“You didn’t,” I tell him, my words tripping on a boulder-sized lump lodged in my throat as his hand slips from my neck to fall at his side. “You’re here. You stopped them. I’m okay. You’re going to be okay, too, amor. Just hold on. Help is coming. Just hold on.”
I can’t even believe the things I’m saying to him because his pale irises are drifting from side to side like he can’t even see me anymore.
I lean over his face, my hair falling around us, hiding us in the same secret place we always shared, and draw my thumbs over his cheeks. “Just hang on, cariño. Try to look at me.”
“Isla.” He attempts to inhale again, but this time it’s even more shallow and labored, and his face is so cold and so pale, and he can’t even verbalize when his mouth forms the words, I’m sorry.
I can’t hold back the sob that explodes from me, and I hear Mamá silently petitioning all the saints of heaven, and Dios, por favor. Dios ayúdame. “Don’t waste your energy apologizing right now. It’s stupid. Just look at me, amor.”
And then he does. His eyes still and focus like lasers on mine, limpid and earnest, and his lips part again. “World without end…”
A hundred thousand images flood my mind over the course of mere seconds.
I’m three years old, he’s five, and we’re playing on a beach only a mile or two from here. He’s built us a castle from sand and shells and driftwood, and it’s the earliest memory I have.
“You see this, baby Isla?” he queries, picking up my chubby, little hand to place a palmful of tiny shells in it, which I use to mash into the sides. “This is my palace in Corwick, and this is the balcony where you can see the ocean. Your mama and papa are going to bring you here this autumn, and I’m going to show you the sunrise on that balcony. It’s so pretty, and you will never want to watch the sunrise anywhere else.”
Excitement bubbles in my tiny chest at the idea of going to a real castle, and I beam at him. I beam for so long, that he beams back and leans forward to plant a little, wet kiss on my forehead. “You are the sweetest little girl, you know that? You are my very favorite friend.”
Another second; another image.
I’m seven years old, he’s nine, and I’m shaken awake in the middle of the night by shouting voices, and I instinctively leap from my bed and crawl out my window.
I run blindly across the yard, barefoot and gasping on terrified tears, not even knowing where I’m going, but I’m suddenly climbing up a trellis and then slapping his window.
He appears only seconds later, dark brows drawn in alarm, and throws open the panes. “Isla? What’s going on?”
“Bad people are in my house! They’re going to hurt Papá!”
He immediately wraps his arms around my ribs and pulls me inside, then drags me to his bed and wraps all the blankets tight around me. “Just stay here. Bad people would never come here. We have diplomatic immunity.”
I squint at him, face half-hidden by the blankets. “What does that mean?”
He shrugs. “I don’t know, but mother and father are always saying it.” He climbs on top of the blankets and wraps his gangly arms and legs around me. “I think it means bad people would get extra punishment for messing with us, so that means they’ll stay away.” He holds me tighter. “So, if those people come back, you just come here like you did, and I will keep you safe.”
I wriggle in the blankets to turn and face him. “Promise?”
“Promise.”
Mamá is now silently weeping and pleading with God, and Malachi and I are still hidden behind the black curtain of my hair, and tears are dripping off my nose and onto his cheeks.
“...beyond my last breath…” he murmurs, his words even quieter, but his eyes don’t stray from mine.
Another second ticks by; another image surges to the front of my mind.
I’m thirteen years old, he’s fifteen, we’re on the beach again, and the heavens open up with torrential downpour. I shriek and dart for a half-hollowed dune about twenty yards from us. I reach it and turn to see him laugh and shake his head while he carries our towels and picnic basket to the temporary shelter.
“You know, my sweet little Isla,” he says coyly, standing right in front of me and then throwing a towel over both of our heads, “I know why you hate getting rained on.”
“Yeah, because it’s cold and wet,” I retort, full of sass while I tilt my chin up toward him.
“And because it’ll most assuredly melt you,” he adds. “Know why?”
I smile and shake my head, and he captures my chin between his thumb and forefinger. “Because you’re made of sugar.”
I snort. “That’s so cheesy.”
“No,” he returns, inclining his mouth to mine. “It’s sugary.”
We both giggle for a moment before he silences us with his lips parting over mine. My chest fills to overflowing just like it does every time he’s kissed me since the first time he did at the Christmas party. But this time, my heart is so full that I can’t stop the words before they spill out.
“I love you,” I confess with our lips still attached.
He smiles and lowers his forehead to mine. “I love you, too, my sweet Isla.”
Another second; another image.
I’m fifteen years old, he’s seventeen, and he has to leave for his university in Corwick in the morning. Clad only in moonlight and bedsheets, in the silent secrecy of my room, he braces his body above mine, and I hold him as close as humanly possible, and we break the last barrier that separates us.
The pain is sharp, but brief, and he strokes my hair, then my cheek. “I love you. I love you so much.”
Pain gives way to a strangely satisfying sensation that causes chills to scatter my arms. “I love you, too.”
“Are you okay, my sweet Isla?”
“Yes.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes. I promise.”
We move together, and learn together, and take a flying leap into adulthood before either of us are even technically adults.
Afterward, he’s wrapped around my back like he always has to shield me from my fears that lurked in the night, but this time there’s no separation from a cocoon of blankets wrapped around me, and only his warm skin against mine. And that’s when he first said it.
“World without end, and beyond my last breath, I will love you, my sweet Isla.”
Mamá is weeping louder now. Papá’s footsteps are pounding the floor. Joaquin is shouting our address for the third time. I’m still holding Malachi’s cheeks. We’re still hidden behind my hair, and tears are trickling down his temples from his half-lidded eyes that still haven’t strayed from me.
“... I will love you.”
At that, his lips close, and his eyes start to slowly blink.
“I know,” I murmur, because I do know. For all my life, I’ve known. And it’s only now, after going to hell and back, and landing right back in a whole different version of hell, that I know it never changed. “I know you will, but cariño. This isn’t that. This isn’t your last breath. You’re still breathing.” I release his cheek to press my hand to his chest. “See? I can feel it.”