by Bade, Julia
Suddenly, her memory burst forward with images of Abril’s pudgy little arms wrapped around her legs.
“Hi my niña,” she whispered the words she used to tell her little girl. Her daughter became a beacon.
Soledad turned to leave. She made her way back through the mushy road. Her legs moved much faster on the departure. She forced them to. There was nothing left to hope for. But suddenly, when she exited on the opposite end, something caught her eye. In the distance, the form of a man grew visible. She stopped walking and focused on the apparition, her eyes squinting as though she was angry. For a brief second, a dart of fear shot through her, but without a second guess, she instinctively began to move rapidly to him. Her eyes widened when she saw that he also picked up his pace. As the man’s form became more and more familiar, she was soon running at a full sprint. He was also now running. The distance closed between them. Then, out of breath and in one unforgettable moment, without one second thought, she leaped into this man’s arms.
He wrapped his strong body around her. She fit into every groove of him like always before. For several moments they stood as still as perfect puzzle pieces.
Soledad didn’t need to look at his face to know who was holding her. She clung to him as though any minute she would be pried off and taken away again. He, the same. The sobs came freely between the both of them. The sound of his cry stirred a fire in her. Soledad fiercely clung to Xavier. Although she knew how inappropriate her actions were, she still being married, and he, happily married, she never wanted to let go of this man again.
“My Cholita.” His voice came to him now, tender, deeper than she remembered, and while thick with lament, it was calming. “It has been so long.”
She squealed inside as he spoke his chosen name for her. She didn’t understand how this happily married man would so easily revert back to the old habits that represented their love. “Yes, it has.”
Xavier peeled himself away from her. Holding her face in his hands, he used his thumbs to rub the tears off her face. “You haven’t changed at all,” he murmured, his voice husky.
She stared at the face of an angel. Her eyes locked with beautiful blueness. She felt she had aged so much over the last twenty years, but there, in that moment, she was eighteen again. His dark facial hair and chiseled chin gave him a sturdy look. “You are as striking as ever.”
As they stood there face-to-face, their boldness and free compliments shocked her. She didn’t understand it at all, but she didn’t want it to end.
Xavier took her hand, and she gasped as their fingers intertwined. She could only dream of these things. They had officially gone too far. If she were separated from Xavier again, after these few precious moments, she would surely die. She knew that for sure.
“Can you talk for a little bit?” Without waiting for her reply, he eagerly led her through the road and back to the bank of the river.
“I wasn’t sure how to go about contacting you,” he admitted. “I can’t believe you figured out that mess I tried encrypting to you.”
“Yes,” she said, and laughed. “I would have spent the entire day at the only financial bank I know, trying to figure out the south part.”
“How did you figure it out?” Still holding her hand, he began rubbing her palm with his thumb.
“It hit me like a bottle over the head.”
They both laughed. She memorized everything about these precious moments, his face, his eyes, his voice, their conversation, his laugh. If she did survive this separation, this would be all she had left to take with her through the next twenty years. She shuddered at the thought.
He sat down on the bank and pulled her down to him. There, she leaned into him, and he held her close.
“Is this okay?” He seemed unsure, his voice could not consume his worry.
“This is okay.” She stroked his hand to assure him, then urgently broke their silence. “There is so much to say, Xavier.”
“I know, my love.”
Again, he was killing her with his words.
“Abril,” she began, unsure of how to proceed.
“Cholita, I knew from the moment I saw her with you that day in your home.” His voice cracked once more. “Why didn’t you ever find me to tell me?”
“I didn’t know how. I was put in a prison. Once she was born, I needed to do everything I could as a mother to protect her. I did the only thing I could do.”
“You did right then, my love.”
Soledad began to cry again. Why was he tormenting her with such sweet words that didn’t rightfully belong to her?
Xavier squeezed her tighter. “She’s beautiful. Just like her mother.”
“Yes, she is beautiful.” Soledad could not regain her composure.
“Please, please don’t cry, my darling.” Xavier turned to face her, and brought her into his embrace. She freed her arms and clung to his neck. She had to steal one more opportunity to pull her through the next forever. She brashly reached up and left a lingering kiss on his cheek. She breathed in the scent of his skin.
That was all it took.
Chapter 26
At first she was stunned when he began pulling her away from him. When she was about to apologize, he urgently put his mouth on hers. Together, they were transformed back to two young lovers. Xavier held her face eagerly, pressing it into his. They kissed passionately, breathing each other in for several minutes, but it felt like an eternity. And even an eternity was not long enough.
After a few minutes, Xavier withdrew, sitting back on his hands.
“What’s wrong?” Her worst fear was realized. He did not want her anymore. The direction they were headed was wrong to him, unacceptable. Her mind darted frantically over the details, the kissing, the handholding, the touching. Where was it that she could have offended him, pushed him away?
