“What were you trying to ask her?” Alejandra crossed her arms.
“Just for a date. Is she single?”
“Listen, she’s off limits. She has a lot going on. She’s not up for a one-night stand.”
Ilias placed a hand over his heart. “Who said I just wanted a one-night stand?”
Alejandra gifted him a flat stare. “I’ve known you since we were eleven. But I’ve known her since we were five. Just let her be. She needs to heal. She needs someone reliable.”
“Wait, that hurt. Iamreliable.”
“Unless you’ve changed in the past two years, you’ll have to prove it to me before you even try to have a chance with her,” Alejandra warned.
“Fine. I’ll be on my best behavior. But you could’ve warned me she was gorgeous.”
“All my friends are,” she replied with a grin.
“You just called me gorgeous?” Ilias teased.
“You’re not my friend,” Alejandra said, sticking out her tongue.
Ilias chuckled.
Yeah, they were friends. They had been for years now. Maybe she had been a better friend than he had over the past two years. Maybe she was right. He had left the circuit because he’d been too childish well into his lat twenties, too in love with partying, to the point where he’d had to quit drinking. Sure, he’d won medals and awards, but he hadn’t been truly happy, nor had he felt deserving of them.
He had been broken after his father’s death two years prior, shattered into pieces he barely recognized as himself. Grief had swallowed him at first—angry outbursts, sleepless nights, the weight of things left unsaid pressing on him. Slowly, he had faced it, piece by piece, through long therapy sessions and quiet days spent wandering the coasts of Morocco and Spain, retracing the steps of conversations he wished he could have back, trying to reconcile the last words he’d exchanged with his father. He had learned to sit with his pain, to listen to it instead of running, and in that patient reckoning, he had healed. If there was one person who truly understood what healing meant, it was Ilias. So he would let Sofia heal too—though not without teasing her a little. She seemed like she needed to loosen up a bit.
3
SOFIA
gata negra – Natalia Lacunza
To her utter annoyance,Sofia’s group had lost the clean-up challenge. She normally wasn’t a competitive person in those kind of settings, but watching Ilias win did something to her. He had that smug grin on his face. For people like him, everything came easy—charm, sponsorships, medals. Plus, he was aman. And men were her worst enemy at that moment. Was that childish? Probably.
Sofia shook her head. Why was she even thinking about that idiot of a surfer when the event had wrapped up and had been an undeniable success?
Around her, the volunteers were happy. Even the sponsors. The line at the Nereid Coffee Co. cart was long, and even people who hadn’t joined the clean-up were roaming around the sponsor stands grabbing something to drink, buying sustainable clothing, testing out that eco-skincare brand she loved.
Elvira, her friend and the co-founder of Salacia, had announced that they had sold out the whale tours for the next couple of weeks, which meant more exposure, and more funding.
Whale season was about to start, and Sofia wanted to be ready. Not just for the tours she was leading but for her research.
There was one study she had never run while at Neptune—the one she was finally ready to pursue to get her research back on track. More than a year had passed since her last paper, and the truth was, she had never published anything without Thomas’s name attached.
Just the thought made her want to throw up at her own stupidity. She’d trusted him so much and he’d just played her and her years of research.
She needed a goddamn publication with her name on it, something that would keep her hard-earned credibility afloat, instead of letting it sink beneath the flood of online comments from people questioning her expertise—all because of the content-creation side hustle that had somehow become her salvation.
She took a deep breath, pushing away all those thoughts, and scanned the crowd at Praia dos Pescadores, a tide of people drifting from sponsor stall to stall. She was searching for Alejandra, who was probably licking her own wounds—losing wasn’t in her vocabulary. Instead, she found Ilias, leaning back against a nearby stand with that infuriatingly smug smile.
“I won.”
“Good for you. But this wasn’t a competition.”
As he got closer, she had to tilt her head to meet his hazel eyes—eyes that were far too amused. His smug grin was practically weaponized as he leaned in, lowering himself closer to her height.
“Yet, I won,” he said.
