With Every Breath (Sea Swept #2) (10 page)

After a moment, I hear footsteps behind me.

“I get that, okay? All I meant is …” Yasmin catches my arm, and I pause to see her frown up at me. “All I meant is that your health is more important than money.”

“Without money, you won’t have your health for very long,” I say.
 

Yasmin makes a face. “I guess. But without your health, what’s the point of money?”

“To hire the best damn doctor in the world to fix you.”

She ducks her head. “Maybe there’s no one who can fix you.”

“Of course someone can fix you. They can fix everyone these days.” It’s a ridiculous thing to say, but this is a dumb argument. Why is she getting so upset that I care about my job?

“No they can’t!” Her voice rises. “I—”

“We come from different worlds, okay?” I interrupt. “You probably had this perfect childhood, and now you have this perfect future with your scholarship and your nice house and your parents and your sister, so stop assuming that everyone else—”

“Sofia’s dead.”
 

That stops my rant cold. Did she just … ? I wait for her to clarify, but she only stares at me, wide-eyed, looking almost more surprised than I feel. Maybe she hadn’t meant to share that until I provoked her.
 

“My sister,” Yasmin whispers after a moment. Her dark eyes are stormy, filled with the pain I’d glimpsed earlier. “She died almost a year ago.”

Suddenly I realize that’s why she was so interested in my mother the other night. I could ask why she hadn’t said so in the first place, but I already know how hard it is to utter words like
she died
.

“Shit,” I say quietly. “What happened?”

At that, Yasmin’s mouth begins to quiver. She slumps against the wall of the alley.

“No one could fix her,” she says raggedly, and puts her hand over her eyes.
 

Her anger is gone, the annoyance and fiery attitude evaporated. Her shoulders start to tremble. Yasmin looks beaten now. She looks like one sharp breeze could dissolve her into a million pieces.
 

She looks like she needs a goddamned hug.
 

I shouldn’t be the one to give it to her, because she’s my employee, and I barely know her, and two seconds ago we were practically shouting at each other. But I’m the only one here. She’s hurting, and …
 

Screw it. I can’t be an ass about this, not when I know what it’s like. Stepping forward, I pull Yasmin close and wrap my arms around her.

Chapter 9

Yasmin

I’m enveloped in West’s strong arms, and it’s all too much. I’d almost managed to get my impending tears under control, but his sympathy breaks my hold on them. Suddenly I’m crying into his shirt, deep, wracking sobs.
 

Why was I even picking a fight with West, anyway? I’m so stupid. Sofia is dead—
dead
—and arguing over health versus money isn’t going to bring her back. Nothing will. Sofia will never traipse through the dusty streets of a foreign country in search of fun things to photograph, like papayas at the markets. She’ll never drink a beer with me in a Mexican beach bar like I did with my new coworkers. She’ll never get to do anything ever again, and it kills me that I’m here, trying to complete her checklist for her.
 

Sometimes I think I should be the one in the ground, because Sofia would have done more with her life than I’m doing with mine. Even when she was in the middle of her treatments, she had such big plans for the future, knew exactly what she wanted to be, while I’m lost, fumbling. And I want to apologize to her for that, but I can’t, which opens the hurt all over again.

West stands silently, his arms locked around me. Faintly, I become aware of his hand brushing the nape of my neck in a soothing rhythm. My sobs subside and I begin to quiet, but I don’t want to move yet. I’m exhausted by my tears, like I’ve survived a hurricane, and West’s embrace is sturdy, holding me up. His chest against my cheek is hard underneath his t-shirt. My arms are caught between us, my hands clutching his shirt, but other than that I can feel every inch of his sculpted torso.

Recalling how he looked with his shirt off last night, I start to feel warm, almost sunburned. Crap. I’m crying over my sister, but getting turned on by West. This is all sorts of wrong.

I straighten, and West lets his arms fall. I don’t dare look at him, instead swiping at my cheeks with my palms. Thank God I took off all of that Señorita Star Heart mascara, but I bet I look like a total mess.

“Sorry. This is embarrassing,” I say.
 

