I failed, and he helped me clean up the evidence.

"You knew," I said, realizing why he hadn't blinked when I told him I was allergic to peanuts. I thought of him moisturizing his feet. "You asshole."

He laughed, catching the peanut I threw at him.

Damian fucking Caballero laughed. And it was the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen. I pretended it didn't matter, like my breath hadn't caught, like my throat wasn't clenched, when I dumped the rest of the peanuts in his lap and walked away.

I needed to be alone so I could hug that moment, the moment his face had cracked into a smile. He needed to be alone so he could eat those peanuts without feeling like I had prepared anything special for him.

Damian got better. He finished his food. When we ran out of soup, I moved on to refried beans and cans of chili and peaches and pears. I hit the motherload when I opened the freezer and found TV dinners I could nuke in the microwave. I was going positively gourmet, adding a pinch of paprika to the mac and cheese, and a floret of thawed out broccoli (which Damian flicked out of the way, the ungrateful bastard).

Sometimes when he was sleeping, I turned on the radio. There was no TV, so I had to rely on crackly news broadcasts. They repeated my name and description, along with Damian's. He was considered armed and dangerous. I listened to a short plea from my father, addressed to Damian. He had a hotline and a reward set up for any leads. I had disappeared almost two weeks ago, and I could hear the strain in my father's voice. He was coming after Damian, guns blazing, not knowing the root of the story. He had no idea that Damian was Esteban, that he was paying for the repercussions of his own actions. I wavered between anger over what he'd done, the lies he'd told, and a deeper conviction, that there was more to the story. I knew my father, just as I knew Damian. I wanted to tell my father where I was, to put an end to his obvious distress, give him a chance to explain himself, but that meant exposing Damian, and I wasn't about to betray him, like he thought I'd betrayed him all those years ago.

I busied myself with nursing Damian back to health and not thinking about anything else. One night, I opened up a can of tuna and decided it was time I made something. I looked in the fridge and found some lemons, an overripe tomato, and a lone onion rolling around in one of the drawers. I figured I could make ceviche. It was a summertime staple at my favorite restaurant. I had ordered it countless times, and let's face it-how hard can fish cured in lemon juice be? Granted, it was normally made with fresh, raw seafood, but I was all about innovation. I emptied the tuna into a bowl and juiced the lemons over it, being careful to keep my bandaged pinky out of the way.

Marinade. Done.

Next, tomato and onion. I tried to chop the tomato, but it was all squishy so I pulsed it in the blender with the onion, added a dash of hot sauce, and stirred the mixture into the fish.

Voila!

Feeling quite accomplished with my culinary venture, I arranged tortilla chips on the tray and placed the bowl in the center. I carried it to the bedroom and deposited it on Damian's lap.

"I made you something," I announced.

He eyed the lumpy concoction without touching it.

Dear God, he looked so rough and rugged with his almost-beard.

"Go ahead," I said. "It's ceviche."

"Ceviche?" He examined it.

"Yes. It's fish with-"

"I know what ceviche is." He was definitely wary. "You first."

"Fine." I shrugged, scooping up a mouthful with a tortilla chip. "Mmmm," I said. "It's really good."

Damian had a taste of it. We both chewed in silence. I swallowed. He spit out a lemon seed and swallowed. I went for another. He followed. Neither of us broke eye contact.

It was the most vile, putrid, goopy thing in the world. It tasted of bile and rotten tomatoes and Bart Simpson's butt.

I spit it out, but Damian kept going, bite after foul, rancid bite, until it was all gone. When he was done, he leaned back, holding his tummy like he was trying to keep it all down.

"Wha-?" I stared at him. "Why did you finish it?"

"Because you made it," he replied. "Don't make it again." He turned onto his side and went to sleep.

Damian got out of bed early the next morning. The threat of more of my cooking may have hastened his recovery. The first thing he did was to move the boat under a canopy of coconut trees. He covered the roof with palm fronds and secured them with a rope so no one could spot the boat from above.

Watching him work, lean and shirtless, I wondered how I had ever thought of him as ordinary. He was sculpted, but not overly muscular, with the kind of back and shoulders that came from hard work. His skin was the same color I remembered: warm sand with a dusting of bronze. He rarely combed his hair, but far from a tangled mess, it looked wind-worn and sexy, with the ends curled up from the humidity.

When Damian looked my way, I pretended I was engrossed in the seashell at my feet. I thought of our Sunday strolls on the beach, the two of us racing ahead of MaMaLu, ready to pounce before the next wave pulled its treasures back into the ocean. We only picked shells that had been battered by the waves, smashed and worn so thin that they turned into iridescent slivers of light. Those were the ones MaMaLu loved best. We made necklaces for her. I sorted them by size and shape while he carefully made a hole through them. That was the hardest part-tapping a nail through their fragile forms without breaking them.

