DAMIEN

 

 

“Jesus Christ, Rosarío, what the fuck are you teaching her?” I exclaimed, stepping out onto the back porch. Catching them both off guard.

I’d just gotten back from Pinar del Río, where I was dealing with Emilio’s enemies for almost a week, and I missed my girls.

“Damien!” Amira excitedly beamed, swaying her hips to the melody of “Quimbara” by Celia Cruz, one of Rosarío’s favorite songs, blaring through the speakers. “Mama Rosa and I are dancing,” she giggled. “She’s been showing me how to Salsa and Merengue, and she’s going to teach me how to Tango next.”

Rosarío smiled, obviously pleased with herself as Amira provocatively swayed her hips to the music without missing a beat. Her hands held her white skirt up at her sides, slightly lifting it as she danced. The fabric flowing with each movement, each sway of her hips.

“Do you see her—”

“More now than ever. She’s fourteen not—”

“I’m almost fifteen!” Amira chimed in, slowly gyrating around in a circle. Her hands still firmly on her hips.

“Are you trying to fucking kill me?” I questioned, peering over at Rosarío.

“Damien, she’s not a little girl anymore. Look at her, she’s a gorgeous young lady, and what Cuban woman doesn’t know how to dance. It’s in our blood. My mother would roll around in her grave if I didn’t keep her legacy alive. She was the best dancer in all of Havana, performing at the casinos. The Tango was her favorite routine to perform.” She looked over at Amira who was happily twirling, sashaying in a back-and-forth motion. Naturally strutting her skills. “Besides, any husband of hers—”

“Husband? The fuck? Now, she’s getting married?”

Amira laughed, throwing her head back. “I’m going to get married one day, Damien. I need—”

“The hell you are.” I shook my head, blown away. “I’m gone for a week and I come back to this bullshit. Her dancing and talking about getting married. Rosarío stop teaching her this shit, she needs to focus on school. Not dancing and men I’d never let near her.”

“Well, Enrique, has been coming over here to dance with me for weeks, and he will be here any minute,” Amira sassed. “So, don’t scare him off. He’s my friend and I like him.”

I jerked back. “Who the fuck is Enrique, and how am I just learning about this, Rosarío?”

She placed her hands up in the air in a surrendering gesture. “He’s the boy from a few streets over, it’s nothing. He stepped in as her dance partner because as you know, you can’t learn to dance without a partner.”

“That’s it. She’s not leaving the house anymore,” I ordered, pointing to Amira.

She laughed again, “Damien, you can’t lock me away.”

“Try me, Muñeca. See what else I’m capable of,” I warned, walking back into the house to cool down.

Watching her dance from afar for a few more minutes before I walked into the living room. Just in time to see the boy who was about to fucking die, walking up to the door, through the window of Amira’s reading nook. Not allowing him to knock, I abruptly opened the door, coming face to face with the little shit.

“Hey, is—”

“No, so fuck off.” I slammed the door in his face.

“Damien!” Rosarío chastised from behind me, holding a pitcher of water as soon as I stepped back into the yard.

“Don’t,” I let out with a warning glare.

She sighed, “Fine, then you’re her new dance partner.”

Amira strutted her way over to me, moving her body to the rhythm of the salsa song.

I shook my head no, eyeing her up and down.

“Oh, come on… don’t you want to dance with me? Enrique’s not here yet and I have a feeling you made him go away. For what reason other than you want to dance with me?”

“To protect you, like I do with everything,” I simply stated.

She rolled her eyes. “To protect me from dancing? Nice try.” Lifting her hands in between us, pouting she added, “Please… I promise not to step on your toes.”

“Muñeca—”

“Pretty please… for me…”

I took a deep breath, taking off my military jacket and throwing it on the table. Grabbing her hands, pulling her toward me. Making her laugh in my embrace.

She wrapped her arms around my neck and kissed my cheek. “I missed you.”

All of us knew, I could never say no to her.

I blinked, shaking off the memory of the first time we started dancing together. Quickly realizing I was standing on the beach outside the venue, the orchestra still playing in the distance from inside. It was as if my body led me to the one place I always felt the closest to her. I couldn’t remember the last time I stood on the beach, since I was in Cuba with Amira still by my side. The refuge I sought was nowhere to be found under the full moon dancing off the water. Only darkness surrounded me like the sadness that reflected off my soul.

I watched the waves crash on the shoreline for I don’t know how long, letting my mind wander to a time when she was mine. Feeling her next to me, showing me the stars in the night sky.

