I’ve heard a thousand lines in a hundred rooms. The men I know perform charm like it’s business. This lands like a promise in the dark, uncomplicated, sincere. I can’t explain why that makes me want to trust him.
“My yes for what?” I ask.
“For the next drink,” he says. “For the next hour. For a day where you’re only a woman on an island and I am only a man at a pool.”
The spritz drips cold on my fingers. The sun catches a drop and throws it like a diamond reminding me of the one I locked away. My life at home is mapped and measured, always watched. Yes, is a small word that could punch a hole in all that. Maybe I want to punch something.
“Yes,” I say, hiding my breathlessness.
He climbs out of the pool, and the world narrows to the breadth of his well-developed shoulders. Water sheets off olive skin, runs over the cut of his carved chest and the tight ladder of his perfect abs like a sexy waterfall. His trunks are dark and sit low on narrow hips.
Eye level with his belly button, I catch myself cataloging details I shouldn’t be collecting like the adonis belt and dark hair leading lower. He takes a white linen towel, wraps it once around his waist, the fabric clinging whereit meets his skin and blocking my view. Blinking like the sun’s in my eyes, I let them travel elsewhere.
There’s more to notice. Dark hair slicked back by water. A mouth I can’t stop watching. Day-old stubble along a jaw that looks capable of damage. Veins raised on his wrists from the swim. A pale crescent-shaped scar on one shoulder that I file away for later.
His smirk growing, he offers me his hand like a gentleman, like a sinner, like both at once. When I stand, it’s like he is made of heat and salt, magnetic. I keep my eyes on his mouth because the rest of him is too much.
“What should I call you?” I ask.
He considers the question for only a heartbeat.
“Call me Luca,” he says.
It’s a lie that fits him. He wears it the way I wear Sera. We nod to each other like we’ve shaken hands inside the deception.
We don’t leave the pool for an hour. We float under the lazy ceiling fans while the sea sighs beyond the glass. He tells a story about a fisherman who swears La Sirena is haunted by a mermaid who drowned a hundred lovers.
Sirens drown oath-breakers. Rivers keep their bodies. I’ve seen both.
Itell a story about a woman who never learned to swim until she was twenty because the city she lived in made risk seem like a luxury. The truth hides inside the stories and peeks out with teeth. We laugh. We say nothing real.
It feels like everything.
Luca grabs my left hand. “Say yes?”
“To what?”
“Getting out of here for the day.”
I never leave the resort. Isabella would be instantly on guard. Sera smiles and says yes.
We go walking. La Sirena has a terrace that wraps the cliff like a bracelet. He insists we go barefoot, carrying my sandals. Hot stone under bare feet brings me to life. I’m rewarded with limoncello in tiny cold glasses.
He points out a gleam on the horizon and names the boats by their shape. I make up names for the people on them. Stories. An heiress on her third husband. A cheating politician. A man who stole a fortune and ran for the sun.
“You’re good at this,” Luca says.
“At what?”
“Not being where you are.”
I let the wind take my hair. “Practice,” I say. “And need.”
He looks at my left hand, empty for once. I took off the ring before I came down from the room. The ghost of it still marks my skin. He notices the pale band and looks away, kind enough to pretend he didn’t.
A bell rings from the chapel on the hill.
Noon.
