by Alexa Riley
Crimson red.
Tears fill my eyes. I don’t dare to hope. I don’t dare to fear. But there is knife right beside them. A knife that is all too familiar.
“My sweet Bella.”
The voice comes from behind me, so soft I can’t be sure I’m not going insane. I can’t move. I don’t dare. I am so afraid that if I blink, that if move even a fraction of an inch, the illusion in the reflection will disappear. His face will disappear, and I will be plunged right back into my waking nightmare again.
“You have two choices,” he tells me. “You can keep me, or you can kill me. For I cannot go on living without you. And I cannot go on living with you as my captive. So you must decide on your own. You must choose to be my willing captive. You must choose to remain by my side for the days of your life, or be merciful and have your vengeance by bleeding me dry.”
A tear falls down my cheek, followed by another. And then another. Soon, Javi is kneeling before me at my feet, cupping my face in his palms. And they feel so real. So warm.
I can smell him. I can feel him. It is either the cruelest fabrication of my mind or the best day of my life.
Javi wipes away my tears.
“Do not cry for me, my Bella.”
“You can’t be real,” I whisper. “This can’t be real. I must be dreaming.”
“It is no dream,” he assures me.
I close my eyes and open them again. He is still there. Still breathing. His heart still beating when I feel it beneath my palm.
“Javi?”
“Yes, my love,” he answers. “It is me. I am real. I am here. And I am not going anywhere.”
I leap into his arms, and he catches me.
“Javi.”
Over and over, I say his name like a prayer. He kisses me. He holds me. And he doesn’t let go. His eyes move over my body. Over the bump that now rests between us.
“You carry my child so well, my Bella.”
His hand hovers there nervously, wishing to touch, but possibly afraid.
“You can,” I tell him. “This baby is ours, Javi.”
He touches me, as gently as Javi has ever touched me.
“I still cannot believe it is real,” he says.
“Did you know?” I ask.
There are so many questions. So much for us to talk about. I don’t know where he was or what happened to him. But I don’t know if I’m even ready to hear it yet, and I think Javi knows it.
“I did know, Bella,” he answers. “There is much for us to discuss.”
“There is,” I agree. “One step at a time. I only just got you back.”
“I take it then,” he says hopefully, “you do not wish to kill me?”
“Don’t ever leave me again,” I tell him. “Ever.”
“I won’t, my Bella,” he says. “But your father…”
I shake my head and close my eyes.
“No. Not now.”
Maybe not ever.
I don’t know how to make sense of the things that I feel for my father. My warring grief and hatred for the man that he was. I think I will always be split in two as far as he is concerned.
I mourn him because I am still his daughter. But I have so much anger towards him too. Anger that I never had a chance to express. But none of that matters right now.
Nothing else matters when Javi is real, and he is right here beside me.
I tell him as much.
And then I tell him to take me home.
CHAPTER FORTY-NINE
“MY BELLA.”
Javi’s voice pulls me from my daydream, and I open my eyes. The sun is shining, but his body shields my face from the worst of it.
The hammock rocks in the breeze and I cradle my belly, resting the book I was reading atop the bump as I give him my full attention.
“What is it?”
“You have been out here too long,” he says. “Your skin will burn in this light.”
Concern mars his features, and I give him a gentle smile. He is unguarded. Still wild, as he always has been. But there is something so different about my Javi now.
He is no longer ashamed of his scars. He no longer hides from me. He is beautiful and primitive. He still struggles with control. With asking questions or making suggestions instead of demanding them.
Like right now when I can see he would prefer to simply pick me up and carry me back into the house. But he is trying to be patient.
He is trying to learn. We are trying to learn together. I teach Javi patience, and he teaches me strength, and together we make it from one day to the next.
“Bella,” he says again. “Come inside, yes?”
“Yes,” I answer him. “I will.”
“Now?”
He is anxious. The baby will be here any day.
“I need help.”
I hold out my hands, and Javi tugs me up from the hammock, cradling me in his arm as he walks me into the house. We sit down at the kitchen island, and he makes me a cup of tea while I watch.
Since his return home, Javi has been busy remodeling Moldavia. The first thing to go was the surgery room. The walls of the house have been re-papered and painted, and the floors polished and shined. The only thing that remains is the locks on the windows. I feel more secure knowing they are in place.
Javi no longer works for the agency. He tells me that they will not come for us, but I can never really feel one hundred percent comfortable when it comes to the agency.
I don’t know if I’ll ever feel completely comfortable again. If I’ll ever stop looking over my shoulder or checking the house for devices.
I know Javi won’t either. I see him doing the same. And now that we are about to be parents, it weighs heavy on both of our minds.
That is not the only thing weighing heavy on Javi’s mind, and it is obvious in the way he carries himself today.
When he places my tea on the counter, I reach for his hand.
“Javi.”
“Hmm, my love?”
He seems scattered, his thoughts elsewhere.
