...Val...

Three tequilas.

That was how many I'd had when I saw him walk in.

Or four. I don't know anymore. After the second, I stopped counting because Luciano's voice wouldn't stop replaying in my head.

"You're crazy, Valentina. You always have been."

"No one is going to put up with you. Without me, you're nothing."

I threw back what was left in my glass. It burned. Good. I preferred that to the humiliation stuck in my throat like something I couldn't swallow or spit out.

Bar Vuelo Nocturno. Thursday. Half empty. I didn't care. All I wanted was to get drunk enough for Luciano's face to disappear from my memory, along with the screenshots Camila had sent me.

"Another," I told the bartender, knocking my glass against the bar.

He poured without asking. Good.

Three years with Luciano Reyes. Three years with a man who wasn't good or bad. He was nothing. Like an expensive piece of furniture that sits there until you get used to it.

But today I found out the furniture talked about me behind my back.

Camila, my half sister, had added me to Luciano's friends' WhatsApp group. Two minutes. That was all I needed to read everything.

"Valentina's getting crazier by the day, isn't she? Yesterday she started crying because she burned the rice. I seriously think she needs a psychiatric hospital."

"Hahahaha then why are you still with her, bro?"

"You know how it is. She's a Mendoza. If I leave her, the old man pulls the contract."

"Oh, so you're with her for Daddy's money?"

"Let's say it's a package deal: the crazy one comes included with the signature. It's not like she's ugly, either. Might as well get something out of it hahaha."

Camila kicked me out of the group before I could type a single word. Then she called me in that sweet little snake voice of hers.

"Oh, I'm sorry, little sister. I didn't know they were going to add you. What Luciano said was horrible, right?"

She'd done it on purpose. Like everything she did. But that didn't matter anymore. What mattered were those words in gray bubbles that I saw every time I closed my eyes.

Crazy. Package deal. Might as well get something out of it.

I lifted my glass.

"To honest men," I toasted alone. "All three of them in the world, and not one of them crossed my path."

"Four, if you count me."

That voice. I would have recognized it anywhere. Drunk, sober, in the middle of an earthquake. Some voices get inside your body and stay there, in a place that isn't memory but something lower, something more animal.

I turned on the stool.

Sebastián del Fuego.

No way. Of all the bars in this city, my high school desk mate, the most arrogant, infuriating, ridiculously handsome man I'd ever known, was standing half a yard from me in a black leather jacket, wearing the same shitty smile he'd had at seventeen.

"Mendoza?" He recognized me. The surprise lasted two seconds, then amusement took over. "Valentina Mendoza. No fucking way."

"Del Fuego." I said it as if his last name were an insult.

"Are you drinking alone on a Thursday?" He sat beside me without asking permission. That was him. Sebastián del Fuego didn't ask permission to invade your space. "That's new. The Valentina I remember wouldn't even drink still water."

"That Valentina was seventeen. Things have happened."

"I can tell," he said, and his gaze traveled over me in a way I felt on my skin.

I looked right back because I'm not a coward. Not anymore. He was no longer the tall, skinny boy who stole first place from me on exams. He was broader now, his jaw harder, his stare darker. There was something in him that hadn't been there before. Or maybe I'd been too young to notice it.

"What are you doing here?" I asked. The bartender set a whiskey in front of him without being asked, which told me he came here often.

"Resting between flights." He lifted the glass to his mouth. "What about you? Celebrating or drowning?"

"The second one."

"The boyfriend?"

I didn't answer. My silence said everything.

"I get it," he said, and for the first time, the arrogance dropped out of his voice. "Sometimes you need a place where no one knows you."

"You know me."

"No." He looked me in the eye, and something shifted in the air. "I knew you. Ten years ago. I don't know the woman you are now."

"Good. You wouldn't like her."

"I didn't like you back then, either, and I still couldn't take my eyes off you."

Heat climbed into my face. Maybe it was the tequila. Maybe it was what he said. I don't know. I stared at him, waiting for the sarcasm, the jab. But his eyes were serious.

We stayed like that. Looking at each other. Ten years of distance between us, and yet being in front of him felt like something my body recognized even while my head said no.