“That’s Princess Andromeda and that’s her husband, Perseus. Do you see how they unite in the middle? You can’t tell where one star ends and the other begins, kind of like they’re holding hands.”

I stared at those exact stars, they were easy to find. I’d spent over a decade pinpointing Perseus and Princess Andromeda from all over the world. They’d become as much a part of my persecuting memories as she had.

“After consulting an oracle, the King and Queen chained Princess Andromeda to a rock, in order to be sacrificed to the monster. But the hero, Perseus, was nearby and heard of the imminent death of Andromeda. He came to her rescue and saved her from the monster. She returned to Greece and they got married, having nine kids. After Princess Andromeda died, the Goddess of love, Athena, placed her in the sky as a constellation, nearby her beloved husband, Perseus. They were two soul mates who were destined to be together forever, so she made them constellations so they would be.”

The overwhelming sentiments and emotions of what the ocean and the nightfall meant to me were almost too heavy a burden to endure. I shook off the unrelenting feelings evoking from deep within my core, needing to get back to the fundraiser, and just as I was about to turn around, I saw a petite, shadowy figure in the distance. Stopping me dead in my tracks.

It was Amira.

Standing with her feet in the water like she needed to feel our eternal love too. The bottom of her gown getting soaked from the waves. There was something about the way she just stood there, looking out at the ocean with her hair blowing in the light breeze, she looked like a painting, a dream I never wanted to wake up from. The sight of her literally took my breath away.

There was no beauty in this world like Amira’s.

My feet moved on their own accord, walking toward her, closing the distance, emotionally and physically between us. I couldn’t take my eyes off the vision in front of me. It took everything in my being not to run to her and hold her in my arms. I couldn't control the internal battle that surfaced in the forefront of my mind, it was a whirlwind of sensations.

From my mind to my heart to every goddamn bone in my body.

She suddenly looked down at the ground when I was a few feet behind her as if she felt my looming presence. Her breathing hitched, but she didn’t turn around.

She didn’t move.

It seemed like she was barely even breathing.

“You have no idea what it was like waking up that morning, searching for you the moment my eyes opened. Thinking it was the start of a new day, a new life…” she paused, clearing her throat and gazing out in front of her again. She may have been physically standing there, but her mind was back in that bed.

Where I left her behind.

“A life where we could finally be together. Where you would come home to me every night, kiss me and tell me you love me. Where we would have a future together. One that would include getting married, having babies…” she hesitated, breathing in a deep and sturdy breath. Contemplating her next words, debating if she should say what I needed to hear. She protectively wrapped her arms around her stomach in a comforting gesture, trying to hold in the emotions that threatened to spill. As she prepared herself to reveal more of her truths.

She knew I noticed. There was no way I couldn’t have felt the effect I always had on her. I closed my eyes, waiting for the unknown and the inevitable to be spoken. Feeling her hesitancy to expose her truths, seared into my skin more and more with each second that passed. We weren’t even touching, and I could still feel her all over.

Her words.

Her hurt.

Her love.

Causing shivers to course through the depths of my core, practically bringing me to my fucking knees with her words, comforting and tormenting me in ways I never expected.

“You know that’s what I wanted, right? What I’ve always wanted since I was a little girl. To marry you, have your babies, to have a family and grow old… with you.”  

I wanted nothing more than to be that man for her back then, and knowing it wasn’t possible didn't stop my desire to try to be that man for her now. “Muñeca, I can give you the life we were meant to have, the one you dreamed of,” I wholeheartedly replied, hanging on by a very thin fucking thread.

“I was there when you married Evita, Damien. Did you know that? Could you feel my presence? Hiding in the back of the Cathedral of San Cristóbal.”

I stumbled back, the wind knocked out of my lungs. Never expecting her to confess that to me. “Jesus Christ, Amira, you know if I would have known that, I would have never been able to—”

“You wouldn’t have been able to what? Marry her? There you go with your lies again, Damien. I remember silently praying as she walked down the aisle for you not to marry her. There I was hiding in a church, praying to God for you to not marry her,” she repeated, stressing the last four words. Her body trembled, her strong, hardened composure weakening with each confession that escaped from her mouth.

My willpower matched hers. “I didn’t know, baby. Please tell me you at least believe that. I couldn’t hurt you in that way. Never fucking like that.”

