18 - Adrian
Part of me still expects her to disappear, to wake up and find this was just another desperate fantasy.
But she’s here, real, water streaming down her spine while I sit on the edge of the bathtub, watching through the steam.
Each droplet catches light before disappearing, and I track them all.
She’s naked in my shower, not through a hole in the wall but right in front of me where I can see everything.
The shampoo she’s using is mine, and something about that makes my chest tight. My scent on her skin.
Years of watching through glass, through holes, through careful distance, and now she's here letting me see everything. The permitted voyeurism is somehow more intimate than all my stolen glimpses combined.
"You're staring," she says without turning around.
"Always."
She rinses her hair, and I track the suds sliding down her back, over the curve of her ass.
This is what I never let myself imagine.
Not the sex, which I imagined plenty, but this.
The ordinary miracle of watching her shower on a lazy morning, no rush, no fear, just us existing in the same space without walls between us.
When she finally turns off the water and steps out, I'm ready with a towel. She lets me wrap it around her, lets me touch without the knife appearing. Progress. The trust of it makes my hands shake as I tuck the towel around her body.
In the kitchen of this apartment I've claimed as temporary home, she sits at the counter wearing nothing but my shirt while I make breakfast. The shirt hits mid-thigh on her, and every time she shifts I catch glimpses of what's underneath.
Every glimpse of her bare thigh makes me want to mark it, leave bruises shaped like my fingers so everyone knows she's claimed.
My cock stirs, but this isn't about that.
This is about the impossible fact of Isa barefoot in my kitchen, hair still damp, watching me scramble eggs like we do this every day.
Outside, Miami's underworld is already moving.
Territories being carved, product being moved, blood being spilled.
My phone sits silent on the counter. No territory disputes, no Zayas movements, no blood to clean up.
For once, Miami's violence is someone else's problem.
But in here, we're just two people sharing eggs.
"You cook," she observes, something like surprise in her voice.
"Had to learn young." I butter the toast, not elaborating. The coffee's already brewing, proper Cuban coffee, not that instant poison she drinks. "Someone had to feed…"
I stop. The sentence reaches toward memories I haven't unlocked yet. Not yet.
She doesn't push, just accepts the plate I slide toward her.
We eat in comfortable silence, her bare feet finding mine under the counter like even our skin needs to stay connected.
Every few minutes I have to look at her again, confirming she's real.
That this domestic morning I never thought possible is actually happening.
"This is good," she says about the eggs.
Three words about eggs, and they matter more than any praise I've ever received. This is what I'm greedy for. Not just her body but these tiny approvals, these crumbs of domestic normalcy I never thought I'd taste. It feels like being knighted.
After breakfast, she disappears into the bedroom to get dressed. When she emerges, she's in yesterday's jeans with her boots back on, my shirt still hanging loose on her frame. The knife's back in place, I know without looking. That's just Isa, armed even in paradise.
I watch her move through the apartment, this surveillance space that's become something else now that she's in it.
She examines the books on my shelf, the view from my window, claiming territory just by being here.
Every room she enters becomes hers. I marvel at it.
Isa padding through my space, examining my life with those sharp eyes.
"I should get dressed properly," she says eventually. "Need to get to La Sirena by four."
"About that." I lean against the doorframe, trying to look casual. "I already handled it. Called Logan, told him you needed the night off."
She goes still. Not the reaching-for-steel stillness — I know that one, I've felt its edge. This is worse. This is the stillness of a door closing somewhere behind her eyes.
"You did what?" Her voice is deadly quiet.
"You heard me." I keep my tone easy, though something in my animal brain has started paying very close attention.
She doesn't go for the knife. I almost wish she would — the knife I understand, the knife means she's still in the room with me. Instead she crosses to the chair where her jacket hangs and starts putting it on. Methodical. Unhurried. Leaving.
"Isa."
"After everything." She checks the pocket, finds her keys, and I feel each small competent movement like a cut.
"After my job, my locks, my passport — one good day, and you're back to making my decisions before the breakfast dishes are dry.
" She looks at me then, and there's nothing in her eyes at all, which is so much worse than rage.
"The knife never taught you anything. Let's try this instead. "
She walks to the door.
