The Hacienda(93)

He did not speak.

How could he? There was too much to say. The road we stood on led to nowhere but parting.

Somewhere over the mountains, a soft roll of thunder sounded.

Andrés cast a look up at the sky, soft annoyance crossing his features. As if he were displeased with the heavens for interrupting.

“Is it going to rain?” I whispered.

He still held my hand to his lips. I could almost feel his indecision against my skin. Of course it was going to rain. It always did, this time of year. But rain meant turning back, and turning back meant . . .

“I don’t think so.” His breath brushed against my knuckles, sending a shiver over my skin.

The wind tugged at my skirts. One cold drop, then another, struck my cheeks.

“Liar,” I said, and pulled my hand toward me. He released it, though his expression remained unchanged.

I turned away. I couldn’t bear to see it. Better to bid goodbye and get it over with than linger with him here. Better not to think about how perhaps, he was as lonely as I was. How perhaps he felt the tautness between us as I did, as a living, breathing thing. A creature of featherlight longing that bound us, though it rippled fragile as mist at sunrise. Perhaps he was afraid that my leaving meant losing it forever.

It would.

And that was the way it should be.

I repeated this over and over to myself, setting one foot in front of the other. I walked ahead of Andrés so I would not have to look at him and filled myself with stern determination. This was the way it must be. Loneliness had been a part of my life before, and perhaps it would be again—it was not something that would kill us.

But oh, the weight that had lifted from my shoulders when I slept next to him in the capilla. When we sat shoulder to shoulder, facing the darkness together. The rush of knowing one was not alone was a heady thing, thicker than mezcal in the way it made my head spin.

We were still a half kilometer from the village when the clouds broke open. The rains in the valley never began shyly: it was as if the skies had made a trip to the well and dumped bucket after bucket into the valley with cackling abandon.

At first I made to outrun it, pulling my shawl over my head in a vain attempt to keep dry, then I pulled up short. I was breathing too hard; my wound hurt faintly. Andrés was at my side then, and I laughed up at him as I opened my arms to the skies.

“I surrender,” I called to the clouds. “You win.”

We reached the capilla before the village. By then, the rain was coming down in sheets so thick the ground was slick with mud and the stucco walls of the chapel gray in my vision.

“Come inside,” Andrés said, raising his voice to be heard over the tumult. I followed him to his rooms off the chapel. He struck his head in the low doorway for the umpteenth time; he cursed colorfully. I broke into breathless laughter as I followed, shaking from the cold and from running through the rain.

He shut the door behind me. His hair was slicked dark across his forehead, his outer coat completely soaked. I lifted my shawl and held it out before me. It poured water onto the floor.

“I’m so sorry,” I gasped between peals of laughter. “I didn’t mean to—”

I broke off, laughter dying on my lips. He had taken a step closer to me. My pulse pounded in my throat as he tucked a curl behind my ear and, ever so delicately, took my face in his hands. My cheeks burned; the brush of his thumbs was cool relief.

He met my eyes and saw all the answer he needed there.

He kissed me.

There was no hesitation. No shyness. Only need.

I dropped the shawl. I leaned into him and kissed him back, winding my arms around him. Holding his warmth close. Fleetingly, I thought of how Rodolfo was the only person I had ever kissed, and how this was nothing like that. Time was lost to me—here, there was no calculating, no wandering thoughts. I was here, breathlessly here, and seized with a dizziness that left me clinging to Andrés as if he alone could keep me on my feet. As if there were nothing in the world but Andrés, the smell of rain on his skin, his lips on the sensitive skin of my throat, his hands traveling down my back and pressing me to him with a strength I did not know he had.

I dug my fingers into his back. Hard.

A small gasp against my neck. “Beatriz.” Then his mouth was on mine again, hard, with a deep and searing need.

I knew then I would not look back. I would not look forward.

There was only now, there was only stripping soaked clothes from burning skin and the labored creak of his cot as he sat on it and drew me roughly into his lap. There was only now, the skin of his chest against mine, running my fingers through his damp hair as he kissed my neck and breasts, holding me so tightly to him I could barely breathe.

He loosed a small groan as I rocked against him. “Don’t leave.” There was a note of helplessness in it, a plea, a prayer.

“Come with me,” I said into his hair. “To Cuernavaca. Leave all this behind.”

He lifted his head and looked up at me.

All this.

For the briefest second, his eyes skipped past me, to where I knew a cross hung on the wall. A flicker of apprehension across his face; a soft lilt of panic in his voice as he forced his attention back to me. “I can’t think about that now. I can’t.”

“Shh.” I cupped his face in my hands, running my thumbs over his cheeks. I wanted to memorize the feeling of his stubble against my palms, the shape of his lips as they parted. His dark eyelashes, framing eyes that looked up at me with utter trust. With a longing so open and deep it sent an ache through my chest.