76. Now We’re Even
Now We're Even
Kiri
After another month in the studio, Stefan finally gives us a week before special projects he's arranged start swallowing every day leading into festival season.
I use this rare opportunity to fly home and surprise Nat.
The second she answers the phone, I say, “We have a flight to catch, Rithy's staying with Ma, I'll pick you up at yours. Pack light.”
I should have known that was a stupid choice of words.
“How light?”
“One bag.”
“What kind of bag?”
“I don't know, a normal one?”
“That means nothing. Are we talking overnight tote? Carry-on? Checked luggage? Is there a beach? Snow? Am I dressing for hiking or dinner?”
“Warm weather. Swimming. A couple of nice dinners.”
“How nice? Shoes are determined by the answer.”
“Pack whatever you need.”
The sound she makes turns victorious. Two hours later, I’m standing beside three suitcases. I look at them, then at her.
“I said one bag.”
“You also surrendered and said whatever I need.” She pats my cheek. “You told me to trust you. Now trust that I understand vacation wardrobe logistics better than you.”
I load all three into the car because arguing would only delay us and I’ve missed her enough that even her luggage feels good in my hand. I don’t tell her where we’re going, not even when we reach the airport and she realizes our flight is taking us out of the country.
“You know I can look at the boarding pass,” she says.
“You could but that'd just tell you the country, it still won't tell you where we're going.”
The last two months have been measured in calls from detectives, hospital appointments, Ma learning to live in a house where nobody controls the way she breathes, and Natalia quietly stitching our family back together while pretending she isn’t doing anything extraordinary.
The medical examiner ruled Dad's death a suicide, finally.
The firearm evidence matched and the house was released.
Detective Alvarez said there was nothing suggesting anyone else was involved.
There are still forms, lawyers, insurance calls, and pieces of Dad that refuse to disappear neatly but the investigation, at least, is finished.
Ma is walking without the cane most days. She cooks again, though she tires quickly and refuses to admit it. For the first time since the phone rang, she can spend a day alone without any of us feeling like we’ve abandoned her.
Natalia deserves a break. She deserves more than I know how to give or say. So I take her somewhere the view can do the talking for me.
By the time we reach Saint Lucia, she’s tired, suspicious, and vibrating with curiosity.
The drive climbs through green hills beneath an azure sky so blue it seems unreal, like we're entering a movie set.
She keeps lowering the window to stare out, then turning toward me as though I might finally explain myself.
I don’t.
At Jade Mountain, she starts looking at me differently.
The private arrival leads to stone paths and impressively strange architecture that rises into the hillside.
Staff greet us like they’ve been expecting royalty instead of a bassist and a woman who brought enough products to open a cosmetics counter.
We're led along a winding walkway, the air warm and heavy with salt and flowers. Water moves below us, hidden behind walls of rock and thick green leaves. Natalia keeps looking around like she expects the place to reveal whatever trick I’m playing, but the path only curves higher, each turn opening another glimpse of blue ocean between the trees.
At the end of it, two enormous wooden doors wait beneath a stone arch, dark and polished, carved with patterns that catch the light.
Natalia slows beside me.
“Kiri, what did you do?”
"Nothing yet, not until you walk through those doors."
Two members of staff stand on either side of the entrance.
One smiles at us, says something soft about welcoming us to the sanctuary, then they each take hold of a brass handle.
The doors swing inward together. I take Natalia’s hand and lead her through and the room opens around us.
There's no glass separating us from the sky.
Just rocks, air, the private infinity pool stretching toward the horizon, and the Pitons rising beyond it from the sea.
Natalia stops. I watch the view hit her and her mouth falls open.
Her sunglasses slide down her nose, and she pushes them onto her head without taking her eyes from the mountains.
“What the fuck is this?”
I laugh. “Yeah I thought the big rocks would be boring. We can leave.”
She turns in a slow circle, while hysterical laughter escapes her. She takes in the pool, the enormous bed dressed in white, the carved walls and the open sky.
“This is the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever seen in my life.”
“Now we're even.”
Her laughter stops.
“Misiu.”
“This is for you. For the career you put on hold for everyone else,” I add before the emotion on her face can kill me. “Best pictures you’ll ever take.”
My throat tightens. I swallow hard, trying to force the rest out.
“For Ma. For Rithy. For me. For everything you’ve done.” I look toward the mountains. “I don’t really have the words. That’s not my thing. So I thought the pretty rocks could say it for me.”
“They’re mountains.”
“Very large, pretty rocks.”
Her eyes narrow, but they’re already shining.
“This is genuinely insane.”
“I have money,” I say quietly. “I have time, so I'm spending both on you. If I were Rafe I'd say the fates allowed me a chance to have both together to visit some part of Olympus or whatever. All I know, is that whatever I have, I want to share it with you.”
Her chin lifts as she fights back the tears, so fiercely proud and stunning at the same time. My favorite fucking view in the world, and the Pitons are right behind her.
“This is too much,” she says.
“Kroppy,” I take her hand and bring her knuckles to my mouth. “It's not.”
