Wicked Like a Wildfire (Hibiscus Daughter #1)(76)
I crossed my arms over my chest. “What are you talking about? I may not have been allowed to have him, but you didn’t have anyone, either. That was how it was. You and me, alone together.”
“I wasn’t alone!” she shot back. “I had Niko!”
“I had Niko, too. We weren’t best friends, but still, that’s not the same as love.”
She groaned in frustration. “God, Riss, listen to me for once. It is the same, it’s exactly the same. I love her, okay? I’ve loved her since I was fifteen. Longer than that, really. And she—she loves me, too. We . . . we just told each other a few days ago. Really, finally said it, for the first time.”
The shock was so numbing and intense I felt like someone had rung some massive church bell inside me. On some level, I found it hilarious that this should rock me more than anything that had happened so far, but there we were. I actually shook my head, as if that would clear it. “You—you and Niko? You’re in love? Why . . .” I scrubbed my hands over my face, stretching it tight over the bones beneath. “Why wouldn’t you tell me that?”
“Because I felt so guilty for betraying all of us,” she said softly. “Falling in love, sharing my gleam with Niko, singing for her every day. Doing all the things that Mama said put us in danger, when you didn’t get to have anything. Not love, not magic. And also because you’re so much like her, sometimes.”
“Like who?”
“Like Mama. All that control, all the time. You make your mind up about things, and it’s like concrete setting. Whatever impression gets left, whatever indent, it’s there forever. The way you think I’m a coward because I don’t want out of Cattaro like you do, for one. Because I don’t think about Japan like it means freedom and salvation and everything Montenegro doesn’t mean for you. Don’t shake your head, I know it’s true. I’ve heard you feeling it at me. And I don’t mind that you think those things about me—we’re not one person, Riss, we can feel different things—but Niko . . .” She glanced up at me, suddenly tentative. “I didn’t know what you would think of us together.”
I couldn’t believe the notion had never crossed my mind before—that the reason Malina barely noticed men might be that they genuinely weren’t interesting to her. I’d thought it was growing up around Mama that had done it, the endless castigation, the relentless shaming. Of course, that had been meant for me—Mama hadn’t seen the need to chisel away at her more malleable girl, or maybe couldn’t bring herself to do it to us both—and it had worked.
I’d never fully given anyone my heart.
But Lina was my sister, my twin, the first thing I’d seen when I opened my eyes in our shared womb. I’d held her by the hand before we were even thrust into this world. I should have felt the need to look deeper, to think of her as more than the most vulnerable extension of me, a weaker limb I needed to favor. Especially when that was so far-flung from the truth.
“I’m sorry I didn’t know,” I said softly. “I shouldn’t have needed you to tell me. But if you had, I would have been happy for you, Lina, I swear.”
“And you don’t care? That she’s a girl?”
“Of course I don’t. Does Luka care that his sister’s with a girl?” I replied tartly, as all the furtive half gestures, the bit-back sentences, fell into place.
She winced. “He wanted to tell you. And he almost did, a bunch of times. He thought it was wrong of us to hide it from you, but Niko made him swear he wouldn’t say anything until I did. Only because that’s the way I wanted it.” She huffed out a little breath. “She hated hiding it, so much. And you know how hard Niko can hate things. I spent a lot of time paying penance by watching horror movies with her. A lot.”
“So what were you waiting for? What did you think I was going to do?”
“I’m not sure. I didn’t want you to judge me for being so indulgent, for letting myself do what I wanted. And sometimes . . . sometimes you make things bigger than they need to be. I was a little afraid you’d, I don’t know, be loud about it once you got on board? Throw me a one-person parade, just so you could fight anyone else who judged me for it.”
I took a shaky breath. “I might be Iris the Martyr, but this does make you a bit of an asshole, Lina.”
She sputtered out a little laugh. “Yeah. I guess it does.”
“What is it really like, though?” I twisted my hands together in my lap. “Being in love, I mean.”
She crawled over the bed to meet me halfway, then laid her head tentatively on my shoulder. I wriggled down farther to rest my cheek against her crown. “I don’t know if I can tell you about love in general. But I can sing you what it’s like for me. Being in love with her.”
I nodded once. I could feel her smile against my shoulder, and as I closed my eyes she began to hum the fundamentals, overtones layering in. Usually her singing transcribed directly into emotion, but this time it was even more vivid, images blooming on the insides of my eyelids, as if she were showing me what she’d seen as well as felt. Maybe being here was making her stronger, too.
I caught a mosaic of glimpses, little glittering stained-glass pieces that each reflected some part of Malina’s love. There was Niko in a white triangle bikini top, her slight midriff taut and brown beneath it, a jewel winking in the shadow of her navel. A sarong was draped below the tuck of her waist, and she danced for my sister, the slim flare of her hips rippling to some beat I couldn’t hear, each dainty foot perfectly placed. Her silky hair fell over one sloe eye, but the other was large and dark and heavy-lidded, narrowed with her smile. I could feel the exact way it had made my sister’s heart race.