I’ve not told a soul. Not Marcella. Or my mother. I couldn’t bear their reaction, they were both already treating me with kid gloves. Besides, it’s not like I had any prospects. What did it matter?
I shoved the folder into my closet and tried to forget. When Marcella got pregnant, I convinced myself I didn’t want kids anyway. I was too busy. Too tired. Too full of ambition and responsibility with the long nights of running the restaurant and ten thousand expectations.
Tears stream down my face as the truth washes over me. In burying my own needs, I’ve become resentful. Short with my family and staff. Mean, at times.
No wonder my family sent me here. They didn’t know why I’ve been so off this past year. Sending me here was their way of telling me: we want Rosa back.
God, I’ve wanted her back too. So much.
Now I’ve met Santiago.
After my diagnosis, his vision of our life together is something I gave up hope for.
It’s absurd, really. I’ve been in Barcelona for less than a month and am hopelessly in love with a man who treats me like gold, gives me everything he has with no expectation.
Santiago has single-handedly rebuilt me and now I can’t stop imagining what our children might look like.
I press a hand to my belly and try to calm the shaking in my limbs.
This isn’t a first-class fling. I love him with my whole heart.
Santiago is my soulmate.
I’m terrified of losing him. Of losing this.
At the same time, I don’t want him to waste time loving someone who can’t give him what he wants. He’s older than me, he won’t want to wait. He’ll want me pregnant as soon as possible.
If I let him love me, he’ll build dreams on a fault line I already know will crack.
A careful knock pulls me out of the spiral. “Rosa?” He sounds hesitant. “May I come in?”
“Uh, give me a minute.” I scramble for casual. “I’ll be out in a second.”
Silence. Then another knock.
“Please let me in.”
I hesitate. Then unlock the door.
Santiago slips through the narrow gap and shuts it behind him. His expression is open and tender, though his brow furrowed like he already knows something is very wrong. He studies my face andsees something. Or maybe he detects the absence of everything I usually wear to mask it.
The two of us stand stark naked and exposed in his bathroom about to have a conversation which will burst this bubble we’ve been living in.
“I scared you,” he says.
Immediately, I shake my head. “No. I mean…yes. But not the way you think.”
“Tell me.”
I bite my lip and cross my arms over my breasts. “I don’t want to ruin this.”
He steps closer. “What do you mean?”
“I’m not built to give you a future like the one you want.” My voice fractures. “We’re on borrowed time here, Santiago. I go back in one week to my life and I won’t have time for long mornings or lazy afternoons or—any of this. Let alone marriage and kids.”
He reaches over to brush my hair back from my cheek. “And?”
“And…” I look down. My chest seizes.
