Desired: A Love Letters Novel

by Kristen Blakely

  Desired

  A Love Letters Novel

  Kristen Blakely

  Copyright © 2015

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, without prior written permission.

  Publisher’s Note: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are a product of the author’s imagination. Locales and public names are sometimes used for atmospheric purposes. Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, or to businesses, companies, events, institutions, or locales is completely coincidental.

  Contents

  Desired

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Epilogue

  Ensnared

  Love Letters

  About the Author

  Desired

  I want a divorce. And I don’t know why.

  “The Plan” we made twenty years ago as naive seventeen-year-olds is on track. Married. House with a white picket fence. Two matching BMWs. Two kids. And Gabriel is on track to becoming a partner in his law firm.

  How can one have everything and still need something more…something different? How do I tell the man I married that he’s practically a stranger to me now?

  “The Plan” is about to go completely off track. Far worse, I’m not sure if it’s his fault…or mine.

  Chapter 1

  For the fifth time in as many days, Valeria Cruz awoke alone. Huddled beneath the quilts, she peered, bleary-eyed, over her shoulder. The bedsheets were cool and smooth on Gabriel’s side of the bed. The indentation of his head did not mark his pillow. The sheets, laundered yesterday, smelled of detergent instead of him.

  If he had returned home last night, he had probably slept on the sofa bed in his study.

  She sighed, her heart too heavy to string curse words into a coherent sentence.

  Dawn peeked in through the window, small pockets of sunlight pooling upon the polished hardwood floors. In the next room, she heard her five-year-old daughter, Marlena, call out, “I’m starving! Get me breakfast, Diego!”

  “Get yourself breakfast,” eight-year-old Diego retorted. “Mom! She’s bossing me around again.”

  The patter of feet rushed down the corridor and into the master bedroom. Marlena, her dark hair loose about her face, scrambled into the bed and primly pulled down on her Disney Princess nightshirt to cover her thighs. “I want to cuddle.” She snuggled against Valeria with a smile that would have melted any heart.

  “I thought you wanted breakfast,” Valeria said.

  “I want Diego to get me breakfast. I want you to cuddle with me.”

  “Ah.” Valeria concealed a smile. “Thank you for clarifying. We’ll cuddle for five minutes, then it’s time for breakfast.”

  “Is there space for me?” Diego asked in a plaintive tone from the doorway.

  “Of course,” Valeria said. Diego was eight, but as much a cuddleholic as anyone else in the family—as much as Gabriel had once been, but that was a long time ago. The memory was bittersweet, but she had no time to lose herself in memories. She had children now, and they needed her attention. She patted the other side of the bed. “Come on in.”

  Diego scrambled in beside her. “Has Dad left for work?” he asked as he wrapped an arm around her waist.

  “I suppose so,” Valeria said, although she did not know.

  “Did you remind him about the school fair?”

  “He knows about the school fair, baby. I put it on his calendar.”

  “For the last time,” Diego huffed. “I’m not a baby.”

  She stroked the black curls cropped close to his head. You will always be my baby, but you’re growing up so fast. “All right, my big boy.”

  “I’m your baby!” Marlena offered with a wide grin. “And a princess.”

  Diego cut in. “You’re just a little girl. You’re not a princess because Mom and Dad are not the queen and king.”

  “You know, Diego, reality is a really nasty thing to smack your sister with first thing in the morning,” Valeria said, snatching at Marlena’s arms as she reached across Valeria’s body to scratch out her brother’s eyes. “Hold it, hold it. The Mommy Line is in effect.”

  Marlena’s eyes opened wide. “The Mommy Line?” A smile crept over her face, transforming her usually serious expression into pixie-like cheekiness. Her voice dropped into a reverent whisper. “What happens when we cross the Mommy line?”

  “You get tickled,” Diego intoned solemnly. “Isn’t that right, Mom?” His expression remained impressively neutral as his little hand inched across her stomach, obviously testing the integrity of the Mommy Line.

  Valeria lunged up to follow through on her threat. Diego doubled over in laughter and collapsed into helpless giggles. With a squeal of delight, Marlena threw herself at her brother, her little fingers wriggling into the sensitive spots under his arms and at his waist.

  “All right, enough, enough!” Diego shouted. “I can’t breathe.”

  “If you can talk, you can breathe,” Marlena said. “Mommy always says so.”

  “Mom,” Diego whined. “She crossed the Mommy Line.”

  Marlena’s eyes widened. “Uh-oh.” In a flash, she leapt off the bed and was halfway down the corridor to her bedroom before Valeria caught up with her and carried her, laughing and squealing, back to the bed to be thoroughly tickled.

  The day began with laughter, shattering the melancholy of Valeria’s waking.

  The lively chatter continued all the way downstairs. She saw an envelope on the kitchen island—the card she had left out for Gabriel last night. It did not even look like it had been disturbed, let alone read. Her breath caught.

  Not now.

