I swallow hard. “What can I say? I want both. But I have to think of something other than my own needs.”

And yet, the pain on Rafa’s face tells me that I’m making the wrong decision. Again. Is there a way for me to start this conversation over? I chew on my bottom lip.

“Coño, Justine, we could have the best life here together. Every woman in the world would jump at the chance to be here with me. I’ll take care of you. I’ll buy you anything you want. I’ll give you a fairytale life.”

I cradle his face, and his cheeks are fever-hot. “I’m not just any woman, Rafa. And what would my fairytale be like if it didn’t have a happy ending for the paper? Or for the people who work there? Think about Diana. And everyone else who has worked there for thirty-plus years. I can’t be that selfish. I won’t.”

Rafa squirms out of my hands and stands to pace the room. His voice takes on an edge and rises in volume. He punctuates each sentence with sharp gestures with his hands. “Do you know that I have thought of you every day, every night, every fucking morning since you left eleven years ago? Every morning, I have reached for you in bed, and until a month ago, you weren’t there. And now that I finally have you in my life, you’re going to walk away? Again? Do you know how that makes me feel?”

I stare at the floor and try to stay calm. “I’m not walking away from you. I have an obligation to my business. I want us, but not here in Miami. I’ve never stopped loving you. Not for a minute. And none of this would be happening if you had told me you loved all those years ago and asked me to marry you.”

Rafa’s back is to me as he stares out the window.

“You’re the only woman who has ever said no to me. And you’re the only woman—hell, the only person—that I can be myself around. Do you understand that? I can’t be real with anyone but you.”

I swallow a giant lump in my throat. “And I feel the same way about you. My defenses are down when I’m with you. All I’m asking is for you to compromise. If I have to compromise for the paper and sell the building or take it all-digital in order for it not to close, you should have to compromise, too.”

He spins around with blazing eyes, stabbing his finger through the air. “Open that nightstand drawer near you. The top one.”

As if moving through thick liquid, I reach over to slide open the drawer of the boxy, modern nightstand. One thing is inside: a lone, black, leather-bound book.

“Take it out,” he commands. I do and set it on my lap.

“Look inside.”

I open it slowly, knowing what I’ll find. It’s a photo album, my photo album, one I’d compiled for him so long ago. I shut the cover.

“I know what this is. I don’t need to look.”

He walks over and flips the cover open. He pushes words out between gritted teeth.

“Look at it.”

I flip the pages, trying not to cry. A photo of me at the Venetian Pool in Coral Gables, laughing in a bikini. One of me and Rafa on the UM campus, kissing. I gasp when I turn to the next page. There are the erotic photos I’d taken of myself. There are also a few others of me that he’d taken back then, haphazardly stuck in between pages.

“Oh, Rafa,” I breathe. “What do you do—”

“What do I do with these? What do you think?” he snarls. “What you wanted me to do with them.”

I thumb through to find more images of me. I was so young and happy, and it makes my heart plummet to think about how uncomplicated everything was back then.

I extract one loose photo, a black-and-white of us making love. I remember when he’d taken it and how he’d set up a tripod and a time-release shutter with my digital camera. He was on top of me, his naked body lithe and sensual, his lips on my neck. I was also naked, my head tilted back in ecstasy, my long hair spreading over a pillow, my leg wrapped around his.

I trace the silvery image with my finger. It’s not raunchy or pornographic. No, it’s beautiful and sensual, a portrait of two people who absolutely adore each other.

“God, we were gorgeous. This was us, Rafa. This was how we used to be. Like one person.”

“It’s how we still are, Justine. You’re the only one who doesn’t see it.” He clasps his hands together in a prayer gesture. “Why don’t you believe in me? Why don’t you trust that I’ll take care of you? Why can’t we get over this last hurdle?”

“I guess because I’ve been taking care of myself for so long. Because I still hurt from what happened when I was pregnant with our baby.”

His hands ball into fists, and those words suck all the air out of the room.

Finally he speaks. “Let me handle everything. Please. Just say you’ll be with me. Trust me. Confia en mi.”

Frowning, I shake my head. “Maybe I don’t want you to handle everything. I know that if I close the paper and don’t have a job, I’ll totally surrender to you. In every way. And I don’t know who I’d be anymore. I’d lose myself, like I did when we were together before.”

“Jesus, Justine.” He raises his arm and goes to punch the door, but stops. I shrink back, stunned. He’s never been like this before.

He spins around, his voice rising in volume. “Do you think I would let you lose yourself? Why would I do that to someone I love?”

I try and fail not to sob. I’m ugly-crying now, snorting and sniffling loudly. I wave the photo in the air. “We can’t get this back if we stay together, Rafael. Too much has happened between us.”

