Chapter 62: Between Desire and Exile

LUCÍA – POV

The oven wakes before I do. By four in the morning it’s already roaring in my aunt’s bakery, and the smell of sweet bread seeps into every corner of the house. It’s a comforting scent—cinnamon and piloncillo—but sometimes it suffocates me. It’s a reminder that I’m living a borrowed life, built on routines that don’t truly belong to me.

With my hands buried in the dough for conchas, I try to forget, but my thoughts always return to the same place.

Mateo.

No matter how many times I tell myself I have to think about my child, that I need to focus on staying safe, he appears. In the flour that clings to my skin like ash. In the steam rising from the oven that blurs my vision. In the stillness of dawn, when silence blends with his voice saying my name.

“Lucía, pass me the tray,” my aunt Leticia says, pulling me from my thoughts.

I hand it to her without looking up. She notices—she always does—because she watches me with those eyes that understand everything, no matter how hard I try to hide it. Her hands keep kneading the dough, but her silence weighs on me.

“You need to eat more,” she says suddenly, firm, without lifting her gaze. “It’s not just you anymore.”

The words cut deep. Instinctively, I place a hand on my belly. It’s barely starting to show, but she sees it, remembers it in every gesture. My aunt has known everything from the very first day. She knows who the father is, she knows the weight of my secret, and she has never judged me—not once.

“I try,” I murmur, lowering my head.

“Trying isn’t enough, mija. If you don’t eat properly, the baby will pay for it. And so will you.”

Her voice is stern, but tenderness hides behind it. I fall silent, swallowing hard. Sometimes I feel the only reason I don’t collapse is because she’s here to hold me up.

By midmorning the bakery is already full of customers. Vancouver wakes up cold and rainy, and the line at the counter is long. I smile, serve people, bag pan de muerto and empanadas, but everything is mechanical. My mind is far away.

It’s in San Cristóbal.

In Saint Michael the Archangel Parish.

In his voice—firm and trembling at the same time—saying my name as if it were a prayer.

I miss him with a fury that makes me sick. I don’t want to admit it, but I do. Every night I close my eyes and imagine him with me, his hands gripping my waist, his mouth kissing me as if the world were ending. And I wake up in tears, my body burning, an unbearable emptiness between my legs.

When we close the bakery, my aunt waits for me in the kitchen with a cup of chamomile tea. She sits across from me, looking at me the way only she can—direct, without detours.

“Have you thought about going back?”

The question explodes in my chest. I don’t answer right away. The word back is the tightrope I walk every night.

“Of course I want to go back…” I finally say, my voice breaking. “I want to see him, tell him. I want him to know the truth. That he’s going to be a father.”

My aunt nods, patient, waiting.

“And what’s stopping you?”

What stops me has a name and a face.

Damián.

I don’t say it out loud, but she understands. He’s still there, in San Cristóbal. A ghost with a body, capable of anything. I was warned a few days ago via WhatsApp: “He’s asking about you. He’s furious. He says when he finds you, he’ll kill you.” Since then, I live with the feeling that every shadow on the street could be him.

“If I go back,” I confess, pressing my fingers into the table until my knuckles turn white, “I risk everything. My child, myself… Mateo. Damián would burn him alive if he knew the truth. He already burned the church. What would stop him from burning people?”

She grips my hand tightly.

“Then protect what you love from here. Silence can be a shield too, mija.”

I freeze. I want to scream no—that I need to see him, that I can’t take this distance killing me slowly. But I bite my tongue until I taste blood. She’s right.

I go up to my room at the end of the day. It’s small, with a window overlooking the wet streets of Commercial Drive, but it’s my refuge. I look at myself in the mirror: a tired face, skin dusted with flour, a belly just beginning to curve beneath a loose blouse. I stroke it with my palm and whisper without meaning to:

“Your father should be here. He should know you exist.”

My eyes burn with tears. I shouldn’t cry anymore, but I do anyway.

I close my eyes and see him. I see Mateo as the last time. His body over mine during the storm, his ragged breath against my neck, his deep voice telling me I was his. I remember the strength of his hands, the way he devoured me as if he wanted to erase the entire world, as if in that moment only the two of us existed.

My body reacts instantly. Desire pulls a muffled moan from my throat that fills me with shame. I touch my belly, trying to focus on the baby, but my need for him is stronger. And I hate myself for it, because I know I can’t go back.

Not while Damián exists.

Not while Mateo is in Rome, preparing to become a monsignor.

The phone vibrates on the nightstand. It’s Mónica, an old acquaintance from La Merced. I answer with my heart in my throat.

“Lucía, you need to be careful,” she says quickly, no greeting, her voice nervous. “Damián is still looking for you. He’s worse than ever. He’s going around saying you were his woman and that no one takes what’s his.”

“What else has he said?” I ask, a knot tightening in my throat.

“That it doesn’t matter where you hide, he’ll find you. And when he does…” she pauses. “Lucía, he has people in other states. He’s asking around at bus terminals. Be very careful.”

The call ends, and I stand there in silence, trembling from head to toe. Fear cuts off my breath. I pace the room, one protective hand on my belly.

“I won’t let him touch you,” I whisper to the baby. “I won’t allow it. I’ll protect you even if it costs me my life.”

I collapse onto the bed, unable to sleep. Outside, Vancouver dims beneath the steady rain, but inside me I burn. I burn with fear, with desire, with contradiction. I want to run to Rome, find him at that seminary, hold him, tell him I love him, that I need him, that he’s going to be a father. That that stormy night created a life.

But I can’t.

If I do, I destroy him.

If I do, Damián will find us.

If I do, I lose him forever.

The silence is unbearable. I clutch the pillow, close my eyes, and summon him in my mind. His mouth on my neck, leaving marks that made me feel his. His hands pinning my wrists above my head. His voice breaking as he made me his, saying my name like a forbidden prayer. I shudder, collapse, and cry again until I have no tears left.

Dawn finds me with swollen, red eyes. I get up, splash my face with icy water, get dressed for the bakery. I look at my reflection in the mirror and barely recognize myself.

I am a woman split between two worlds:

the one who longs to go back and the one who is terrified to do so.

The one who loves a priest now studying to become a monsignor.

The one fleeing a man capable of burning churches and killing without remorse.

The one carrying in her womb the living proof of a sin that, to me, is the purest and most devastating love I have ever known.

I step into the hallway. My aunt is already in the kitchen, preparing café de olla. She looks at me and, without a word, gently strokes my cheek with maternal tenderness.

I don’t need words to understand what she’s thinking: endure.

I nod, even though inside me everything screams the opposite.

The weight of my desire drags me down, burns me, suffocates me like the smoke of that fire. But I don’t give in.

Not yet.

One day, when the danger is gone, when Damián is no longer a threat, I will return. And then there will be no fear strong enough to stop me.

For now, I stay here—hidden among sweet bread and flour—loving in silence the man who will never stop being mine.

The father of my child.

The only man who ever made me feel I deserved to be loved.