Zoraida Cordova - A Crash of Fate

So while Jules was chasing the fish at the bottom of the cenote, she finished removing her clothes, adding to the dirty pile on the ground.

She dove headfirst into the water. Julen Rakab had lied to her. It was cold—so cold that she couldn’t breathe as her arms flailed. She kicked to the surface.

“Liar,” she said, her teeth chattering. When she licked her lips, she was surprised to find they were salty.

“Swim to me,” he said. “You’ll warm up as your body moves.”

She did just that, relishing in the movement of her arms and legs. It had been months, maybe even years since she’d done this.

“See?” he asked, when she surfaced in front of him. “Are you cold now?”

She wrapped her arms around his torso, her knees on either side of his waist. “Now that you’re swimming for both of us? Definitely.”

He licked his lips. She dragged her fingers around the base of his neck. Droplets of water clung to his dark lashes. She found that she didn’t want to look away from him. She wanted to tell him all the things she’d been holding back.

“I’ve thought about you all the time. Sometimes I’ll fly to a new world and think about how you would love the mountains or frozen lakes or the lights. I wanted to come back to you after my parents were killed.”

“Why didn’t you?” His arms were moving faster, propelling them to the other side of the cenote, where it was shallower. When had the night grown so dark?

“I was afraid,” she said. “We were friends when we were children. What if you didn’t remember me? What if too much time had passed? I couldn’t take the chance.”

“All you do is take chances, Izzy. Why would this have been any different?”

She considered this. He wasn’t wrong. If Damar was right about anything, it was that she didn’t like being alone. She thought about who she’d been during that time in her life. Scared, reckless, impulsive. Lonely. At times she’d thought of Jules, of charting a course to him. And then she’d convinced herself not to. “Because I’d lost my mother and father already. It was better to dream of what could have been instead of facing a truth I wasn’t ready for. What if you looked right through me? What if you hated me? I didn’t want to find out.”

“Believe me when I say that I have missed you every day for as long as I can remember.”

She couldn’t believe him. “That’s a bold statement.”

“It’s true. You’re the one who said I was a terrible liar. Tell me, Izzy—am I lying?”

She knew he wasn’t. But that familiar panic took hold of her. If he hadn’t been carrying her, it would have pulled her under. “What happens tomorrow and the day after? What happens if a week from now you decide that I’m too terrible, I’m not the girl you remember. What if you decide that I’m not what you wanted?”

“I want you,” he whispered.

“Why?”

“Because you’re everything. You are the reason I can find bravery when I don’t want to be brave. You were right. I did follow you around when we were kids. I wanted to keep up with you.”

“I’m not brave, Jules.” Without wanting to, she was thinking of Damar again. Unlike all her moments with Jules, she couldn’t remember a single moment with Damar being so emotionally intimate. “If I was, I would have gone on my own sooner. I wouldn’t have followed Ana Tolla even though I knew she did terrible things. I went along with more than I ever want to tell you.”

He kissed her jawline. “You don’t have to. I think you’re stuck with me, Izzy.”

“I wish I’d spent yesterday with you.”

Jules rested his hands on her waist to hold her tighter. The water was around their shoulders. “Is this about what Damar said?”

She nodded. “When I was a little girl, my dad used to get these candles for my birthday. They had them on Coruscant or someplace he’d been to before. They lit up like fireworks. After he died, I didn’t celebrate my birthday.”

“Why?”

“Because it was only me for a while. This might surprise you, but I don’t have as many friends as you do.”

“I’m your friend, Izzy. What does that have to do with Damar?”

“I was with Damar for almost a year. I knew things weren’t right, but when I tried to end it he told me that I needed to give him another chance. That he had something special planned for me. He said that on my birthday he was going to light up the sky the way I deserved. Instead, he left.”

Jules watched her with dark eyes. The light of the cenote around them gave their skin an incandescent blue glow. She hated that she had taken the smile from his face.

“I told you, it shouldn’t matter. I know how to be on my own. I should’ve known better—”

“You said that he left you yesterday,” he said.

She traced the outline of his shoulder, and somehow it felt like she had always been doing it. “It was the best thing that happened to me because it led me here. Oh, skies. I sound like you, don’t I?”

Jules frowned, but it only lasted a moment. “We have two things to celebrate now. Tell me what you want.”

They floated toward the center of the water, and everything around them fell away. If she would only look up, she’d see the canopy of stars above them, the shine of the moons. But her eyes were fixed on Julen Rakab, and for a moment, she was certain she was where she needed to be.

“I want you to kiss me.”

Julen Rakab had been imagining what it would be like to kiss Izal Garsea since the moment she’d punched him in the face. Then she’d kissed him outside the farm. He wanted nothing more than to do it again. So when she said the words, he should have jumped at the opportunity.

If he were a different kind of person—a scoundrel, a scourge, a pirate who stole hearts for the sake of doing it—he would have kissed her in an instant. Perhaps he wasn’t the good guy everyone thought, because he so badly wanted to. But Izzy had just been through one of the worst experiences of her life since losing her parents. Being abandoned by someone who had professed to care for her had to have done something to her. Would kissing her be taking advantage? Before she’d confessed to him, he would have done it. Everything inside him ached to do it.

“Are you sure that’s what you want?” he asked, needing permission.

“Yes.”

Jules pulled her against him and kissed her.

She tasted faintly of salt from the cenote and sugar from the fruit they’d eaten at the farm. He felt her wet eyelashes against his cheekbones. He was forgetting to breathe, to kick and tread water. All he could do was hold her as they sank below the surface. She broke the kiss first. In the light of the water they could see each other clearly. The tips of their noses were touching. She bit his bottom lip and then swam away from him.

As they resurfaced, his chest burning and aching to inhale, he saw the flash of her smile and followed her. Whatever Izzy was running from, he would follow her as long as she’d allow him.

They swam to the edge of the cenote, and she pulled herself up and over the ledge where there was a patch of grass. Water sloshed from his body as he climbed up beside her.

She rested her head on his shoulder and intertwined her fingers with his. They looked up at the sky and watched streaks of light and distant ships arriving and leaving the planet. The thought of anyone hurting her burned through him. Then that thought was gone when she leaned in to kiss him again.

Her kiss had a different effect this time. They were getting to know each other in a way he’d only dreamed of before that evening. He pulled her on top of him and held her tight. She gasped at the strength of his hold. For a moment he was unsure where to put his hands. He could hardly breathe from the warmth radiating off her, despite the cenote water dripping from their skin, despite the cold breeze that enveloped them.