Translation of Love (30 page)

“Victor’s a good man, Elle. Give him a chance.”

“I’m not making any promises but I’ll hear him out. That’s all I can agree to right now.”

“Good enough,” he says, releasing my hand and getting up. “I’ll drop by the house to check on you tomorrow.”

“Okay, go home and get some rest.”

I’m finishing up my Jello when Victor strolls out of the bathroom in dark grey sweatpants and a black t-shirt. My pulse quickens at the sight of him, looking completely refreshed and just plain hot.

“You just missed Gavin,” I say trying to ignore the reaction that my body is having to him. “He and Dad are leaving. He said they’d drop by the house tomorrow.”

“Good. How was your dinner?”

“Strangely enough, it wasn’t so bad.”

He pulls the table so that it’s out of my way. “Your pain meds should be coming soon. You wanna lay down?”

“Yes,” I reply softly. He’s being so good to me. It’s hard to stay angry with him when all I really want to do is let him hold me. He helps me get comfortable and sits down next to me.

“It’s time for you to hear me out, Babe. I’ve let this go all day, let you get your rest but now it’s time for you to listen.” I take a breath and nod my agreement. It’s time to get this over with and hear what he has to say.

“Everything that has happened in the last few days was an attempt to break us up. I think if you really look back at everything that happened, you’ll see that we were set up.”

Can I really believe what he’s saying? That someone would be that malicious just to break us up? It hits me at that very moment what he’s referring to. “Your mom?”

He runs a hand through his hair and nods. “She’s been plotting since she met you. Since she found out I was retiring and she blamed you.”

“Brian told me that she contacted him, trying to get information on me. He said that she paid him for the video.”

“Yes. She ran a background check on you and found Brian through an old rental agreement from when he lived with you. She paid him for the video and once she had it she waited till we were together in Miami to show it to us. She wanted to humiliate you, hoping that you would be embarrassed enough to leave and that I would be mad enough to break up with you.”

That does make sense. It coincides with what Brian told me, but it doesn’t account for the rest of it. “All of that may be true, Victor, but what about Christina?”

“Well you can imagine that when we didn’t break up after I saw the video, my mom was less than thrilled. She called in for reinforcements. She used the record company’s jet to fly Christina down to Miami. She knew that you and I would be out most of the morning looking at houses. She knew she needed to separate us so she called me, asking me to have you meet her for lunch, extend an olive branch.”

“Yeah, a lunch where she called me a whore and offered me two million dollars to get out of your life.”

His whole body goes stiff, his eyes wide. “She did what?”

“She always assumed I was a gold digger. I guess she thought I’d be more than happy to leave you for the right price. I told her no, in case you were wondering.”

I can see the pain in his eyes. “I know you would never do that. I’ve never doubted you,” he says, grabbing my hand. He takes a breath and begins again. “While we were looking at houses that morning, my mom had someone come into our room and plant a small camera over the bed. Because she’s my manager, she was able to get an extra key to our room, which she later passed on to Christina. After you left to go meet her, I took a nap like I told you. Christina was watching the feed, she knew you were gone and she knew that I was asleep. Mom called her when you were on your way back to the hotel. Once that happened, Christina let herself into the room, and hid out in the bathroom until you came back. You know the rest.”

It sounds unreal but after meeting his mother, I believe that he’s telling the truth. “How could they do that? How could they be so cruel?”

“I don’t know, Babe. I still can’t believe it myself. Anyway, once my mom got word that you left, she called Brian. She let him know that you were headed back home and that we were over. I think she was trying to put the idea in his head that you were single again and maybe he’d try to get you back. I don’t know, but whatever her reasoning, it landed you here.”

“I don’t know what to say.” My eyes are stinging with unshed tears.

Victor gets up and sits on the edge of the bed. He cups my bruised face in his hands. “Say that you believe me. Say that you know I would never do anything to hurt you, that I would never betray you like that. Say that you believe me when I tell you that I love you, Babe. Say that you forgive me.”

I take a breath, tears now streaming down my face. “What is there to forgive? You didn’t do anything wrong? I believe you, it all makes sense. I had a bad feeling when your mom asked me to lunch but I went anyway because I wanted to make things better for you. I was hoping that she was genuinely trying, but as soon as I got there I realized that wasn’t the case. I should have trusted my instincts.”

He wipes the tears away. “I guess none of it matters now. What’s done is done.”

“Is it always gonna be like this if we stay together?”

He lets go of my face and picks up my hand again. “Not if. We
are
staying together, and no, it won’t always be like this. I fired my mother as my manager. Alex is taking over for the remainder of the promotional and concert tour. I don’t know if I will ever forgive her for all that she’s done, but even if I do, you’ll never have to see her again if you don’t want to.”

“I can’t think about that right now. Right now, all I wanna do is move on.”

“I’m okay with moving on as long as we do it together. I promise you that I will never let anyone hurt you again, Babe.”

Victor keeps telling me that he won’t let me go that easily and I finally realize that those words are a promise, a promise that he always intends to keep. He’s a fighter, always willing to battle on, to make sure that we come out together at the other end. Even though he’s had to battle several people to make sure that we stay together, it hits me that the biggest threat to this relationship has always been me. Me and my inability to believe in a happy ending, always expecting him to let me down or hurt me. The whole time I was allowing myself to experience a relationship with Victor, I never allowed myself to think in terms of the future. I would only let myself think of the here and now with no regard to the possibility of a real life with him.

