Fifty-Four

YNA heard Eric catch his breath.
“You’re so unfair. I can’t even kiss you, baby,” he said tenderly. “You got a split on your lip.” He burrowed his head into the side of her head, breathing in the smell of her hair. “I’m so sorry… I’m so sorry, Arianna.”
“Stop. You didn’t do this to me.”
He raised his head and his eyes followed the direction of the scratches and bruises on her face. “I’m going to kill them,” he said in a rough voice.
“E-Eric...” she whispered, wanting to tell him to just stop getting angry, but the tears chose then to appear and start flowing down her cheeks.
She couldn’t stop them anymore, nor the self-pity, and her own anger at how she’d been treated even by Señorito Brad.
When he embraced her again, she felt like falling building blocks from a formed structure. All the exhaustion, pain, and fear were released from where she’d been trying to hold them in.
She missed him terribly. She missed the warmth of his body, the shape of him, his smell, and the thudding of his heart on his chest whenever he was holding her like this.
And she realized how foolish it was for her to think she could get away, or if she ever did and he finds her, if she could fight him off.
It was futile.
She loved this man and she wanted to be with him, too, more than anything else in the world.
“Arianna, how can you think you can just leave me and get away with it? Did you really believe I’ll not find you? Tommy was right, I will find you wherever you may try to hide. I’ll not easily let go if I knew you love me back. I know you love me. Right? You love me, too?”
“Eric...” she cried.
“It’s wrong to leave. I’m going to go crazy if you leave me. The last days away from you are the hardest I’ve ever felt in my life. In fact, when Brad called me this afternoon I was getting ready to drive back. I couldn’t wait another day to see you.”
“But your work. Your trip!”
“There are ways to go around the management, and I’ll still go for the trip. But this was going to be my base. It was my plan to propose to you until Brand’s call.”
“You’re so stubborn…” she said as she wiped the tears from her face. “Are you always going to do things your way?”
He was nodding. “If it’s about being with you, yes. You better believe it. what else needs to happen before you believe how obsessed I am with you? I’ll only stop if I see you don’t love me anymore.”
She sighed. “I can’t help you with that.”
A smile stretched his lips, but hesitantly. “Does that mean I don’t have to stay away anymore? That’s done?”
“If you’re going to stalk me as you did before, watching me from afar like a lovesick fool then I guess it’s done. That’s just stupid when I know you’re out there.”
He lowered his head and kissed her forehead, then from there proceeded to kiss her over her closed eyelids, her cheeks, on the bruises, and carefully… on her lips. She moaned in protest.
“I’ve got antibiotic cream on it, Eric. It’s going to be on your lips,” she told him to distract them both because she would want nothing but to kiss him back. She ached for not being able to let go like she suspected he was wanting to do.
He just hugged her. “I’ve missed you. If your mother isn’t downstairs, you’d have been on your back, naked, and I’d be inside you—”
“Eric!”
“We should get married.”
“There you go again… and here I am still getting used to the idea that you’re my boyfriend.”
“I know…” He sighed. “And I know I’m being irrational. We’ve only been together almost two months.”
“No, we’ve been together two weeks…? But you only knew about me almost two months ago.”
“I fell in love with you that night.”
“No, I…” Her eyes focused on him. “You can’t know that for sure.”
He snorted. “So in love that I did everything I can to hunt you like an obsessed beast, and after that did what I can so I can be a part of your life? You bet I’m sure about it.”
She sighed, then kissed him shily on his lips because she couldn’t help herself.
He indeed had done those things he’d said he did. And she might still think it was highly unbelievable, but she also appreciated his feelings for her.
She was thankful that he was taking care of her and her family, and that he had their best interest in his heart.
As she looked at him and how his pleasure for the kiss showed on his face. She realized how lucky she truly was to be regarded so well by a man like him.
He was a good man—too passionate for what she was used to, with a temper too handful for anyone to take—but he was kind and gentle and was always there for her.
He’d managed to get Tommy’s trust and respect and allayed her mother’s fears for her children’s future.
And she loved him.
There was no doubt in her mind now, because that love was not overwhelming her heart.
There’s still fear there, about how she could ever manage to return his love equally, how she could take care of him and protect him and make him happy the way he was making her happy.
But now that she was reminded of her mother, she suddenly realized there was something she must do.
“We have to go downstairs and tell Mama, Eric. I’ve been hiding from her since I arrived earlier because I was afraid to show her my bruises, but I can’t keep what happened from her any longer.”
He winced. “I told her that I’d heard you’ve met my mother. But this…” His hand gently cupped her chin and raised her face so he could check her face again. “Baby, she wouldn’t expect this. I’m busted.”
But they did need to let her mother know. So he finally released her and they both got up so they could come out of the room and talk to her mother about the confrontation this morning.
When they came down to the living room, she instantly noticed how the curtains were drawn from any prying eyes from outside.
It was late in the afternoon and the sky was ready to go dark outside. She didn’t need to look, she already knew from her bedroom window.
And one look on Tommy’s stricken face, his newly wet eyes, that something was wrong.
Her mother was sitting on the couch, her face pale, her demeanor stiff. And she wasn’t looking at her, nor at Eric. She was resolutely looking at her hands, whose fingers had the beads of the rosary tangled with them.
Something was terribly wrong.
She looked at Tommy again, and her younger brother nodded.
Yna abruptly stopped approaching the two although she was just a few steps away. She pulled her hand from Eric’s grasp as she watched fat tears streaking down her mother’s cheeks.
“Mama…?!”
She closed her eyes, tight, as more tears followed.
And Yna realized it wasn’t a prayer that was issuing from those moving lips when what she was saying became clearer as they went louder.
“This is all my fault. All my fault. It is all my fault. My children went through this because of me… oh my Lord, why don’t you just take me?”