“It’s going to be okay.”
“What is?” he asks.
“You’re going to do just fine.”
I tell him so every day, but he doesn’t believe me. I know he worries that he will not be a good father. He never had a father, he said. Or at least, he did not know him. And the closest he had to one was my father. The man who deceived him.
“You will be nothing like him,” I say. “You will be here. You will be present. And you will teach your son to be a man of honor.”
“Yes,” he says softly. “I hope so.”
I smile and take a sip of my tea.
And then my water breaks.
Javi is still at war in his own mind, and I have to call his name to get his attention.
“Yes, my love?”
“I guess there’s no time like the present to find out.”
“What do you mean?”
“It’s time,” I tell him.
CHAPTER FIFTY
THE WHOLE PROCESS is overwhelming from the start.
The trip to the hospital takes an eternity, and I worry I will not get her there on time. The registration process overwhelms me. Paperwork this, and insurance that.
These are things not to worry about I try to tell them. We can take care of it later. But first, we must have our baby. They tell me this is not the way this works, and I get frustrated.
Bella reaches for my hand and smiles.
I know I must be patient. I must do this right, for her. I fill out the paperwork as they ask. Nurses come and go from the room. A doctor comes and goes.
I think that the baby will come soon, but they tell me no, this is not how it works. So we wait. And I watch Bella. This is not the kind of pain I like to see her in.
Eventually, they say she is getting close. They give her an epidural, and I almost get sick. I do not like hospitals. I do not like the smell. The needles. The tools.
I remember my mother, and then
I try to erase those thoughts from my memory. Not today. Not ever again.
Forward. Always forward with my Bella.
The doctor comes in and tells her it’s time to push. She does. They ask me if I want to see the baby’s head, and Bella tells me no. That I better not dare to look down there right now. So I don’t.
I stay up by her side and hold her hand and kiss her forehead and tell her how amazing I think she is. How lucky I am to have her. How I will never let her go. She cries and tries to smile. She cannot say the words back. But I don’t need them. Not anymore. I know that when she does say them, she means them.
I know that I love her. Nothing will ever come between us again. I tell her so. And she agrees.
“Yes, Javi. Never.”
The baby is born, and the doctor laughs as he cleans him up.
“Would you like to meet your daughter?”
“Daughter?” we both ask.
“Yes, it appears that your son is not a son after all. What we have here is a little girl.”
Bella smiles and I almost pass out.
A girl.
A girl is not better, is it?
A girl is worse?
A girl is sensitive. Delicate.
This means I must learn to be sensitive and delicate. I’m still panicking over this until I look at my Bella. So soft and beautiful and exhausted, clutching our baby girl in her arms.
She looks up at me, and there are tears in her eyes.
“She’s so…”
Her voice is weak. Raspy. She must be so tired, I reason.
“Pretty.”
The word is barely a breath.
A machine starts beeping. The doctor yells something. But I can only focus on Bella. Her eyes have closed, and her body is limp, and I only blinked, and I don’t understand what’s happening.
Someone shoves the baby into my arms and tells me I must leave. I tell them no. The machines keep beeping, and Bella is not waking up, and I am so scared. The most afraid I have ever been, with such a tiny baby in my arms.
I cannot fight them. I cannot get to them. Because it would hurt the baby. The nurses push me from the room, and I tell them no again.
“Mr. Castillo,” the nurse says. “You must be calm. You have to let us try to help her.”
But that isn’t the way it sounds. That isn’t the way it sounds at all. Because her voice is grim, and her eyes are apologetic. She’s looking at me like my Bella is already gone. And the only thing I can do is look down at the little baby in my arms.
The little baby that looks so much like Bella.
EPILOGUE
-FOUR YEARS LATER-
“ARIA, COME TO PAPA.”
The little girl with black hair and pale blue eyes bounds from the other end of the room and leaps up onto the sofa.
“What is it, Papa?” she asks.
I tap her on the nose and shake my head. “It is long past your bedtime, yes?”
She giggles and shrugs.
“I’m not tired, though.”
“Ah yes, this is what you say. However, in the morning it will be, Papa I’m too tired to get out of bed.”
She giggles again.
“Can you tell me one story first?”
Like most things, I cannot turn her down when she uses this voice. The same one she got from her mother.
She is a songbird, like her mother too.
“Which story would you like tonight, my Aria? Will it be Kings and Queens or fairies and toads?”
“I want the story about the caged bird,” she tells me.
I smile.
My heart aches whenever I tell this story, but I indulge her. It is good for me, to never forget.
“Come, come.” I pat the sofa beside me and Aria cuddles into my side.
“Okay, here we go. You comfortable?”
“Yes, Papa,” she says.
“Okay then. Once upon a time, there was a beautiful songbird. The most beautiful songbird in all the land.”
“You forgot the most important part,” Aria interrupts me.
“I have not forgotten. You just need to learn patience, my Aria. Now hush and let your Papa tell the story.”
