“You must have missed her,” Kira asked, trying to be gentle while still pushing.
“I did.” Santi nodded. “But she was there when I opened Villa. It counted for something, when she showed up.”
Kira scooted to the edge of the swing, and patted the empty space beside her, and Santi sat. It was a bit of a tight fit, but they made it work, both of them using their feet to gently rock the swing forward and back, forward and back.
“She made it out, somehow,” Santi noted. “She seems happy.”
“Why are we here, Santi?” Kira asked, looking out at the ocean like the answers could be divined from there.
“I came here because... I don’t know. Maybe I needed to go back, find proof that my family was actually normal once. That we used to love each other. That deep down they loved me.”
It was painful to hear, and it wasn’t Kira’s relationship with her family. And she knew she needed to be patient, needed to wait to coax the truth out of him.
But god, she was tired of waiting. Tired of hearing Santi beat himself up for being told he wasn’t enough, when the man was So Utterly Perfect and Objectively Not An Awful Person. Anuba! He was wonderful! Took such good care of her, and the people around him. And he was so terrified of hurting people that he seemed cold, but Santi loved more deeply than Kira had ever thought possible.
How could his family not know that about him?
“You know that every time I experience something good,” he said slowly, “at the back of my mind, a voice whispers. Tells me I don’t deserve it, because I’m a bad grandson. Because I abandoned my family.”
Kira’s heart twisted in her chest. She thought about every happy moment she experienced with Santi—the wedding, sitting with him in Sunday Bakery, in the gardens of La Spezia, their New Year’s, and all the moments in between. Did he mean to say that all those things were stained dark because his family wasn’t there?
“You didn’t abandon your family!” Kira said angrily, because god, why wasn’theangry? Why wasn’t he railing against them and fighting for himself? “Santi, your family ishorrible! Family doesn’t treat you this way. They don’t force your hand, or squeeze you out. They don’t abandon you, or make you dissect everything they said just so you can convince yourself that they loved you. They shouldn’t make good things feel like bad things. And you didn’t do anything to deserve it!”
“To them, I did,” Santi insisted. “Lolo released a memo making Altair Chocolates the exclusive distributor of all Carlton hotels, including Villa.”
Kira’s stomach dropped, and she had to grab the rope of the swing so she didn’t fall. A wave of dizziness hit her as she realized the implications of Santi’s sentence. Vito really was as horrible as every story Santi told. As horrible as he’d seemed on that one interaction she’d had with him. How could anyone who claimed to care, claimed to love their grandkid, treat them like this?
“Fuck,” she managed to say. Because what else was she going to say? What else was theretosay? She had waited, and waited for him to tell her everything. He could have told her on New Year’s, and they could have maybe done something about it. But he hadn’t, and it hurt. It hurt badly that he hidthisfrom her. “You should have told me.”
“I wanted to find a solution to the problem first.” Santi admitted, dropping his shoulders. “Miro hinted that there’s a problem in Carlton, which is why Lolo is acting like this. And if I want to keep helping you, if I want to keep our partnership alive, I have to go back to Manila just like Lolo wants.”
“No,” Kira said immediately, turning a little to face him. “No! Santi, don’t go! They make you so miserable. You’re so miserable now, and you’re not even there!”
“I made a commitment to you, Kira,” he reasoned, and he sounded defeated, like there was no other decision to be made. Kira refused to let that be the default. “We’re supposed to be business partners. And this is my fault. So if leaving will fix it, then...”
“No,” Kira repeated, scrambling out of the swing so she could face him fully. Santi kept his eyes on his toes, his ankles buried in the sand as he lazily moved the swing. “This is not how you are business partners with someone. Partners do things together, they make decisions together. There has to be another way, I absolutelyrefuseto let that horrible man use you. You belong in Lipa, and with me, and everyone in the Laneways...”
“Did you know that he wants to buy the Laneways?” he asked her, and no, she did not. Kira wished she could just fall backward and lie in the sand. This was alot. Almost too much, and she still couldn’t believe that he had been carrying this around by himself. She understood how the Laneways was attractive, and profitable, but her family was never going to sell it. She was willing to bet it was going to be brought up at the family board meeting.
“I didn’t,” she admitted.
“I couldn’t do it, because I know how much it means to you. And if I don’t go, then he’ll do everything to destroy everything I love in Lipa,” he told her, and the pain in his voice fully made tears fill her eyes. She was sad, yes, but more than that, she was angry. Angry at the ways one man had managed to manipulate Santi, Santi who didn’t want much in the world but to be loved. She was starting to sob, she realized, and she hated that her breath was unsteady, that her voice was unsteady, too. “I love you, Kira. I will not be the reason why you lose Gemini. And this will fix that.”
“So...yun na yun?” she asked. “You’re going to leave, and make yourself the hero, and you’re just...unhappy? And I’m supposed to just smile, let you go as you yeet yourself off of a cliff without a parachute?”
She shook her head. This couldn’t be right. Between Gemini losing the Villa order and Vito almost buying the Laneways, and this? She couldn’t wrap her head around any of it. How had Santi carried this around by himself?
It had to be solvable, surely it had. There were things they could still do, not that she could think about them at the moment. But Santi was already walking out the door, and she needed to remind him that he already knew what the better choice was. That he’d told her, that New Year’s Day, what was truly, honestly in his heart.
I want everything with you, Kira. As long as you’ll have me. I want to stay here in Lipa, I want to be happy here. There’s nothing else.
“I love you too, you know,” Kira told him. “As much as you’re willing to go back to Manila for me, I’m willing to keep you, even if it means losing Gemini.”
Truth. Because Kira knew if she had to, she could start over again, would do it all over again, if it meant having Santi stay. She was sure of it. As sure as she was that the best tsokolate was made with 70% dark chocolate, that the 50% chocolate bars were her favorite, and that her regulars would all come back even if she restarted the business from her bedroom.
She knelt in the sand, placing her hands on his knees, looking up at his pained face. He looked so hurt, and it killed her that it took so long for him to tell her all of this. If he’d told her sooner, then they would have figured it out sooner.
Hmmm. That wasn’t very air sign of her.
