Mad Valentine: A Bad Boy Romance (Mad Valentine Trilogy Book 1) (15 page)

XXXIII. El Dorado

Warren was able to walk at graduation. His internal bleeding was minor and his body repaired itself under observation. He was released from the hospital in just two days. The swelling and bruising in his face went down, and he almost looked normal on graduation day. Despite what had come between Warren and me, it was wonderful to see him rebound so quickly.

Maggie’s scratch was also totally healed by graduation day, and her rattled nerves were on the mend too. She kept telling me how wrong she’d been about Victor, but it almost pained me to hear her say it. I didn’t want to gloat in petty I-was-right-and-you-were-wrong-isms. I was overjoyed that my best friend finally saw the person I’d fallen in love with in a fair light. But at the same time, that didn’t allay the growing anxiety inside me that I would leave Merritt without seeing him again. As the days to graduation passed away, I became panicky.

“I’m running out of time to see him,” I told Maggie.

She looked genuinely sad and replied, “I know. But I’m sure he’ll turn up, El. He cares about you too much to let you go without saying goodbye.”

“I don’t know,” I said. “He’s got his mind set on forcing me to move on.”

“It’s a cowardly thing to do,” said Maggie with a sniff. “He could at least end things amicably.”

“I guess you’re right. But I think he thinks he’s doing me a favor. I wish he’d understand that he’s just hurting me.”

Maggie and Archie even volunteered to haunt Lucky 13 with me to see if we could catch a glimpse of Victor. But he was like a ghost, and he never appeared. We just ended up getting drunk and depressed instead.

When graduation day came around, I looked all around the sea of black caps and gowns for Victor. I knew he wasn’t the walking at graduation type, but I thought there could be a chance he’d turn up for the age-old sound of “Pomp and Circumstance.” But with Maggie, Archie, Warren, the frat guys, and all their accompanying chatter, joking, and cheering cocooning me, I couldn’t make a decent search. Giving up, I decided this wasn’t the time, and instead I joined in the excitement of graduating and officially becoming a contributing member of society.

Later that night, though, after I had celebrated with my family who had come for my graduation, and after I had gone home slightly drunk from the after-party with Maggie and Archie, that feeling of panic took over again. I grabbed my phone and sent Victor a message.

I leave for New York in a week. Please, let’s not end it like this. Please let me say goodbye. I know you’re trying to do the right thing but you must know that you’re hurting me. BTW, congratulations on graduation.

As I hit send, I knew it would be my last message to him for a long time.

*

“You’re going to be
late
?” I yelled into the phone to Maggie. “Are you kidding me? Mags, I have a
plane
to catch. I don’t have time for you to fuck around!”

“I know, I know! I’m sorry!” came my friend’s plaintive voice. “Look, I can be there in twenty minutes. Just cancel the Uber and I’ll pick you up with my Uber when I’m on the way. Just sit tight and wait for me, okay? Okay, El? Promise you’ll wait.”

I fumed and sputtered but found myself promising. Rolling my eyes, I ended the call and sat heavily on my suitcase. I had a 3 p.m. flight to New York and it was now 1 p.m. Maggie was going with me to the airport for our final goodbye, but now I was marooned on the sidewalk outside my apartment waiting for her. Crossing my arms and stewing, I decided that if I missed my flight, I would not only make her pay for my flight but also make her take me to dinner.

Unbelievable. She better make an extra night in Merritt worth my while!

Sighing, I looked down the street with the knowledge that inside the apartment building, my little studio was bare and empty. My family had helped me pack my things and ship boxes home before they went back to Portland. I was traveling light to New York, where I hoped light luggage would help me with a fresh start.

My eyes slowly moved over the houses and apartments of the quiet little residential street that had been my home for my last year as a college student.

So this is it. Goodbye, Merritt.

There was another goodbye on my lips, “Goodbye, Victor,” but I pushed the thought away. He hadn’t replied to my message on graduation day. I knew then that nothing I could do would change his mind and he would simply become a man in my past. Meeting Victor had changed me, and the woman he had made me become would always be present. But our relationship—our mad, complicated, passionate relationship—that seemed doomed to become a memory.

With a heavy sigh and these sad thoughts, I crossed my arms and settled in for the wait. I prepared to expect the worst from Maggie. It was feeling more likely that I would miss my flight.

What I was not prepared for was a big, black Cadillac El Dorado to pull up to the curb.

I stared open-mouthed as a tall, muscular, dark-haired, tattooed figure that was so familiar to me got out of the car. I sat completely frozen on my suitcase, not quite believing what I was seeing. I even blinked a couple of times to see if it was a hallucination. But no, it was real—there was Victor, walking around the hood of the car and coming to stand several feet in front of me. There he was, with his thumbs hooked on his back pockets and his Wayfarers on. There he was, looking like a modern-day James Dean. There he was, speaking his first words to me in roughly 12 weeks.

“Hey, angel. Need a ride?”

My mouth worked to reply but no sound came out. And then, it was like something inside me that had been straining for so long just snapped. Tears began to fall down my face. I hastily took off my sunglasses and wiped the tears away but they kept coming, and soon, I was covering my face with my hands and weeping violently. I heard Victor’s footsteps and felt his arms around me. I heaved enormous sobs as he held me tight.

“I’m so sorry, Ellen,” he whispered. “I’m sorry I hurt you.”

Between sobs, I smelled his woodsy scent again, and I felt sorrow, anger, and joy battling inside me.

“God damn it, Victor!” I shouted suddenly, hitting his chest. “You don’t know what you put me through the last three months! I’ve been pining after you, you mother fucker! You lousy bastard!” I pummeled his chest and he just let me. “I thought I’d never see you again! I thought you were done with me forever.”

