The Paper Swan(69)

“So tell me about the guy you were seeing in San Diego.” He was massaging my feet with a mix of sand and coconut oil—his homemade spa treatment for me.

“Nick?”

“Whoever you were out to dinner with that night.”

“Were you spying on me?”

“I was.”

“Creep,” I said. “Nick’s a nice guy. I dated him for four months, but we never took it to the next level. We were never ‘boyfriend and girlfriend’.” I should have felt more remorse for not thinking about Nick, but whatever I felt for him had paled in comparison to this.

“And what are we?” asked Damian, recapping the jar of coconut oil and helping me up.

We walked into the water, and I let the waves wash away the sand, leaving my feet silky smooth.

“Not bad,” I said. “You might be on to something with this island exfoliation treatment of yours.”

“You didn’t answer my question.”

I put my newly pampered feet on his and framed his face. “We are a question that hasn’t been answered yet, a hiding place that hasn’t been found yet, a battle that hasn’t been fought yet.”

I looped my arms around his waist and we walked the beach like that, with Damian carrying me on his feet. We stopped to watch three iguanas sunning themselves on a rock.

“Blondie, Bruce Lee, and Dirty Harry,” said Damian. “Bruce Lee is the little one. Blondie is the one missing part of his tail, and Dirty Harry is the mean looking one.”

“You named an iguana after me?”

“Not you, güerita. The other Blondie: Clint Eastwood, in The Good, The Bad and The Ugly.”

“Ah. All your heroes, lined up in the sun.”

“Until the bad guys come.”

I hopped off his feet and we turned back. “You think my father is a bad guy,” I said. “Let me talk to him, Damian. We can fix this. He doesn’t know you’re Esteban. He hasn’t made the connection. He’ll call off the search. He’ll understand. What he did was terrible, but I know he would never maliciously set out to hurt you or MaMaLu. Everyone has a reason. You said it yourself.”

“After everything he’s done, you’re still defending him to me?” He looked at me disbelievingly.

“After everything you’ve done, I would still defend you to him. Give him a chance. He’s a decent man, Damian.”

“We’re never going to see eye to eye on that. You have your loyalties. I have mine.” Damian looked down at the waves rushing past our feet. “You know what we are, Skye?”

I watched the foam gather around our legs as the waves receded, feeling the warmth seep out of me as Damian took his hand away.

“We are sand that hasn’t been washed away yet,” he said.

A cold knot formed in my stomach. The two men that I loved the most, with all my heart, were out to destroy each other. I had a feeling that by the time it was all said and done, only one would be left standing.





FOR THE FIRST TIME SINCE our strawberry fight, Damian and I spent the night together but apart. The hopelessness of our situation, the consequences of what I had done when I’d followed him back were starting to weigh on me. I had gone with my heart, with the hope that I would be able to mend things between him and my father. I had bought into the crazy conviction that love conquers all. My love for Damian certainly felt big enough and wide enough, and yet it lay crammed into the few inches that separated us, wrestling with his need for retribution.

Lovengeance.

I traced the letters on my pillow.

It kept us from speaking to each other for much of the next day. It’s not that we were sulking or punishing each other. I understood exactly how he felt, and he knew all the things that were going through my mind. We just didn’t know what to do or say to make the other feel better, so we said nothing.

I spent the morning feeding Blondie and Bruce Lee hibiscus flowers. Dirty Harry held out until I offered him a banana. Apparently, he had a sweet tooth. There was no sign of Damian. There were no mangoes in the morning. I had a feeling he was hiding out in the shack, but in the afternoon, I found a note from him, propped up on the counter.

“A truce. A date. Pick you up at sunset.”

It was folded in the shape of a giraffe, the last thing he had made for me all those years ago, on my birthday. I sat with it for a while because it was one of those moments you know you’re going to cherish the rest of your life. And there aren’t enough of those. You go through life, turning pages and turning pages, black and white words, running into each other, and then bam! Three rainbow sentences and a paper animal, and you’re rummaging through your clothes and washing your hair and changing your outfit again and again, because you’ve gone giddy and silly and sappy. Because that’s what those moments do.