EverHeart

Chapter 2: An Uninvited Guest

Getting Marco up the hill took twelve minutes.

Getting him through my front door took another five.

This was mostly because he fainted on my bougainvillea.

“Marco.”

Nothing.

One knee had landed in the flowering bush beside the veranda. A pink blossom clung stubbornly to his wet hair.

“Marco.”

Blue eyes opened to slits.

“We’re here.”

He looked at the cottage. Then at the bougainvillea.

“I don’t think I’m doing very well.”

“No.”

“Thought so.”

His eyes closed.

“Don’t.”

They reopened.

“Wasn’t.”

“You absolutely were.”

“I was blinking.”

“That’s not how blinking works.”

He seemed to consider this.

Then his knees buckled again.

“Inside.”

The cottage had seemed charming when I rented it. Small, whitewashed, quiet. The sort of place travel listings called rustic when they meant the plumbing occasionally had opinions.

It sat above Cala Verde beneath a terracotta roof, green shutters open to the sea breeze and bougainvillea steadily attempting to swallow one wall. A faded salt-ward marked the front lintel, peeling at one corner.

Twenty-three days of me had changed the rest.

Books lay facedown because bookmarks required planning. A towel had occupied the veranda railing since yesterday. Inside, a half-finished puzzle covered the dining table, and my laptop remained zipped beneath the window.

I had opened it exactly twice since arriving.

Both times by accident.

Marco stopped at the threshold.

His weight shifted against me as his gaze swept the room.

Windows. Hallway. Kitchen. Back door.

Then the sofa, the misplaced books, my straw hat hanging from a chair.

His shoulders loosened.

Only slightly.

“Nothing,” he said before I could ask.

Not a lie.

Not the whole truth either.

I let it go.

The guest room was less encouraging. My suitcase covered the bed, two dresses hung from the wardrobe handle, and books occupied the chair.

Marco leaned against the frame.

“This is the guest room?”

“It has aspirations.”

I shoved the suitcase beneath the bed and found a clean towel.

Clothing was harder.

Marco was, as previously established, unnecessarily large.

The only possibility was a grey shirt Cami’s brother had left after helping me move a table. I tossed it to him.

“Yours?”

“Do I look like I wear that size?”

His gaze flicked down me before he could stop it.

His ears reddened.

“No.”

“Good answer.”

“What about trousers?”

“More complicated.”

He looked at his own clothes, drying stiff with blood.

“I’ll ask Cami.”

“Who’s Cami?”

“A friend.”

The word came easily for someone I’d known eighteen days. Moira apparently operated on accelerated friendship.

I handed him the towel.

“Bathroom. Sit down if you get dizzy. Don’t lock the door.”

His eyebrows rose.

“You’re very comfortable giving orders.”

“I’ve been told.”

“By who?”

My hand stopped on the door.

“People with poor attitudes.”

“Many?”

“An exhausting number.”

I left before he could ask another question.

Behind me, he laughed.

Quietly.

For some reason, I noticed.

---

I found my phone beneath yesterday’s newspaper.

Calling the clinic was obvious.

Calling the police should have been too.

My thumb hovered over the screen.

Someone had restrained Marco. Drugged him, or at least put enough needles into his arm to leave marks. Hurt him badly enough that the blood on his clothes should have belonged to a dead man.

Whoever had done it might reasonably expect him to be dead.

The shower started down the hall.

I called Santa Isla Medical instead.

“Near drowning,” I told the receptionist, looking at the blood smeared across my forearm. “And memory loss.”

She told me to bring him in.

The shower stopped just as I ended the call.

Silence followed.

One second.

Two.

Three.

I was moving before I decided to.

My hand closed around the bathroom handle.

“Marco.”

“I’m alive.”

I stopped.

Water dripped somewhere inside.

“That took too long.”

“I dropped the soap.”

“You were silent.”

“I was retrieving it.”

“From another island?”

A pause.

“Do you want a detailed explanation?”

“No.”

“Good.”

I released the handle.

My pulse took longer to settle.

Annoying.

“Lucy?”

“What?”

“I’m going to need trousers.”

“Working on it.”

“And food.”

“You ate.”

“I know.”

Genuine confusion entered his voice.

“I’m hungry again.”

Of course he was.

---

Marco emerged fifteen minutes later in the grey shirt and a towel.

The shirt fit in the loosest interpretation of the word, pulling across his shoulders and ending well above his wrists. His blond hair had dried into unruly waves.

Without the blood on his face, he looked younger.

More ordinary.

Except every bruise was gone.

I stared at the place one had darkened his cheek.

