Safe in Clua

EIGHT

Felix

“These ribs better be worth it.” Mylo scratches his jaw as he checks out the restaurant over the heads of the other people waiting for a table in Mama Den’s. “I’m about to hulk out if I don’t get some food in me soon.”

“Definitely worth it.” I snort a laugh; I still can’t believe the fucker showed up outta the blue. It’s been good having him around. Like old times. A distraction from thoughts that are not from the old times at all. Thoughts of big green eyes and pink cheeks and, seriously, the worst habit of literally walking into me wherever I go. If it wasn’t for the fact that she jumps back like I’m contagious every single time, I’d think she was running into me on purpose—I mean, I’m not exactly a small man, not exactly easy to miss in broad day light. And it just makes stopping thinking about her and her reasons for looking at me like I’m the most lethal thing she’s come across even harder.

“What’s with the photo wall?” Mylo’s rumbling voice forces my mind back to the now.

He’s turned completely in the queue now, craning his neck to get a better look at the back wall and the thousands of polaroid pictures that cover it.

I try really hard not to, the memories that wall brings with it too big to let loose. Too painful to keep close. My picture was on that wall once. Our picture was on that wall. I clear my throat and instead focus on the ceiling and the hundreds of blown glass light shades twinkling every color of the rainbow. If it wasn’t for the ribs being that good, I’d have stopped coming here years ago. “Mama Den has a thing about photos. Trust me. You see her point that camera at you, you walk the other fucking way.”

Mylo’s staring at me when I finally look at him, eyebrows lifted in question.

“You don’t wanna know.” I force a smirk.

Before he can push for an explanation, I’m whacked in the elbow from behind. I scowl, turn, look down. Mama Den in the flesh.

“You two, with me.” She cranes her neck back to look at us, her slashing black eyebrows in their usual unamused grimace making the deep lines that cover her face even more prominent. The tight knot of gray hair on the top of her head wobbles when she jerks her chin for us to follow her, completely ignoring the two couples waiting in front of us.

That’s the thing with Mama Den’s, you never know where you’ll end up. With the people you come with or the people she decides to put you with. The cranky old woman just does whatever the hell she wants, and everybody lets her because, seriously, the ribs are that good.

We follow her tiny self through the restaurant, past the massive circular bar in the middle of the enormous space and through the tables that surround it until we come to one in the back corner that’s, by the looks of things, already occupied on one side.

By Zi.

I didn’t tell her we were coming here tonight. Hell, we decided on a whim and a craving for barbeque.

Awareness tickles down the back of my neck as we near, I can only see the back of the head of the woman sitting across from her, but it doesn’t take a genius to figure out who it is.

I slow my steps, Mylo almost walking into my back when Laia turns at Mama Den’s arrival. Her smile falters when her wide eyes lift to me, her cheeks flushing pink even in the moody lighting of the restaurant.

“Busy night. You four share table.” Mama Den orders, the Japanese in her accent still unmistakable even after way more than my lifetime here. “Ladies on wall side, these brutes no fit.” She scowls up at Mylo, her small stature almost comical next to him.

It takes Laia a second to react, to stop staring. Her mouth goes slack before she turns, eyes narrowed at Zi.

“Woah.” Zi lifts her hands up. “This has got nothing to do with me.”

Laia’s less than happy reaction to the thought of sharing a table with me stings more than it should. It’s been a long time since a woman’s reaction to me has even registered, far else stung. She doesn’t look at me again, but there’s no disguising the straightening of her spine.

I open my mouth to tell them we’ll go—

“I’m not complaining,” Mylo cuts in before I can.

Zi presses her lips together, barely managing to hide her smile. “I bet you’re not. Come on, Laia, the quicker we let these brutes sit, the quicker we get fed.”

Laia just nods without looking at either of us and stands, brushing her hands down the back of her pale gray pants. My gaze drops, unbidden, to her ass. She may be a tiny little thing, but the woman has curves for days. I jerk my gaze away. Inappropriate. She can barely even look at me. Checking out her ass does nothing but make me look like one.

I barely register Zi and Mylo’s easy banter as I pull out the chair she was just sitting in, watching her slide into the one across from me. Awkwardly, carefully, looking anywhere but at me.

