‘Can I please take you to lunch? I think it’s time I took you on a proper date.’
His stomach grumbled and they both laughed.
‘Are you sure? Or are you just very, very hungry and can’t wait for home?’
Benjamin grimaced and Rose leaned over to kiss him. ‘I don’t care why, but yes, Benjamin, you can take me for lunch. Nothing would make me happier.’
‘Well, good, because I’m starving.’
She tried to play-hit him but he ducked out of the way and pulled the car out into the traffic. And as Rose settled back into the seat, watching as Buenos Aires became a blur of streets and cars, in that moment she knew she was home.
Perhaps Benjamin was right all along. Maybe Argentina is in my blood. It had just taken coming back to realise just how much she’d missed it, and how much she felt that she belonged.
29
ARGENTINA, 1940
Valentina stopped when she saw Felipe ahead of her. She’d tried so hard since she’d last seen him not to cross paths with him, to avoid the feeling of their eyes meeting or having to make small talk when her heart was still healing. But today, it was inevitable.
‘I was hoping to see you,’ he said.
And I was hoping not to see you. ‘Felipe,’ she said, leaning into the open doorway of the stable building.
‘You look well,’ he said, and she could tell by the hesitation in his voice that he was as nervous about seeing her as she was him.
‘Thank you.’
‘Are you riding?’ he asked.
Valentina shook her head. ‘No. I haven’t ridden since…’ Her voice trailed off and she found that she didn’t want to finish her sentence. ‘It’s not the same, riding alone.’
Felipe stared at her, and she wondered if he felt the same, gnawing pain inside as she did from standing so close and yet so far from him.
‘Valentina, I need you to know?—’
‘Please, stop,’ she said, holding up her hand. ‘You don’t need to say anything.’
But Felipe didn’t stop. He came closer, taking her hand in his and not letting her pull away when she half-heartedly tried.
‘Valentina, please let me say this. I promise that I won’t come looking for you again, but I need to tell you this.’
She looked down at her hand in his, closing her eyes for a beat, before finally looking up at him.
‘If I’d known there was even a chance of you coming back, if I’d thought there was a possibility of us being together again, I would have waited for you,’ he said, tears shining from his eyes as he spoke. ‘You will always be the love of my life, Valentina. I need you to know that I will never love anyone in the way I loved you. But I thought you were lost to me.’
Valentina had been so careful not to see Felipe, because she didn’t trust herself around him. And now that he was so close, she couldn’t help but lift a hand to touch his cheek, her palm resting softly against his skin.
‘Will you ever be able to forgive me?’ he whispered.
She smiled. How could she not smile when she was looking into the eyes of the man she loved? ‘There are people in my life whom I will never forgive, Felipe, but you are not one of them,’ she said, surprised at how strong her voice sounded when inside she was breaking. ‘But if you need to hear me say it, then I forgive you.’
‘I don’t know what to do,’ he said. ‘I?—’
‘You don’t need to do anything,’ she said. ‘You’re married, you’re about to be a father. You have your whole life ahead of you.’ Valentina took a breath. ‘With your wife.’
She could see the pain etched on his face, the haunted way he stared at her as if he couldn’t live with himself; and she only recognised it because she felt the same.
‘I wish things could have been different.’