As my punches got weaker, he drew me close. “I’m sorry, Ellen,” he said again. “I was never done with you. Never. But I was an idiot and I was stubborn, and I was trying to make
you
done with
me
.”

“Well, it didn’t work, you jerk.” I sat there on my suitcase, letting him hold me, feeling my tears dry. “Why did you put me through that? And how can you just show up now and think everything will be okay?”

“I don’t know that everything will be okay,” he said, pulling away. He kept his hands on my arms, and his mere touch was comforting to me. “In fact, I can’t expect you to forgive me. But I can try to explain why I did what I did. You deserve that much.”

I remained silent, waiting for him to continue. He took off his sunglasses and I almost melted when his dark, serious eyes met mine.

“We’re the princess and the frog, Ellen. I’ve loved you ever since the day you opened that smart mouth of yours in class. But how could a frog tell a princess he loved her? How could he expect her to love him back? It didn’t seem fair to you, and I convinced myself I had to let you go.”

“I know, Victor, but don’t you see all you did was hurt me? I don’t know how I can forgive you for treating me like that.” But as I said those words, they sounded hollow to me. It was an empty threat.

Victor nodded. “I was so stupid and so convinced I was doing the right thing. But you know who finally convinced me I was wrong?”

“Stu?”

Victor shook his head slowly. “My dad.”

I stared at him in utter shock.

“He came to graduation. He’s been sober for almost a year now and we’ve been talking more. You know, trying to mend things between us. Anyway, I wasn’t going to walk at graduation but he told me he’d like to see it, so I did it for him. And then we talked. I…I told him about you.” He looked at me furtively, as if he felt guilty for mentioning my name to such a man. I nodded at him, encouraging him to continue.

“He told me that I was more like him than I wanted to admit. I almost walked out on him then, but he explained. He said that everything he did while I was growing up—every ass kicking he ever gave me—he thought it was good for me. He thought he was disciplining me well. He said he was doing it for my sake and he didn’t realize until later that all the time,
he was just hurting me
.”

“Victor!” I interjected. “You’re nothing like your father!”

Victor shook his head. “I know. At least, I’d like to think I’ve got better self-control and principles than him. But I have to admit our mistakes were the same. We get convinced of the good of our actions, when really we’re just fucking everything up. And I realized I wasn’t doing anything but hurting you.”

He took my face in his hands then, and he looked at me with such earnestness that it was hard to meet his gaze. “Ellen, I want you to know that once I learn a lesson, I never unlearn it. I will never hurt you again. I will never decide what’s good for you again. I know I don’t deserve you but I’ll work hard to if you’ll let me.”

I realized with panic that my anger was already melting away, and I tried desperately to grasp onto it, to cling to at least a few traces of the hurt he had caused. But instead, I felt an entirely different sensation inside me. It was a curious swelling, a feeling I hadn’t felt in weeks: a wonderful, bubbly laugh was slowly rising to my lips. I studied his face as the swelling grew and grew inside me.

Victor and I have known each other for only a year, but we’ve done and felt it all—everything humans are capable of on the emotional spectrum. Lust, anger, sadness, fear, guilt, shame, compassion…So, now is it time for joy? Will this crazy man and this crazy, messy thing we share finally give way to simple joy?

As he looked down at me so intently, a giggle escaped my lips. He smiled back in surprise, dimple and all.

“What? What’s so funny?”

At this, I laughed out loud.

“Fuck!” I cried, throwing my arms around him again and laughing. “The last three months were awful! But now that you’re here, and I feel like I could laugh forever!”

He laughed with me. When we quieted and pulled away to look at each other again, I broke down into more fits of laughter. We clung to each other on the sidewalk in the bright afternoon sun and laughed like that for a good while.

When we finally calmed down, he said, “Christ, you have no idea what it was like for me not to pick up the phone. It was even harder listening to your messages and not calling back. I saved all your messages.”

“You did?”

“Well, not all of them, because my mailbox kept getting full. But most of them. Like the day you bowled a 181. And the day they picked Stu as Person of the Year. A lot of others.”

I fell quiet, reflecting on how we had both been hurting so much, it seemed, for no good reason.

“So…what now?”

Victor looked down at me, his eyes clear and full of conviction. “Let me take you to New York.”

“You mean, you’re going to drive me there?”

Victor nodded, his crooked smile inching across his face.

“Across the country,” I specified incredulously.

He nodded.

“In your car.”

Nod.

“But I have a flight to catch in an hour and a half. Oh, and Maggie! Shit, Maggie’s coming and she’s taking me to the airport.” I realized I was still sitting on my suitcase and hopped down.

Victor slowly shook his head slowly. “Maggie’s not coming.” He struggled to hide a smile, but it gradually broke through. I looked at him suspiciously. Victor was usually king of the poker face.

I narrowed my eyes. “Why is she not coming?” But I had already guessed at the truth.

“She may have…helped me arrange this meeting with you.”

“Oh, my god!” I laughed and punched him in the shoulder. “I’ve been set up!”

“I think the correct term is ‘sitting duck.’”

He gave me his sexy smile and rested his hands on my hips. I melted under his gaze and weakly protested, “But my flight. If I miss it, I won’t get a refund.”

“I’ll pay for it.”

“I can’t let you do that!” I said, flustered.

“What if I say pretty please?” His hands traveled from my hips to the small of my back as he drew me closer. He was using his sexy wizard powers on me again, and this time I didn’t feel like fighting him. I was just so happy to have him back.

“Well, what happens after New York?”

Victor shrugged and looked off into the distance, seeming to consider. “Well, I guess I could help you find an apartment, and help you move in…” He looked down at me now with a smile. “And help you make the place cozy…And help you pay the bills…”

What he was saying dawned on me and I gaped at him in shock. “Are you saying—Victor, do you want to move with me to New York?!”