Page 95 of Shameless Vows

I run blindly across the yard, barefoot and gasping on terrified tears, not even knowing where I’m going, but I’m suddenly climbing up a trellis and then slapping his window.

He appears only seconds later, dark brows drawn in alarm, and throws open the panes. “Isla? What’s going on?”

“Bad people are in my house! They’re going to hurt Papá!”

He immediately wraps his arms around my ribs and pulls me inside, then drags me to his bed and wraps all the blankets tight around me.“Just stay here. Bad people would never come here. We have diplomatic immunity.”

I squint at him, face half-hidden by the blankets. “What does that mean?”

He shrugs. “I don’t know, but mother and father are always saying it.”He climbs on top of the blankets and wraps his gangly arms and legs around me. “I think it means bad people would get extra punishment for messing with us, so that means they’ll stay away.”He holds me tighter.“So, if those people come back, you just come here like you did, and I will keep you safe.”

I wriggle in the blankets to turn and face him. “Promise?”

“Promise.”

Mamá is now silently weeping and pleading with God, and Malachi and I are still hidden behind the black curtain of my hair, and tears are dripping off my nose and onto his cheeks.

“...beyond my last breath…” he murmurs, his words even quieter, but his eyes don’t stray from mine.

Another second ticks by; another image surges to the front of my mind.

I’m thirteen years old, he’s fifteen, we’re on the beach again, and the heavens open up with torrential downpour. I shriek and dart for a half-hollowed dune about twenty yards from us. I reach it and turn to see him laugh and shake his head while he carries our towels and picnic basket to the temporary shelter.

“You know, my sweet little Isla,” he says coyly, standing right in front of me and then throwing a towel over both of our heads,“I know why you hate getting rained on.”

“Yeah, because it’s cold and wet,” I retort, full of sass while I tilt my chin up toward him.

“And because it’ll most assuredly melt you,” he adds. “Know why?”

I smile and shake my head, and he captures my chin between his thumb and forefinger. “Because you’re made of sugar.”

I snort. “That’s so cheesy.”

“No,” he returns, inclining his mouth to mine. “It’s sugary.”

We both giggle for a moment before he silences us with his lips parting over mine. My chest fills to overflowing just like it does every time he’s kissed me since the first time he did at the Christmas party. But this time, my heart is so full that I can’t stop the words before they spill out.

“I love you,”I confess with our lips still attached.

He smiles and lowers his forehead to mine.“I love you, too, my sweet Isla.”

Another second; another image.

I’m fifteen years old, he’s seventeen, and he has to leave for his university in Corwick in the morning. Clad only in moonlight and bedsheets, in the silent secrecy of my room, he braces his body above mine, and I hold him as close as humanly possible, and we break the last barrier that separates us.

The pain is sharp, but brief, and he strokes my hair, then my cheek. “I love you. I love you so much.”

Pain gives way to a strangely satisfying sensation that causes chills to scatter my arms.“I love you, too.”

“Are you okay, my sweet Isla?”

“Yes.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes. I promise.”

We move together, and learn together, and take a flying leap into adulthood before either of us are even technically adults.