He did not dance around his words. “I can’t control myself around you.” He turned away from her, as if repulsed.
Soledad blinked back tears, tears that now needed direction. Were they devastated tears mourning loss, or were they joyful tears of relief?
“Who do I think I am, charging in, luring you off to Mexico, and expecting to cheapen our reunion with fast-track sex on the dirt?” He reached for a handful from the ground and let it fall through his fingers. “It’s not at all how I’ve seen it over and over again in my dreams.”
He wanted her. And he dreamed of her the way she did of him.
“Our reunion was already cheapened. Emmanuel was there.” She reached out to rub his face, afraid to be rejected, but needing to try. “This is try number two.” She smiled when he placed a hand over hers. Searching those blue eyes, she brashly moved herself between his legs, and he sat, spooning her.
He pulled her hair back, then planted a wet kiss on her neck. Chills raced over her flesh at the feel of his breath.
“I’m so sorry, Cholita. I have dreamed of doing that for twenty years.”
“I wish you would do it for twenty more.”
“I’m afraid I can’t control myself.” He stared at the ground, laughing as if in disgust.
Soledad felt Xavier’s remorse, and denied herself the desire to touch him or comfort him.
“I’m so sorry about what happened with your husband, Soledad.”
She could hear that he truly meant it.
“I’m not. Not at all. I’m finally free.” The memories of her life with Emmanuel sucked her dry of any emotion, and she spoke softly, her back still to Xavier.
“Free?” As though he could see her shutting down. “Was it really that bad?”
“I was never his. Never. That’s what made it unbearable.”
He reached for Soledad’s hand.
“Did you make it to college?”
Soledad cringed at the hope
in his voice, and she didn’t, couldn’t answer him.
“You still can. I’ll help you.”
“Xavier, we have a bigger problem.”
Xavier understood her subject change. “Yes, Alex and Abril.”
“What are the chances she would meet and fall in love with her brother?”
“Her brother?” Xavier looked suddenly alarmed.
“Yes, Xavier, you said you knew Abril is your daughter.”
Relief spread across Xavier’s handsome features. “My love, I’m sorry. I can see why you would be confused, but Alex is definitely not Abril’s brother. But what he is may not be any better.” He paused, his eyebrows furrowed.
“What do you mean?” Why didn’t he just spit it out? Didn’t he understand how worried she’d been?
“Darling, Alex is my brother.”
She sat shocked. His words tauntingly danced circles before her.
“But, Señora Mendoza, is she not your wife?”
“That sweet woman is a casualty of my father’s irresponsibility.”
“Your stepmother?”
He shook his head. “I don’t exactly call her that. She was never married to my father.”
Come to think of it, Señora Mendoza had seemed slightly older than Xavier.
Soledad sat silently, taking everything in. She suppressed the eagerness to evaluate her new hopeful situation, that she was soon to be divorced, and her precious Xavier was not married. But she still needed to make the connection between Abril and Alex. How it was all possible?
As if he sensed the calculations going on in her mind, he said, “A short time after you were taken from me, my father met Ramona. You know he was very reckless with women. But this one stuck. She made a home for my father, and she took care of me. I believe she truly loved him. She was much too young for my father, but that didn’t seem to matter to her. My father, of course, would never marry her but at the same time, he couldn’t let her go. They lived together like that for a little while, but then my father died suddenly. A drunken accident.”
Soledad squeezed Xavier’s hand. “I’m so sorry, mi amor, so terribly sorry.” She remembered the handsome man who’d answered the door for her the day she and Xavier had had to say goodbye. And actually, he looked a lot like the man she was staring at today.
Xavier continued. “So my father was gone, and I had this woman who had nowhere to go, who was mourning for my father, living in our home. I could not put her out, especially not after she began showing signs that she was pregnant.”
His story was starting to come together.
“She was, after all, carrying my brother. I promised to look after her. She traveled everywhere with me as I pursued my career in oil. She is a big part of my success.”
It began to feel awkward to Soledad.
“You two never began to feel anything for each other?” The thought sort of sickened her.
“Certainly not, I swear. To this day, she grieves for my father. Believe me, she has had plenty of suitors come her way over the years, and I have never stood in her way. And she did always care for me like a son, even being only a few years older than me. I guess in a way she took me in like an older sister.”
“You were not attracted to her at all? Not even after two decades of living with her and raising a child with her?”
“There was only one woman who owned my heart.” He stared into her eyes. “Ask Ramona. She’ll tell you. She knows exactly who you are.” He seemed proud.
“She knows?” Soledad asked, shocked. Xavier had confided to her about them?
“Well, she knows about you through my stories, but she didn’t realize who you were the day you met her.” His thumb ran circles around Soledad’s outer hand.
“So how and why did you go about raising your brother and passing him off as your son, and her as your wife?” She hated asking the hard questions, but she had to.
