The Most Beautiful Girl in Cuba(47)

“I am healthy,” I reply. “I have been fortunate. We all have.”

“You don’t know how many nights I’ve wondered if you were all safe,” he says.

“We’re safe.”

He squeezes my hip reassuringly, leaning forward so his forehead rests against mine. His hand drifts lower, his touch instantly shifting to something else entirely, his fingers stroking my hip, clasping the folds of my dress.

The time apart has created a distance between us we’ve never experienced before. I’ve changed in these past years, too, life in the camp altering me, making my bones more pronounced, my cheeks gaunt, my skin sallow. Vanity hardly seems to matter, though, considering the most salient point:

We are both alive when so many are not.

Not a moment has gone by when I haven’t felt the absence of him acutely.

We reach for each other in a frenzied tangle of limbs, pretense abandoned.

Mateo’s mouth is at my neck, his teeth scraping over my skin, my back hitting the wall as he reaches between us, hiking up my skirts as I grapple with his trousers.

His lips find mine, and I reach up, threading my fingers through his hair, pulling his head down toward me, giving me better access to deepen the kiss, the fire inside me that has been dormant for so long suddenly awakening.

I thought I’d lost the ability to feel passion, another casualty of this war, but there’s something powerful about the two of us here, together, and for a moment, it’s as though we were never parted.

I would know him anywhere.

Mateo moans against my mouth, his body hardening against mine, whispered endearments breaking through between our kisses. His hands roam the planes of my body, and I am too far gone to care that the curves he once knew and loved have disappeared. I have become someone stronger than I imagined since he left, and it feels as though he is learning this new part of me as I am doing the same to him.

“Marina.”

Tears prick at the sound of my name falling from his lips, the familiarity of it taking me back to a different time even as his hands and mouth on my body hold me firmly to the present.

Mateo grips my hips, lifting my leg up, bracing me against the wall.

There’s some fumbling between us, hands brushing, a frenzy taking over, and then he thrusts inside me, our bodies one.

When we both find our release, he sags against me, letting me down gently. My legs are limp beneath me, and I slide down to the floor, my limbs boneless. Mateo joins me, leaning against the wall and wrapping his arm around me, resting my head against his chest.

His hand finds mine, and our fingers intertwine.

Neither one of us speaks, the force of our joining startling both of us, I think. There is a quiet desperation I have kept at bay in the face of the circumstances surrounding us, and there is a sense of immediate relief in letting go, even for a moment.

I have never felt safer or more myself than I do with Mateo.

I tilt my head, studying him. Some of his tension appears to be gone, but his expression is still filled with worry.

“What are you doing here?” I ask again, realizing he never answered me to begin with.

“I’m here trying to get some intelligence. What are you doing here? Those men in the hallway. Were you meeting with them? What have you gotten involved with?”

“I’ve been passing information,” I say reluctantly. “As a courier.”

A blistering oath falls from his lips.

“At this point, you’d be safer on the battlefield. Of all the jobs you could do, that has to be one of the most dangerous ones you could have chosen. Do you know what will happen if you are caught? Do you want to live out the rest of your days in Recogidas? For Isabella to grow up without both her parents? Marina, you have to be careful.”

“Of course I don’t want that. I’ve been keeping everyone safe, but that doesn’t mean I don’t want to do my part as well. This isn’t just a man’s war. You went off to fight, but the war came to us. We were forced from our home and sent to Havana. What was I supposed to do? Nothing?”

“You were doing something. You were taking care of our daughter. Our home.”

“Our home is gone. All we worked for, all we built. The Spanish have taken that away from us. We can’t come out of all of this having lost so much with nothing to show for it. We must defeat them, and I won’t rest until I’ve done my part. This war—there’s no room for anyone to not take a side, to not join and fight. We’re outmatched enough as it is. Did you really think I wouldn’t do what I could to help you? To help myself? The longer this war drags on, the worse it is. I want to see it finished as much as you do.”

“I know that. I know it’s been hard for you. When we heard that Weyler had reconcentrated the Havana province, I was sick with worry.”

He doesn’t know how hard it has been. Not really. He can guess at what we’ve endured, but it’s not the same as living it.

He runs a hand through his hair. “I can’t lose you. I am fighting for Cuba, yes, but never think I’m not also fighting for you and for our daughter. If anything were to happen to you—”

“Nothing will happen,” I interject, even if we both know it’s not a promise I can make. “I’m being careful. Your mother is watching Isabella when I am gone. It was her idea, actually.”

“Why am I not surprised?” Mateo says, a trace of affection in his voice. “I miss them both terribly. Isabella must have grown so much.”