“You sure this is okay?” I scan her face, waiting for her to slowly blink those big green eyes at me from beneath her eyelashes.

“Yes. Fine.” She forces a smile, and I’m smacked about the head with an acute need to make her smile at me for real.

I drag my hand over my mouth and shut that need down. “So. Ribs?”

The corners of her lips quirk up.

Her eyes spark with curiosity even though they’re still narrowed, still filled with mistrust. She tucks her hair behind her ears and glances over to where Kenzi is laughing at whatever story Mylo is regaling her with, that quirk growing into a real smile.

Until she returns her attention back to me.

My jaw ticks, a gnawing uncomfortableness I can’t remember ever feeling over being blanked by a woman opening in some part of me I haven’t paid attention to since—

I cut that thought off as soon as it catches, but it does nothing to stop the ache of loss that’s never far away from expanding, spreading, reminding me that there’s a reason I don’t do this. That I have a type, and skittish, worried-eyed women aren’t it.

“Ribs?” Her soft voice drags me back, zoning my attention her way again.

Loose curls the color of sand, the front lighter than the last time I sat across from her. The details of her face pulse at me exactly like they did that first morning in Clua Coffees, like I’m seeing in focus for the first time in fuck knows how long. There are freckles across the bridge of her nose that weren’t there before too, her skin’s sun kissed, healthy, like island life agrees with her.

“Best on the island.” I lean back in my chair and rub my hand up the back of my neck.

“So they tell me.” Elbows on the table, she clasps her hands in front of her mouth, her gaze dropping to the rough wood of the tabletop.

I reach around for something to say, something to get rid of the tightness to her shoulders. I’m rusty. It’s been a while since I tried to actively engage a woman in conversation. It’s been a while since I’ve been curious enough to. They come to me when they come. I don’t chase. I don’t put at ease, and I don’t strike up conversations in the hope that they’ll be more comfortable around me.

Mylo and Zi are already laughing over something that happened in the spa in the Castle. I click my tongue off my teeth. No help from them.

“You go to the market this week?” It takes a whole lot of effort not to roll my eyes. Smooth.

Her gaze flicks up and she lowers her clasped hands onto the table. “I did.” She presses her lips together like there are words there, she just doesn’t want to let them out.

“More mangos?” I raise my brows, this pull inside me to get her talking growing when her pressed lips start to curve up and she unclasps her hands.

“Mangos, berries, artisan chocolate.” Her teeth flash when she bites her bottom lip, but there’s no disguising the light in her eyes. “I got chilies too. I’ve been working on a recipe for chocolate and chili pie. Sounds weird I know, but spicy chocolate! I think I can make it work.”

“You bake?” I don’t know why that little fact makes me grin, but it does.

“I mean…” The light in her face dims and she blinks back down to her fingers. “I try. I know it’s—”

“Does she bake?” Zi butts in, knocking Laia’s shoulder with her own. “Only the kind of pies dreams are made of. You should totally start selling them in The Beach Hut.”

I start at the sharp reminder that we’re not sitting at this table alone, the chatter and clatter of the restaurant around us swirling back to the forefront of my mind. The sweet scent of Mama Den’s barbeque sauce tainting the air.

“I’m always down for pies,” Mylo rumbles from beside me.

Leaning back in my seat, I clear my throat, trying and failing to not look at Zi. She may not have set us up this time, but there’s no disguising the smugness written in the twinkle of her eyes.

“Kenzi,” Laia warns, shaking her head. “Don’t listen to her, it’s just … a thing I do.”

I’m struck again over how little this woman likes attention. I’ve known women who pretend not to like being the center of attention, but when it’s praise, they still preen. Not Laia. She seems to wilt under it. Visibly shy away from it.

I watch her shift in her chair, fiddle with the pendant glinting against her black top. “I wouldn’t say no to trying one.”

I’m pinned by her beneath-the-lashes stare as she puffs out a tiny breath of a laugh. “You don’t have to.”

“I’d like to.”

“You’ll probably be disappointed.”

“By the kind of pie dreams are made of?” I shake my head but can’t seem to bring myself to look away. “I don’t think so.”

“Mylo, let’s go order drinks at the bar.”