“Look in that other drawer.”

I shut the book softly and set it back on the nightstand. Sliding from the bed to the floor onto my knees, I cry harder. I barely know what I’m saying, what I’m feeling. I paw around in the drawer and look up at Rafa.

“They’re all my things,” I whimper. “You’ve kept them all these years.”

My University of Miami sweatshirt. A silver necklace I’d left behind. A four-inch thick packet of letters and cards I’d sent to Rafael when I was in Latin America.

“You never answered these.” I hold them up in his direction.

Rafael paces, then sinks to the floor, his back against the floor-to-ceiling window. His eyes are swollen, and he looks defeated.

I inspect each thing in the drawer, my heart sinking. A stuffed flamingo I’d given him when classes ended one semester. The first generation iPod I bought him for Christmas. A Paulo Coelho book I’d put in his Christmas stocking.

I had copied a quote from the author onto the title page: “When you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it.”

If only that were true.

I spot something unfamiliar. It’s a small, black velvet box. Trembling, I pluck it from the drawer.

“Rafa, what’s this?”

“Open it,” he says hoarsely.

It’s a small diamond ring set in rose-gold.

I walked over to the window and kneel in front of him. Tears are running down my cheeks. “When did you buy this?”

“A month before you left.”

I shake my head. “I don’t understand. Why didn’t you ask me to marry you?”

Rafa stands and goes to the open drawer. Crouching, he picks up the pack of letters and flips through. Extracting one from the stack, he walks back to me and drops it in my lap. I stare up at him, then down at the letter, brow furrowed in confusion. He paces the room.

I notice the return address. It’s from my father.

“What is this?”

I open it, and the familiar, cursive writing is inked onto black-embossed stationary.

Dear Rafael—

I appreciate that you had the guts to ask me for my daughter’s hand in marriage.

However, I will disown my daughter if she marries you. So if you love her, it’s in her best interest that you don’t ask her.

Edward Lavoie

I shake my head, bewildered. “No. No. This can’t be. I know he didn’t like you, but he wouldn’t have been this cruel.” I twist to look at Rafa, who’s sitting on the edge of the bed, his head in his hands.

With the letter in one hand and the ring in the other, I stand up. “And you listened to him? You did what he asked?”

Rafa doesn’t say anything.

“Answer me,” I say, my voice rising.

I set the ring box on the nightstand and read the letter again. Noticing there’s something behind the letter, I flip the page. What I see feels like a kick to the stomach. It’s a check, signed by my father and made out to Rafael.

For two million dollars.

“What the fuck is this?” I whisper. I’m now standing over Rafa, furious.

“I’m sorry,” he mumbles, his head still in his hands. “I figured I needed to finally tell you.”

“My father paid you two million dollars to stay away from me?”

Rafa lifts his head, but his eyes are still closed. “I never cashed it.”

I might vomit. “Why?”

“Why didn’t I cash it? I thought about it, but I couldn’t. I was angry at you, but not angry enough to take your father’s money.”

I stare at him, gaping.

“Justine, you didn’t ask my opinion about going to Latin America. I was so pissed that you thought only of yourself. You didn’t consult me. It was as if I was nothing to you, as if we hadn’t been together for years. As if you didn’t fucking respect me at all. You came home one day talking about how your dad would pay for your trip and wasn’t it wonderful and how you would finally achieve all of your goals. I’d always admired your ambition, but hated how it got between us.”

I sit next to him. Twisting to face him, I wave the papers in his face.

“When did he give this to you?”

“A couple of weeks before you left. I thought you’d come to your senses and not leave. I couldn’t take the money. I hated him for trying to buy me off.”

“But you kept this, all these years? The check? Why? Because you knew you would show it to me one day?”

He shrugs, and the muscle in his jaw bulges. “To motivate me to succeed, probably.”

Hot tears run down my face. “Why didn’t you tell me about this? I called you when I got to Nicaragua. You didn’t even pick up the phone.”

Rafa reaches his hands out as if to cup my face, but they remain suspended in the air, mere inches from my skin. As if he dares not touch me.

“In my anger, I still had so much love for you. I decided to leave you alone because I didn’t want you to be without your family. Your only family. I knew what it was like to be without parents. I decided to step aside so you and your father could maintain a relationship. And as long as he was alive, I knew I couldn’t be in your life because I hated him that much.”

“Jesus Christ. Couldn’t you have told me about this so I could have made that decision myself?” My chest constricts, and I breathe shallow.

He strokes my hair. “You didn’t consult me when you decided to leave.”

