Devoted Love, Mr. Hayes’ Darling Wife

Micaela turned around with an extremely polite and light smile already on her face, “It’s been a long time.”

When she broke up with Dario Cepeda at sixteen, she had imagined many, many reunion scenarios, but she had never imagined finding herself in such an awkward scenario.

The dim orange streetlight illuminated Micaela’s face as Dario Cepeda looked at her and finally smiled somewhat helplessly and said, “I didn’t think that would be the first thing you’d say when you saw me.”

Micaela, slightly stunned, looked at him suspiciously as Dario Cepeda gazed at her with a serious and deep look and said, in one word, “I thought it would be that I missed you so much.”

Five years.

From the age of sixteen to twenty-one, this man disappeared from her life for five whole years.

Micaela laughed lightly, with little emotion, “I can’t say that to an ex who has disappeared from my life for five whole years.”

“I know, it was me who … affected you negatively at the time.”

Micaela didn’t want to catch up, let alone sigh with him about the past, “That’s in the past, it’s late, I’m going home.”

Micaela reached out to take off her coat, which belonged to Dario Cepeda, and he held her arm, “I’ll give you a ride, it’s hard to get a cab at this hour.”

Micaela did not tempt fate, standing in the streets of Clareta in the dead of winter, with her delicate makeup and a fine evening dress, looking less like a spectacle and more like a bundle of nerves to passersby.

She doesn’t want to be in the dock every other day.

The headline reads: Almazan girl Clareta meets mysterious lover in privacy in a dress.

Dario Cepeda approached her, opened the passenger door and, without a word, Micaela bent down and climbed in.Content bel0ngs to Nôvel(D)r/a/ma.Org.

The black Bentley slowly moved down the road.

Dario Cepeda said to me, “I’ve been following you over the years and I heard that you’re going to play the female role of Almazan in that movie ‘Black and White’ coming out this year…”

Micaela nodded slightly, “Hmm.”

The response was muted.

“Why are you engaged to Nico?” asked Dario Cepeda pointedly.

Micaela’s answer was also direct, “For fame and fortune, for money.”

The faint floating shadows of the light coming through the car windows cut out Dario Cepeda’s handsome face in the gloom, and the emotions on his face were as mixed as those in his heart.

Five years apart, she knew he was the one who owed too much.

The black Bentley comes to an abrupt stop against the curb.

There was little emotion, even indifference, on Micaela’s delicate face.

Dario Cepeda turned his head to look at her, “Micaela Matamoros, can you give me a chance to make it up to you? This time I will not give up on you and I will give you the home you want.”

Micaela smiled, “Do you know what the biggest problem is between you and me, right now?”.

“The five year gap, we can make it up if you want, it’s my fault for leaving without saying goodbye and making you suffer so much back then.”

Micaela shook her head with a bitter smile, then she looked at him and said, “I’m Micaela now, but you still think my name is Micaela Matamoros, Dario Cepeda, you see, what is missed is missed, now you don’t even know what my name is, what makes you trust that you can still find our past? What makes you think you can find our past?”

“Micaela…”

Dario Cepeda grabbed her hand and Micaela didn’t struggle, she just calmly looked at his grip and said, “There are things that the past is the past, and when you abandoned me for your future, we couldn’t go back. It’s just that, Dario Cepeda, I’ve always wanted to ask you, why are you so stubborn that you think I won’t support you in your further studies in England?”

“I can’t bear the thought of you suffering with me, huddled in a small rented room of less than forty square meters, with a shared bathroom, Micaela, I love you, that’s why I can’t bear the thought of you being poor with me. You should be the one I hold in the palm of my hand, how can you be so humble for me.”

Micaela’s eyes moistened and she looked at Dario Cepeda with red eyes and a smile, “If suffering with you is considered poor and humble, then Dario Cepeda, it’s not me you want, it’s your haughtiness.”

Micaela took his hand in her palm and jerked it away.

Dario Cepeda leaned back in his seat, sighed softly and looked at the windshield in front of him with a forlorn look as he said, “The saddest thing about a man is not poverty and lack of talent, but meeting the girl he wants to take care of for the rest of his life at the age when he is most impotent.”

“I was happy when I was with you, even when I drank porridge, even if you couldn’t give me the life I wanted, but that didn’t stop me from wanting to be with you, Dario Cepeda, you just loved your dignity and your pride, you just wouldn’t accept being poor with me. ”

Micaela looked at him, tears were slipping from her eyes and reddening them.

Dario Cepeda’s voice was muffled with guilt and resignation, “I thought that by being willing to write to me, you were slowly beginning to forgive me and start over with me.”

Micaela, slightly stunned, asked suspiciously, “Writing a letter?”.

“Yes, it was because of those letters you wrote me that strengthened my heart to come back this time, and I put off a lot of work to come back just to find you.”

“I didn’t write you.”

Dario Cepeda frowned, “You haven’t written to me? Those letters were sent from La familia Matamoros to my home in London.”

“Sent by La familia Matamoros?”

“Yes.”

Dario Cepeda carried those letters with him and handed them to Micaela, “Aren’t these the letters you wrote to me?”

Micaela opens a letter at random, shakes the paper and sees a handwriting almost indistinguishable from her own.

“The handwriting on these letters looks like mine, but it’s not really mine. You can leave these letters with me for now, I need to find out who really wrote to you imitating my handwriting.”

Dario Cepeda smiled in disappointment and said, “It seems … I have pounced on it. Now even these letters are fake, Micaela, is it true that we can’t go back?”.

Micaela bit her lip and finally spoke, “Dario Cepeda, take me home.”

All the way, no more words, reluctance to the extreme.

When we reached the entrance to the Bayside neighborhood, Micaela got out of the car and Dario Cepeda got out too.

“Wait.”

Micaela looks again at the man standing under Clareta, the former Dario Cepeda is a loner, so his body carries a coldness that no one should approach. The man who has grown from a poor schoolboy to become the newest man in the financial city of London is a man of great reserve and even greater coldness.

Dario Cepeda approached her and said, “You once asked me why in my love letter to you only the word ‘you’ appeared. I never told you because I thought we would always have a future and that I would tell you later. But I never thought there would be no future.”

“Now I tell you that this ‘you’ means that you are in my heart, a thousand times, and not a day is forgotten. I was glad when I heard you say you were with Nico for fame and fortune.”

I was very afraid that Micaela had fallen in love with another man.

The confidence he had been sure of, tonight, was almost gone.

Dario Cepeda bends his head and kisses Micaela on the forehead.

Before Micaela could react, his lips were gone, as if in a dream, the kiss so light, light as if it hadn’t happened.