Val shows up at home

It started innocently enough—at least, that’s how Valeria justified it to herself.

Diego was in the kitchen, hunched over a textbook, scribbling notes in his careful, cramped handwriting. His shoulders were rounded, his back to her, that same smallness she’d been seeing in her fantasies for days now.

She poured herself a glass of water, but her attention wasn’t on the glass—it was on him. And somewhere between one sip and the next, Val slipped in.

She set the glass down with a faint clink and leaned on the counter, her voice low and cutting.

“You always sit like that? Like you’re apologizing for taking up space?”

Diego froze mid-sentence, his pencil pausing above the page. “What?”

She took a slow step closer, letting her heels click against the tile. “You heard me. You hunch over like some scared little kid. You wonder why people don’t take you seriously?”

His brows knit, eyes narrowing just a fraction. “I’m studying, Mom.”

That word—Mom—was like sandpaper against the slick pleasure she was feeling. Val tilted her head, smirking. “Studying… sure. Is that what you call hiding in here all night?”

She reached over without asking and plucked the pencil from his hand, letting it roll between her fingers before tossing it onto the counter. The sharp tap of it hitting made him flinch—just a hair, but she caught it. Oh, she felt it.

“You need to grow a spine, Diego,” she said softly, almost kindly—but with a glint that didn’t match her tone. “The world doesn’t have time for boys who shrink away. It eats them alive.”

His jaw tightened. “Why are you talking to me like this?”

Her smirk deepened, and she straightened up, taking the glass of water and walking out without answering. The air in the kitchen felt different when she left—charged, tense, unsettled.

Later, in bed, she replayed the moment over and over. The little flinch. The way his voice had strained. The way she had walked away in total control.

And when her phone buzzed with a text from Chase—Tell me what you did today, Val—she found herself smiling in the dark.