“But you did…” She shook her head, remembering the day as if it were yesterday, or even worse, still feeling as if she was hiding there, witnessing it all over again. “I watched you say your vows to a woman who wasn’t me. You married her and broke my fucking heart in more ways than I thought you already had.”

I instinctively stepped toward her, longing to hold her in my arms. It physically pained me to be standing there with her, hearing her tell me everything I thought I wanted to know. Nothing could have prepared me for these truths.

Not even her.

“Please don’t,” she urged, halting me. Feeling my governing presence coming for her, she finally turned around and faced me.

“Muñeca, please just let me hold you.”

“I’m not telling you this looking for your comfort, Damien. I’m doing it because I’m praying, once again, I’m fucking praying that you will leave me alone. Get some closure so you can move on with your life because I’ve already moved on with mine. I can’t do this with you again. I won’t. That night meant everything to me. I gave you what had always belonged to you, and I’m not talking about my virginity… I’m talking about my heart. I forgave you and believed it when you said you loved me.”

“I do love you, Muñeca. I’ve always loved you and I always will,” I spoke the truth, silently praying like she was, to fucking believe me.

“Yeah… you love me when it’s convenient for you. From the second I saw Yuly lying beside me instead of you, I knew. I knew you’d fucked me over yet again, and what makes that time so different from the others is I had no one to blame but myself. And still, like a desperate goddamn idiot, I called you, trying to give you the benefit of the doubt. Thinking maybe you left for work, but you’d be back. You’d come home to me because things were different now. We were different now.”

I bowed my head in shame, taking a deep breath, trying to gather my thoughts.

My emotions.

My fucking memories.

“Amira, that phone call saved my life.” I peered back into her eyes. “It was the first time I wanted to kill myself for leaving you there. If you hadn’t called, I wouldn’t be standing here in front of you right now.”

She shuddered, now it was my truths that were too much for her to take.

“I would have died right along with you that day, and in a way, I did. I didn’t just leave my heart with you in that bed, on those sheets, I left my soul with you too. I thought Emilio had ripped it from me, but he didn’t. You did, and I willingly handed it to you. It’s always been yours. I’ve always been yours. Do you understand me?”

“How do you expect me to believe anything that comes out of your mouth? All you’ve ever done is lie to me. I didn’t even know where you went, Damien, and still, I was worried about you. Thinking about you. Praying for you. Until Mama Rosa said you left… you left Cuba… you left us…” She looked broken when she emphasized, “You. Left. Me.”

It was then I realized she was just as much a prisoner of my sins as I was. Her memories of the man she fell in love with. The one that protected her, made her laugh, made her smile.

Her confidant.

Her savior.

Her everything.

Was the same man who fucking destroyed her in the end.

“No amount of apologies or excuses are going to change the fact that you left me behind in Cuba. You didn’t even have the balls to tell me you were leaving. To even tell Mama Rosa, the woman who raised you. Raised us”—she pointed in between us—“like her own. Do you have any idea how much you hurt her? Betraying her like that when all she ever did was take care of you and be there for you! No. You don’t. You weren’t there! You left like a fucking coward, and I lost every ounce of respect for you because of it. She didn’t deserve it and neither did I! So there you go, District Attorney Damien Montero. There’s the truth. I hope becoming this bigshot, this man I don’t care to know, was worth it to you, because not only did it cost you me… it cost you her too.”

“That’s where you’re wrong, Amira. You couldn’t be more fucking wrong. These last twelve years have been nothing without you! Nothing! You want to know why I left Cuba? Why I left you?” I countered, stepping toward her until we were only a foot apart. Looking deep into her eyes, I spoke with conviction, “Because I killed my fucking wife.”

She gasped, jerking back with wide stunned eyes. “What? I thought… she…. what?”

“You heard me. I killed Evita the same day you watched me say my vows to a woman who wasn’t you. I shot her point blank, one fucking shot to the heart, and I have never looked back. I have never regretted it and if given a chance, I’d do it again.”

Slowly, shaking her head in confusion, she replied in disbelief, “Why? Why would you do that? You loved her.”

“I love you.” I pointed at her. “And don’t you ever fucking forget that.” She eyed me cautiously when I added, “She wasn’t who she claimed to be. She worked for Intel—”

“For the States,” she finished my sentence. The expression on her face understanding of where I was going with this.

“So you see. I left you in Cuba because it was far the fuck away from me. You didn’t deserve a man like me, you never did, and you still don’t. Me entiendes?” I asked, “Understand me?” in Spanish. Tired of the charade, pretending to be who we weren’t.