I don't know who moved first. I was drunk and had no filter. He had never been the kind of man who waited.

What I do know is that when we kissed, it wasn't pretty. It was a collision. He tasted like whiskey; I tasted like tequila and decisions I was going to regret. He caught my face in both hands and kissed me as if he'd been carrying ten years of hunger, and I kissed him back just as hard because in that moment I didn't care about anything: Luciano, Camila, my father, my entire life.

"This is a terrible idea," I said against his mouth.

"Terrible," he said, tightening his hand at my waist.

"I hate you, Del Fuego."

"I know, Mendoza."

And we left the bar.

The hotel was two blocks away. We didn't talk on the walk. His hand was at the small of my back, and I could feel the heat of his fingers through the fabric as if he were burning me.

The room door had barely closed before he had me against the wall. He kissed my neck, my jaw, that spot behind my ear that made my knees go loose. His hands moved over me on top of my clothes, my waist, my hips, up my sides, and everywhere he touched, my skin lit up.

"Wait," I said, but my hands were already pulling off his jacket.

"Do you want me to stop?" His mouth was on my collarbone. His voice vibrated against my skin.

"No."

He pulled my blouse over my head. Then he looked at me. No one had ever looked at me like that before, not like Luciano, who looked at me the way someone checks over a purchase. Seb looked at me as if he were memorizing every inch.

"Stop looking at me like that," I murmured.

"Like what?"

"Like that."

He didn't stop. He traced my mouth with his thumb, slowly, and the gesture was so intimate I felt more naked in that than I did standing in front of him without my blouse.

I took off his shirt. His chest was hard, his skin hot, and there was a small scar beneath his ribs that I wanted to touch, so I did. He closed his eyes for a second when my fingers passed over it, as if it hurt, but not with pain.

He lifted me. Just like that, as if I weighed nothing. My legs locked around his waist on instinct, and he carried me to the bed without stopping the kiss. The mattress caught my back, and the weight of his body over mine knocked the air from my lungs.

He took his time. That was what undid me most. Luciano was always in a hurry, as if sex were one more box to check off his to-do list. Not Seb. Seb kissed my stomach, the curve of my hip, the inside of my thigh, and every kiss was slow, wet, deliberate. As if he were learning my body with his mouth.

"Del Fuego," I said, and my voice no longer sounded like mine. "Hurry up."

"No."

"I hate you."

"You told me."

His mouth moved lower, and I stopped talking.

When he was finally inside me, I let out a sound I didn't know I could make. He covered my mouth with his and began to move slowly, too slowly, until I dug my nails into his back and whispered in his ear to stop torturing me.

He didn't stop torturing me. He changed rhythm only when he wanted to, and every time I was about to come, he stopped, watched me with those dark eyes, and started again. As if he knew exactly where my limit was and enjoyed taking me there only to pull back.

"You're a bastard," I said, and he laughed against my neck.

When he let me finish, it went through my whole body. I arched against him, squeezed my eyes shut, sank my fingers into his shoulders, and felt something break open inside me that had nothing to do with sex. It was bigger than that. It was letting go of something I'd been carrying for a long time.

He finished after me, his face buried in my neck, breathing hard, saying something I couldn't quite hear but felt on my skin like a mark.

We stayed that way. Sweaty, panting, tangled together. His thumb drew circles on my hip, and my face rested against his chest while I listened to his heartbeat return to normal.

We didn't talk. We didn't need to.

I fell asleep without realizing it. And the last thing I registered was his mouth in my hair and his arm tightening around me as if someone might come and take me away.

I woke with the sun on my face.

Everything hurt. My head, my body, parts of me I hadn't known could hurt that way. My mouth tasted like regret with tequila.

I turned over. The bed was empty. Only the imprint of his body on the pillow remained. And a note on the nightstand.

A phone number, written in firm handwriting. The same handwriting he'd had in high school. Under it, one line:

"For when you stop lying to yourself. - S."

I stared at it for five seconds.

Then I tore it to pieces, got dressed in what was left of my dignity, and walked out without looking back.