  She shoved the note out of her mind and focused on getting her children fed, dressed, and out the door. Keeping her thoughts centered on her children was, however, easier said than done. Her gaze kept drifting back to the card. Had he seen it? Had he read its message?

  Had he given a damn?

  She ushered Marlena and Diego into her car for the fifteen-minute drive to their Montessori academy. She dispensed kisses and checked them in for the school day before returning home.

  The return trip seemed longer and farther, although Valeria knew it was only her imagination at work. She busied herself cleaning the kitchen and restoring it to its pristine state. When every plate had been put away and every surface wiped down, she ran out of excuses.

  Her hands suddenly cold, she reached for the envelope, opened it, and removed the card.

  Happy anniversary, she had written. I want a divorce.

  Her legs trembled beneath her, and she sank down to sit cross-legged upon the cold kitchen tiles. Valeria dragged her hands through her long, dark hair. Gabriel had forgotten their dinner date and failed to come home early as he had promised. Oh, God. Why had she written those words? Was it childish spite over the anniversary dinner she had painstakingly prepared going cold, or had the dinner been the last straw, the final insult in a marriage long gone cold?

  Her eyes damp, she slid the card back into the envelope. Well, the joke was obviously on her. Gabriel had not even seen the card. If he had, surely he would have come in to her last night and demanded an explanation. She would have welcomed a chance to deal with an angry, irate husband instead of a man who simply wasn’t around.

  She reached for her smartphone and pressed the third number on speed dial. The first two numbers would have connected her with Gabri
el’s cell phone and Gabriel’s office, although she could not recall the last time she had actually called him.

  They had nothing to talk about anymore. She ran the household on autopilot with the salary he deposited into their joint bank account each month, likewise on autopilot.

  Her best friend, Cherish Petersen, picked up the phone. Like Valeria, Cherish had been an undergraduate business major at New York University, and they had taken several classes together, eventually moving beyond acquaintance into friendship. “What’s up, chica?” Cherish asked.

  “I did it. Last night.”

  “What did you do? Pick up a hunky sailor at the local bar?”

  “There are sailors in the Upper East Side of Manhattan?” Valeria let herself get sidetracked by Cherish’s banter, because it was easier than getting consumed by the dread of having thrown a live hand grenade into her marriage.

  “In the old days, sure. Now it’s mostly investment bankers, management consultants, and lawyers.” Cherish laughed. “So, what did you do?”

  “I told Gabriel I wanted a divorce.”

  Cherish’s laughter trailed into silence. After a long moment, she asked, “What did he say?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You didn’t talk about it? He’s a lawyer. Talking…hell, arguing is an occupational hazard for him.”

  “I wrote it down on a card and left it on the kitchen island. I don’t think he saw it.”

  “Oh, Val.”

  Valeria could hear Cherish’s exasperation in the sigh that breathed into her ear. She pressed her free arm across her stomach to contain the flutter of nerves. Her head ached, as if filled with too many half-thoughts.

  Cherish asked, “Do you want your life to change, or not?”

  “Yes. I just…”

  “Just what?”

  “Just don’t know if I have to blow it up to make it different.”

  “Do you love Gabriel?”

  Yes. That particular question she could answer without any trouble, although Valeria knew that Cherish, who was halfway out of her third marriage and already planning her fourth, would not have approved of Valeria’s response. One-sided love, as they both well knew, skewed the balance of power in a relationship. Valeria tried not to walk into the minefield of questions better left unanswered. “Isn’t the better question, does he love me?”

  “Does he?” Cherish demanded.

  Valeria drew in a deep breath, but it did not stem the ache in her chest. Her answer quavered on her lips, the truth unpalatable. “I…don’t think he does.”

  “And there’s your answer,” Cherish said. “Your life’s not going to get better on its own. He’s too comfortable with the status quo. If you want change, you’re going to have to change it yourself. And that means telling him, as opposed to leaving a note on a card he’s not going to read.”

  “I know,” Valeria said, chastised. She hung up on Cherish and stared at the card in her hand.

  Happy anniversary. I want a divorce.

  Had she meant it?

  Yes. And no.

  The “no” came out a little stronger.

  Valeria’s shoulders sagged on a sigh as she held the card in the tips of her fingers. She would tear it, trash it, and not say a word to Gabriel. Perhaps she had had a lucky escape after all; she was not ready to blow up her marriage, especially if it was working for everyone else in it.

  But what about me?

  I want more…

  She looked around her kitchen. Stainless steel appliances marked with designer brand names nestled next to polished butcher-block countertops that cost more than imported granite. The contents of the pantry would have looked perfectly at home at Whole Foods, and the wine closet was stocked with whites and reds that would have made the sommelier of any four-star Michelin-rated restaurant proud. Everything in the kitchen exuded tasteful luxury. She had come so far from her childhood home with its dirt-stained linoleum tiles, water-damaged laminate countertops, and empty pantry shelves.