She opened her mouth to say something, but nothing came out. Fully aware of everything including our native tongue and why I was suddenly using it with her.

 “Does everything make sense to you now? Or do you need me to tell you about how I killed Salazar’s unborn son too? Except, I didn’t do that for anyone but you.”

“Jesus Christ, Damien,” she breathed out, searching for more answers through my eyes.

“I took away the one thing he ever wanted, and it was one of the few things I’ve ever done right. Aside from saving you, protecting you, falling fucking in love with you. I did it for you.”

Tears started streaming down her beautiful face, one right after the other. It was the first time I’d seen her cry since fate brought us back together. She didn’t even try to hide it, she let them flow loosely. Wanting me to see the part she thought was long dead inside of her.

“I did it for the innocence you lost, the future that was ripped away from you. For your family that you watched die all in the name of ‘Fatherland or death, we shall win!’ Or the sister you watched get raped by the fucking monster standing in front of you!”

“You didn’t rape her! That’s not what happened. I saw it with my own two eyes, Damien. I was too young to understand what that was at the time, but it was the furthest thing from fucking rape. You were kind to her, I saw it!” she bellowed through the tears. “You didn’t want to hurt her, and you weren’t the one who did. I saw it, Damien! I saw how you were with her!” she fervently shouted in a sharp tone, trying to make me believe her. “You did it for my family. You did it for them! You didn’t want anyone to die. You thought… you thought Emilio would follow through on his word not to hurt them. He made you! He always made you do things you didn’t want to do! Hurt people you didn’t want to hurt! Take lives you didn’t want to take! Just like you said, it was all in the name of ‘Fatherland or death, we shall win!’ Except, you’re not a fucking monster like him, Damien! He just made you think you are!”

I reached over to wipe away her tears, to hold her in my arms, but she stepped back, though this time there was no way in hell she could keep me away. In one swift movement, I gripped onto the back of her neck and before she even realized what was happening, I was holding her fragile frame in my strong and steady arms. Kissing away the tears from her face. She stirred beneath my lips, her body trembled under my touch.

“Damien, please…” Her mouth quivered. “I can’t do this with you again. Please… you have to let me go.”

“I fucking love you, Muñeca,” I breathed out against her lips. “Please tell me you at least believe that. I searched for you, for you and Rosarío. I spent years trying to make sure you were alright, but up until I first saw you again, I thought you were dead. The PI I had trying to find you found your death certificate a few months prior and that same night I took a gun to my head and didn’t hesitate to pull the fucking trigger, but he took the bullets with him. Don’t you see what’s blatantly in front of you, because everyone else can. I can’t live without you. Te amo, eres mi todo. Para siempre,” I added again in Spanish, “I love you, you’re my everything. Forever.”

Our mouths were parted like we were trying to breathe for one another, sucking in air that wasn’t available for the taking. She peered up at me through her wet lashes, searching my eyes for the truth beneath the lies I once told her.

I softly kissed her because I couldn’t not fucking kiss her.

Claim her.

Make. Her. Mine.

“Damien, please…”

“I love you. I fucking love you. I’m sorry, Amira. I’ll spend the rest of our lives proving to you how fucking sorry I am. Te amo, te adoro, mi amor, mi vida, mi todo.”

She shut her eyes, turning her face from me as soon as she heard me say, “I love you, I adore you, my love, my life, my everything.” Breaking our connection like she could no longer bear to see the man staring back at her. Professing his undying love for her as if we were still held captive in Cuba.

Not by Emilio Salazar, but from our tumultuous love neither one of us could ever live without.

“I don’t love you anymore.”

“Say it to my fucking face then,” I growled, gripping her chin to look at me. “And stop talking to me in English. Stop pretending to be someone I don’t know.”

She opened her eyes, once again staring deep into mine. Repeating, “Ya no te amo.”

For some reason, hearing those five words in Spanish hurt more. Maybe because it felt like it was Amira saying it and not this woman I no longer knew.

“I don’t love you anymore, and I haven’t for a really long time. That’s my truth. I need you to hear me and understand it. We’re done, Damien! Stay away from me unless you truly want to see what kind of monster you turned me into.”

I didn’t stop her when she turned to leave this time. I stood there, watching the love of my life walk away from me, terrified she’d never come back. I couldn’t will myself to move, my feet sinking in the goddamn sand, the beach swallowing me whole. I let her leave because I couldn’t beg her to stay.

Not when our blatant fucking truths were bleeding out of us this way.