My head snapped up to Ollie, whose still and asleep with a blanket pulled halfway up his face, his eyes closed.
“Well?”
It was bright, and I squinted my eyes as emotions threatened to spill out over the stern and into the blue waters. “Love is forever,” I confirmed, easing his troubled mind. “We are forever.”
The boy smiled, turned his back to me, and took off running across the ship to his mom, shouting, “They’re not dead, mum. They’re in love, forever!”
“Oh, that’s good, dear,” his mom celebrated, sending me a wave.
I waved back and curled back under the covers, eyes wide open with every hair raised over my chilled skin, gazing out into the sea with an unbidden smile.
With Ollie, I’d learned to believe in the impossible, in the unexplainable. With Ollie, magic existed. I could have simply marked it down as a coincidence, but Zeke’s presence washed over me, and I knew there was nothing else it could’ve been. Zeke had visited me, and perhaps it was his way of letting me know he would watch us get married from the Heaven’s above.
Ollie stirred against me, breaths coming out as light moans as he woke. “Did you miss your sunrise, love?”
“Yeah, but I got something better.”
After thirty-six hours of sea, I was ready to be back on solid ground. The ship had docked in Bilbao, Spain at approximately six in the morning, and it was still dark as we stepped off the ship. Jake had kept his word, and he and Mia had stayed awake all hours of the night, planning the small wedding while pounding drink after drink. Both of them dragged behind Liam and me, Jake whining and Mia hiding how terrible she felt under my fedora as she quietly kept up.
Rolling the suitcase behind me, I paused to adjust the backpack over my shoulder. “Come on, love. Only a few more feet, and you’ll have your steaming hot coffee.”
Mia grunted, notifying me that she was still alive. I glanced back and saw her tangled brown hair, loose ripped jeans, and combat boots, tiny inside one of my hoodies that was three times her size.
We reached the snack bar at the port, and Liam and I grabbed four coffee’s as Mia and Jake took a seat at the closest available table. It was still dark, everyone half asleep. “We’re in fucking Spain,” I dropped a coffee in front of Jake as he groaned, “time to wake up, mate.”
“I hate you, Jake,” Mia stated, and I chuckled, handing her the coffee.
“It’s October seventh. We have three days to make it to Gibraltar to get married on ten-ten-twenty-twenty. We could either take a train across Spain, which takes thirteen hours or rent a car, which would take ten if we drive straight through,” I explained. “I say we take a car. It’ll be cramped, but we’ll have more freedom.”
Liam raised his cup to his mouth. “Car sounds good to me.”
“Mia?” I asked, moving my hand under her hair to massage the back of her neck.
“Yeah, I’m down for the car.”
“Sun rises in,”—I clicked on my phone and looked at the time— “two hours. We can grab breakfast and do a little sightseeing before we head out.”
Enterprise didn’t open until after eight, so we took a taxi to Casco Viejo, and I’d asked the driver to drop us off at his favorite place to have breakfast. My Spanish was a little rusty, his English newly developed, but together, we made it work. My three traveling companions fell asleep in the backseat as I struck a conversation with the driver. Talking to strangers had always been easy for me, as long as it wasn’t in crowded areas. I thrived in intimate environments such as this—just me and Antonio, with an adventure before us and sleepy heads behind us.
In the twenty-five minutes to Casco Viejo, I’d learned Antonio just celebrated his sixty-fourth birthday with his seven children, and fifteen grandchildren, with one more on the way. He’d lived in Spain his entire life, born in Madrid, and moved to Bilbao on a whim. He had dark eyes with unruly grey strands curling from his lively brows under his Panama style hat. At around seven in the morning, his smile brightened the narrow streets of the city before the sun did.
“El Tilo de Mami Lou,” Antonio announced, pulling the taxi in front of the Belgian bakery. “Perfecto, para la dama con un paladar dulce, eh?” he wiggled his bushy brows.
I’d told him my fiancé had a sweet tooth, and the old chap delivered. “Perfecto, gracias, Antonio.” And I tipped him extra from the currency I’d exchanged back on the ferry.
Mia’s eyes lit up as soon as we walked into the bakery with black and white checkered flooring under our feet. A glass display case before us held cupcakes, cakes, pastries, and loaves of specialty homemade bread. The quaint bakery had a baroque-style interior with bistro tables and chairs. I ordered both of us cappuccinos, complete with a dollop of whipped cream and cinnamon, and two glazed croissants. Mia added a slice of chocolate pumpkin bread before we found seating outside the building, situated across from the beautiful Arriaga Theatre, lit up by spotlights in the early dark of the morning.
“Oh-my-God,” Mia moaned after her first bite into her croissant, “I needed this so bad.”
“Ah, she’s awake.” I laughed, sipping the cappuccino. Mia nodded, then took another bite.
About forty seconds later, her croissant was gone, and she was already licking the melted chocolate chips from her fingers as Liam pardoned himself to use the loo.
We spent an hour walking up and down the Riverwalk beside the Estuary of Bilbao, stopping when the sun peeked above the historic buildings. Pale pinks, blues, and yellows bounced off the water from the changing sky, and the vintage lamp posts lining the channel went out, one by one, as the daylight arrived. A new day, a new adventure. I caged Mia inside my arms against the railing, her hair whipping under the fedora, as we admired the moment, taking it all in. I dropped my eyes to see hers closed with a lazy smile complimenting her face and dipped down, my mouth grazing the rim of her ear. Her beauty mixed with the morning breeze stole my breath, and suddenly, I forgot what I was going to say.
With marvel lit in Mia’s brown eyes, the four of us walked up and down the seven streets of medieval Casco Viejo. Her camera dangled from around her neck, snapping picture after picture. We stopped and ate lunch at the Mercado de la Ribera, which is a traditional market composed of local farmers inside the walls of the Art Deco-styled building. The entire space was open, and natural light poured in through the ceiling, reflecting off the luminous flooring as merchants and travelers busily exchanged small talk and money by the delicate floral interior. We didn’t stay long and crammed a lot in half a day before we rented a black suburban at a nearby Enterprise before taking off to our next destination.
Though there was another route almost an hour faster, we took the one leading us through the city of Madrid. In the rearview mirror, I glanced back where Mia and Jake fell fast asleep shortly after pulling out of the Enterprise. “They’ll sleep the entire way to Madrid,” I said to Liam beside me, who had his window down and eyes on the busy road out in front of us.
Never in my wildest dreams did I expect to be sitting beside Liam on my way to get married. During our time at Dolor, the two of us never particularly cared for one another. It wasn’t until I slapped him, waking him up from denial when we finally turned a page and developed a friendship. Liam cared for Jake, and Jake was one of Mia’s best friends, so in return, I couldn’t have left the two out on an important day. Though the bloke had fucked my fiancé once upon a time, that was water under the bridge. Her old habits … Which died hard once I came along and showed her the truth. I’d always felt the light in her, it illuminated mine.