To me, they never had. Birthdays were the luxury of permanence; the privilege of being wanted enough to be celebrated. They were marked by people who mattered and moments that stuck, by gifts that didn’t come with conditions attached. Those were the things I’d learned to stop expecting a long time ago.
But Valentina didn’t care about that. She saw something else—something no one else bothered to look for. It hadn’t been pity in her eyes when she’d realized I didn’t celebrate birthdays; it was irritation. As if the absence of something so small, so normal, was a personal offense to her.
It bothered me. Not because she cared, but because deep down I knew what she was really asking. Beneath all that teasing, beneath the casual provocations, she was asking why. Why I kept at a distance. Why I ignored the calendar. Why Itreated another year of existence like an inconvenience instead of something worth acknowledging.
I didn’t have a good answer.
Not one that didn’t involve admitting something uncomfortable.
Like maybe I was still the kid waiting on a doorstep, garbage bag in hand, convinced the people behind every new door would see through me eventually—see I wasn’t worth keeping.
Valentina wasn’t supposed to see that. She wasn’t supposed to matter enough to look.
But she had.
When I got home, I froze in the doorway. The smell hit me first. Something comforting. Something I hadn’t had in years.
Grilled cheese.
It was strange how one smell could make me forget everything else for a second. For a moment, I was ten years old again, sneaking into the kitchen at night, quiet enough that no one would notice me, careful enough not to leave crumbs.
A small piece of comfort in the middle of a life that didn’t have much of it.
I loosened my tie slowly, still skeptical. This wasn’t exactly Valentina’s style. Valentina delivered sushi. She wasn’t the kind to cook, especially not something so specific—something I actually wanted.
I walked in further, seeing two plates already set out on the table, the sandwiches cut diagonally as if she cared about presentation. I glanced at her. She was pretending she hadn’t seen me come in, eyes focused on the pan in front of her.
“You cooked,” I said finally, suspicious.
She scoffed, flipping the sandwich onto another plate. “Barely counts as cooking. It’s melted cheese, Marco. Relax.”
I nodded slowly, still not convinced. “Didn’t realize you knew your way around a kitchen.”
“Don’t get used to it. I’ve got maybe three meals in my culinary repertoire, and one of them involves cereal.”
I nearly smiled at that. It was too easy around her—too easy to slip up.
But still, it meant something. I knew it shouldn’t. It was just a sandwich. But it was the fact she’d remembered—that she’d even noticed in the first place. I couldn’t recall anyone else ever doing something like this for me, caring enough to notice something so mundane, so pointless. Remy never had. Not that I’d expected him to. Not that I’d even wanted him to.
And Tommy . . .
Well, Tommy remembered things for his own reasons, not mine.
“Stop looking at me like that,” she complained.
I blinked. I hadn’t realized I was looking at her any particular way, but apparently, Valentina had. “Like what?”
“Like you’re trying to figure out what I want. Not everyone has an angle, Marco.”
I held her gaze, silently disagreeing. Everyone had an angle. That wasn’t paranoia—it was fact. I’d learned it young. Probably too young. Valentina may have convinced herself she was different, but she wasn’t. Not completely.
“Don’t they?” I asked.
“Sometimes a sandwich is just a sandwich.”
Right. Because Valentina De La Vega, now Grey, was known for her straightforward simplicity.
She continued. “Do you have to turn everything into a cross-examination?”
