caymans 101
“I’m tired,” Luisa said, curling up next to Rose. “I’m so so tired.”
Rose didn’t say anything. She didn’t have to. Instead, she brushed one hand through Luisa’s loose waves as the fan creaked every so often overhead. Her teeth grit together, her jaw tightening, as the creak broke through silence that was otherwise only broken by the sound of the sea waves breaking across the surf just outside their window, just across to the edge of the sandy beach, or by the seagulls that swirled outside, squawking – yelling – at anyone they could find for some little tidbit of food.
Luisa leaned up just enough to press a kiss to her neck, not wanting to lean up any more than that, and then collapsed across her lap again. “I want to go home,” she murmured.
“You are home.”
“I know.” Luisa sighed, and Rose could feel her tensing against her. “That’s not what I meant.”
“I know.”
Rose continued to brush her fingers through Luisa’s hair, not letting her gaze drift away from the woman with her. She wouldn’t tell her that she couldn’t leave – she would never tell her that because Luisa wasn’t a bird in a cage and she would never cage her, not the way she had in the submarine, when it was just them and no one else trying to interfere or lie about her or what she might think or feel or how she might act. That had been…not entirely wrong. Other than the whole kidnapping thing, she knew that Luisa had enjoyed it, had enjoyed watching the fish swimming outside the submarine’s windows, had enjoyed living beneath the waves the way a part of her had always wanted.
“You can go back, if you want,” she said instead. The fan creaked once, loudly, overhead, and Rose tensed in response. She forced herself to relax. It was just broken. Not so broken that it didn’t beat humid air in circles around them, sometimes colder and sometimes not, nowhere near as good as the air conditioning but Luisa thought it wasn’t hot enough for that yet and Rose hadn’t argued.
Luisa shook her head, her lashes brushing against Rose’s sensitive skin. “That’s not what you want.”
Rose shivered once, tensing again. “I don’t like going there,” she agreed, her voice tense. “It’s a risk every time. You know that the police are still searching for me, and if they ever once consider—”
“They won’t,” Luisa murmured. Again. It was the same conversation they always had. Not always. Sometimes they could go weeks, months, without having it. But it always circled back to this again – Luisa wanted to see her brother, who could have cared less about her, and Rose didn’t want to go.
You could go without me, Rose thought but wouldn’t say – would never say. If there was anyone around looking for her outside of the police, any of Elena’s old crew, any of one of the other crews who hated her, they would know well enough to go after Luisa the same way Elena had. She couldn’t let Luisa go alone. She could become collateral damage in a war that she was never meant to be part of.
Rose brushed her hand through Luisa’s hair again, and the fan creaked overhead. “We could go somewhere else,” she suggested. “We could go to Paris again.” It wasn’t her favorite of the places they’d traveled, but she knew Luisa had loved it, had loved buying out an entire flat and just living there, occasionally leaving for crepes or travel, standing nude at the window and staring down at the citizens below. They’d gone there first, after Luisa had left with her again – this time by choice, this time away from the submarine, this time not under the cover of darkness – just going and then they were there and it was like…it was like Luisa had never known she was Sin Rostro, as if she’d taken that information and thrown it into a pit in the back of her mind where she would never take it again. She’d been able to pretend, then, too.
“I don’t want to go to Paris,” Luisa said, then she sighed and looked up enough to meet Rose’s eyes. “I would love to go to Paris,” she corrected, “but I want to go home, and Paris isn’t home.” She pressed her lips together. “Here is home, but here’s not home. My heart’s not here.”
Not with me, Rose thought. Somewhere I can’t touch it.
That was the worst part of all this – that for all Luisa loved her, and for all Luisa had her heart, Luisa did not trust her with hers so much as she trusted the brother who wanted nothing to do with her. Who still wanted nothing to do with her – with either of them, even though he had no reason to believe that she was still around anymore. He wanted nothing to do with Luisa’s new girlfriend, Eileen, which made no sense, given that she was specifically tailored to be nothing like Rose – with the exception of loving Luisa – and much like Luisa, the sister he was supposed to love.
And yet.
Rose brushed her hand through Luisa’s hair, and the fan creaked, and her jaw tightened, and she swallowed, and she forced herself to say, even though she hated saying it, “We can go back. We can’t stay long, but we can go.”
She could feel the words sticking in her throat, strained as they broke through, and she knew that Luisa could hear it, too.
But Luisa didn’t fight against not being able to stay longer the way that she would whenever Rose said they needed to leave. There would be nothing fun in returning to Miami, in returning to the Marbella. Rose would spend the entire time on high alert and Luisa would spend the entire time telling her there was no reason to do so and they would spend the entire time fighting because Rose would want to leave sooner than Luisa did because Luisa would never want to leave because she was finally home.
But Rose wasn’t. The only real home she had was with Luisa where they were together and they were themselves, and she was never herself in Miami.
But she couldn’t tell Luisa no.
Speak around it as much as she wanted, but she couldn’t tell Luisa no.