Paige is given the week off again. She feels good, it's frustrating, but it is what it is. She helps Sofia with stuff to keep her mind off of things. She cooks, she cleans, she helps Sofia in the garden, she even assists the yard staff with the late season things they need to do. It keeps her busy, it keeps her focused, it keeps her too exhausted to think late at night when she's trying to sleep and finds herself staring at her phone screen more often than not, tracking Ricardo's tweets and finding it just a little easier to breathe after each one.
He's happy, he's fulfilled, and that's the important thing, but dammit, he keeps hurting his finger again and again and again, and the weeks are lagging worse and worse as March inches closer. And even worse than that, Valentine's Day is this Sunday and she won't have anyone to kiss, or share chocolates with, or even just to go on a walk around the grounds with. She stares up at the ceiling, trying to breathe through the pain, when her phone lights up. Another video, another picture, another comment from Ricardo. Something that's equally life affirming and heartbreaking all at once. She feels like she's drowning in pride and longing for Ricardo, rolling over and burying her face in her pillow, screaming helplessly into the fabric.
The only reason she's as quiet as she is is because Sofia is in the next room and Alberto is across the hall and there's no way she's going to do anything that sends either of them to contact Ricardo and alert him that there's a problem. This is her issue, she'd stepped into this mess when she'd put her WWE career ahead of her relationship with Ricardo. Of course he'd run off to India, who would want to be with you after all of that?
She stares into the pitch darkness of her pillow before sitting up and rolling off of the bed, padding out of her room and down the hall to the living room. Alberto's code is updated pretty regularly but he'd given it to her recently, just in case, and she enters it in right now, hand shaking slightly as it beeps. The lighted interior takes her breath away for a moment and she swallows, finding the box and plucking it out of Alberto, Ricardo and Sofia's various papers and valuables. She holds it to her chest until she's sitting down, pulling it open and staring at it. It's beautiful, even in this dim light, and she breathes out as she traces the delicate cut of the stone with her fingernail, her eyes feeling heavy as she holds the proof of Ricardo's feelings for her in her hand.
Please still want this when you come home, she thinks sleepily before collapsing into an exhausted puddle on the couch, her hair covering her face as she breathes in and out gently.
She doesn't notice the sun rising a few hours later or Alberto walking quietly into the room to prepare for his flight. She doesn't hear as he stops short, a Spanish curse on his lips. His walking towards her and gently prying the ring box from her fingers, putting it back in the safe and re-securing it, also goes unnoticed. The only response offered after he drapes a blanket over her if a soft snuffling noise and a whispered "Ricardo" as she snuggles into the warmth, hugging it closer. He watches her, a sad sort of smirk crossing his face before he leaves the house.
The days somehow pass even slower when it's just Paige and Sofia in the house, the two of them cleaning every inch of the house and making everything shine as brightly as the ring waiting to be put to use in the safe behind them. Paige is in the garden, up to her elbows in weeds and dirt, about to go wash up and get something to eat when Sofia leaves the house and kneels down next to her. She pauses and brushes some of her hair out of her eyes with her forearm, trying to keep from smearing dirt around when she spots the look on Sofia's face, how tight her fingers are around her cell phone. "What's wrong?" she demands. "Is it AJ? The baby-?"
"Mi hija, no, it's not the baby." Sofia holds the phone out to Paige and inches closer, wrapping her arms around the girl and waiting as Paige reads the tweet alert there.
There's a spree of tweets from Ricardo that she'd woke up to, about his stay in India and how much it'd meant to him... and a few other things here and there... She's not sure what she's supposed to be looking at before she spots it, way at the top of Sofia's timeline. Ricardo announcing that, instead of going home, he's heading for Australia for a week. "No," she hisses, the phone slipping from her slack fingers and hitting the dewy grass. "Sorry, sorry," she says, scrambling to pick it up and hand it back to the housekeeper. "I have... I have to go." She pulls away from Sofia and rushes into the house, feeling like she's about to hyperventilate.
She's covered in dirt and grime and her hands are shaking as she all but tears her clothes off, ignoring buttons clicking off and hitting the floor, rebounding around the room. Ignoring everything until she's in the shower, water as hot as it can get pouring down her fair skin, quickly staining every inch of her that it touches a blistering red. She ignores this, however, slamming her fists against the tile surrounding the bath, sobbing and demanding answers out of thin air. "Ricardo," she wails, sinking down under the waves of brutally pounding water and sitting in the bottom of the tub, miserable and broken. "You were supposed to come home to me..."