“Your wife,” Jamie stutters. The edges of her brown eyes crinkle in confusion and her posture stiffens. She shakes her head, starts to inch away from me, but I place my palm on her thigh. “Mateo, you just told me you were married. I would advise you to let me go.”

“Was,” I say sharply because the pain is fresh—a scalding pressure behind my eyelids. “I was married.”

Her shoulders hunch forward. “Oh, God.” She slides her teeth over her lower lip and presses her hand to her stomach. It’s still flat, but I’m a part of her now. My baby. She’s pregnant with my child, and it changes everything. “Oh, God, I thought you were about to tell me I was sleeping with a married man.”

It shouldn’t surprise me that her opinion of me is so low, but a sharp knife twists in my chest nonetheless. “Even as fucked up as I am, I would have never cheated on my wife. I wouldn’t even—” She clenches her teeth, so I stop. I don't want to remind her of the parties, of the other women who’ve come with their husbands. When we stood in my sister’s living room earlier tonight, I could tell those thoughts were running through her mind. They had sure as fuck been in the front of mine.

Before she walked through that door, I already knew I was bound to go back to the life I had before I met her. I would use the sex as my escape—to put Delfina out of my mind, to forget Jamie. I’m ashamed of myself for wanting to forget her, but she had slid beneath my skin. She had awoken feelings I never cared to experience again.

I’d thought of her every time I turned around over the last several weeks. I thought of her as I sat in the hospital room, praying that by some miracle Abuela would make a recovery. On the night she passed away, I’d drowned myself in whiskey and called Jamie. She was working because the call went straight to voicemail. I had mumbled through an apology, a declaration of feelings I never dreamed were possible. When the voicemail prompt asked if I wanted to keep the message, I said no. I told myself she was better off not knowing.

I thought of her during the funeral, wishing that she were beside me, wishing that I could touch her face or breathe her in. She would say something that was right. Something that made me ask myself how this had happened. How she had happened.

And she was on my mind just a few days ago when I visited my family. I had put flowers on Delfina’s grave—on my son, Gabe’s, grave—and I felt like an evil motherfucker for wanting Jamie so badly. I wanted to confess. To tell her everything. I had picked up my phone to call her on the way back to Marisol’s.

Just let me hear her voice one more time, I had said to myself. I just want to hear her voice one more goddamn time.

I stopped myself. Convinced myself she was better off without me. That she deserved so much more. She was honest about what she wanted from the beginning—a family—and I didn’t want to give her that because I had lost mine already. I never wanted to fall in love with her because she was supposed to be a distraction. She was supposed to take my mind off Delfina.

In the process, she had become the only thought in my mind.

“So … what happened?” Jamie asks, her hesitant voice dragging me back to the present and into her hotel room. “Did she divorce you?”

I wish. It would have been easier if she had divorced me because at least she would have lived.

“She died.” There's no other way to say it, and she releases a soft cry. Her hand flies to her throat, and for a second, I swear she’s not even breathing. “Delfina passed away a few years after we got married.”

“I'm so sorry, Mateo. How—” She pulls in a shuddering sigh. Her leg trembles under my hand, so I spread my fingertips apart to still her. “I'm sorry. I'm so sorry.”

“Stop apologizing.” I'm the one who should be apologizing to her. I should be begging on my goddamn knees for this woman to forgive me. I hadn’t gotten the chance to say sorry to Delfina for being such a selfish bastard. Now that I’m a part of Jamie—that she’s carrying my baby inside of her—I can’t let her go without telling her the truth. “I don’t want to lose you, so I need to tell you the truth.”

Her pink lips firm into a line. “Bailon, I’ve already told you I don’t expect anything from you. You don’t have to do this. You don’t have to do anything just because I’m pregnant. I’m not coming after your money. I’m not going to be the woman forcing myself into your life at every turn just because I have your child.” Her face moves closer to mine and she looks at me with narrowed brown eyes. “You don’t have to change for me.”

No, I don't. And before she walked through the door with that news, I had every intention of letting her go because I was afraid of changing. I wanted to let her go so she could be with someone different, someone who could give her a family. But I’ve already given her that. She’s mine now, and I will fight to keep her.

“I want you to listen to me,” I say roughly. “Can you do that?”

She nods.

“Delfina and I were married young,” I say. “I was twenty-one and she was nineteen—she was a friend of Marisol’s that I chased for about a year.” The corners of Jamie’s lips curl slightly, and I can tell she remembers the night she pointed out I wasn’t the type to chase women. That it wasn’t like me. “I loved her.”

