Total pages in book: 49
Estimated words: 44860 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 224(@200wpm)___ 179(@250wpm)___ 150(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 44860 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 224(@200wpm)___ 179(@250wpm)___ 150(@300wpm)
Miguel had found him first.
Olivio had gone to refill his glass, and his father was already at the bar, as if he'd been waiting for exactly this moment, the way Miguel waited for everything: patiently, strategically, with the quiet certainty of a man who had learned that timing was the only variable that mattered.
You knew. Olivio kept his voice low. About the proxy marriage. About her.
Miguel poured slowly. He did not look surprised by the question, which was itself an answer.
Edgar told me before he told you.
How long?
Long enough.
And you said nothing. Did nothing.
His father set down the bottle. The movement was exact, the way everything Miguel did was exact, but his eyes, when they met Olivio's, held something that was not control. It was the look of a man who had once slid a list of eight names across a desk and told his eldest son to choose a wife or lose his sponsorship, and had spent the years since learning exactly what that kind of intervention cost.
I have learned, Miguel said quietly, that my sons' hearts are not deals I can close for them.
A pause.
The last time I forced a hand, your brother spent ten years punishing a woman who loved him for a decision I made. He held Olivio's gaze. I will not do that again. Not to you. Not to her.
Olivio said nothing.
But I will tell you what I told your brother once, and what I wish someone had told me before I lost Paulette. Miguel's voice was even, but beneath it was the bedrock of a man who had buried a wife and rebuilt a life and nearly lost his son to the same grief that had nearly destroyed him. Do not wait until she is gone to understand what you have.
Olivio looked through the glass, toward the dining room where Chelsea was laughing at something Sienah had said, her chin in her hand, her whole face open and unguarded in the way it was when she forgot anyone was watching.
Which was always.
I appreciate the concern, Father.
It is not concern. Miguel's dark eyes gleamed with something that was warm and knowing and, beneath it, the faintest edge of the old authority he had learned to hold in check. It is experience.
He took his glass and returned to the table, and Olivio stood at the bar alone for a moment, his father's words settling over him like something he would need to carry whether he wanted to or not.
Aivan had found him on the balcony.
He'd gone out for air he didn't need, because what he needed was two minutes without Chelsea in his eyeline so he could think without the thinking being contaminated by the fact of her. The city spread below, all glass and distance and cold certainty, and he'd put his hands on the railing and breathed.
His brother had come to stand beside him with the quiet of a man whose body had survived four hundred kilometers per hour and had opinions about how to wait.
What's wrong?
Nothing is wrong.
A pause. Aivan looked through the glass, toward the dining table where Chelsea was covering her mouth with both hands at something Shayla had said, her whole body shaking with a laughter so uncontained it was visible even through the glass. Which was always.
Nothing is wrong, Olivio said again, hearing himself, and that is not a problem.
You've been watching her all night.
She's my wife.
You've been watching her like you're afraid she's going to disappear.
He had no answer for that. He watched the city instead.
I destroyed everything, Aivan said. Not as confession. Aivan had done his confessing, and the patience of Sienah Posada had survived it, and his brother wore that survival the way he wore everything now: simply, without looking away from it. Do you remember what I told you, when Sienah finally left?
I remember.
You told me I was a fool who had been handed something extraordinary and had spent a decade treating it like furniture.
That is what happened.
Yes. Aivan turned to look at him. You look at her like a man who can't breathe without her.
The words sat between them.
And it terrifies you, his brother said. So you're already building the door.
I don't know what you're talking about.
I invented what I'm talking about. No sympathy in his voice. Just the flat certainty of a man reading a map he'd already walked, backwards, in the dark. I spent ten years with one foot out the door while my wife broke herself trying to keep me in the room. She kept trying. A pause. Don't make her keep trying.
I am not you.
Aivan was quiet for a moment. Inside, through the glass, Miguel had said something that made Chelsea cover her mouth with both hands, her whole body shaking with laughter, and the sight of it hit Olivio below the sternum with a force entirely inconsistent with the distance.