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The Captain Who Lost Control

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The Captain Who Lost Control

Episode 1

...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."