Page 92 of Shameless in Vegas

“Mamita,” I squeak through a voice that I’d guess sounds a lot like the child version of myself that she last saw me as.

She heaves a sob, tightening her arms around my shoulders and kissing my head. “Gracias a Dios. Gracias a Dios. Gracias a Dios.Oh,mija.Oh, my Natalia. My girl. My baby girl.”

“Te extrañé mucho,” I try to tell her, but I have no voice to back the words that come from deep within my battered soul.

I missed you so much.

I missed you so much.

I missed you so much.

“Oh, my girl.” She clasps her palms on my cheeks, framing my face and turning my head toward her. “Look at you, my beautiful girl.” She sobs again, trails of tears dampening the apples of her high, elegant cheekbones. “Look at how beautiful you are,preciosa. I have dreamed of watching you grow, and you are every bit as perfect as I knew you would be.”

She kisses my cheeks, then my forehead, and pulls me close for another hug. My chin rests on her shoulder, and I see Joaquin standing across her small living room watching us in a reverent silence.

In the three months or so that I’ve known him, I’ve seen many expressions on his handsomely chiseled features, but none like this one. This expression speaks volumes about how much he understands how monumental this reunion is for both me and my mother.

His brows lifted and slightly knitted. The rims of his eyes red and brimming. His stubbled jaw at ease aside from the faintest tremble in his bottom lip; the upward quirk at the corners of his mouth in a soft, happy-tears smile.

He watches us, and his shoulders rise and fall with what looks like a silent, content sigh, and he understandsso well, and moments ago, I didn’t think I could love him more. But I do. Oh, how I do.

Gratitude and love swell so ferociously that it feels like I could come apart at the seams and burst, and I can only mouth another silent phrase that is far too lacking.

“Thank you, amor.”

In response, his closed-lip smile tugs wider, and he sniffs quietly before wiping his face on his sleeve.

I pat my mother’s shoulders. “Mamita, my husband, Joaquin found you for me.”

She turns to him and opens her arm. “Come here,cariño. Let me hug you, too.”

He wipes his face with his hand and crosses the room. My mother releases me to reach up for his cheeks, and Joaquin leans down toward her so she can pepper his face with kisses.

“You wonderful, good man,” she gushes as he wraps his large arms around her little frame. “You are a good, good man. Thank you.Gracias, chico. Te agradezco de corazón.You have healed my broken heart today. You have mended my shattered life. You have restored the missing piece of my soul.”

At that, fresh tears surface on the rims of his, and one trips over his lower lashes, and I know he needed something like this, too. That kind of commendation is something that’s been missing his whole life, just like the love of my mother has been missing from mine. Everything I’ve witnessed since coming into his life even under the premise that I did practically screamed how lacking he was in this area. The knowledge that he’s done something so good that it breathed life into two people who’d been existing in a half-dead state in the aftermath of being torn apart.

And the only reason we three tattered souls are standing in the salve of this restorative moment is because of love. Because he loves me and continued to love me even when he learned the sinister truth of who I was; the person I’m not anymore because of the power of that same love.

After more than twenty years of being imprisoned in a life of violence and hate, I am free. Only one thing could purchase such freedom from the pain, suffering, and sinister ways that cut and carved me.

And that thing is love.

The one thing I was truly lacking.

The one thing I know I’ll never be without again.

EPILOGUE

NATALIA

THREE MONTHS AFTER ALL the shit came to a head, I’m still living a lie. Rather, my husband and I are, and this is a lie we’re okay with maintaining.

After the news of Xavier’s demise reached his father, Joaquin decided that going to his parents with the intention of spilling our guts about exactly what happened and who I am was pointless. What good would it do other than adding to Ernesto’s paranoia about his now-mostly-dead extended family and his prolific disappointment in his only son?

So, now, as far as his family knows, our marriage is just a drunken Vegas mishap that somehow worked out. Joaquin and I know the truth.Ourtruth. The truth that everything we endured over the past few months has bound us for life in an unshakeable ride-or-die, Bonnie-and-Clyde-style partnership. And somehow sharing a secret like that only deepens the soulish tie that I believe has always connected us.

On the day I was battered by the cartel for the very last time, I picked out a pretty dress that I didn’t believe I would ever wear for a wedding; one I didn’t believe I would live to attend. Today, that dress is hanging in a garment bag in the closet of a hotel room in Los Cabos, and tomorrow evening I will wear it to the wedding of two people who have become more than friends and are starting to feel like family.

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