“Okay,” she whispers.
“The beautiful songbird looked just like you. With long raven hair and pale blue eyes. Her skin was porcelain, and she could have been an angel who fell from the sky.”
“Soooooo pretty,” Aria adds.
“Yes, she was. And this beautiful songbird had the voice of an angel too. But sometimes, she did not always know this to be true. She was filled with doubt by all the villagers who told her she did not sing so well as she thought.”
“They were sooooo mean,” Aria contributes.
“Yes, they were mean. But the meanest of all was the beast that she crossed paths with one fateful day. He thought her so beautiful that he decided he should have her for himself. But it was not to covet her like the songbird she was. The beast had set out to hurt the songbird.”
“But why, Papa?” Aria asks. “Why would he want to do that?”
“I have told you this story many times,” I say.
She grins.
“I know, but not for a while now.”
“Okay,” I concede. “Well the Beast, he was cold-hearted, Aria. Not like you. He did not care for others. He had no compassion. His heart was filled with hate and a thirst for revenge. Because the songbird’s father had tricked him once. And because he was scarred and ugly. He decided that it was easier to have his revenge than to accept what was.”
“So he did not think the songbird could love him?” Aria asks.
“No,” I answer. “He did not. For he was a beast after all.”
“But sometimes, maybe, a songbird could love a beast anyway,” Aria says thoughtfully. “Right, Papa?”
“Yes.” I smile. “You are so smart, Aria. And this is precisely what happened. In spite of his terrible ways, the songbird fell in love with the beast, anyway.”
Aria wiggles her feet beside me nervously in anticipation for the part that she remembers next.
“But it was not to be. For there was a terrible, terrible illness that took…”
“Papa!” Aria covers her ears and screeches. “Don’t say this part.”
I poke her in the tummy, and she smiles.
“But this is the story, Aria. Do you want to hear it or not?”
“I do, but skip to the best part.”
“Patience,” I mumble. “You must learn patience, my Aria.”
“Okay,” she yawns. “Then let’s finish the story tomorrow night.”
She closes her eyes and snuggles against me, and I do not have the heart to move her. Instead, I stroke her hair beneath my palm and marvel over the little girl that Isabella and I created.
“Do we miss mama?” I ask her.
She yawns again and nods into my side, her answer only a faint whisper.
“Yes, Papa. We miss her very much.”
And then she is asleep. Off to dreams in a place that no darkness can touch her.
I close my eyes too and remember my Bella. I remember her in a white dress, with her hair falling in curls around her face. She wore a halo of roses that day, and I told her that I thought it was shameful I was the only one to bear witness to such beauty.
She argued with me that the minister was there to witness it too, and all the stars in the sky above us, and of course, our Aria.
I told her I had no need for the stars in the sky or the moon or the sun, because I had her, and that was everything to me. She replied with a smile on her face that I had gone soft, and she was probably right.
But my vows were not soft. And the ceremony was not soft. I was determined to bind her to me for life, and words weren’t enough. Her blood still hangs in a vial around my neck, where it will remain until my heart gives out.
My Bella conceded that this was the way it should be because our journey had never been all roses.
I laid claim to her with my ring and my
words and my knife. The minister paled as we performed the blood ceremony and exchanged vows.
I promised to love, cherish, and protect my wife. And then I promised to punish and reward her when I saw fit too.
Bella promised to love me, even when I didn’t deserve it. She promised to teach me patience when I needed it, which was always. And she promised that even if I lived to earn another thousand scars, she would see nothing except for her beautiful beast.
The last part was not necessary. Because I discovered that as time went on, my scars faded away. Perhaps not in the mirrors, but in my own eyes. It was easy to forget they existed when Bella loved me in spite of them. Her opinion was the only one that mattered. The only one that still matters.
And I miss her terribly sometimes when she disappears this way. When she goes away to write. Vanishing into the other wing of the house for hours on end.
It is something that helps her. It is her way of processing the emotions that she feels so strongly at times. I will often hear the soft notes of the piano at all hours of the night, playing songs with words only I can hear.
She does not put them on albums. She simply records them and uploads them to YouTube. Something for her fans that costs nothing. And then she leaves them, never to return again.
She does not read the comments. She remains safe in her bubble here with her family. Ever since that day when we brought our little girl home.
It took some time to make this happen. I almost lost her. We almost lost her. To an embolism. But against the odds, she recovered.
The doctors told me she was a fighter. And I told them they had no idea. I brought my Bella home, and we have never looked back.
The door opens, and with it comes the light.
“I wasn’t expecting you to finish so early.”
“I know,” Bella says. “But I missed you guys.”
She looks lovely this evening, her tired eyes roaming over Aria and then me. She is always so lovely.
“Let me put her to bed,” she says. “And then I’ll come to you.”
I scoop Aria into my arms and hand her to Bella. She leaves, and I go to the place where it all began, amongst the roses and stars.