"I wanted you to stay." It comes out before I can dress it in anything. Simple truth, simply stated, and I hear the crack running through the middle of it. "I wanted one full day where the world doesn't exist."
Her hand rests on the handle. She could be through those deadbolts in seconds. I have moved men off rooftops and out of marriages and into unmarked ground with less fear than I feel watching her fingers on that handle.
"You can't decide things for me," she says, without turning around. "Not anymore. Not after everything."
"I know."
"Do you? Because managing my shifts suggests otherwise."
The silence stretches long enough for me to count her breaths. Then her hand leaves the door. She slides the jacket off, drapes it back over the chair, and returns to the counter like a queen granting a stay of execution.
"Call Logan back," she says. "Tell him I'm taking the night off. Same outcome. But it comes from me, even if it's your mouth saying it."
"Noted." I reach for the phone, dizzy with a relief I'll examine later, if ever. "Though for the record, he agreed before I finished asking. Apparently we've been, and I quote, 'painful to schedule around.'"
She chuckles darkly. Not quite the full laugh I coaxed from her yesterday, but I’ll keep working on it.
"You're impossible," she says, but she's almost smiling now. I'm collecting her smiles like rare coins, hoarding them against future poverty.
Golden light pools across the cheap laminate floors, turning Isa's black hair copper and setting fire to the bottle in her hand. The window is open, letting in Miami’s nighttime humidity and the groan of city traffic.
We’re sitting on the rug, cross-legged, backs against the wall, a half-finished bottle of whiskey between us.
For hours, we’ve passed it back and forth, no chasers, not even a glass sometimes.
I like the way it burns, the way it slows my thoughts.
Isa doesn’t even flinch when she drinks, and somehow that's sexier than anything she did in that harness.
The light catches her silver chain as she holds the bottle out to me in challenge. I take it, let the smoke flavor cut down my throat, and before I know what’s happening, I’m talking.
The words tumble out all at once: “I had a brother.”
I don’t plan to say it. I don’t plan to say any of it. It’s like the whiskey reaches inside me and yanks the story out by force. Her face stills instantly. Isa has the patience of a predator, total focus when it matters. I feel her watching me, waiting to see if I’ll finish the thought.
“Efrén,” I say, the name thick in my mouth. “Two years younger. I protected him. At least I thought I did.”
Isa’s hands go still around the neck of the bottle. “You started to tell me before,” she says, voice careful, like if she moves too quickly I’ll spook and bolt. “About being alone. But you stopped.”
I nod without looking at her. “I lied. I wasn’t alone.
Not at first.” My mind plays the memories: scrounging stale pastries from the back of bakeries, Efrén picking every one of the raisins out and offering them to me like it was a joke.
“Our mother lasted until I was fourteen. Then she died. My father was already gone, deported back to Cuba a year or two earlier.”
“I’m sorry,” Isa says, so quiet I barely hear it.
I ignore the sympathy—it’s dangerous. “After that, it was just me, Efrén, and Zoila. My sister. She was barely nine, still believed in birthday candles and saints.” I swirl the whiskey, watching the thin legs of it climb the glass.
“I worked three jobs. Dishwasher. Stock boy. Night janitor at a hospital. Did everything I could.” My voice gets tight on the last words. “But it wasn’t enough.”
The silence stretches long and thin, until I almost wish she’d say anything, even if it was to tell me to shut up. But Isa just waits, her face a blank wall, making space for the worst of it.
“Efrén started hanging out with these older kids. Said they were looking out for him, teaching him how to survive.” I shake my head.
“It was a street crew. They ran drugs, ran fights. He was in over his head, but I didn’t see it.
I was too busy working.” The guilt sits in my chest like a stone.
The memory pulls at me: the call from the hospital, the way Zoila screamed.
"I was at work when it happened. Washing dishes, making eleven dollars an hour, thinking I was taking care of them. "
The whiskey burns, but not enough to wash away the memory. "They found him behind a convenience store with three bullets in his chest. He died alone, bled out while I was scrubbing pots. My providing, my being responsible, it's what left him unprotected."
"Adrian," she starts, but I'm not done.