Forbidden

When Damián closed the door and left on a trip, Mariela already knew that a whole week alone with Rodrigo would change everything between them.

Every morning she handed me coffee with a smile that lasted a second too long. I knew she had a boyfriend. She knew I knew. And still, neither of us looked away.

When she hung up the phone, I knew I’d be at her place the next day. Her husband was away. And my daughter would never look at me the same way again.

I got there at seven in the evening to look after her. At midnight I carried her to bed. At dawn I passed her half-open door and knew my life had just changed.

I’d never done it with anyone. And the first person who entered me wasn’t my boyfriend, but his father, one afternoon when the house was empty and I couldn’t say no.

I woke up not knowing how I would ever justify what they forced me to do that night, or how I could look the man I still loved in the eyes.

He had spent years perfecting an expression that revealed nothing. But that afternoon, in the hotel lobby, his eyes betrayed the one thing he must not feel for her.

She knocked on my door at midnight with red eyes and a broken voice. I didn’t expect the last night of the trip to end with my student in my bed.

Marcos asked me to look gorgeous by the time he got home. While Carla was doing my hair, I remembered everything I did to be his—and what I’m still willing to give.

I touched it for just an instant, and the softness of the lace woke something sleeping inside me. That night I dreamed I put it on, and I knew I’d be back for it.

When he staggered against me on that packed bus, I felt something I should never have felt. Since that day I haven’t been able to think of anything else.

I thought nobody had seen me that afternoon at my grandfather’s house. I was wrong: there were a pair of eyes behind the door, and they took fifteen years to speak.

What happened that night between Lorena and me was never supposed to come out. But the scream from the other side of the wall told me it was already too late.

I’d been trying for years to get her to give in again. That afternoon, between joints and caresses on the couch, she sat up and kissed me like before.

That morning, her husband left on patrol without looking at her. By nine, she had already chosen the clothes she would wear to open the door to another man.

I came out of the shower wrapped in a towel, knowing my father was alone. That night I wanted to see how far he’d dare go without alcohol.

When I moved her panties aside to tend her wound, I thought she’d protest. But she only pressed her face into the pillow and opened her legs a little wider.

I went down to the garage ready to cry alone, but the hand that tapped my car window that night wasn’t bringing comfort: it was bringing an offer I couldn’t refuse.

Everyone in the neighborhood wanted her, but that birthday afternoon she discovered just how far she was willing to go to be the center of her own family again.

When he opened his shirt and I felt his cologne fill the kitchen, I knew that breakfast with my nephew wasn’t going to end with a quiet coffee.