“She was content here, you know. But I wanted something more. I wanted money and power because I guess I’ve always been fucked up.” I close my eyes, remembering how hell-bent I was on becoming an attorney. I can pinpoint the exact moment I decided that was my path. I was fifteen, and Abuela had dragged me along with her to the attorney’s office after Oscar hit a boy in our neighborhood with brass knuckles. She hadn’t had the money, she never had the money to clean up my brother’s mess, but the attorney set her up on a payment plan. She’d thanked him a million times before he shuffled her off to his paralegal and left for lunch in a new Cadillac with thirty-day tags.

That night, I’d told my grandmother I wanted to better my grades so I could maybe go to law school one day. Looking back on that moment now, I wish she had never hired that fucking attorney for my brother and had let him do his time.

I clear my throat. “I think I’ve always wanted more.”

“You don’t have to do this, Mateo,” Jamie says again, her voice so low I need lean in to hear her. She can argue with me all night, but I’m going to finish.

“I was already in college when I met Delfina, and she was all for me going into law. She supported me. Wanted me to succeed so I could make myself happy.” For a moment, I see Delfina’s bright smile and laughing brown eyes, but then it blurs, and another set of dark eyes stare back at me, blinking. Waiting.

“We were broke. We were broke as fuck, but she wanted to help, and she wanted me to be happy. I used to ask her where the money came from, and she’d say she worked an extra shift. I never imagined she was helping my brother run drugs.”

Her lips part and a harsh breath washes over my face. “Oh dear God.”

“She wanted to help, and she died trying.” Before I can stop myself, I’m telling her the whole story. How Oscar had approached my wife because he knew we were struggling and he figured using Delfina would make things easier for him. How she’d gone back and forth with him for months. How, when they’d finally gotten caught, he’d crashed the car he was driving and had left her there to run from the cops. Jamie is shaking from head to toe when I finish, but so am I because the memories are like poison on my tongue.

“I read the police report,” I say. It’s hard to get the words out because I swear my goddamn chest is crashing in. “She wouldn’t have made it, but he left her behind. Didn’t give a fuck that it was his sister-in-law or that she was eight months pregnant with his nephew. He just left her there and worried about himself. They knew who they were looking for—who he was—so they picked him up a day or two later. There was enough in that car to put him away for a long time.”

And yet I still don’t think he got what he deserved. Some people can forgive and forget—they can move on—but I’m not one of them, not when it comes to this.

Jamie’s standing in front of me, her arms weaving around my neck as she pulls me to her. She whispers she’s sorry, and I feel the warmth of her tears falling against my skin. “It was my fault,” I say, but she tells me it wasn’t. She’s wrong. “If I hadn’t wanted more, she wouldn’t have been with my brother. She wanted to make me happy, and she and my son died. He didn’t even have a chance.”

Jamie holds me tighter, and I bury my face against her stomach where there’s life. My life and hers. “I’m sorry,” I rasp. “I’m sorry I left, and I’m sorry I didn’t come back. I’m sorry, but I don’t want to let you go.”

“Mateo—”

“I love you.” I haven’t said those words to a woman who’s not my grandmother or my sister in fifteen years, and they scrape the back of my throat until it’s raw. She goes rigid, but I draw one arm around her waist, keeping her in place because I won’t let her go. “I love you, Jamila.”

“Don’t tell me that just because of the baby or because you’re upset right now. Please,” she whispers. I tilt my head back and shake my head.

“No, I loved you before the baby. Before you came here. I told myself you were better off without me, but I don’t want you to leave.” I draw in her scent. Let it intoxicate me. Let it drag me under. “I haven’t touched another woman since I met you. Haven’t wanted to fuck anyone or go to any parties. Do you know how scary that is?”

“Yes.” She digs her fingers into my shoulder blades and closes her eyes. More tears fall, trickling down her cheeks, so I reach up to brush them off with the tip of my thumb. “I love you too, Mateo. But I didn’t come here because I wanted you to give up who…”

I pull her into my lap, my lips roaming across hers. She’s soft—just as soft and sweet as I remember—and I know I’m a fool for believing I could stay away from her. I tell her that I’m sorry. That I love her. That I don’t want to let her go. I’ll tell her this until the words are tattooed across her thoughts.

When she finally pulls back, she’s breathless and I cup her face in my hand. “What do we do now? What the hell do we do, Mateo?”

“We start over.” I kiss her collarbone, and she shivers. “We start over, and we do things right. Just don’t leave.” She’s silent, and I feel her heartbeat throbbing against my lips when I stand her up and work my kiss down. I kiss her belly button, looking up at her. “Don’t leave.”

She releases a breath that shakes her shoulders. Places her fingers on my face, her touch hesitant at first but then a little more confident when I repeat those three words I never thought I’d say again. Then she bobs her head. “I won’t.”