It was one night. The tequila was to blame. I was the victim. Period.

I wasn't going to call him. I wasn't going to look for him. Sebastián del Fuego was a one-night mistake, and I don't repeat mistakes.

Or so I thought.

In the hotel parking lot, my phone vibrated. Luciano.

"Doll, you left without saying anything. Can we talk? I love you."

I read it. Laughed. Deleted it.

I started the car and drove to the airport. I had to work. Sit in the control tower and pretend my life wasn't falling apart.

But as I drove, his voice was still there.

"I didn't like you back then, either, and I still couldn't take my eyes off you."

Damn asshole.

...Val...

The worst part about being an air traffic controller isn't the pressure. It isn't the twelve-hour shifts or the fact that three hundred people depend on your voice so they don't kill themselves in the air.

The worst part is that you can't show up hungover.

And today I had a hangover the size of a Boeing 747.

I put on my sunglasses, swallowed the bitterest coffee the airport cafe had to offer, and walked toward the control tower praying no one would talk to me. Especially Paty, who had a radar for detecting romantic drama more accurate than any navigation system.

Then I saw him.

At first I thought the tequila was still doing things to my brain. Because it couldn't be. It couldn't be the same man I'd run from that morning walking down the airport hallway in a pilot's uniform that fit him as if it had been sewn directly onto his body.

A captain's uniform.

Four gold stripes on the epaulets. White shirt stretching across his shoulders. Perfect tie. Aviator cap in his hand. I looked him up and down, and my body reacted before my brain did, a hot pull low in my stomach, the same sensation from last night when he'd touched me. I had to clench my teeth so it wouldn't show.

He stopped. I stopped.

Three seconds. We stared at each other in the middle of the hallway while people moved around us, unaware they were witnessing the worst moment of my life.

"No." I said it as a general rejection. To the universe. To everything. "No, no, no."

The corner of his mouth lifted.

"Good morning to you too, Mendoza."

"You're a pilot?" I pointed at him as if accusing him of a crime. "A pilot?"

"Captain, technically." He settled the cap under his arm. "Vuelo Cielo. And you? What are you doing here at seven in the morning looking like you want to kill someone?"

"I work here," I said through my teeth.

"Seriously?" The surprise was genuine. "Doing what?"

"Air traffic controller."

Silence. I saw the realization hit him. She works in the tower. I fly for Vuelo Cielo. Our jobs are glued together.

And he laughed.

Not a discreet laugh. He laughed with his whole body, tipped his head back, and showed his teeth. The same teeth that had bitten my lower lip last night and pulled a sound out of me I was still embarrassed to remember.

"Let me get this straight," he said, wiping away a tear. "The woman I slept with last night is the same one who's going to give me flight instructions?"

"Keep your voice down!" I looked everywhere at once. "Listen, last night was a mistake. An accident. I was drunk, you were there, it happened. It won't happen again."

"Never is a long time, Mendoza."

"I have something for you." I pulled an envelope from my bag. I'd prepared it in the car with money from the ATM, because I was a woman who solved her problems quickly. "It's one hundred thousand pesos. For last night."

The laughter vanished from his face. He looked at me. Looked at the envelope. Looked back at me.

"Are you paying me?" His voice dropped two tones. "Are you trying to pay me for sleeping with you?"

"Don't put it like that."

"How do you want me to put it, Valentina?" My full name. It sounded different in his mouth. Deeper. I remembered how it had sounded last night against my neck, rough and low. "You're giving me money as if I were a..."

"It's so there aren't any debts," I interrupted, pushing the envelope toward him. "Take the money, forget what happened, and that's it."

He stared at me for a long moment. I felt his gaze go straight through me. Seb had that way of looking at you that made you feel as if he could see everything you hid, and last night he'd seen all of me, no clothes and no masks, and that scared me more than anything else.

He took the envelope.

My body relaxed. Good. This was going to work. He was going to take the money and he was going to--

He tore it in half.

Then he tore the halves into quarters. The quarters into pieces. He let them fall between us.

"What the hell are you doing?" My mouth fell open. "That was money, you idiot!"

