He worked me until my hair plastered to my forehead and neck with sweat, my body was writhing against the bed, and his name was an endless chant spilling from my lips. The moment he added his fingers into the mix, I was a goner.
I lay there, limp, all energy sucked from my body and he still didn’t stop. He cleaned me up with his tongue to the point of pain. I shoved his head away. He chuckled against my bare thigh before placing a kiss against my skin.
He crawled up my body until I felt his erection where his mouth had just been. I whimpered, an all too familiar heat racing down. “We don’t have time for that, bonita. You have to be at work in less than an hour.”
I whimpered again, this time for a completely different reason. He pressed a soft kiss against my lips and I hugged him to my body. I didn’t want to let go. Not now. Not in five minutes or an hour. I would have lived a satisfied life if I could just hold him like this until my last breath.
“Get ready and I’ll take care of breakfast.” He untangled himself from me and I moved enough to watch him walk into the kitchen and start making me breakfast.
“Since we’re doing this forever thing,” I said, propping my elbows up on the bed. He looked at me, a beaming smile plastered on his face. “I think we should follow a set of rules.”
“Okay,” he said, cracking an egg. “What are these rules?”
“Well, just one for now.” He grunted. “Hector Rivera must always cook while shirtless.”
Hector laughed and my heart wasn’t intact anymore, it was floating in the air between us. Is this what it would feel like every day for the rest of our lives? This feeling of loving someone so much and them loving you back the same.
“Done. For every rule you have, I also get one.”
“Fair enough,” I conceded, working my way out of bed. I didn’t bother getting dressed as I walked toward him. He was cutting up vegetables as I used him as a leaning post. “What’s your rule?”
“That you be happy every day for the rest of your life.”
I blew out a breath. “That’s a big rule compared to mine.”
He nodded. “That’s because it’s more my priority than a rule. I want to make you happy every day for the rest of your life.”
“Thank you for hijacking my life, Hector Rivera. I can’t imagine it without you,” I whispered against his skin. He turned to face me and tilted my face up so he could kiss me.
His phone ringing was the only thing that managed to make me snap out of my Hector haze and get ready for the day. He picked up the phone and planted a final kiss on my temple before he shooed me into the bathroom. Just as I closed the door, I heard Hector say, “Hey, Dad. Remember that question you always used to ask me? I have the answer now.” His eyes found mine between the crack of the bathroom door. “I found her.”
“When are you coming home, bonita?” Hector asked not for the first time. I hadn’t been back to my home of the past three months since I left it with Samuel. Over the past few weeks, Hector had become a permanent fixture in my little apartment. There hadn’t been a night that I didn’t fall asleep wrapped up in him.
But something was holding me back from giving up my own space and moving back into his. My hesitation didn’t make any sense to him. I knew that because it didn’t make any sense to me, either. I loved him. I was obsessed with spending time with him. If our lives allowed it, I would have him attached to my hip.
But for the first time, I could answer the most important question in life. I could look in a mirror without flinching. I could talk for hours about all of the things I loved. I finally found the answer to who Annie Miller is, and I wasn’t ready to give up that independence quite yet.
“I still have one month of our agreement left,” I said teasingly because I didn’t know what else to say.
A growl came from the doorway of the bathroom. I didn’t bother looking at him. I tightened my hair tie and took one last look at myself in the mirror. Wearing the outfit that Hector bought on my mom’s birthday, I was beyond excited for the day. I had no idea what he had planned. All I knew is that he asked me to schedule a day where I was off from Philly Range and the women’s shelter.
I finally turned to him. “I think you should move here, instead.”
He grunted. “That’s not going to happen.”
Curling my fists against my hips, I demanded, “And why the hell not?”
He sighed and reached for me but I stood my ground. He kicked off the doorway and sauntered over. I didn’t back down or cower, just held those brown eyes captive. When he was within reaching distance, he hooked his finger on the shorts of my overalls and pulled me to him. I braced my hand against his chest and looked up at him. “I don’t want to live in the city.” I was already gearing up my rebuttal but his other hand reached up, placing a single finger against my lips. “Neither do you. You toss and turn all night because of the noise. And it’s not safe here. The house in New Hazle is.”
I knew he was right. “I don’t want to go back,” I admitted quietly, looking away.