Her lashes lower.
“You don’t have to pay me back in some other way,” I say. “You don’t have to be grateful or even turn it into content unless you want to. You don’t have to make this useful.”
Her breathing changes. That’s the line that reaches her.
Useful.
Because Natalia makes everything useful.
Pain, beauty, even attention. Her face, her body and most of all her grief.
She hones her anger. She knows how to use her perfect mouth and proud chin and every bit of softness she's polished into a weapon before anyone can touch it.
I know that because I do it too. Different tools of the same process.
The stage made my armor profitable and her camera does the same for her.
“You can just be here,” I say
She looks past me, around the sanctuary, at the fancy bed, the awe-inspiring walls, the water glowing in the pool, the mountains beyond. Then back at me.
“With you?” she asks
My heart kicks inside my chest.
“I mean, if you want.” I try to make a joke of what I’m offering her.
Me. Us. An always I never thought I could give anyone. With her, it feels easy. Her eyes search mine. That’s the terrifying part, and somehow the only part that matters. All of this pales beside those big brown eyes, the way she looks at me and always sees too much.
Then she steps into me, both hands closing around my neck, her nails digging in as she drags me down to her.
I lock my arms around her waist and pull her hard against me while her palms slide up to cradle my face.
She kisses me like I’ve pissed her off, like she wants to punish me for making her feel too much and thank me at the same time.
I lift her until her feet leave the floor, and she wraps her legs around me without breaking my mouth from hers.
When she finally pulls back, her eyes are wet.
“You still owe me so much groveling for all the shit you pulled.”
“I know.”
“Don’t think this means you get to relax.”
“I wouldn’t dare.”
She looks around the sanctuary again, then back at me.
“It’s an extremely good start.”
I huff a laugh. “I was hoping so.”
Then she kisses me again, and this time there’s no hallway, no band, no family, no locked door waiting to open. No one here to stop us at just a kiss.
Nothing left to hold us back.
Natalia comes out in a black bikini held together by a few thin strings and what I assume is spite just to torture me.
I stare at the knots at her hips and imagine undoing them with my teeth.
She catches me looking so I step into the pool before I act on my deviant thoughts.
The water is warm against my skin, the edge disappearing into the ocean and sky.
She lowers herself onto the first step. I hook my thumbs into the waistband of my trunks and her eyes widen.
“What do you think you're doing?”
“It’s a private pool. Might as well take advantage of it.”
I slide them off beneath the water and toss them onto the stone. I laugh at the shock that passes across her face and sink deeper into the pool. Then I remember the gift I brought her.
“Oh shit, I almost forgot.”
I climb out with painstaking control, making sure every muscle tightens as I straighten.
Natalia turns to watch exactly like I knew she would, one elbow propped on the edge of the pool.
Her gaze travels over every inch of me as I cross the sanctuary naked, and she doesn’t bother pretending otherwise.
I find the folded plastic in my bag and hold it up.
“What's that?” she asks.
“Something important. A member of your family.”
Confusion pulls her brows together. I hop back into the pool, spraying water across her face. She shrieks and splashes me while I unfold the surprise.
“You’re such a dick.”
“You'll love this.”
I start blowing it up. She watches the green plastic expand, first with suspicion, then recognition. By the time the crocodile’s face takes shape, her mouth falls open.
“No fucking way.”
I keep blowing. I seal the valve and hold it up between us.
“I didn’t want you to feel alone. So I brought some family.”
She slaps my arm as I break into a laugh. Then she smacks my chest.
“Asshole.”
“Hey, behave. Your cousin’s watching.”
She launches herself at me and her teeth sink into my bicep as I drop the floatie into the water.
I jerk with laughter. "Fuck's sake."
“You keep calling me a crocodile, so I’ll live up to the name.”
She bites my shoulder, then my chest. I don’t stop her, I don’t even try. She circles behind me through the water and bites into the muscle beside my shoulder blade. My body jolts, my laughter twisting into a rough, pleasure-laced moan when her teeth sink into one of the deep lines along my back.
“Nat.”
“You brought my relative on vacation. These are the consequences.”
Another bite lands at the top of my shoulder, then her arms wrap around me from behind, nails dragging down my chest. She stretches to bite me once more, right where my neck meets my shoulder, then laughs against my skin. I catch her wrists and pull her around to face me.
She’s breathless, triumphant, and so fucking beautiful that the mountains disappear.
The crocodile glides along the top of the water beside us, wearing the same stupid smile from the package that made me buy it. Natalia looks at the float, then at me.
“I should dump you.”
“No use. We’re tuned to the same fucking frequency. One of us starts vibrating and the other always answers.”
She scoffs. “You say that like you didn’t fight this every step of the way.”
“Yeah, and look how well that worked out.”
She twists against my hold, trying to wrench one hand free to smack my chest, but I only tighten my grip around her wrists and pull her closer, until the black strings of her bikini dig into my bare skin like they’re begging me to make them disappear.
“You’re not dumping me, Kroppy.”
Her eyes narrow as her mouth curves.
“No,” she says softly. “Probably not.”