Brody casts me a skeptical look. “Really?”
“Oh yeah. One hundred percent.”
“So let’s hear it.”
“Okay…but you asked for it.” I cup my hands over my mouth, breathing heavily with a littlecoo-chooas I inhale. “Luke…I am your father!”
Brody’s brows lift dramatically. “That was…terrible.”
“What?! No.” I try my best to hold a scowl. “That wasAmerica’s Got Talent–worthy. You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
And then he laughs. The sound is warm and genuine and does absolutely nothing to help my “this is just adrenaline” theory.
I wait for him to catch his breath before asking, “What about you? What’s your thing?”
“I play—” He stops, like he’s reconsidering what he was about to say. “I’m…between things right now.”
“Between things. That’s delightfully vague.”
“What can I say? I’m a man of mystery.”
“A mysterious man who knows Barcelona and has the reflexes of a parkour expert. Very suspicious.”
“Maybe I’m Batman.”
I laugh—a real laugh, not the polite one I use at family gatherings. “Barcelona Batman. I’d watch that movie.”
“It’d be very confusing. Batman, but with tapas.”
“The Dark Knight Rises…to get second breakfast.”
He grins, and the expression transforms his whole face. When he actuallysmiles—not that half-quirk thing but a real,genuine smile—his eyes crinkle at the corners, and there’s this warmth that makes him look younger, less guarded.
Stop it, Chloe. You’re staring.
We turn another corner, and suddenly the port opens up before us, the massive expanse of Port Vell stretching out with sailboats bobbing in their slips, their masts clinking softly in the wind. The water is blue—unreal blue, like a dream—dotted with white sails and the occasional yacht. The wooden boardwalk stretches ahead, lined with restaurants and shops.
And there, in the middle of the harbor, is a very large cruise ship.
A very large cruise ship that ismoving.
My heart drops into my shoes. “Oh no.”
“What?”
“That.” I point with a shaking finger. “That’s my ship. That’s…it’sleaving.”
The cruise ship is pulling away from the dock, massive and white and utterly indifferent to the fact that I am NOT ON IT. Its horn sounds—a deep, mournful blast that echoes across the water.
And I don’t know why, because there’s no way I’m catching that boat, but suddenly I’m running.
And I can hear Brody calling something behind me, but I’m too busy sprinting toward the pier, weaving between startled tourists and a man selling balloons who yells something as I nearly take out his entire inventory.
The sun is hot on my shoulders. My hair whips across my face. The smell of salt water and diesel fuel from the ship’s engines fills my nose.
I reach the end of the pier just as the ship clears the dock. There’s a gap of water between the ship and the pier—not huge, but definitely too wide to jump unless I’ve suddenly developed superpowers in the last thirty seconds.
Which I haven’t.