It’s not Zi’s words that catch me up, it’s the panic that flits across Laia’s face when she jerks her head around to where Mylo and Zi are already getting to their feet. And there it is again, that sting that she’d rather be anywhere else but alone with me.

“I can come,” she goes to stand too.

“Nope. You two hang out, talk pie, we’ll get the beer.” Mylo claps me on the shoulder.

“I’m driving,” she calls after them, her eyes wide as she watches them go. “Just water.” She sinks back into her seat, gnawing on her bottom lip, when she looks my way again. “Sorry.”

“Sorry for what?” My brows lower at the uneasy way she’s watching me. It’s like one step forward, two steps back trying to get her to relax around me. I’m not even sure why the fuck it even matters. Why I want her to relax around me.

“About Kenzi’s outstanding subtlety.” She tucks her hair behind her ears again and glances around the busy restaurant. “Does she always try to set you up?” Her cheeks flush, her gaze flashing back to me, like she did not mean to say that. “I mean … not that … I know this isn’t … we’re not.”

“Never.” My sigh is long. “She knows I don’t date.”

She presses her hands over the handles of her cutlery and blinks up at me. “You don’t date?”

“I don’t.” My jaw ticks at the questions so clear in her eyes. “Do you?” I ask before she can ask any of them.

“Me? Date?” Her laugh is a ripple of nervousness. Her fingers curling around her pendant again. “No … I definitely don’t date.”

“Not even back in Arizona?”

Her face sobers, that startled, worried look freezing her features again. “No. Not there either. It’s—”

“A long story?” I finish for her. “You don’t have to explain yourself to me, Laia.”

“You won’t ask about my long story, if I don’t ask about yours, right?”

“Right.” I rest my elbows on the table. “So maybe now you can stop looking at me like I bite.”

“I don’t look at you like you—do I?” Her eyes widen almost comically.

“You do.”

“I do?” She grimaces. It’s cute. It’s easy. It’s finally unguarded.

I nod.

“I … sorry. I—”

“You don’t have to apologize to me either.”

“Okay.” She puffs out her cheeks. “Sorr—I mean, okay.” She sits back in her chair and nods. “No more apologizing.” She narrows her eyes and scrunches her nose. “Do you always glower at people like that?” Right on queue her cheeks flush, like she has no control of the words that fall out of her mouth. “I … I mean—”

“I’m not glowering.” I take stock of my face. My eyebrows are low, and my forehead is tensed. She’s right, I’m glowering. I force the muscles in my face to relax, force my eyebrows up and my jaw to unclench. Do I always glower?

“You’re not anymore.” She smirks, nods, glances to the empty chair beside her like she too is completely out of practice at making small talk. “So … ribs?”

My laugh rips out of me. It’s a shock to the system. To hers too, going by the hesitant grin that lifts her face from pretty to disarming.

Laia

I shift on my chair, chewing on my lip to halt my grin. His laugh is like melted chocolate on ripe strawberries. Rich, but filled with gravel. It’s captivating. It’s all kinds of terrifying. And don’t even get me started on the eye-crinkles and dimples that come with it.

It stops as quickly as it starts, but the glower doesn’t sink back into place over his features. His forehead stays smooth even when he drags his hand over his mouth, finishing with a little tug of his bottom lip.

This time his gaze on mine eases something in me I’m not sure is safe to have eased. Even the noisy restaurant around us seems to blur out.

No part of me wants to shy away from it. If I’m being really honest with myself, I kinda want to sink into it and cling to the tiny slice of normality radiating from its easiness like a normal woman, on a normal non-date. “What’s so special about them?”

“Looks like you’re about to find out.” He takes his elbows off the table as the waiter appears with the biggest platter of barbeque ribs I have ever seen.

I blink from him to the ribs then to where Kenzi and Mylo have appeared again, Mylo with a pitcher of beer and Kenzi with a glass bottle of mineral water and a bottle of wine. They look good together. Like a matching set. Kenzi’s hair is loose and perfectly tousled around her shoulders. Mylo’s is up in a top-knot of a standard mine can never dream of reaching. Both tall and tanned and blond, and both grinning down at us like they’re waiting for us to announce the engagement.

“We come bearing beer.” Mylo’s the first to move, to drop the pitcher onto the table beside the giant-sized platter of sticky, sweet-smelling goodness, froth spilling over the side and onto his massive hand.