“This is nothing.” West’s voice is deep and quiet. “After my mom died, I wound up crying in front of my whole class at a school assembly. The football team called me Cry Guy for a year.
That’s
embarrassing.”

I glance up to see his rueful smile, and my own lips lift a little.
 

“Ouch,” I murmur. But I don’t know what else to say to make this less awkward. There is a big damp spot on his T-shirt where I cried on him, and I know my eyes must be red and watery.
 

“You feeling better?” he asks.

I nod. I do feel better, lighter. I’d been holding so much inside of me for so long.
 

“Sofia is why I’m here,” I find myself explaining. “On board the
Radiant Star
, I mean. She always wanted to work as a photographer. It was her dream.”

West’s brow furrows. “Her dream was to take photos of passengers in various stages of sunburned inebriation?”

That makes me laugh, which surprises me because I didn’t think I had any laughter left in me at the moment. I shake my head.

“No, but I didn’t really qualify for any other photography jobs. I only had one semester of it, plus whatever tricks I picked up from Sofia.”

He studies me. “You couldn’t have gone to grad school and done photography on the side?”

He’s right. Of course he’s right. It’s not like I owe him an explanation, but I did cry all over his shirt and he’s still talking to me, so I guess he deserves an answer, such as it is. My fingers fidget with the straps of my camera bag.
 

“For the longest time, I wanted to be a clinical psychologist for sick kids and their families. You know, help people who were going through what mine did. That was
my
dream. But now … I don’t think I can do it. That’s why I’m here, instead of in grad school.”

“I’m not sure I follow,” West says after a moment.

My parents were confused too, when I told them I wanted to defer school a year. They thought the best thing for me was to dive into the future. They thought I was doing well, that I was moving on just fine. Hadn’t I aced my senior courses, after all? But even though almost a year had passed since Sofia’s death, I couldn’t manage to tell them how lost I was. Still am.

I struggle to put it into words. “It’s like … how am I supposed to help other people if I can’t help myself? I can’t even say Sofia’s name without crying. It’s like that part of me is broken.”

My eyes well up again and the alleyway blurs, but I swallow hard and stare at the ground until the urge to cry subsides. I hate crying. I especially hate that I’m crying in front of my boss.
 

Most of all, I hate that my sister is gone, and that I’ll never get her back.
 

I focus on each breath, in and out, until I’ve pulled myself somewhat together. Finally I raise my head. I’m sort of surprised that West is still here, that he hasn’t fled such a weepy drag of a conversation. But he is leaning against the other wall of the narrow alley, regarding me with a steady, solemn expression.

“There’s nothing wrong with you,” he says. “Everyone grieves differently.”

I know that, it’s in all my books. I know dozens of ways people grieve. None of them are helping me.

“I feel so lost,” I say. I should shut up, but the words won’t stop tumbling out. “I wanted to help people like my sister, help families like ours. But then Sofia died, and my parents and I stopped being able to talk about it. They kept busy with the charity they started in her name, and I kept busy with college. We hardly ever talk about her anymore, because when we do everyone winds up crying, and we’ve already cried so much that it’s less exhausting to not talk.” I wince, because I sound like I’m complaining about my parents, but I’m not. It’s just that after hearing them weep together at night, I can’t bear making them sad again by bringing up Sofia. And instead of finding a counselor at school to talk to, I made myself really busy instead.

“Yeah,” West says. “I know what you mean. My dad got so choked up whenever I mentioned my mom that eventually I stopped. But that felt even worse.”

Looking into his blue eyes, laced with shadows and old pain, it hits me that West really does know what I mean. He gets it. None of my friends at school did. They tried, but I saw how uncomfortable it made them when I was sad. Even my best friends Georgia and Parker, who were great and tried so hard to be there for me, couldn’t really do more than try to cheer me up. Not their fault; they just hadn’t been through it, and it’s not something I would wish on anyone.

West doesn’t look uncomfortable at all, and something inside me eases. I don’t have to pretend to be okay here, with him, because he already knows I’m not.