He tugged at my chin, forcing my eyes back to his. “Why?”
I tried to create some distance between us but he kept a firm hold on me. “I feel independent, Hector. For the first time in my life, I’m not using anything as a crutch. Not my mother’s death. Not my revenge plan. And not you. I feel like that’s going to change if we go back to the way things were.” He frowned but remained stoic. “I miss your house. I miss watching you cook from the living room. I miss working out together. I miss writing in your study. I miss your bed. But it’s all yours.”
He hid those eyes from me, his nostrils flaring as he took a deep breath. When he opened his eyes again, he said, “Okay.”
I blinked once and then twice. And a third time just as a precaution. That’s it? No fighting or throwing me over his shoulder, damn what I want? “Just okay?”
“Yes. We won’t go back, but this is Samuel’s apartment so we’ll have to go house hunting, okay?”
I smiled, standing up on my toes to kiss his lips. “I love you,” I whispered against his skin.
His hands wrapped around my lower back, squeezing my body to his. “I love you, too, bonita. Now come, we have a busy day.”
I backed away just enough to catch his gaze. “Tell me what we’re doing.”
He placed a quick kiss on my nose before telling me, “No.”
I frowned but followed him, anyway. Once we were loaded in the Range Rover, Hector took my hand as he drove toward New Hazle.
I pinned him with a look once he was driving down the familiar path to his house. “It’s not what you think it is.”
“Then tell me where we’re going.”
He tried to hide his smirk but I still caught it. “See, Annie.” There was that name again in that playful tone of his I loved so much. “When a man loves a woman.” He paused, looking over to catch me rolling my eyes. “Before he gets down on one knee.” My entire world stopped, my heart still and a lump the size of Alaska lodged in my throat, I waited for his next words. “And asks her to spend the rest of her life with him, he usually has to get a blessing from her parents.”
I waited for him to say more but he didn’t. He simply put the car in park. I tore my eyes from him to see where we were.
New Hazle Cemetery. “Please tell me you fucking didn’t,” I whispered, my emotions getting the best of me.
“Annie,” he tried, softly reaching out for me. “I have things to say. Please hear me out.”
All I could manage was a sharp nod. “I want to meet the woman who raised you, who sculpted the love of my life.”
I looked at him through blurry vision. “Hector,” I whimpered.
He gripped both of my hands. “Introduce us, love.”
I nodded and watched Hector climb out of the car. I wiped at my face furiously as he walked over to help me get out.
“We don’t have to do this if you don’t want to. I just thought—”
I shut him up with a salty kis
s. He thought this is what I wanted and he was right. It wasn’t his fault I couldn’t stop crying. I led him through the graveyard to where I knew my mother rested. Fresh flowers were laying against her headstone. I looked at Hector in question.
“I would do the same thing if she was alive,” he admitted softly.
I read her headstone.
Michelle Miller. Loving Mother and Friend. 1977-2007.
I felt Hector’s presence behind me, his light touch grounding me. “Hi, Mama. I’m sorry I didn’t make it on your birthday. Someone was holding me hostage.”
I felt Hector’s sharp poke against my ribs and I laughed. I no longer wondered if my mom would approve of Hector or the two of us together. There was no doubt that she would love him and how grateful she would be that I had met a man who put stars in my eyes, butterflies in my stomach, and respect in his touch.
“I met someone, and I’d like you to meet him.”
Hector stepped from behind me and crouched down by my feet. I sifted my hands through his hair as he bowed his head toward my mother’s headstone. After a few minutes of him paying his respects and me in the presence, no matter how silent hers was, of the two people I loved the most, Hector stood and faced me.
“Hector,” I whispered.
He wiped my tears away and he tucked the loose strands of my hair behind my ear. “Yes, bonita?”
I wrapped my fingers around his hands still holding my face. “Will you marry me?”
I was met with a grin brighter than the sun.
Seven Months Later
The sound of sizzling woke me up. That and the smell of bacon. My stomach growled but my body ached. “Do I get breakfast in bed?” I called.
No reply. I knew he was there. No one else would be in my apartment cooking before the sun even rose. “Hector,” I called.
Still nothing. I positioned myself up on my elbows and craned my head but I still couldn’t see him. “Pretty sure you broke my vagina,” I yelled into the void of our apartment.