I collected a few shells before heading back inside, feeling like I was reclaiming little pieces of me. Here, on this remote island, with no beach chairs or loud music or attentive hostesses topping up my cocktail, I was getting back in touch with myself. I didn't care if my hair was frizzy, or what time dinner was being served, or my massage appointment, or the private cruise. There was a sense of freedom, a sense of simplicity that I didn't know I'd been missing.

That night, Damian cooked crabs on the beach over a small fire and a pot of water. We ate them with melted butter dribbling down our chins. Okay, so he was a much better cook than me, and he would make a hell of a contestant on Survivor, but all of that aside, I thought he was a motherfucking bad-ass because he had survived my ceviche.

He slashed open some green coconuts and we sipped the sweet, light water inside. Damian didn't look at me. Much. He kept his eyes on the water. Occasionally, he looked up at the sky. I wondered if he was scanning the area for boats or helicopters. I was pretty sure he'd tuned in to the news.

Once or twice when his eyes settled on me, he looked away quickly. I didn't know what he was thinking or how long we were supposed to lay low. There were so many things I wanted to ask him, so much I wanted to know, but sitting beside him, watching the fire as the waves rolled in, filled me up. I felt safe with Damian. I wanted to curl up and put my head on his lap, like I had done all those years ago at the start of our friendship.

But Damian was busy. He was making holes in the shells I had picked. He was so gentle, so careful with each piece that I couldn't take my eyes off him. His fingers felt each shell, before picking the right spot. Sometimes he caressed a shell, turning it over, giving it his full attention, before putting it aside. Those were the ones that would crack from the slightest dent, and Damian didn't want to damage any.

When he was done, Damian threaded a cord through the shells and tied the ends. He held it up before the fire. The necklace glowed in the golden light, frail and ethereal.

"Here." He gave it to me.

Damian had never made a seashell necklace for anyone except MaMaLu. Suddenly, I realized what he was doing. He was saying sorry. He was making up for the necklace he had thrown overboard, the necklace that had taken his mother away from him.

Have you ever held a life in your hand? He had dropped the locket in my hand and closed my fingers around it. Here, feel it.

I'd thought he was nuts, but my mother's necklace had cost his mother's life. And yet, here he was, giving me a memory of his mother to make up for taking away mine.

"She was my mother too," I said. "MaMaLu was the only mother I knew."

Huge, heavy sobs ripped through me. I reached for him, wrapping my arms around him, wanting to share this pain, this grief. Had anyone held him when she died? Had anyone comforted him? He stiffened, but let me cry. I cried for him. I cried for MaMaLu. I cried for our mothers who were gone, and for all the years we'd lost in between.

When I was done, I realized that he was holding me just as tight as I was holding him. I felt like Damian was starting to thread his way through all the broken, battered, beautiful pieces of himself, back to me, back to us, and I held him tighter.

SLEEPING NEXT TO DAMIAN WITHOUT touching him was torture, and not in a romantic or sexual way. I felt like a part of me that had been cast away had floated back, and I wanted to hold it, hug it, keep it from slipping away. I knew it would freak Damian out, so I suppressed the urge, although I may have accidentally, in my sleep, draped an occasional arm around him. For those few seconds, I allowed myself the luxury of re-acquaintance, the warmth of his skin, the realness of my long-lost best friend lying beside me. Then Damian would slowly pick up my hand and return it to my side. I had a feeling he knew it was a ruse. After all, I had stuck tenaciously to my side of the bed on the boat, my body as stiff and straight as a board, lest any part of me touch any part of him. And now I was all arms and legs. I knew he knew, and that made me smile, because he inched away, and I inched closer, until he was perched at the edge of the bed, and the only thing that kept him from falling was the mosquito netting tucked under the bed.

Whether I stuck to my side or invaded his, Damian was up at the crack of dawn. Not surprisingly, he looked after the cooking, although he left me chores without saying a word: a broom and a mop, standing square in the center of the kitchen, laundry detergent sitting on a stack of towels, a toilet brush dangling from the bathroom doorway. I fumbled through my tasks, but if Damian noticed that I mopped before I swept or that the towels were now a weird shade of pink, he didn't say anything.

