33 - Isa #3
She's joking about almost drowning. Making light of the horror I put her through with my careless advice. But she's here beside me, stealing food from my plate, choosing to sit beside me even knowing what her friendship with me almost cost. Living proof that I didn't destroy what I loved this time.
“Thanks for being here,” I say, promising myself not to make a habit of thanking others. I don’t want to become weak.
"Where else would I be?" She bumps my shoulder with hers.
"You're not getting rid of me that easily.
Eleanor tried to pack me onto the jet Tuesday.
Physically packed — she folded my jeans into a suitcase while maintaining eye contact.
I unpacked everything while maintaining eye contact right back.
A lifetime of being managed for my own good is enough; my life's here now.
Even if your advice is terrible and I'm apparently too much of a coward to confront anyone and honestly Santiago Zayas can go fuck himself because… "
She keeps talking, the light chatter of someone turning near-death into dinner conversation, but I'm caught on the reality of her warmth beside me. The friend I didn't destroy. The proof, literal and breathing, that not everything I touch dies.
Adrian's thumb strokes over my wrist under the table, right over the crown he burned into my skin.
The still healing wound pulses sharp with my heartbeat, and I realize he's been touching me constantly since we arrived.
My back, my thigh, my wrist. Claiming me in front of everyone, making sure I feel his presence with every breath.
The warmth surrounds me now. Every fractured piece mending or mended, the table whole again despite what Adrian and I put them through. No one mentions the Lins, the blood on my hands from just days ago. Everyone around this table has blood on their hands.
Sera brings out dessert. Flan that wobbles perfectly when she sets it down, the caramelized sugar catching light like amber.
Gabriel pours more wine while arguing with Marisol about something ridiculous involving cryptocurrency and the Catholic Church's investment portfolio.
Even Gunner contributes a full sentence about security protocols, his deep voice rumbling through discussion of the new cameras at the port.
The Siren hums unconsciously, filling the spaces between conversations with melody that makes everything feel good.
This is what I thought I'd destroyed. This family Adrian rebuilt from nothing after losing his own, the loud warm table his Cuban mother would have loved. And they're letting me back in.
But as Adrian's thumb traces those possessive circles on my knee, something builds in my chest anyway.
Inevitable and overwhelming. Not doubt — I've spent fourteen years fluent in doubt, I'd know it anywhere.
This is the other thing. The one I have no practice carrying.
A woman who never got to keep anything, sitting at a table full of everything she gets to keep.
"You okay?" Juliet asks, and her voice comes to me through what I slowly recognize as the roar of my own pulse.
But sitting here surrounded by warmth, something unexpected spreads through me like good wine, like his cum dripping down my thighs, like the first deep breath after drowning.
Peace.
All my life I've needed to control every variable, verify every truth, maintain perfect surveillance on my own existence.
The exhausting vigilance of making sure nothing could surprise me, hurt me, destroy what I touched.
Every door checked three times, every person kept at calculated distance, every feeling contained.
Adrian took that away.
He knows every part of me. He holds my entire existence in his hands. He built my whole world without my knowledge once — now he asks. Out loud. In words. And sometimes I even say yes.
This complete surrender terrifies me less than another day of maintaining perfect control.
"I'm good," I tell Juliet, meaning it completely for the first time in fourteen years. "I'm really good."
Adrian's fingers lace through mine under the table, and I squeeze back hard enough that our bones grind together.
The man who drilled holes in my wall to watch me sleep.
His cologne fills my lungs with each breath, and I want to taste it on his skin, want to bite his neck right here and make him groan.
The conversation flows around me. Nico checking his phone again for territory updates, someone joking about the new Zayas soldier who got caught trying to infiltrate our dock operations, Marisol threatening to throw wine at Gabriel if he doesn't shut up about cryptocurrency.
My family whole and warm and dangerous, passing around expensive wine while discussing murder with the same tone they use for the weather.
I let myself sink into it completely. I take another sip of wine Adrian selected, in this life Adrian built, at this family table Adrian filled with the people he gathered to replace what he lost.
The crown he burned into my wrist throbs with my pulse, permanent evidence of the choice I made with eyes wide open.
The passport rests against my ribs, warm from my body, going nowhere. I am exactly where I'm supposed to be. Held, known, kept, and finally, impossibly, at peace.