his lipstick-drawn mustache.
The caption: I asked her to marry me, and when she said yes, we had our wedding two days later. She could have asked me for the moon and the stars, and I would have found a way to give it to her. But instead, she asked me if I could just look a little ‘uglier’ on our wedding day. Indeed, no one is like my wife, and for that I will always love her.
Downtown, a third digital billboard waited for her, and this time it was a short video of Eula practicing her reading skills with a bedtime story. It would have been cute, if only this wasn’t the night after she and Luca had gotten back together. Exhausted beyond belief after almost nearly twelve hours of lovemaking and barely little sleep, she had fallen asleep right after Eula began with, “Once upon a time,” and the video had then zoomed in for a close-up shot of her face as Vivian began to…snore.
The caption: In hindsight, I started to fall in love with her when my daughter accidentally spilled soup on her lap, but somehow my wife was able to turn things around by convincing my daughter that soup-spilling was proof of one’s destiny to become a princess.
It was probably the sweetest of all captions, but---
The video, which was playing on a loop, started again, and she watched herself fall asleep on the screen and begin to snore.
Her teeth gnashed.
Sweet caption or not, she was going to kill Luca for this.
When she finally made it to the office, it no longer surprised Vivian when everyone turned to look at her with knowing smirks, some even taking photos of her with their smartphones as if they wanted to share proof that they had seen the woman whose face was plastered on every available billboard in the city.
Maggie had texted her while she was in the car, and so far, her former roommate had told Vivian gleefully, she had been able to track down twenty different billboards.
By the time Vivian made it to the penthouse, she could no longer remember how it felt to have a face that was not on fire, and her cheeks burned anew when even Luca’s normally conservative exe
cutives were grinning at her.
Fuuuuudge. Next time, she would remember that Italians seemed to have a strange definition for the word ‘mushy.’ When she reached Luca’s office, she didn’t bother knocking on the door and simply barged in, saying hotly, “Luca Valencia, you have some explaining---mmph!”
The door closed behind her, and her back fell against it a moment later as Luca caged her in his arms while his mouth ravaged hers in a savagely sweet kiss.
“L-Luca!” But she couldn’t really remember what she was supposed to be mad about and instead found herself locking her arms around his neck and returning his kiss. His tongue pressed deeper in bold intent, and her knees buckled.
Chucking against her lips, he asked huskily, “Did you like my surprise?”
“N-no.” But she ended up whimpering her answer out as his mouth trailed down, and she arched her neck when he began to suck the soft skin.
“Why not, cara?” His mouth moved back up, and he whispered into her ear, “Was it not mushy enough for you?”
Vivian couldn’t answer, too busy shivering at the way his words caressed her ear. By the time she had recovered her voice, it was to have him spinning her around, and as she felt her breasts flatten against the door, she asked him breathlessly, “Where did you even get the idea to use all those billboards? Did you lose a bet to Rafe or something?”
“No, that was all mine,” he told her with amusement. “But Rafe did suggest I take you to a vacation island he and Ari had tried, and I did take him up on it. I’ve booked us for the weekend and as soon as Eula is out of school, we’ll be flying there. It will just be the three of us, no phones, no anything---”
This time, she couldn’t help spinning around to face him. “Really?”
A crooked smile appeared on his lips. “Don’t be too excited, I haven’t told you the best part yet.”
Her eyes shone. “Tell me, tell me.”
“I was thinking we could cook our meals together, because you always make this little sigh whenever you watch that show, Unplugged---” He stopped speaking as his wife threatened to choke the life out of him with her bear hug.
“I’m so happy, Luca,” she whispered. “So happy.”