Page 43 of Jetmir

“What? I have a beautiful voice.”

“No, you don’t.” Amara echoed my exact thoughts in the background. “Happy birthday, Anya.”

“Tell her I sing beautifully,” Gabriel insisted, ignoring his wife.

“I’m sorry, I can’t lie. But we love you regardless of your singing voice.”

He let out an exasperated sigh. “You two don’t know what real music is.”

“I’m afraid we do,” I said amused. “That’s why we know you can’t sing for shit.”

“Keep this up and you won’t get a birthday present,” he threatened, but there was no merit to it. Gabriel already sent a gift to the house.

“I thought I already got it. That baby-blue Corvette sitting in the driveway.”

“What makes you think that’s yours?”

I scoffed. “Oh, I don’t know. Maybe that big-ass bow on top of it and the canvas that’s laid in front of it that says ‘Happy Birthday’?”

“Damn it, they delivered it already?”

“Yes, and thank you so much. To both of you.”

“You’ll have to take me for a ride,” he replied. “I want to feel it purr in case I want to get one for myse—” He cut himself off, but before I could say anything, he continued, “Are you on your way to the gallery?”

“Yes.” Fuck, this guilt about my brother’s condition was killing me slowly. If there was a reason not to love my ex-husband, that should have been a perfect one. Why couldn’t my stupid heart get on board with it?

“And you didn’t take the Corvette?”

“No, but next time,” I assured.

“We’re here, Miss Santos,” my driver announced, catching my reflection in the rearview mirror.

“Ah, Gabriel, I have to go. We’ll see you tonight though. Right?”

“Absolutely.”

“I’ll see you then. I love you.” I hung up and caught my reflection in the rearview mirror, locking eyes with my driver. “Thank you, Andy,” I said briskly, gathering my purse and waiting for him to open my door.

The moment my heels touched the sidewalk, I looked up.

The cream-colored stone building stood exactly as it always had, elegant and imposing beneath the Miami sun. The wide glass doors reflected the traffic, the palm trees, and the people moving along the sidewalk, but for a moment, none of the city seemed to exist around me.

I couldn’t stop staring. It was like a compulsion when a memory had found me.

Suddenly, I wasn’t standing outside my gallery anymore. I was ten years old, sitting in the back seat of my mother’s car when she took me to my papa’s island. Papa wanted to sell it because Mama hated going to the Caribbean and she offered to take photos of it.

I could still remember the sea, that impossible shade of blue stretching everywhere. The white sand. The salty breeze that tangled my hair.

My mother had taken me with her to take photos of the island. That day she had trusted me with something very precious. Her camera.

I could still remember the weight of it in my small hands. I had lifted it to my eye and taken my first photograph. I remembered the click of the shutter. The rush that followed. The strange, breathtaking certainty that I had found the one thing in the world that made sense to me.

Photography.

It was the most beautiful thing I had ever experienced. And for years, it had been the only thing I wanted.

Until I met Jetmir.