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“I love you too,” I say and it’s true, I love him so much it hurts me. Emilio’s the only person in this world that cares about me, and I’ll do anything for him, anything at all.
I’ll feel any pain.
Sink into any pleasure.
I’ll give him every part of me and more.
“What do we do now?” I ask, leaning my forehead against his. My Emilio, my love, my entire world.
There’s no going back from here.
There’s nothing else for me but him.
“Now, we rebuild.”
He kisses me again in the moonlight and I let myself tumble deep into his lips.
Chapter30
Kaye
My shovel bites into the blackened ground. I toss it into a wheelbarrow and Dirk drags it off with a nod, adding the load into a waiting truck.
The remains of Calico House stand around us like a charred skeleton.
Everyone’s working: Jayson, Dom, Paola, Lesley, Dirk, and a few guys from the other societies that offered to pitch in. Emilio wipes his forehead and winks at me, the sunlight glittering off his sweat-drenched chest, as he digs out more burned remains.
My back’s aching. My feet are exhausted. My arms are burning from days of cleaning, and we still have days more to go.
I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else in the world.
Calico House was like a friend to these people. It was like a child to Emilio. Cleaning the remains is hard for them, especially when they come across signs of their old life: clothes, ripped pictures, broken laptops, books and movies and more. It’s all destroyed, mashed into a pulp from the rain, mixed with mud and ash, but beneath it all the concrete foundation of the house remains in place.
Undamaged and unbroken. Somehow, it survived the extreme heat of the fire.
Emilio says it’s a minor miracle. I’m not sure I believe in miracles, but I do believe in him, and if he says we can rebuild then we’re going to try.
After a while, we take a break. I join Emilio in the shade of some palms while everyone else grabs water and sandwiches for lunch. I lean against him and breathe his smell and he wraps his arms around me, and we sit there for a little while, not saying anything, only looking at what’s left of the house.
“Once that’s all cleaned up, the hard part begins.”
I laugh gently. “You don’t mix words.”
“It’s going to be a shitshow. Every bit of material we’ll need will have to come over by boat.”
“Good thing you found one already.”
He sighs and nods. “Good thing, but it nearly cleaned us out. In the meantime, I’ll have to do smuggling runs.”
“You won’t do them alone anymore at least.”
“You’re coming with me? Here I was thinking you’d never set foot on a boat again.”
“The storm wasn’t great, but I liked what happened after.”
He smirks and kisses me, biting my lower lip. “I bet you did.”
“Besides, we’re in this together now, right?”
