Valentina sighed, knowing she was only going to be able to hold her tears for so long. ‘So do I. We would have had a beautiful life together.’But it wasn’t to be.
‘One day, far in the future, if we ever find ourselves alone, if?—’
‘Yes,’ she whispered, not letting him finish. ‘I will always be here. Even if we’re eighty, if we ever have the opportunity to be together, the answer will always be yes.’
Felipe kept his hold on her hand, looking down at their skin touching before letting go of her and placing both his palms to her face. He hesitated, as if waiting for her to pull away, but Valentina was powerless to move. When he kissed her, she let him. It was a slow, warm kiss—a goodbye kiss—and she hoped that his wife would forgive him if she ever found out.
‘I’m going to miss you forever,’ he murmured.
‘I’m going to miss you forever, too,’ she whispered back.
Felipe hovered, his face barely an inch from hers, his breath mixing with hers, until he finally stepped away.
‘Would you like to go for a ride together, one last time?’
She was going to say no, to walk away from him and tend to her broken heart alone, but when she saw the way he was looking at her, she couldn’t help it.
‘Yes.’
One last ride. One last moment in time together before he spent the rest of his life with another woman, another woman to whom Valentina would show the utmost respect. Her marriage might have been a sham, but Felipe’s wasn’t, and she would not be responsible for breaking up a family, or another woman’s heart.
The ride was as beautiful as it was lonely. Valentina couldn’t understand how she could be so close to the man she loved, and yet somehow feel so alone.
They started at a walk and then cantered, and she was grateful for the wind whipping against her cheeks and the sun beating down on her arms as her horse stretched and pulled beneath her. But when they finally slowed, she saw that they’d come to the one place she’d never imagined coming back to—their tree at the farthest reaches of the estate.
She asked her horse to halt and stared at Felipe, who appeared equally as breathless as her.
‘I didn’t intend on bringing you here.’
Valentina nodded. ‘Old habits, or maybe our horses chose for us.’
Neither of them made an attempt to dismount, and she was grateful to stay at a distance from him so that she wasn’t tempted to touch him again.
‘Felipe, I have a daughter,’ she suddenly said, the words falling from her mouth before she had time to think through what she was telling him.
His eyes widened. ‘A daughter?’
‘When I left my husband, when I disappeared, the reason I had to leave was because I was pregnant.’
His eyes never left hers. ‘You knew he would never agree to end your marriage if he found out.’
Valentina swallowed. She could have left it there, but she needed him to know. ‘And I knew I would never find my way back to you if I had to stay married.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Felipe said. ‘I’m so sorry for what I did.’
‘I know you are,’ she replied, forcing a small smile. ‘But it also wasn’t just that. It was about honouring my father, righting the wrongs that had happened after his passing. I had to make everything right.’
They sat a while longer, neither of them talking as they both stared out across the property, as the sun continued to rise higher in the sky. It was moments like these that Valentina knew she’d miss more than anything else—being in Felipe’s quiet company, trusting the person she loved with all her heart.
‘Where is she now? Your daughter?’ he asked.
‘In London,’ Valentina replied, glancing over at him and seeing the hard set of his jaw as he continued to look into the distance. ‘That’s where I went, when I left. I had her at a special home where I was very well cared for, and a family adopted her after I left.’
‘If you’d known about me, that I was married, would you still have left her?’ Felipe asked.
‘Yes,’ Valentina said, immediately. ‘I left her to escape my marriage, to avenge my father, and to allow her to have a life that I didn’t believe I would be able to provide for her.’A life that I could provide now, if I could find a way to get her back. If I truly believed she would be better with me than the family who adopted her.
Felipe turned his horse around then and met her gaze.
