Next Year in Havana(111)

I close my eyes, moisture gathering in the corners, a tear trickling down my cheek. Just one.

I never imagined it was possible to miss a place this much.

When I open my eyes again, I turn, rubbing my damp cheek with the back of my hand, my gaze on the corner of the balcony, the palms swaying in the distance—

A man stands off to the side of the house, one side of him shrouded in darkness, the rest illuminated by a shaft of moonlight. He’s tall. Blond hair—nearly reddish, really. His arms are braced against the railing, his broad shoulders straining the back of his tailored tuxedo, as though he, too, knows a thing about cramped ballrooms and strangling obligations.

He’s so still he could be a statue.

I didn’t come here for company, and if I’m honest, I’ve more than had my fill of Americans. I take a step back, and then another, about to turn around, when he turns—

Oh.

Oh.

The thing about people telling you you’re beautiful your whole life is that the more you hear it, the more meaningless it becomes. What does “beautiful” even mean, anyway? That your features are randomly arranged in a shape that someone, somewhere, arbitrarily decided is pleasing. “Beautiful” never quite matches up to the other things you could be—smart, interesting, brave. And yet . . .

He’s beautiful. Blindingly so. Shockingly so.

For a moment that stretches on and on, I can’t look away.

He appears as though he’s been painted in broad strokes, his visage immortalized by exuberant sweeps and swirls of the artist’s brush, a god come down to meddle in the affairs of mere mortals.

Irritatingly beautiful.

In that moment, I hate him just a little bit. He looks like the sort of man who has never had to wonder if he’ll have a roof over his head, or if his father will die in a cage with eight other men, or face a firing squad, or had to flee the only life he has ever known. Surely he’s never held his murdered twin in his arms, blood spilling over that pristine tuxedo. No, he looks like the sort of man who is told he is perfection from the moment he wakes in the morning to the moment his head hits the pillow at night.

He’s noticed me, too.

Golden Boy leans against the balcony railing, his broad arms crossed in front of his chest. His gaze—piercing blue eyes—begins at the top of my head, where Isabel and I fussed with the style for an hour, cursing the absence of a maid to help us. From my dark hair, he traverses the length of my face, down to the décolletage exposed by the gown’s low bodice, the gaudy fake jewels that suddenly make me feel unmistakably cheap, as though he can see that I am an impostor and he is the real deal, to my waist and my hips, lingering there.

A tingle slides down my spine, goose bumps pricking my skin.

I take another step back.

“Am I to call you cousin?”

I freeze, his voice holding me in place as surely as a hand coming to rest possessively on my waist, as though he is the sort of man used to bending others to his will with little to no effort at all.

I loathe such men.

His voice sounds like what I am now learning passes for money in this country: smooth, crisp, and devoid of any hint of foreignness—the wrong kind, at least. The kind of voice that is secure in the knowledge that every word will be savored.

I arch my brow. “Excuse me?”

He reaches between us and grabs my hand, his skin warm, his thumb rubbing over my bare ring finger. His touch is a shock to my system, waking me from the slumber of a party I tired of hours ago. His mouth quirks in a smile as he looks up, his gaze connecting with mine, little lines crinkling around his eyes. How nice to see that even gods have flaws.

“Andrew’s my cousin,” he offers by way of explanation, his tone faintly amused.

I find that most rich people who are still, in fact, rich, manage to pull this off, as though a dollop more amusement would be atrociously gauche.

Andrew. The fifth marriage proposal has a name. And the man before me likely has a prestigious one—is he a Preston, or merely related to one, like Andrew?

“We were all waiting with breathless anticipation to see what you would say,” he comments.

There’s that faint amusement again, a weapon of sorts when honed appropriately. He possesses the same edge to him everyone here seems to have, except I get the sense that under all of that seriousness, he is laughing with me, not at me, which is a welcome change.

I grace him with a smile, the edges sanded down a bit. “Your cousin has an impeccable sense of timing and an obvious appreciation for drawing a crowd.”

“Not to mention excellent taste,” he counters smoothly—too smoothly—returning my smile with one of his own.

My breath hitches.

He was handsome before, but this is simply ridiculous.

He leans back against the stone railing once more, his long legs crossed at the ankle. My gaze drops to the soles of his shoes, to the scuffs there, seizing on that imperfection.

“True,” I agree. I have little use for false modesty these days; if you’re not going to fight for yourself, who will?

“No wonder you’ve whipped everyone into a frenzy,” he replies, appreciation in his gaze.

I arch my brow once more, for a moment feeling as though I have indeed gone back in time to when I was a different person, my problems far simpler. To when I enjoyed flirting with men on balconies and in ballrooms and the like.