“You’re doing that thing,” he said.

“What thing?”

“Looking at me like I’ve done something strange.”

“You’ve done several strange things.”

“I don’t remember doing any of them.”

“Convenient.”

His stomach growled.

I turned toward the kitchen before he saw my mouth twitch.

“Sit.”

“I can help.”

“Sit.”

“Lucy.”

I opened the refrigerator.

“Marco.”

The scrape of a chair followed.

Good.

I pulled out eggs, tomatoes, rice, and leftovers from something Cami’s mother had sent over.

“How many eggs?”

“Two?”

I looked at him.

“Four.”

I took out six.

“Optimistic.”

“Prepared.”

Butter hissed across the pan while I chopped tomatoes.

“Knife,” Marco said.

I glanced at him. “What?”

“Your thumb. Put it behind your fingers.”

I changed my grip.

Not because he was right.

He was.

Marco went still.

“You knew that.”

“I know how to hold a knife.”

“You don’t know where you live.”

“Apparently knife safety was more important.”

The humor left his face.

“How much can someone forget and still remember things?”

The kitchen quieted around the question.

“Personal memories aren’t the same as learned skills.”

“You know that?”

“Most people do.”

I scraped the tomatoes into the pan.

“Right.”

He didn’t believe me.

That was fine.

He ate everything I put in front of him and still looked hungry afterward.

“Where are you putting it?”

Marco looked down at himself.

“I don’t know enough about myself to answer that.”

A laugh escaped me.

His eyes lifted.

Something changed in them when I laughed.

I decided not to examine it.

Instead, I tossed him a mango.

He caught it one-handed.

Cleanly.

We both looked at his hand.

“Good reflexes,” I said.

“Apparently.”

“Knife safety. Reflexes. Sarcasm.”

“Building quite the résumé.”

“Not enough to identify you.”

His smile faded.

My phone sat between us.

I picked it up.

“Let’s try.”

---

We searched for nearly an hour.

Missing-person notices. News reports. Social media. Marco plus every useful description we could think of.

Blond. Blue eyes. Tall.

I suggested nuisance.

He objected.

No photograph matched him. No desperate post from a parent, sibling, partner, or friend. No article about a missing tourist.

Nothing.

Outside, Moira continued without us. A delivery truck rattled down the road. Someone called to a neighbor. The chapel bell carried faintly over the hill.

Marco stared at the blank search field.

“No one is looking for me.”

“We don’t know that.”

“If I had a family—”

“You don’t know how long you’ve been missing.”

“If someone cared—”

“Marco.”

His thumb pressed into the mango until a crescent formed beneath his nail.

I took it from him before he crushed it.

“No conclusions without evidence.”

He gave a short laugh.

“You say that like it’s a rule.”

“It is.”

“Whose?”

“Mine.”

I cut the mango and handed him half.

His gaze dropped to my grip on the knife.

Then returned to my face.

“Eat.”

“Is that also a rule?”

“Currently.”

This time, he didn’t argue.

---

Cami brought her brother’s clothes later that afternoon and extracted a promise that I would explain the mysterious man eventually.

Marco barely stayed awake long enough to try on the trousers.

The moment his head touched the guest-room pillow, he was gone.

I stood in the doorway longer than necessary.

His ruined jacket hung over the chair. A borrowed shirt lay folded beside it. My suitcase had been shoved beneath the bed to make room for him.

Evidence of another person.

In my space.

I wasn’t accustomed to that.

I closed the door halfway.

An hour passed.

Then two.

I read the same page of my book four times.

By the time the sun dropped behind the palms, turning the cottage walls gold, I decided I should check whether he’d developed a fever.

Medical responsibility.

Entirely.

I pushed open the guest-room door.

Heat met me.

Not oppressive.

Just wrong.

The rest of the cottage had cooled with evening, but the room held the warmth of late afternoon.

Marco slept on his side, breathing evenly.

I crossed to the bed and pressed the back of my hand to his forehead.

Very warm.

My gaze moved to the chair.

The towel he’d used after his shower hung over the back. I had seen him leave it there wet enough to darken the wood.

I picked it up.

Dry.

Not mostly dry.

Bone dry.

Still warm.

I went very still.

Marco exhaled.

Something flickered between his fingers.

Blue.

So faint I might have mistaken it for moonlight.

Then gold threaded through it.

A flame no larger than the head of a match curled once over his knuckle.

And disappeared.

Marco slept through the whole thing.

I looked at his hand.

Then at the dry towel in mine.

Outside, the sea moved softly against the cliffs.

Twenty-three days of peace.

Apparently that had been enough.