“Yes,” he says. “Stay in my bed. I’ll be here one more day.”
He kisses me once, slow and sure, and the day catches on that kiss like lace on a ring. He leaves. The door clicks. The suite hums with the sea and the echo of his steps.
I lie in the warm dent he left and breathe him in. Salt. Oak. A clean heat runs through me that feels like the first honest thing I’ve felt in a long time. The sky outside turns from slate to pearl. Birds begin to argue in the pines. I close my eyes and see his face the way it looked in the water, and in the glass, and over me with his mouth open on my name.
I shower and put the red dress back on because it makes my skin register his touch. I don’t decide anything. I don’t have that luxury. I write a note on hotel stationery that says thank you and nothing else. I leave it on the pillow beside the shape my head made in the night.
Sera would stay.
Isabella packs.
Back in my room, I take the ring from the safe and hold it for a long moment before I slip it back on. It feels heavier than it did yesterday.
The helicopter pad is a circle of sunburned concrete on the roof. From up here La Sirena is a white crown on a dark head. The staff carry my bags like I’m a queen and a thief both. I sense the juxtaposition more than ever as guilt follows me. The rotors start to turn. The wind lifts my hair and throws it into my face. I laugh because if I don’t laugh I’ll do something else.
I’ll run back to Luca’s room.
Maybe swim.
The pilot checks my name and I give him Sera. He accepts it. We lift. The island shrinks, then steadies, then becomes a coin on blue silk. The mainland grows ahead. My phone finds a signal and fills with messages. My father. The consigliere. Adrian. I watch their names stack in small blue boxes as the sea slides under us like a road.
My chest is split and bright. My body is sore in all the good places. My mouth tastes like wine and him. I look down at La Sirena until I can’t tell the hotel from the rock it sits on, until the whole place becomes a memory I won’t let anyone take from me.
Chapter Three
Luigi
La Sirena pretends to be holy. White stone. Blue glass. A chapel bell on the hill that rings like forgiveness is something you can buy by the hour. Some bells bless. Some bells count the missing. The night my father didn’t surface, a different bell rang like a ledger.
I’m not here to save my soul. I swim laps until my shoulders burn and the noise in my head goes quiet, until the counting inside me loosens its grip and my lungs start telling the truth. The water takes what it can. Salt and effort and repetition, the only kind of penance that ever worked for me.
When I stop for breath, she’s there.
White suit. Red mouth. Sunglasses that catch the sun but don’t hide her eyes. She sits like she belongs to the horizon more than the pool, watching the line where sea meets sky as if she made a bargain with it and it hasn’t decided whether to keep its end.
I drift to the marble lip and feel the temperature change where my forearms meet shade. She’s sizing me up, like she’s deciding if I’m a hurricane or just a gentle breeze.
I’m sizing her up too.
She’s the kind of beautiful that wastes nothing, built in long, clean lines and restraint, with a waist I could bracket with one hand if she allowed it. Her shoulders are set. Her chin is steady. The white suit looks poured on, thin straps and a high cut that makes her legs go on forever, and there is a bare flash at her hip where warm skin lives. Sun glosses her collarbones and a bead slides down the hollow of her throat where a bruise hides, half concealed, half daring anyone to ask.
Pool light knives her calves and lifts the arch of her foot. Her red lips part, and her hair is pinned up, damp wisps caught at her nape like she dressed in a hurry and refused to apologize for it. When she looks over the sunglasses, her green eyes go straight through my ribs, and something in me clicks into place with the ugly certainty of instinct.
I decide to spend the rest of the day learning what she’ll let me touch and what she’ll make me earn.
“You look like you’re making a run for it,” I say.
“Run is a strong word. I prefer swim.”
It lands low in my chest. Calm and precise, she holds her posture like a dancer who learned to fight. I ask whether that’s her plan or her preference. She says to call her Sera and lets it sit between us. It’s a good lie. Soft where it needs to be. Tailored. Expensive in the way it hides seams.
I tell her I don’t want her name. I want her yes. Coming from nowhere and everywhere at once, it’s not a line. It’s truth in a world that I rarely confess to.
Her fingers tap the stem of her drink once. She weighs me like a purchase and like a risk. Then she nods.
“Yes.”
On the steps the towel boy appears as if trained by fear. I climb out and offer my hand. Her palm is warm. Her fingers are cool where the glass kissed them. The shape of her mouth makes me forget what time wants from me.