“And I come bearing water.” Kenzi cocks her head at me. “And wine. You could always scrap the good girl vibe, leave the truck and sleep over at mine tonight.”

“Thanks, but sorr—”

Felix cocks his head. No apologies.

“Just water for me.”

Now, I might be imagining things, but I’m pretty sure I see a tiny blip of pride in the tilt to Felix’s lips before he scratches his jaw and turns to whatever Mylo is saying to him.

Best. Ribs. Ever.

My fingers are sticky and I’m pretty sure I have barbeque sauce on my chin, but my belly’s full and I swear there’s a full-blown party going down on my tongue. Damon would hate this, the mess, the stickiness, the blatant disregard for cutlery.

It was his voice in my head that had me picking up my knife and fork.

It was Felix looking at me like I was insane, holding my stare as he picked up a rib with his fingers and tore off the meat with his teeth, that had me putting them back down again.

I’m not gonna lie, my mouth had dropped open, and the heat that had rushed up my neck had nothing to do with embarrassment and everything to do with the way he watched me when his tongue slipped over his bottom lip to catch some stray sauce.

I’ve laughed more than I have in years—more than even Drunk Laia did last week in The Beach Hut. Stone cold sober, I’ve relaxed into the conversation, joined in, made jokes, asked questions, lived in the moment without a flinch or a paranoia in sight.

That’s probably why, when, elbows on the table, Felix leans forward towards me, I find myself leaning in too.

“You’ve got sauce.” His eyes lower, gaze fixed on my mouth as he reaches over and brushes my chin with his thumb.

If I thought the restaurant around us blurred, out before I was hugely mistaken. This time it does. It really does. It’s like everything stops, pauses. Kenzi’s cackle at whatever Mylo is telling her. The kids fighting at the table beside us. Everything but his touch on my face, the dilation of his pupils, the slight parting of his lips, and the thumping of my heart. And this time I can’t even blame it on the Monstrosities.

Then in a flash—a literal flash—it all spins back to real time.

I jerk back, my head snapping around to Mama Den. And a camera. My mouth dries, whatever easy breezy I thought I was feeling evaporating completely under a wave of what-do-I-think-I’m-doing.

“Wait. No.” My head’s shaking, my hand coming up to, I’ve no idea what? Snatch the camera the little old lady is already snapping a photo of Kenzi and Mylo with? To plead with her not to put my photo online or anywhere near social media without sounding like a loon?

The shell-shocked look on, not only Felix’s, but Kenzi’s face too, momentarily pauses my panic. But only for a second. A millisecond.

My cheeks are clammy, my palms sweaty and that party on my tongue? It’s evaporated to ash. “That … she won’t put that online?” I go to stand. To follow Mama Den. To get that photo deleted regardless of how insane it’ll look to them.

Kenzi’s fingers circle my wrist. I snatch it back without thinking. “You don’t understand. I can’t…”

“Laia, it’s just a polaroid for the wall. I don’t think Mama Den’s even has a website.”

Oh. I open my mouth. Close it again. Sit back down, embarrassment almost swallowing me whole.

Kenzi’s watching me like I’ve just grown another head. Mylo’s ever present smile has even straightened. And Felix? He isn’t even looking at me. His eyes are fixed on his empty plate, brows lower than I’ve ever seen them, which is really saying something.

“The photo wall?” I manage to drag my attention from Felix back to Kenzi, the need for confirmation that my face isn’t going to end up on the internet where anyone can find it too big to let go. Anyone meaning Damon. Where Damon can find it—find me.

Kenzi glances at Felix, her lips making an O, like what she’s about to tell me is not something he’s gonna like. “The wall is.” She presses her lips together. “It’s an island superstition.” Her wince does nothing to ease the shriveling of whatever sense of freedom from my past I thought this night had given me. “If your photo goes on the wall” —her big blue eyes flick to Mylo, before she closes them and shakes her head— “you’ve found your one. It’s probably nothing, I mean who even believes in silly superstitions anyway?”

Her. She does. She rescued my mangos from the garbage the other day because of a superstition.

Felix still hasn’t looked at me. Like, at all. Like he believes, or believed it too.

My cheeks warm. It’s not like I want him to be my one either.