Page 46 of Shameless Vows

How could she do this tous?

To our families?

To our entirelives? Both the life we had lived thus far together, and the life we had dreamed of and talked about since the time it occurred to us that we could spend the rest of our lives together?

What had happened to my sweet Isla?

This couldn’t have been just a one-off, drunken mistake at a party.

A girl like Isla, who had been largely sheltered and only had me—a guy she’d known herentire life—as her single sexual partner, wouldn’t just randomly decide to let two guys nail her simultaneously. Therehadto have been some kind of escalation to what I saw in the photo. Therehadto have been other instances of her fooling around.

And after all, that’s exactly what she said in the hastily punched out messages after she accidentally sent it.

I’ve missed out on a lot of life experiences.

I need the chance to see what’s out there.

I was going to talk to you during the break.

I don’t want to lie to you anymore.

It was clear as day that she’d beenexperiencing lifeandseeing what’s out therebehind my fucking back while we were separated.

If you really love me like you say you do, you’ll let me go.

And Ireally lovedher. So I let her go.

“Goodbye, amor.”

The last thing she said to me over the phone.

Goodbye,amor,indeed.

Goodbye love.

Goodbye life I had always dreamed of.

Goodbye to everything that I knew and believed.

A year spent in total isolation after that kind of heartbreak will harden a person like nothing else can. It caused the formation of scar tissue so thick, and so hard, and sodeadthat nothing would ever be able to penetrate me again.

When I returned, I heard from my parents and Philipp that Isla had come by our summer estate about six months after I left, asking if I was there. My parents said she “didn’t look well.” Philipp was far more candid about her appearance, and said she looked like she’d been strung out and used up like an old mop, and that I should be glad I missed her sudden reappearance. That it was clear I’d dodged a bullet. That it was clearer than ever that Isla had become an entirely different person than the one we’d always known and loved.

And that didn’t exactly make me feel better.

It didn’t make me feel anything at all, because I could feelnothing.

So, I left again and enlisted in my compulsory stint in Corwick’s Royal Navy, preparing to live the rest of my life in total service to my country, and still felt nothing.

I continued to feel nothing even years later when it became clear from yet another cryptic text message that I was going to have to marry Isla after all.

MALACHI

Present

ISLA AND HER FAMILY take their sweet time saying their goodbyes while I stand off to one side at the entrance of the palace. Fortuna hugs her and kisses her cheek, then presses her palm to Isla’s still-flat stomach. Isla wears an expression that makes it obvious how much she’s fighting her emotions. Ernesto joins them, kissing Isla’s head and saying something in her ear. Her sisters do the same. Auggie, Graciela’s husband, offers Isla a disconnected pat on the head before crossing the stone-paved drive toward me with his hand extended.

“Always a pleasure to visit your lovely country, Malachi,” he says, shaking with me. “We may return for another visit come spring.”