He brought in all my shopping bags from the boat, and although my sequin skirt wasn't exactly toilet scrubbing gear, I caught him checking out my sparkly ass. I trailed him all day in that skirt, a cropped top, and the shell necklace he'd given me. I had pretty much been stuck to Damian's side the whole time he was recovering, so it was my first real look at the island. It was just a few square miles around, hemmed in by a white, sandy beach on one side, and lush, tropical forest on the other. The little house was nestled in between, under the shade of tall trees. The front faced mirror-calm waters, protected by a coral reef, and the back opened up to palm groves, papaya trees, and shrubs with thick, glossy leaves.

It was obvious that Damian knew the island like the back of his hand. He knew where to find small, red bananas with a texture so creamy that they tasted like thick, sweet custard, with a hint of raspberry. He knew where the sun hit, at what time, and where the coolest breezes came off the ocean.

"Do you come here often?" I asked, as he checked on the generator. It seemed like the place was pretty self-sufficient. A generator, tanks to collect and process rain water, propane to heat up the water we used for cleaning and bathing.

"It was home for a while," he replied.

"You mean when you and Rafael were hiding, after the incident with El Charro?"

"How do you know about El Charro?"

"Rafael told me."

It didn't seem to bother him. He was who he was, with no pretense about his past or the things he had done.

"Does anyone know you're out here? I mean, whose property is this?" I asked.

"It's mine now," he said. "No one else had much use for it. It's too small for tourism, too much beach for farming, too remote for fishermen."

"But you don't live here?"

"No. I go where my work takes me."

"So . . ." I fiddled with the hem of my top. "We are okay here?"

Damian stilled at my words. "There is no 'we', Skye. We grew up. We became different people. We live in different worlds. As soon as it's safe, I'm dropping you off at the mainland."

"You're just going to drop me off?" I stared at him incredulously. "What about MaMaLu? You said you were going to take me there. I need to see her, Damian. I need to see her grave. I never got to say goodbye."

"Neither did I," he spit out. "I was taking you there so you could see, so you could understand why I did what I did. But you already know the truth."

"So that's it? You unload me somewhere they can find me, like some unwanted cargo? And what am I supposed to do? Forget everything that happened? Forget that you abducted me, turned my life upside down, and then turned me loose? Just like that? Well, you know what? I did forget. I forgot about you until you came back into my life. You're a selfish fucking bastard, Damian. Pick me up when it suits you, drop me off when it suits you. I'm not some mindless, emotionless pawn you can move from here to there in this game you're playing with my father. I'm real and I'm here and I care about you."

And there it was, a flash of raw emotion on Damian's face, a hitching of his breath like he'd been punched in the gut. And just as quickly, it was gone.

"Don't care about me," he said. "I am a selfish fucking bastard. I've killed people, planned, plotted, and orchestrated the whole thing, and never felt an ounce of remorse. And I planned, plotted and orchestrated to kill you. So don't care about me, because I'm only going to disappoint you."

"Bullshit! You're just afraid to let me in, you're afraid to let anyone in."

We glared at each other, neither willing to back off.

Then Damian turned and disappeared into the trees.

Fine.

I stormed off to the beach.

I shimmied out of my skirt, tossed my top onto the sand and walked into the water. It was warm, and so clear that the sun's rays danced on my feet. I lay on my back and gave myself up to the ocean.

Take it. Take it all away, I thought. I don't know what to do with any of it.

I floated like a piece of driftwood, bobbing up and down on the waves. My finger still stung, but it was bearable. I opened my eyes as a seagull passed overhead, blocking the sun momentarily. I turned to the shore, following its path, and noticed Damian watching me from the verandah. I was wearing my underwear, but it was stuck to my body like second skin. He'd already seen me naked, but this was different. He hadn't looked at me then, the way he was looking at me now, with the kind of longing that made me feel like I was the Holy Grail to his quest, like I was the oasis and he was two burning feet in the desert sand. He looked away and went back to whittling whatever he was working on.

I came out of the water and picked up my clothes. Damian kept his gaze averted. When I stepped out of the shower, my black-and-blond hair freshly shampooed, he was waiting for me in the bedroom.

"Let me see your finger." He slipped off the wet, dirty bandage and inspected it. It was healing, although parts of it were still tender. "This will work better." He'd made me a wooden splint, padded on all sides, but not so bulky as to get in the way.

I sat on the bed and let him slip it on.

"How does that feel?" he asked, securing it with Band-Aids.

"Good." Really, really good. Look at me like that again. With softness in your eyes. "What about you?" I traced the stitches on his temple. One, two, three, four. Four crisscross latches.

"I'm fine," he said, but he let my fingers rest on his skin.

He was kneeling on the floor. His other hand hadn't moved from mine, even though the splint was now secured. Our eyes were level; there was nowhere to hide.