“You yourself did the things you had to do as a mother to protect your child. I believe Ramona did the same. She gave up a lot for Alex. And as for the father part, I have never passed myself off as something I am not. But any boy is eager to have a father, and so even though Alex knows I am his brother, he has called me his father since he learned how to speak. And I’m okay with that. So not wanting to embarrass this poor woman, we agreed that I would begin introducing her as my wife.”
“I find it so hard to believe that you both could live that way for so long and not act on it,” she shamelessly persisted.
“Soledad, we were two people who belonged to someone else, and had one little boy connecting us. He is my brother, my father’s son, and I would have died for him if the need was called for.”
She exhaled the breath that had lodged itself in her throat. She now believed him. “And now you’re an oil tycoon.” She laughed.
“A darn good one. But everything I did, every improvement I made to my life, was not just for them, but in preparation of the day I would be with you again, and your father.” His voice rose. “And I would be able to prove myself and prove that I could take care of you. That I wasn’t just a feria boy, cleaning up after animals and traveling like a circus show.”
“I was in love with that feria boy,” she was quick to defend.
“Was?” His voice did not try to hide his disappointment.
“And I will forever be.” She turned, leaning over and quickly kissed him on the mouth. “But beneath these revelations, we still have a grand problem.”
He continued her thought. “Our daughter is in love with her uncle.”
Soledad blocked out that last part so she could linger on his words our daughter. This would mark the first time she would hear him say this.
“I can’t believe that beautiful girl is mine.” He spoke so proudly, almost as if reading her mind. His gaze drifted behind her, as if trying to captivate the memory of Abril. “I’ve missed so much.”
“I’m so sorry. I hope you can forgive me.” Soledad clasped his hand. “But I believe that everything works for the good. Had you known you had a daughter, you would not have taken on your stepmother and brother, and you may not have pursued your dream in the oil industry.”
“I suppose you’re right. I’m sure you are, because before all of that, I considered sneaking into El Paso and whisking you away. I had no plan, no career mapped out quite yet. I just needed to take you.”
“I’m so proud of you. You have lived such an amazing and productive life.”
“It was for you.”
The intensity was gaining on them, but she had to get back across the border.
“I need to get home.” She felt like a child with a curfew and regretted her words the second they escaped.
“I didn’t see your auto. Let me drive you. We can finish talking on the way.”
His words scared her. They were making their way toward goodbye. Goodbyes with Xavier weren’t acceptable anymore. “Xavier?”
“I feel the same way, my Cholita.” Again, it was like he was reading her thoughts.
He leaned in and smelled her hair, inhaling deeply. From there he moved to her cheek, then down to her neck. She shuddered, then curled her arms around his neck, encouraging him to go on.
“Are you sure, Cholita?” he asked.
At her nod, he led her to a horizontal position, his mouth never moving from hers. Flashes of their first time, the last time they’d be together for two decades, revealed themselves under closed eyes. Just as he was on top of her, she willingly opened her legs. He freely moved his hands up and down her thighs and legs.
“If you only knew how many times I dreamed of this, Xavier.” She could barely get a breath out, much less a sentence.
“Me, too, Cholita, me, too.”
She shifted in his arms, feeling heat rush into
her. When had she last felt this alive? Since the first, and last, time they’d made love? She moved against him, desperate to feel him inside her again.
“I love you. With my whole life.” Xavier lifted himself onto his knees and fumbled desperately to slide his zipper down. Soledad took his hands, using him to pull herself to a sitting position, her shirt and buttons disheveled.
“Calm,” she whispered, speaking slowly, trying to bring him down from the frantic pace. “Calm.” She shifted to her knees and placed his hands on her breasts and began kissing him, moving from his face to his neck, slowly, soothingly. She pushed him down by his shoulders and climbed up onto him, straddling him, and very slowly, she led him inside of her, trying to make every moment of this event last. He wrapped his arms around her waist and groaned as she anchored herself, letting him deeper inside of her.
Making love on the riverbank might seem immature to some, but to Soledad it felt like the most right thing in the world. Their bodies became one again. It was as if the last two decades had never happened. Time had stood still.
After, he hugged her toward him, but there was no shame in their naked bodies. Not even the pieces of grass that stuck to her skin, nor the grimy dirt in the creases of her kneecaps could stunt this moment.
“I think that might hold me over for another twenty years.” He laughed, but stopped when Soledad’s body tightened. “Cholita, I was kidding, my love. Do you honestly think I will ever let you go again?”
“Really?” She was unsure whether or not to allow herself to find confidence and joy in his words. If this were true, she would die happy, knowing she had finally fulfilled her greatest desire. To be with Xavier for the rest of her life.
“Yes.” He was whispering now. “This is not how I ever imagined doing something like this with you again. You deserve so much better.” He sat up, his naked body luring her to one more engagement. He pulled her up and into him. He whispered softly into her ear, “I’m going to marry you. Will that be okay?”