I shudder a breath. “That’s because I was so upset with you for being so cold after the miscarriage. I thought you had stopped loving me. And talking about ambition, you were relentless back then. Working all the time. So I thought we needed space. And you didn’t try to stop me.”

His hands clamp around my face.

“You’re right. I didn’t tell you how I felt. I shut down, I know that now. I wanted everything to be perfect before I asked you to be my wife. I wanted to be making money. I wanted to be worthy of you. It’s like I’ve never been worthy of you.”

Rafael’s eyes are glassy with tears.

I’m full-on sobbing now. “I never said that. I never wanted you to feel that way.”

“I know. Back then, I was confused, Justine. I didn’t want your father to disown you. He was the only family you had. But I was also enraged at his racism and wanted to distance myself from it.”

This made me sob harder. I couldn’t speak, as shame pooled in my belly.

“If I could go back and do anything over again, I would have told you what he had said, how he didn’t want us to marry. I would have explained my feelings more and reassured you that I loved you, no matter what. I did then, and I still do. I’m sorry that I wanted to punish you for leaving me.”

I struggle to get out of his grip, but he holds his hands tighter around my face.

“What do you mean, you wanted to punish me? You kept saying that when you first got to St. Augustine. Punish me for what my father did?”

His face draws closer to mine, and he speaks in a whisper. “No. Not for that. Look at me. When you called my company, I entertained plans to close the Times, to get back at you for hurting me. And maybe there was a bit of satisfaction in buying your father’s paper, after all he did to me. To us. But over this past month, I realized that I never stopped loving you. I could never hurt you because I love you too much. I will always love you too much.”

Giant, sloppy tears snake out of my eyes and roll down my face. “I don’t know what to say. Should I thank you for your help with the paper? Hate you for being so evil that you would even think about revenge? Or tell you that I love you? Apologize on behalf of my father? You know I never felt the same way he did.”

He blinks several times. “I know that.”

“I feel like you’re not finished punishing me, though.”

“You’re the one who keeps punishing me, Justi. All I ever wanted was you.”

He drops his hands from my face, stands up, and walks out of the bedroom. When he shuts the door, I feel another pain shoot through my chest.

I’m now alone with the relics of our past, and I hate every single one of them. I tear the check and my father’s letter to Rafa into pieces. I hurl them in the air, and they land on the gleaming concrete floor like fallen palm fronds after a hurricane. Then I flop down on the bed and weep.

I’m on the bed, in my red gown, staring at the ceiling. It feels like he’s been gone forever. But about a half-hour after he stalked out, Rafael enters the room silently and climbs on top of me.

He cages my body with his arms and legs. His kiss is so soft that it makes me start crying again. I run my hands down his chest.

We kiss for a long time. Soft and hot at first, then urgent and scorching. Almost as if everything’s normal.

But it’s not.

I sit up and slip the dress over my head. I’m wearing only a red lace thong. He pulls me into his lap, and I wrap my legs around his waist. I sniffle.

“Please tell me this isn’t it.” I put my forehead to his. “Please. We’re not over, are we? I don’t want to lose you.”

“I don’t know. I think I need to let you go, mi cielo, for my own sanity. I need to find happiness. I can’t be tormented or obsessed with you anymore. I need to find love somewhere. I want a healthy, normal relationship.”

“But maybe we can do a long-distance.” I wrap my arms around him. “Come to St. Augustine. Live with me.”

Rafael gently removes my arms from his shoulders. “My life is here. And you don’t want me in your life that badly. You don’t want to make any concessions for me. You don’t want to give up what you have in St. Augustine.”

“But you need to understand why. It’s not for me. It’s for everyone who works at the paper. It’s for the paper itself. For my profession. I can’t close my business. It’s too important for the city.”

Rafa sighs.

“So this is it?” I sob harder.

“Maybe we’re both too much alike. Too stubborn.” Pressing me down on the bed, he strips off my panties. His fingers go deep in me, and I gasp. He slides onto his stomach and roughly spreads my legs with my hands.

His tongue finds my clit, and he consumes me with his mouth. As if he wants to drink me in and use me up. I gasp, working my fingers in his hair. He replaces his tongue with his fingers and moves up my body, studying my face as I come violently. I’m shattered and weeping, and he wastes no time entering me. We’re now sloppy with kisses and tears and my wetness.

“I love you,” he whispers in my ear.

I sob harder and bury my face into the hollow of his shoulder. He comes, a groan exploding out of his mouth. I roll onto my side away from him, and he clicks the light off. It’s two in the morning, and he has to be up in three hours to make his flight to Madrid. I want so badly to take him in my arms, but I can’t. I’m crying and he won’t comfort me and we lie in bed next to each other, lonely.

This is it. The end of us.