Chapter Seven
828 Words
The first week back in Vigan was tolerable, almost pleasant, though Brianna would never admit it aloud.
The air was heavy, yes, and the heat still clung to her skin like punishment, but it was familiar now. The streets felt smaller, the sounds closer. The horses on Calle Crisologo still trotted lazily past the tourists, and the smell of roasted corn mixed with the faint sweetness of summer mangoes.
And then there was Jenny.
They fell back into their rhythm easily. Morning coffees at the small café near the plaza, lazy afternoons walking the shaded streets, laughing about things that made no sense to anyone else. Jenny grounded her, whether Brianna wanted to be grounded or not.
Sometimes, Brianna wondered if Jenny saw the way she watched people, the sharp way her eyes lingered too long, the way she always wanted to know why. Jenny never said anything, just smiled that calm, infuriating smile.
“Same old you,” Jenny would tease. “Always studying people like a science project.”“And same old you,” Brianna would reply, “always trying to save them.”
It was an odd friendship, built on contradiction. And maybe that’s why it worked.
By the third week, boredom began to creep in, and Brianna decided she wanted a change of pace.
“Let’s go out tonight,” she said one afternoon, flipping through her phone while they sat by the fountain. “There’s that new karaoke place near Heritage Plaza. Everyone’s talking about it.”
Jenny hesitated, smiling softly. “I can’t sing to save my life.”
“Good thing I can. You’ll just have to watch me shine.”
Jenny laughed. “Fine. Eight o’clock?”
“Eight,” Brianna confirmed.
By nine, Jenny still hadn’t shown up.
Brianna sat in the corner booth, a nearly empty glass of iced tea sweating beside her. The music from the nearby tables was loud, too loud, and the laughter grated against her ears.
She checked her phone again. No message.
At nine-thirty, she gave up pretending she didn’t care.
She left a curt text: “If you were going to ditch, you could’ve at least said so.”
Then she grabbed her bag and stepped out into the humid night.
The streets of Vigan glowed with warm, golden light. Across the road, the Heritage Plaza Hotel loomed, polished and grand, the kind of place her parents frequented for business dinners. A line of cars glimmered in the driveway, and people moved in and out of the lobby in a blur of motion.
She was about to turn toward home when something caught her eye.
Jenny.
Brianna froze.
Jenny stood near the entrance, her hair loose, her steps hurried. Beside her was a man, tall, confident, his hand resting briefly on her arm as they spoke. Even from a distance, Brianna recognized him.
Jordan Saavedra.
The youngest son. The journalist. The man she had told herself she barely remembered but had, in truth, memorized.
She stepped back, keeping to the shadows as they walked toward the hotel. Jenny laughed at something he said, softly, the kind of laugh that sounded like a secret, and Jordan looked at her the way men looked at women they shouldn’t.
They disappeared through the glass doors together.
Brianna’s pulse kicked hard against her ribs.
She told herself it was curiosity, not anger. She told herself she was being ridiculous. But as she stood there, the words she’d once thrown at Jenny echoed back at her: You always hide too well.
Her phone buzzed.
Jenny: Sorry, something came up. Rain check?
Brianna stared at the message until the screen dimmed.
Something came up.
Her jaw clenched. “Right,” she muttered. “Something.”
She should’ve gone home. Should’ve let it go. But she didn’t. Instead, she crossed the street and stepped into the hotel lobby.
From behind a marble pillar, she caught a glimpse of them near the elevators, Jenny looking nervous, Jordan saying something low, his hand briefly brushing her back as the elevator doors slid closed.
That was all she saw. All she needed to see.
Her chest felt tight, her mind sharp with something too messy to name.
Brianna had never been in love. She didn’t even know if this was that. But she knew she wanted him, and more than that, she wanted to take him away from Jenny.
Not because it was right. Because she could.
Because for the first time in her charmed, ordered life, she had found something she wasn’t supposed to have.
And she wanted it anyway.
As she stepped out into the humid night again, the laughter from the bar spilled onto the street. The world around her looked the same, tourists, lights, cobblestones, but something in her had shifted, dark and deliberate.
She didn’t text Jenny back.
She only whispered to herself, half-smiling, “You should’ve known better than to hide things from me.”
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