Translation of Love - By Alice Montalvo-Tribue Page 0,91

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.

I shake my head. “I want to.” He nods his head, allowing me a moment