“I want us to figure it out together. I should have stayed and listened to you, instead of running away yet again. I swear that I’ll never do that again. I love you.”

“I didn’t think I’d ever hear you say that again. I love you too, Babe.” He leans over and places a gentle kiss on my lips, careful not to hurt me.

“When I woke up and saw that you were here, deep down, I was really happy.”

“There’s no where else I would be. Now go to sleep.”

“Demanding as ever. What about you? Where are you gonna sleep?”

“This chair pulls out into something that resembles a bed.”

I giggle but have to stop because it hurts. “You can go and come back in the morning.”

“You’re in pain?” He stands up presses the call button for the nurse. “I’m staying here.” There’s no point in arguing with him. I know he’s not going anywhere and I really don’t want him to. Having him here makes me feel like I’m protected. The night nurse comes in and gives me some pain medication while Victor gets his makeshift bed ready. I’m able to sleep peacefully with the knowledge that this nightmare is coming to an end and when tomorrow comes, Victor and I will be together.

The doctor comes to release me from the hospital not long after breakfast. I’ve never been so happy to go home and Victor says he’s just happy that he can sleep in a bed again. He knew that it would be too hard for me to get into his Range Rover with my bruised ribs so he had Alex drop my car off at the hospital last night. That’s the thing about Victor, he’s always thinking ahead, doing his best to make things easier for me. It’s one of the many reasons that I love him.

When we get home, everyone is there waiting for me. Even Rob makes an appearance. Victor helps me walk inside, pouting because I refuse to let him carry me in. The smell of food engulfs my senses as we walk into the house and I know that my dad has been cooking. I make the rounds, saying hello and hugging everyone until Victor freaks out and makes me sit on the couch. Before I met Victor, I was alone most of the time. I kept to myself often and rarely had guests over to my house, with the exception of Jordan. Seeing everyone here, laughing, talking, eating and getting along, warms me up inside. I realize that meeting Victor brought me back to life, brought the real me back to my family, not the woman who I was pretending to be. It feels good to let go of all of the armor that I used to protect my heart for so long, to let myself be free to love the people around me and let them love me in return.

Right now, I feel like the possibilities for my future with Victor are limitless. I’m no longer worried about what could happen or how I could get hurt. None of it matters anymore and nothing hurts quite as much as not having him around. That’s why I’ve decided to give myself over to him completely, not just pieces of me, the pieces I let him see while hiding the dark parts away. I’ve decided that in order to love and be loved fully, I have to give him everything.

Once everyone leaves for the night and Victor has bullied me into letting him carry me upstairs to bed, I decide that it’s time for me to let him hear the truth of what has kept me broken for so long. I’m sitting up in bed, watching him strip off his clothes until he’s left in only a pair of boxers. He gets on the bed, sitting directly in front of me. “What’s wrong? You look like you’re worried about something,” he says, stroking my cheek.

I look at him wondering where to begin. “I’m ready for you to hear it, everything that happened with Brian.”

“I thought you told everything to Detective Andrews, Babe. I was right there.”

I shake my head. “No, I know, I mean before that. The reason I didn’t want to date anymore.”

He breathes in, understanding what I’m saying. “I wanna hear it, Love, I do. But not if it’s gonna upset you, I don’t want you to feel obligated.”

“I want you to know. If we’re gonna be together, I think it’s important for you to know. Besides, you’ve already heard most of it.”

He nods and gives me an encouraging smile. “Okay.”

“Brian took advantage of my loneliness, the emptiness I was feeling after losing my mom. He fed off of that, and in the beginning he was good to me. He was sweet and understanding. When things started to go bad between us, I tried to break up with him. He was gone once, disappeared for a couple of days, not picking up his phone, off doing God knows what. So I packed up all of his shit, put it in garbage bags and left it outside of our apartment. When he finally came back he was so outraged to find what I’d done.”

I close my eyes and take a deep breath. “That’s when he started hitting me.” I open my eyes to gauge the reaction on Victor’s face. He’s angry but controlled. “It was like a switch that just clicked in him, and from then on, I felt like he was always hitting me but I was just too scared to leave. I stopped hanging around my friends and family. Especially Dad. He was a cop so I couldn’t let on that something wasn’t right.”

“How long did this go on?”

“I don’t know, almost a year I guess.”

“Brian knew that I was miserable, and I think he thought that I would eventually go to Dad and ask for help. That’s when he asked me to marry him. He promised that he would get help and that he wouldn’t hurt me anymore. You have to understand that I was living in fear. It’s the only reason I said yes. I thought that it would motivate him to get help, and after we got engaged, it got a little bit better. He stopped hitting me but I think that was more because he was gone all the time.”

I swallow and let out a shaky breath, tears running freely down my cheeks now. When I think of what I lost, what Brian took from me, it makes it hard to keep talking.

“It’s okay, you don’t have to keep going.”

“No, I want to.” Victor strokes my cheek again, encouraging me to go on. “A few months after we got engaged, I found out that I was pregnant.”

I hear his intake of breath to my confession. His eyes are full of questions. “Ellie.” I think he must know what I’m gonna say next and I lose it. I can’t hold back the uncontrollable sobs. Victor takes me in his arms, gently stroking my back and letting me cry. “Shhh, it’s okay, Love. It’s gonna be okay.” Slowly he lowers us, until we’re lying down face to face. “You don’t have to say anything else,” he says softly, pushing a strand of hair behind my ear.