A snicker broke out from him as he walked down the stairs toward me. “Good morning, love,” he said, giving me my morning kiss followed by a glass of OJ.
“Hi.” I smiled. I was not a morning person. But I was a Hector’s voice person. And I was a Hector’s face person. Really, I was just a Hector person.
“You did schedule off from work today, right?”
I nodded behind my coffee.
“Good. We have a lot of work we have to do today.”
I looked from him to the clock on our nightstand. “Please tell me you did not wake me up at four o’clock in the morning.”
He smiled guiltily. “I made you breakfast and I have a surprise for you, so you have to get up and get ready so we can leave.”
Over the next hour, I folded into his demands, groggily, but I did it. By the time we made it out of the apartment, I managed to be somewhat awake.
I looked down at my outfit. I was told to dress in something that could get ruined. I wore one of Hector’s t-shirts and a pair of fleece sweatpants.
“Where are we going?” I asked him, even though I knew he wouldn’t tell me.
As he drove on, I realized we were heading to his house. I still hadn’t been back, and he never brought it up again. We leased an apartment month to month because Hector wanted to “explore our options.”
I didn’t say a word, not until we reached the gates. “What the fuck happened?” I blurted, staring at nothing. The house that once was my prison for a few short days and then my home for three months was gone, turned into a pile of debris on the ground.
He parked the car just short of the destruction and turned to me, papers in his hand. I took them from him and scanned them. “The deed to this property is now in your name, Annie Rivera.”
I couldn’t help my smile at the new last name that I was still getting used to. We didn’t have a wedding; we didn’t even have a ceremony. We simply walked into the courthouse and promised each other forever.
“A house is just a house to me. I don’t care what it looks like or what’s inside. My home is where you are. Where you go, I follow. So, I have only one request.”
I looked up at him, at the man I loved, wondering how the hell I got so lucky.
“Envision our future and I’ll help you start building,” he promised.
I leaned into him, looking at the ground before us. I didn’t see the rubble underneath our feet as destruction anymore; I saw them as a new beginning. My hands curved under the tiniest swell of my stomach, knowing he had already made good on his promise.
“Who knows? Perhaps your love will make me forget all I wish not to remember.”
— Alexandre Dumas, The Count of Monte Cristo
THE END
I wrote my first full length novel when I was fifteen years old. I had no idea about anything except that I wrote a book and people seemed to love it. So, I sent a partial of my manuscript to someone, I don’t even know who, and of course, as anyone can predict, it got rejected. And that was that.
I stuck to writing poetry and I kept it to myself. As I grew older, I was that girl who got excited over writing essays and I was the girl who took too long on the open-ended questions in AP Euro. I loved to write and even if I wasn’t writing what I wanted to, I still found a way to do it.
I love writing and I love thinking about life and its journey. I love the way every single decision you make alters the course of your life. Every single person you meet plays a role. So, I want to thank every single person I’ve ever come across, whether we’ve had a good experience or a bad one. You’ve inspired me in some way and I may never get to tell all of you how or why so I’m saying it here now.
Specifically, I want to thank some special women in my life.
I want to thank my mother, for who this book is dedicated to. Thank you for being the strongest woman I know each day and loving me unconditionally.
I want to thank my best friend, Jay, who not only introduced me to the romance genre but encouraged me to write my own. You were meant to be a permanent fixture in my life, I honestly believe that.
A huge thank you to Jess, Fatima, and Anna for blindly supporting me and being so excited for my writing. I lost count of how many times your positive messages have made me cry.
I want to thank both of my editors who were the first people I trusted with Hijacked. The way you were so supportive and gentle with me made me so grateful and both of you were just a complete thrill to work with.
I want to thank my favorite English teacher in high school who wrote in my senior yearbook that she had faith I would write a book someday and she couldn't’ wait to read it. Those words stuck with me in my darkest days and now those words have become a reality.
Lastly, I want to thank anyone who buys this book, who reads it, or talks about it at all. I hope I reach some of your hearts. I hope I bring a little light into your life. Thank you for taking a chance on me.
xoxo, Sonia
* * *
Sonia Esperanza lives in a small town in Pennsylvania where she tries to find the balance between real life and the fictional characters in her head who seem to never shut up. She’s also probably listening to Taylor Swift.
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