desiderium | m. o'hara

twenty-five

  I spin back around to him with a hurt frown. "That's not the point!"

  "Then tell me what is, please!"

  I make a sound of frustration and claw my hands before my chest, ball them into clenched fists. I have to forcefully stop myself from kicking the dining chair beside me.

  "You call me your wife and let your ex-fiancée that you didn't tell me about think she still has a shot!" My eyes begin to sting. "Why didn't you tell me? Am I not important enough? Do you even care that much for me? Or am I just some replacement for your dead girlfriend?"

  Miguel's face falls in shock, and so does mine. I didn't even realise I was feeling that way until I said it out loud. My heart crashes through my feet in stunned clarity. My anger is swiftly consumed by anguish now that the words hang between us, and it spins a torrent in my chest. It hurts. I'm hurt.

  Just the thought of Miguel with another woman sends my stomach hurtling in circles with nausea. Naked with, in love with. This is not Mirilla. This is someone he loved, who he almost married. This is someone who's still hanging around, hoping for him to come crawling back to her. It makes me sick.

  Am I not important enough to know about her? I bet Y/n did. I bet she knew all about Dana.

  "No- no, Y/n, I never thought of you as a replacement." Miguel braves the space between us and wipes away my tears with a look of pain. "Is that what you've been thinking?"

  I swallow deeply despite my thick throat and step back from his touch. His hand falls. "What else was I supposed to think?"

  "Not that," Miguel insists softly. "I really fucked up, didn't I?"

  I wipe my sleeve over my eyes. "You think?"

  He's looks out the window with a stunned shake of his head. His hand drags down his face and lingers over his mouth. My eyes fall to the floor. The very swiftly blurring floor.

  The silence taunts me, suffocates me. When his gaze drops back down to me and he takes a step closer, I don't move. I don't let myself look up, either.

  "Y/n, I came here to protect you and Rosita. I had no motives other than keeping the two of you safe." Miguel reaches out again, tentatively, and rests his palm on my cheek when I don't lean away from it. "I fell in love with you because you're you. Not because you're the alternate version of my Y/n - because of who you are. You're funny, and sarcastic, and so kind." He shakes his head in disbelief. "Even when you're beaten down, you manage to lift yourself and the people around you up. It's incredible. I wish I could be more like you."

  It's a confession that startles me. I'd never fought over something like this with my Miguel, and I'd stressed over it so much since I woke, before he even said good morning to me, that I'd constructed a totally inaccurate representation of his reaction in my mind. I look up at him in weepy shock.

  I'd worried that he'd go defensive again, like how he'd been with Gabriel. I'd worried that he'd raise his voice and call me jealous or insecure or a number of other horrible things - things that I know he would never call me if I was thinking right. But I wasn't.

  Instead, after I called him stupid and shouted at him, he lists the ways that he loves me. And it totally blindsides me, it takes my pain and anger by surprise. The edge of my fury is sanded down to softness.

  My expelled breath is shaky. "Then why didn't you tell me about her?"

  Miguel sighs and lifts his other hand to cradle my face completely. He's so goddamn big and tall and broad but he holds me so carefully, so lovingly. It's a mission not to succumb, not to let myself lean into him.