“I could be persuaded,” Valeria says, leaning in to kiss Camila. Her chest is so full it should be impossible, but not overwhelming; it’s steady. Difficult conversations come easily with Camila.
“Noted.” Camila brushes her nose lightly against Valeria’s. “I want this house to be our home, or we can go to your apartment. I really don’t care; I want to wake up next to you every day, and I know it’s fast, and I’m not going to lie, it’s scary, but I want it.”
“I want that too,” Valeria answers, draping herself over Camila before wrapping her arms around her thigh.
Camila lets out a soft laugh, and the sound alone is enough to make Valeria feel like she could die of happiness. Her heart aches most sweetly, like it’s finally found a place to rest, and that’s when the realization hits Valeria all at once, and she goes still with it—the truth settling deep in her chest, heavy and tender all at once.
She loves this woman.
Not the dizzy, frantic kind she’s known before, but something softer. Something that feels like home. Like safety. Soft in the places love is supposed to be soft. Strong where it counts.
A feeling that’s been building for weeks without her noticing.
But it was always there, simmering quietly. In the way Camila hands her a mug of coffee in the morning without asking, already knowing how she likes it. In the way she listens when Valeria talks about literally anything, like every word she says matters deeply to her. In the way she laughs at Valeria’s silly jokes like they’re genuinely funny, even when Valeria knows they’re not. Being with her is like exhaling after holding her breath for years.
She loves Camila, loves the life she’s building with her.
The realization doesn’t scare her. If anything, it excites her—fills her with an affection that settles deep in her chest.
She shifts slightly in Camila’s arms and presses a soft kiss to her shoulder, relishing the feeling of the perfection of it all.
Her phone rings on the night table, and Valeria reaches for it without paying attention to the caller ID and picks it up immediately as she cuddles back into Camila’s arms.
“Hello!” Valeria sings into her phone, bright and automatic, half-smiling as she expects one of the girls to answer back, but there’s nothing. The silence stretches a second too long, and a faint, uneasy prickle crawls up the back of her neck. Like her body knows something she doesn’t yet.
She pulls the phone away from her ear, glances at the screen, and her stomach drops as she seesBrookeon the caller ID.
Valeria should know by now that when things start to feel perfect, she can always count on Brooke to strip her of all safety. Acid churns violently, crawling up her throat as her pulse spikes. Her fingers go numb, and her phone is suddenly too slick in her grip as the room tilts and all the warmth drains from her body.
She turns toward Camila and her smile falters as concern shadows her gentle features. “Valeria?” Camila asks in a soft voice. “Who is it?” she says, eyebrows knitted.
Valeria wants to tell her, wants to answer, but she can’t answer. Her pulse starts thundering in her ears, and she lies there, breathing quietly—her mouth dry and a burning behind her eyes.It’s ridiculous, she thinks. How old fears know their way around her body, like they never left.
Camila doesn’t press. She must hear something in Valeria’s silence, because instead of asking again, Camila sits up beside her, mouthing “I’m going to go,” before kissing her cheek and gently closing the door behind her, probably trying to give her privacy.
The thought alone makes something ache in Valeria’s chest. The contrast is sharp enough to sting. Brooke never gave her that. Every phone call had been interrogated, every text scrutinized. Privacy had been treated like secrecy, and secrecy like guilt. Valeria had learned to brace for it, to shrink under it.
But Camila ... trusts her. Instinctively. Without conditions.
“Well,” Brooke says lightly, like she’s commenting on the weather. “Wow. You actually picked up.”
Valeria’s heart pounds like a trapped bird against her ribs, and a cold sweat breaks out across her forehead.
“I didn’t think you would,” Brooke continues.
Valeria closes her eyes and sits up, leaning back against the headboard, grounding herself. She swallows hard, trying to suppress the panic in her chest. “It was a mistake,” she says, voice small.
There’s a pause, and Valeria can picture Brooke thinking, calculating.
“What do you want, Brooke?” Valeria asks, not wanting to be on the phone longer than necessary.
“I ... wanted to check on you,” she says, in a soft and careful tone—the same gentle cadence she used to ease Valeria’s worries, soothing her into a made-up sense of safety.
“Brooke,” Valeria says in an exhale, “you shouldn’t be calling me.” She rubs her face with her free hand. The last thing she wanted was to start her morning with Brooke’s voice in her ear, Camila in a different room, probably preparing for the worst. She hasn’t had coffee yet, and she needs it, strong and black, to jolt her system and get Brooke talking faster so Valeria can hang up and find Camila.
“If you’d just listen?—”
“I’m hanging up,” Valeria says, but she doesn’t.