Whenever MaMaLu had sung about the Sierra Morena Mountains, I'd thought of Damian's eyes. I didn't know what those mountains looked like, but I always imagined they were just as dark, with ebony forests and caves of coal. Of course, I had no idea back then that the bandits lying in wait would be my own-my feelings, leaping from friendship to this falling, fluttering ambush that came at me from all sides.

Damian had thieving, stealing contraband eyes, and when they fell on my mouth, they robbed me of all breath and thought. I wondered if he was feeling the same undeniable pull, if his heart was racing as fast as mine, if past and present were making out like wild teenagers in the back seat of his mind.

A drop of water trickled from my hair to the shadow between my breasts. There was nothing separating me from Damian, except my towel. My heart was open-my lips, my skin, my eyes-all bare and naked. And in the end, that was my undoing, his undoing, because Damian could take my finger, but not my heart.

So, he let go of my hand and left the room.

I HAD FORGOTTEN THE TASTE of plump, juicy mangoes eaten right off the tree. The mangoes on the island were small, but remarkably sweet. I could fit three in the palm of my hand and when I peeled off the soft, thick skin, the juice dripped down my arms and turned into a sticky mess. I had to watch for ants as I ate them, especially if any got on my legs. Those suckers loved mango nectar and there were times when they went places I did not appreciate. It was a price I was willing to pay, for the pleasure of sitting in the shade of a mango tree, and sinking my teeth into the soft, orange flesh. The best was when I could fit a whole mango in my mouth and suck on it until all that remained was the dry, bearded pit.

The ripest, heaviest fruit fell off the tree on its own, so there was always some on the ground, but it was bruised or picked over by bugs and animals. Damian climbed the tree and shook the branches while I stood beneath, trying to catch them in a wicker basket.

"Ouch," I said for the fifth time when one bounced off my head. "Not yet! On five, okay?"

It was one of those things that we fell into so automatically that even Damian didn't notice. And it worked perfectly. I was still admiring our little haul when the sky broke loose. It wasn't a nice, gentle drizzle; it was like being splashed with a big wave at the end of a water ride. The tropical shower unleashed more mangoes on my head. I turned the wicker basket upside down over me to shield myself. All the mangoes we'd picked ricocheted off my head. I started running for cover, but the ground was quickly turning to mud and I had to dislodge one foot before pulling out the other. Damian jumped from the tree and was a few feet ahead of me, caught in the same predicament, except he was heavier so he sank lower with each step. We looked like two wet zombies, limbs stiff and awkward, making a run from the crypt.

Damian turned around when I started laughing. He took one look at me, with the upside basket perched on my head, ankle-deep in mud and guck, and started laughing too.

"This way." He grabbed my hand and steered me to a small wooden shack in the jungle.

The palapa-thatched roof protected us from the passing squall. I dropped to the ground, soaked to the bone, trying to catch my breath, but failing miserably because I couldn't stop laughing at Damian's muddy, hobbit feet.

"Dude, for someone who is so compulsive about moisturizing his feet, you need a pedicure. Bad," I said, sobering up when I realized he wasn't laughing anymore. "What?" I asked. He was looking at me with an intensity that was making me squirm.

"You still laugh the same," he said.

I froze and dropped my gaze to the wicker basket on my lap. I didn't want him to see how these brief, small bursts of familiarity made me want to throw my arms around him and tear down the walls that kept us from the easiness we'd once shared.

"Same laugh, except for that gap between your teeth," he continued, stretching out beside me.

"I'm still the same girl, Damian." I put my head down and we lay on the floor, wishing for the simplicity of childhood, the wholeness of hearts, the sweetness of pure, unadulterated life. Muddy puddles and chocolate faces and skinned knees and skipping rope; me hiding behind MaMaLu's skirts after painting his face ballerina pink as he slept under the tree.

"The day you visit MaMaLu's grave-is it the same every year?" I asked.

He nodded, staring at the dried up palm fronds that lined the roof. "I used to wait outside the prison. One day I heard her singing. It was the last time she sang for me. It was so clear I could hear it over all the noise and chaos, like she was right there, singing in my ear. I think that was her way of saying goodbye. I go every year on that day."

I wanted to reach for Damian's hand, clasp his fingers in mine. I wanted to tell him he'd been a good son and how much MaMaLu had loved him, but I couldn't get past the lump lodged in my throat.

We listened to the rain subside as the mud dried on our feet.

"What is this place?" I asked, looking around.

The shack was sparse, but with remnants of use: a lantern hung from one of the posts and there was a makeshift bench with tools and rusty screws and nails on it.

"It's kind of a workshop now. I set it up when Rafael and I first got here. It was just a grass shack then, but we got some wood and patched it up. Eventually, I built the house and outgrew this place."