“Are you serious? Why the hell would she do something like that?”
I shrugged as if it didn’t concern me, but tried to answer, “Because I never mattered to her. Not as a granddaughter, anyway. She tried to live her own dreams through me and controlled my every step. She took advantage of my need to be loved to manipulate me, and I allowed it. But then the accident came and everything kind of crumbled. When they confirmed that I wouldn’t be able to dance professionally anymore, she cast me aside with no concern whatsoever and went off to live with my uncles. She took my grandfather with her. He was the only one who ever cared about me.”
“What about your parents?”
“I don’t know my father, I don’t even know who he is,” I lied—or half lied, because I still wasn’t sure about Giulio. “And my mother couldn’t stand living with my grandmother, so she left when I was four. Unfortunately, she forgot to take me with her.”
“She abandoned you?”
“Without thinking twice about it,” I murmured with contempt. “So yeah, to answer your question, there’s nothing waiting for me in Madrid or anywhere else.”
“That must hurt, huh.”
“It’s my family!”
Lucas bent so close I could count each of his eyelashes. He seemed to be trying to memorize the details of my face as he looked me in the eye.
“Don’t waste another second thinking about those people. Fuck them. They don’t deserve you. If they weren’t there for you, why should you be there for them? You don’t need them.”
“I wish it was that easy.”
Lucas looked out through the windshield and exhaled.
“It would be if we didn’t grow up with this idea that family’s forever, that we have to love them no matter how horrible they make our lives. Honor thy father and mother—sure, but what if your father’s an asshole? What if all your mother did was bring you into the world and after that she only ever thought of herself? We can’t just let that hold us back, Maya. Blood is just blood. It’s not a justification for another person to fuck up your life.”
His words moved me, above all the resentment and rage in them, the sorrow that impregnated them. He added, “If I ever have children, I can promise I won’t treat them like my property or like a means to achieve some goal. Bringing a life into this world is selfish enough. The least you can do is let that person take their own decisions and live the way they want. And I sure as hell wouldn’t abandon them and leave them in the care of someone who wouldn’t care for them.”
The power of words is inestimably strong. It can lift you up to the sky or make you sink down into the void. At that moment, I didn’t know where I was. But I could see Lucas. And all around us were stars.
33
The next morning, the scent of coffee woke me. I kicked the sheet down to my feet, still a welter of sensations as I remembered the day before. My dream had left me feeling warm in my chest and between my legs.
I pressed my thighs together and rolled up into a ball. I’d never felt that kind of frustration—probably because no one had ever turned me on in that way. I’d never wanted anybody the way I wanted Lucas. I hid my face in my pillow and slid a hand down my stomach and into my underwear.
Panted.
Felt a tickling.
Yes…
In the living room, the vacuum cleaner turned on.
I bit the pillow to muffle a shout and got out of bed. Lucas was shirtless and shoeless, vacuuming the rug. The windows were open and the curtains were shaking in the breeze. Music was coming from the speakers, and he was bobbing his head and shaking his shoulders as I leaned into the doorframe to watch him.
I thought to myself that I could easily get used to spending every morning of my life that way, watching him clean up half-dressed, with the smell of lemons, coffee, and the sea. The smell of home.
“Good morning, sleepyhead,” he said, pulling me out of my daydreams.
“Good morning.”
“Are you going to stay there devouring me with your eyes, or are you going to get to it?”
He gestured toward a pail on the table with rags and cleaning products inside. With all the endorphins, pheromones, hormones, and whatever pumping through my body, I’d hoped he meant something else byget to it.
“I need a coffee first,” I told him.
I had almost made it to the kitchen before I realized I was naked except for a T-shirt. I hurried back to my room and heard him giggling behind me.