  The tears springing up in her eyes stoppered her throat. It was all Gabriel’s doing. He had done everything he had promised; how could she expect more?

  Her smartphone rang, its tone customized. Gabriel. She swiped the tears away and inhaled deeply before accepting the call. “Hello?” Her voice, thank God, did not quaver.

  “Val.” His deep baritone still sent a thrill of delight through her, probably because she often went days without hearing it, she thought cynically. “I managed to clear my schedule for lunch. Are you free to meet?”

  Her heart thudded. He must have seen the card. Otherwise, he would never have cleared his schedule for her. “Yes, I am.”

  “Great. There’s a little café in the basement of my office building.”

  “I know the place.”

  “Noon?”

  “Sure.”

  “Right. See you then.” He hung up without saying anything else.

  Bemused, Valeria stared at her phone. The conversation was quintessential Gabriel—strictly business, always to the point, no room or time for random chitchat. He didn’t do social banter. He didn’t flirt. His laser-like focus on academic and professional success had made him unique in high school when the rest of their peers had drifted aimlessly through each class.

  Surely it wasn’t fair to expect any differently from him after twenty years.

  Twenty years. Had it really been that long?

  Their future together had begun the night of their senior prom, a cheap and gaudy affair in a school, which bordered dangerous Bronx neighborhoods and seemed to attract the worst possible residents of both. It was not unusual to find shotgun shells littering the yard, next to discarded condoms and broken beer bottles. The neighborhoods had cleaned up since, but twenty years earlier, it definitely qualified as the “wrong side of the tracks.”

  Gabriel, however, had been determined to make it to the right side of the tracks. They had left the prom together in his rust-stained Fiat, which rattled and knocked in a most alarming way any time he went above forty miles an hour. He drove to a little pizza joint in a better part of town. They snacked on cheese pizza in the car, and there, he had given her a promise ring, a burnished copper band that had left green stains on her finger.

  He had apologized for the cheap ring, which had been all he could afford then, and swore that if she stuck with him, he would make it worth her while. She, however, had treasured the gesture, which accorded the ring a value far above its physical worth. If she had known back then that their fundamentally disparate views on life would cause problems twenty years down the road, she would have given that ring back to him.

  “I’ll get us out of here,” he had promised her. “We’ll both go to college, then law school. When I become partner in a law firm, we’ll give our children everything we couldn’t have growing up. A beautiful house. A school where they can learn and play, and not worry about stray gunfire. We’ll have money. We’ll never have to choose between paying for electricity or rent, never have to eat peanut butter and jelly sandwiches ever again.”

  Valeria sighed. Her present-day kitchen was at least half the size of the entire two-bedroom apartment house in which she had grown up. She had not worried about paying for electricity or the mortgage for years now. With the exception of the peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, which Marlena swore was one of the primary food groups and insisted on eating every day, Gabriel had kept his word. He had brought Valeria along with him every step of the way and anchored his promise to her with a sapphire engagement ring in their junior year in college.

  Working four jobs between the both of them, they had graduated from college, and for a few years after that, Valeria worked to support Gabriel through law school. They lived cheaply, the monotony of sandwich lunches and pasta dinners broken by inexpensive dates at fast food chain restaurants, but their gamble paid off. Gabriel graduated at the top of his class and joined a prestigious law firm, Brickstein and Felder. Her wedding ring, paid for with his signing bo
nus, was diamond studded. The ring he had given her on their tenth wedding anniversary two years earlier was even more lavish, custom-designed to complement her wedding ring.

  She received endless compliments on her rings—the physical symbol of Gabriel’s love.

  Valeria held her left hand out in front of her. The spotlights in the kitchen glittered against the sparkle of diamonds on her finger. Her sapphire engagement ring and the copper ring were tucked away in her jewelry case—cheap trinkets compared to the rings she wore.

  Her breath shuddered as the irony of the situation suffocated her. The prices of the rings Gabriel had given here were inversely proportional to how much he loved her. At the rate she was going, her next ring would bear the Hope diamond, and Gabriel’s love would be ground down to nothing.

  Valeria arrived at the café before the lunch crowd descended and found a booth in a quiet corner. She smoothed the skirt of her jersey knit dress and pressed the damp palms of her hands against the seat cushions. Her heart thudded although she focused on sitting up straight, her shoulders pressed back, and neck elongated. Poise, she knew, was the key to dealing with Gabriel. He hated emotional people, and he loathed histrionics. She glanced down at the small handbag on her lap. It concealed her anniversary greeting card like a dirty little secret. She had brought the card along to reinforce her courage and conviction. She would need it to counter Gabriel’s inevitable use of cold logic and hard reason.

  The thought caught her by surprise. She held back a sigh, but a deep ache settled into her chest, weighing her down. Perhaps the biggest indicator of a marriage gone astray was that she was gearing up for a meeting with her husband as if preparing for war.