“I want to talk about her,” I say honestly, “but if I do, I wind up sobbing, and that makes people run away. But I want some way to remember her, to show the world that she existed. That’s why I need a photo from a bell tower.” I explain my photo collage project. “She had a notebook listing shots she never got to take. I’m going to take them for her.”
 

 
“That sounds like a really great memorial,” West says softly.
 

“In theory.” I make a face. “The hospital where Sofia got her treatments—she had acute leukemia—throws an art auction every year to raise money for research. It’s coming up in a couple months, and I’ve been meaning to donate the collage to the auction, but I can’t seem to get it right. I’ve been working on this for weeks, but the new pictures are nowhere near her level. She was an artist, and I’m just …”

“Just what?”

My eyes fill, and I look down at my feet so I won’t cry. My cute aqua wedges, which rarely fail to cheer me up, aren’t working their magic today. I take a ragged breath.

“I’m just a girl with an inherited camera.” And inherited dreams. I feel like I’ll never do either of them justice.
 

West leans across the alley to touch my hand. I glance up in surprise.

“I could help, if you want,” he says. “With the project.”

“You don’t have to,” I say, because he’s probably just offering to be nice.
 

“I don’t mind. Really.” West smiles at me, his blue eyes warm. “It actually sounds like fun.”

I should turn him down. I should do this project on my own—but I’m not Sofia and I’m definitely not an artist. I can imagine the look she’d give me if she saw the mess of a collage as it is right now. I want it to be something she’d be proud of.

“You wouldn’t mind?” I say.

“Not at all.” West cocks his head towards the end of the alley. “First, we’ll find you that bell tower.”

A little shakily, I nod and push myself off the cool bricks. We walk through the alley and into the dusty streets. West doesn’t speak, and I’m too embarrassed to say anything. I can’t believe I cried all over his shirt. I’m a little worried that nice-West will turn back into boss-West at any moment, but when he glances my way, his blue eyes are still warm as the Caribbean sea. It does something fluttery to my stomach, but I stifle the feeling—after all, he hooked up with Camelia, and I don’t want these flutters to grow into anything more.

A few blocks later, we walk into a little open square that smells of oranges. Along one side stretches an old building that looks like it might once have been a church. On one end, a bell tower rises into the sky.

“It’s been converted into a museum of local history,” West explains.

“It’s perfect,” I say, a grin spreading over my face. “How do we get in?”
 

“In?”

“Yeah, Sofia wrote that she wanted to take a picture from inside a bell tower. I think she was going for a different sort of perspective. Something about the lines of the bell. And, um, the tower.” This isn’t coming out right. If Sofia were here, she could explain this photography-speak so much better than I ever could.
 

West eyes the tower, then shrugs. “Let’s go in, then.”
 

We walk up to the entrance and pay for the museum admission, then step inside, where cool air conditioning breezes over our warm skin. Alcoves showcase artifacts and plaques describing the local history of the region. We browse for a few minutes before heading across the building to where the bell tower is situated. We round a corner, then stop; at the base of the bell tower’s stairs, a velvet rope blocks the doorway.
 

“Damn,” I mutter, disappointed. “It’s off limits.”

We stare at it for a moment.

“I don’t think they’ll notice if we’re quick,” West says.

“But we’re not allowed up there.”

“I didn’t take you for someone who gives up so easily,” West says. His lips curve upward, a wicked glint in his eye, and my stomach flips. “Come on.” He checks down the hallway and back the way we came, then steps over the rope and holds a hand out to me.

It’s not like I’ve never done anything illegal—hello, underage drinking at college—but overall I’m a pretty rule-abiding girl. For a moment I almost chicken out. But West’s grin is conspiratorial and contagious, and we’ve already paid seven dollars apiece, and I’m so close to Sofia’s bell-tower photo that it would be a letdown to stop now.

I grab West’s hand and jump over the velvet rope. We duck around another corner, then run up the stairs.

“Can’t you walk quieter?” West stage-whispers. “You sound like an elephant in those shoes.”

My wedges slap against my soles with each step, and do sound loud in the stairwell. My heart races at the thought of being discovered.