The summer nights in Spain were thick with heat, a sultry embrace that clung to María’s skin as she slipped out of her father’s house. In Deià, where old Catholic rules still held sway, women were expected to be modest, devout, their bodies hidden under long skirts and high collars. But at eighteen, María was a spark in the dark, her heart pounding with a hunger she couldn’t confess in church. The village buzzed with gossip about the European tourists—bold women in bikinis, men with easy smiles—who flocked to the island each summer, their freedom a silent taunt to everything María had been taught.
She moved quickly, her white sundress catching the moonlight as she leaped from rock to rock along the cove’s edge. The sea whispered to her, its waves soft and teasing, lapping at her bare feet