"Do you know what I remember about you in high school, Mendoza?" He stepped closer. His voice was low, controlled. "You always wanted to control everything. Every test, every grade, every situation. Because you were terrified of what happened when you couldn't."

He was right, and I hated him for it.

"Last night," he continued, close enough that I caught his cologne mixed with his own scent, the same scent that had clung to the hotel pillow and was still on my skin, "wasn't a mistake. And it wasn't an accident. I'm not going to pretend it didn't happen. And I'm not going to take your money to forget it."

"Then what do you want?" My voice came out weaker than I wanted.

"Nothing." He stepped back, and the distance landed on me like a blow. "I don't want anything from you, Valentina. But I won't let you turn what happened into a transaction. Neither of us is that cheap."

He put on his cap, straightened his uniform, and walked away.

"Hey!" I called after him. "The money!"

"Keep your money," he said without turning around. "And the next time you want to pay someone for sleeping with you, make sure it isn't a man who did it for free because he wanted to."

I watched him disappear down the hallway. Long, sure steps. The kind of man who walked as if everything belonged to him.

"Damn..." I hissed, crouching to pick up the torn bills from the floor.

"Uhhh... are you okay?"

I startled. Three yards away stood a man in a first officer's uniform, with messy hair and a face caught somewhere between amusement and concern. He looked at me, looked at the torn bills on the floor, then looked at me again.

"I'm Rodrigo," he said, holding out a hand. "Rodrigo Zamora. Captain del Fuego's copilot. But everyone calls me Rodri."

"Good for you, Rodri." I stood with my fists full of shredded bills. "Do you need something?"

He opened his mouth. Closed it. Opened it again.

"No... I just wanted to confirm something." His smile went huge. "You're the girl from last night, aren't you?"

I must have turned a shade of red that doesn't exist, because Rodri lifted both hands.

"Whoa, easy, don't kill me. It's just that the captain came in today with a face I've never seen on him, and now I see you picking money off the floor after talking to him, and well... it's pretty obvious."

"There was no girl. There was no night. And if you say anything to anyone, I swear every one of your landings is going to become a nightmare from the control tower."

Rodri blinked. Then he laughed.

"Oh my God, you're perfect for him."

"Rodri!"

"I'm leaving!" He practically ran off, laughing himself breathless. "But let the record show I don't know anything!"

I stayed alone in the hallway. Surrounded by torn bills. My pride on the floor and my pulse racing.

Sebastián del Fuego was a pilot. A captain. For Vuelo Cielo.

I was going to have to hear his voice over the radio. Guide him professionally. Act as if I didn't know what he sounded like when he came, how his weight felt over me, how he grabbed my hair when--

No. Enough.

I picked up the last pieces of money, shoved them into my bag, and walked toward the tower with my jaw clenched.

I just had to ignore him. Be professional. Do my job.

How hard could that be?

...Val...

I dragged myself into my apartment.

The shift in the tower had been torture. Every time a frequency opened, my whole body tensed, waiting to hear that deep voice say, "Cielo 3576, requesting clearance." It didn't happen. His flight wasn't until the next day, according to the schedule board I checked three times. Casually, of course.

I opened the door, and the smell of cold pizza and men's deodorant hit me in the face before I could turn on the light.

No.

"Doll!" Luciano Reyes was lying on my sofa, holding my remote, watching my television, eating pizza off my table as if he still lived here. "I thought you weren't coming home."

"Luciano." My voice came out flat. "What are you doing here?"

"I came to talk to you." He stood with that good-boy smile I used to think was cute and that now turned my stomach. "We haven't talked since... you know. The misunderstanding in the group."

"It wasn't a misunderstanding."

"Of course it was, doll. The guys were joking, and I played along. That's how men are with each other. It didn't mean anything."

I stared at him. Luciano Reyes was handsome. Tall, fair-skinned, brown hair always perfectly combed, expensive clothes. The kind of man magazines would put on a cover. But underneath that, there was nothing. Like opening a huge present and finding the box empty.

