Valentin and Rojo | ✓

thirty-two (2nd draft)

"Oh. My. God," I muttered breathlessly.

"What are you doing here?" Luis was the first one to break the silence. I looked over at Xavier who had a face of bewilderment.

"I... I need to talk to Adriana. What are you doing here?" Xiomara asked.

"We're visiting," Xavier chimed in with an emotionless tone. I didn't know what to do.

"Hey, is everything okay? I heard a glass shatter," my mom walked in. "Luis and Xavier! About damn time." She looked over at me and I discreetly shook my head. "I'm sure you guys are tired," she said as she walked over to Luis and Xavier. "C'mon, we have coffee." She pushed them over to the kitchen and looked at me with wide eyes. She mouthed, fix this. I nodded.

Xiomara snapped back into reality and looked at the floor. "Damn it. I'm so sorry. I didn't mean to drop it."

"It's okay, but how did you find me?" I asked. She sat back down and I walked over to sit next to her.

"Well, it wasn't easy. I had a sense that I was being stalked, essentially I hired someone to watch over me. A couple months later, I learned that I had a P.I. stalking me. Of course, I wondered who hired him. After weeks, I finally found him and confronted him. Let me tell you, he was one hard shell to crack. The way I got it out of him was not pretty. He solely told me your name, nothing more. I, then, hired my own P.I. to find out who you were and what you could possibly want with me. It led me to this address and finding out that you were merely nineteen years old."

"Twenty." I corrected her.

"Sorry, twenty years old. I still wanted answers, so... here I am. Looking for them, but I seem to have already found them." She said glancing in the kitchen.

"As you probably gathered, Xavier is my boyfriend. I met him around a year ago in California. Luis is a very close friend of the family. After finding out about you, I had the need to find you. As I think about it now, I probably shouldn't have. I wanted you to reconnect with Luis and for you to have a relationship with Xavier. But I don't know. You could be married with other kids. You could want nothing to do with X and Luis. I don't know."

She sighed. "It's been two decades, but I'm still the same when it comes to him. I never loved a man the way I love Luis. So, that's the reason I never married. I was heartbroken when he left me as if I was nothing to him. Believe me, I wanted to be apart of Xavier's life, but I couldn't handle it. Seeing him right now... he's a spitting image of Luis. I would be reminded of the most devastating heartbreak of my life whenever I saw him. It didn't help thinking that he most likely hated me. I did leave him, after all."

"He understands that you didn't have a choice. Your father was a demanding man. Trust me, I was in the same exact boat as you. Except, I didn't get pregnant. Not that getting pregnant is bad. I'm thankful you got pregnant, because now Xavier is here with me. But then that pregnancy led to... I'm sorry. I'll just stop talking," I facepalmed myself.

She chuckled and placed a reassuring hand to my shoulder. "Ah, don't fret. I know what you mean. There were days where I regretted leaving Xavier, but at least something good came out of him being with Luis. I learned about the situation with your family, I'm sorry. It's a good thing Gabriel is dead."

"Thank you and yes, it really is." I sighed. "When you left, where did you go?"

"Back to Italy. I couldn't be here anymore. The pain was too much, so I fled back home. With the permission of my parents, I lived with my grandparents. When they died, I came back to California. Mine and Luis' families were still working together, so I laid low. I stayed home most days and was a mess. Sooner or later, I learned the ropes of the family business and my father passed it down to me after he retired."