Safe in Clua

LAIA

If you ever leave me, you’d better pray to God I don’t find you.

Words that have woken me up in the middle of the night more times than I care to remember this last year.

Running from your past isn’t much fun, running from a past that has every intention of causing you actual bodily harm if it ever finds you? Really not fun.

Even if it has led me to Clua, the most picture-perfect little island I’ve ever seen.
I’ve never had a problem blending in before. Fading into the background has never been an issue. Until now. Here. Where the universe’s whole energy seems to be geared towards throwing me into the path of, I’m not gonna lie, possibly the most ruggedly handsome stranger I’ve ever had the pleasure of nearly plastering to a road.

Accidentally, I swear.

FELIX

Widower.

It’s what people see when they look at me. It’s what I see when I look in the mirror.

I had it all and it was taken from me. No way to make it better. No way to ever get it back. Most days I’ve come to terms with it. Most days I can block it out or fall into women that look like her. Women I can pretend are her for just a fraction of time.

Until Laia.

Until she crashed into my life and just kept on crashing. She’s nervous, and wary, and about as open to being with me as I am to being with her even if she does kiss me like she means it every, single time.

The best thing about her though? The thing can’t seem to make myself walk away from? She doesn’t know enough about my past to look at me like I’m broken.

But that’s the thing about pasts … they always catch up with you in the end.