And last night another man had touched me as if every inch of my skin was worth the time, and the difference between that memory and the man in front of me was so big I almost wanted to laugh.

"You still have the keys to my apartment?" I asked, folding my arms.

"You never asked for them back." He tried to take my hands. I stepped away. "Val, are you seriously going to throw away three years over a joke in a WhatsApp group?"

"It isn't about the joke, Luciano. It's because you meant it." I held my ground even though everything inside me was shaking. "You called me crazy. You said you were only with me because of my father's contracts."

"That's not true, doll. I love you."

"Oh, really?" I let out a dry laugh. "Is that why you told your friends I'm 'the package deal' that comes with my dad's signature?"

His smile broke apart. For a second, the real Luciano showed through, that cold look of someone always calculating how much every emotion he fakes is going to cost him.

"You're exaggerating. Like always." His tone changed. "This is exactly what I was telling the guys. You turn everything into drama."

"We're done, Luciano."

"Done?" He laughed as if he couldn't believe it. "Val, don't be ridiculous. You can't break up with me."

"I just did."

"And what are you going to do alone?" He crossed his arms. He looked at me with mockery and something uglier. "You don't have anyone. Your father barely speaks to you. Your sister hates you. Your mother has been in a coma for ten years. Your grandma is in a clinic in another city. Who's going to put up with you if I don't?"

Each sentence was a blow. Straight to the places he knew hurt.

Because he was right. On every point, the bastard was right.

My father treated me like an inconvenience. Camila hated me with real enthusiasm. My mother was at Clínica Santa Lucía, asleep since I was seventeen. And Grandma, the only good thing I had left, was far away and getting more fragile by the day.

I was alone.

But I would rather be alone than be with someone who made me feel worthless. Last night, someone had looked at me as if I was worth everything, and even if it had been a one-night mistake, at least now I knew what that felt like.

"Leave the keys on the table and get out," I said. My voice didn't shake. I don't know where I got that from, but it didn't shake.

He watched me for a while. Recalculating. Then he walked to the table, dropped the keys with a metallic clink, and headed for the door.

But before he left, he stopped. And what he said didn't sound like goodbye.

"You'll come back, Valentina. You always come back." His voice was soft, almost sweet. His eyes were cold. "You won't be able to live without me. And when you realize it, I'll be here waiting for you."

The door closed.

I stood in the living room. My heart hammered against my ribs. It wasn't sadness. It was the echo of every time someone told me I wasn't enough, that I was broken, that I should be grateful anyone stayed with me.

My phone vibrated. Camila.

"Little sister, I heard you broke up with Luca. Oh, what a shame. But don't worry, I'll comfort him for you 😘"

I read it three times. Each time, it hurt less. Not because I was getting used to it, but because something inside me was going hard. Like new skin over a wound. Not healed, but at least no longer bleeding.

I deleted the message.

I went to the kitchen. Threw Luciano's pizza in the trash. Poured myself a glass of water and sat on the floor with my back against the refrigerator.

I closed my eyes. I didn't think about Luciano or Camila or my father or the ten years of shit I'd been carrying.

I thought about a dark bar. About a laugh. About a voice saying, "I didn't like you back then, either, and I still couldn't take my eyes off you." About hands that roamed over all of me as if they had all the time in the world. About the way he said my name against my neck, rough, half-choked, right before he finished.

I opened my eyes and mentally slapped myself.

No, Valentina. You are not going to think about Sebastián del Fuego. Not his smile, not his hands, not how it felt to have him over you, not that thing he did with his mouth that still makes your legs tremble when you remember it.

He's a mistake. Luciano is the past. And tomorrow you have to get up at five to guide airplanes.

I took a shower. Got into bed.

Before I fell asleep, I unlocked my phone one last time.

Thirty-seven messages from Luciano. "Forgive me." "I was joking." "You're the most important thing in my life."

I didn't answer any of them.

But what I couldn't ignore was the last message. An unknown number.

"I found your airport ID in my jacket. I'm guessing you need it for work. Do you want me to give it back, or would you rather pay me one hundred thousand pesos to forget it?"

I bit my lip.

Damn Del Fuego.