“Your father asked if my being outside the gates had anything to do with you,” she said. “I had been too shocked to reply. And that was when he told me he had just been with you on the way to the station. He said you told him everything about our relationship and that I asked you to run away.”
Ignacio shook his head. “That isn’t true. I mean…Iwaswith him, but he never took me to the station. And Ididtell him about us…but I—”
A sob escaped her. The comandante hadn’t been lying.
Ignacio took her by the arms. Tears stained his own cheeks. “I told him that I loved you. That I’ve loved you since we werekids.”
She sucked in a breath. “You did?”
“Yes, Dovie.” His thumbs brushed up her arms and chillsrolled down her spine. “But I didn’t tell him everything. The moment you asked me to run away with you, I knew I would, but you left in such a hurry, and I was still so numb with shock that I just stood there in the courtyard like a damn statue.”
She laughed bitterly at the thought.
“When I regained my senses, I knew the savings I kept under my bed wouldn’t be enough. I ran to my room and filled my duffle bag with anything I could find of mine that was of worth. I left to try and pawn it off.”
Esmeralda’s knees went weak. “That was why the staff saw you leaving?”
“Yes.”
He eased them onto his bunk and his hands slid to find hers. He squeezed her fingers tight. That was so like him. Always knowing exactly what she needed at the exactly right time.
“My father spotted me walking through town and told me to get inside his motorcar. When I sat on the car bench, the duffle fell on its side and the dove statue we won at the boardwalk tumbled out. He questioned me about it. That’s when I told him I loved you. But everything else I told him after that was a lie. I made up some story about how I wanted to give you a gift to remember me by when I left for the Blackbirds. That seemed to be enough for him because he had his driver bring me to a pawnshop across town. He told me to leave the statue in his care, that it wasn’t worth anything monetarily anyway. Then Father left me at the shop and told me to be back by supper because he was hosting a goodbye party for me.”
“That was why he had our love dove statue,” she whispered. Her chin fell to her chest. “I’m such a fool.”
“Don’t say that.”
“But it’s true. When your father caught me trying to chase after you, he told me there was no use in running to the station because you were already gone. I stood there shaking my head in disbelief, but then he showed me the figurine.”
It was a sculpture of two doves in flight. Their wings formed into a heart. Ignacio had won it for her in a shooting game. She had teased him that one of the doves looked like a pigeon.
“Your father gave me the statue and said you no longer wanted it or anything to do with me. He said you’d only ever been my friend because you pitied me. That you bedded me the night before as a goodbye.”
Ignacio’s eyes flashed with fury. “He. Said. What?”
“I was so devastated. To know that I trusted you with my body and then you shared those intimate details with your father, who sat there staring at me as if I were nothing.”
The anger twisting his features crumpled. “Dovie, I would never disrespect you like that,” Ignacio whispered.
“I know that now. I should have known better then. But you were gone, and he had the statue, and I…I’ve been left before,” she sobbed.
He grabbed her and pulled her into his arms. His warmth snapped the last strands of her composure. Her tears broke loose, and her shoulders shook with a year’s worth of shame.
“I didn’t want to believe you’d do that to me,” she said through her cries. “But then I ran to your room and saw that most of your favorite things were gone. Your prized trophy from the athletic trials at school. The gilded frame that showcased your mother’s photograph. Half of your clothes. I tore off the ring you’d givenme the night before. I couldn’t stand the thought of you making promises that you had no intention to keep.”
The hurt was still there, writhing under her skin.
“I found the loose floorboard where you kept your savings, then went to my room and grabbed my satchel. I smashed the doves and ran away. But soon after, your father’s men caught me and threw me in a cell.”
Ignacio’s arms squeezed her tight. His pulse pounded in her ear. “I am so sorry, Dovie.”
She clamped her eyes shut. “Me too.”
Silence bled between them like an open vein. She didn’t know what to think. What to say. Where did they even go from here? All she knew for certain was that neither one of them had wanted to leave the other behind.
And yet, they had.
Of courseshehad. She had hardly thought herself worthy of Ignacio in the first place. He was so good. So strong and handsome. He was the son of one of the most powerful men in the country. She had believed he had turned his back on her and joined the Blackbirds. That he betrayed her to his father. He joined the Blackbirds, but could she blame him? He thought she had betrayed him first.
