Page 104 of Unholy Union
“I was just…” She clears her throat. “I was just passing by on my way back from dinner and… I saw the piano and I thought I’d… just play for a few minutes.”
I take a step into the room. “Do you play often?”
She rises from the bench, smoothing her sundress with a nervous flick of her fingers, eyes refusing to meet mine. “I’m… okay. I never played enough to get very good. It, um, it reminds me of my mother.”
“Is that why you were playing tonight?”
Her lips part, but no sound comes out. Instead, her eyes start to water again, a flicker of pain passing across her face. She presses her knuckles against her mouth, trying hard to fight against the emotion begging for release.
I step forward, reaching for her, but she bats my arms away and turns her back on me. Her arms fold tightly across her chest like a shield.
I exhale a slow breath, scrubbing a hand across my jaw. “Sabrina… you can tell me about it. Whatever it is.”
Her silence stretches on for a moment as if she’s debating on what she wants to do. When she does speak, her voice sounds soft and cracked at the same time, like it pains her to even do it.
“It’s her death anniversary…” she murmurs, her back still to me. “It’s been seventeen years now. And I thought it would get easier with time, but… lately I feel like I’m starting to forget what she was like. How she smelled. How she sounded when she laughed. How it felt when she brushed my hair. Those memories… they’re starting to fade, and I hate that. I hate that I can’t hold onto them like I used to. But the pain… that never fades. That part still feels as real as the day it happened.”
I’m left speechless by her confession. I’ve never been the type who knew how to deal with these kinds of situations.
I’ve grown up in a family where emotion was treated as weakness on every level.
But listening to Sabrina’s heart-wrenching words about her mother pulls at something deep inside me. It makes me want tobe the person who’s with her in this moment. The man who she can cry to and rest in his arms as he provides a listening ear.
And even if I can’t take away the grief, I can be the one to make sure she’s never alone again.
Cautiously, I close the distance between us and reach for her, resting a hand gently on her shoulder.
“She won’t fade. Not really. Because she still lives on inside you. In the way you move, the way you carry yourself. The way you love… and fight. She’s a part of you, Sabrina. As her daughter, that’s forever. There’s no taking that away.”
She lets out a trembling breath, her watery eyes flicking up to meet mine.
For a brief second, I question if she’s about to push me away again. But instead, she leans closer and presses her face into my chest, her body folding into mine like she’s finally too tired to keep holding herself up. My arms instinctively come around her in a warm, protective embrace.
I stroke my fingers gently through her dark, silky curls, letting the strands slip between my knuckles as she sniffles against my chest.
Her tears wet my shirt, but I couldn’t give less of a fuck.
I’m more preoccupied with letting her come down from the grief she’s feeling.
“The piano reminded me of the one we have at home,” she mumbles against my chest. “Ours is mahogany. We had it imported from Austria. Papi spent a ridiculous amount of money because it was the exact model Mami wanted. They used to play together for hours… and dance. Just the two of them.”
I lean back slightly, a grin pulling at my mouth. “And that’s when you were sneaking down to watch them?”
Her freckled nose wrinkles. “I did. I thought I was so sneaky too. But Leo always caught me. He never ratted me out, though. I think he liked seeing them like that too.”
“How’d they dance?” I ask, grabbing her hand. “Show me.”
She laughs as if she thinks I’m joking, then quickly discovers I’m serious when I give her a spin. Her eyes widen in surprise as her sundress flutters and her curls whip across her shoulders. She twirls back into me like she never left.
My hands settles at her waist as she laughs again, brighter this time.
“Just like that,” she says breathlessly.
I give her another twirl, going slower as she turns in a loose circle under my hand, and then returns to my chest. She smiles up at me with sparkling eyes, like she can’t believe the moment we’re in.
We sway in the middle of the music room to no music at all—music that proves to be unnecessary as we invent our own between the spins, steps, and shared laughter along the way.
At least for the moment, we’ve agreed to a peace treaty.
