Sofia nodded, her hands crossed over the bare thighs her dress showed off. It had been a while since she’d dressed this way; after the press conference, she’d probably reserve it for more intimate moments with Aish. She liked her winemaker garb.
“The Consejo has asked, but I have declined, for now. I suddenly have an overbooked hospedería and wine member list with a two-year wait to get on it. Instead, I’ve asked my mother, Queen Valentina, to serve on the board and represent the interests of Bodega Sofia.”
Aish looked at her sharply. There was still so much she needed to share with him. Like the morning tour of the winery she’d given her mother, and the awkward but sincere conversation that their future could be different than their past.
“There’s a tremendous demand for Monte del Vino wines internationally. Will Bodega Sofia be able to satisfy it?”
Sofia grinned. “We won’t have to. Thanks to our new partnership with Mexico’s Trujillo Industries, the kingdom will be able to offer low-interest loans to anyone in the Monte interested in starting a new winery or modernizing older ones.” That’s the favor Sofia had called in, and the vice president of the company had answered with a yes in less than half a day.
Once again, Roman’s connection to industrialist Daniel Trujillo benefited a tiny kingdom a half a world away from Mexico. And yet, no one in the Monte had ever met the man.
Amelia turned her attention to Aish. Sofia looked at him, at the ocean waves and compasses that licked down his forearms, and marveled that he was there.
“Aish, you’d had a press conference planned when you were kidnapped. What did you want to say?”
“Mostly, I wanted to get the heat off Sofia. She didn’t do anything wrong. She has more integrity and bravery in her little finger than I have in my whole body.”
Sofia slipped her hand into Aish’s—because how could she not—then saw how the sound person wiped his eye, how the camera operator put a hand over her heart.
Aish continued, “I’d known since right before John died—I mean, when I thought he’d died—that he’d stolen songs. I didn’t know before then, but I also wasn’t following up on all the rumors. And I’ve got to take responsibility for that. So, I’m sorry to every hardworking musician who heard me sing a lyric or play a melody that you wrote. I’m relinquishing all royalties to Young Son’s songs; we’re gonna use it to pay those bands we stole from. And I’m...breaking up the band. Young Son is over.”
The squeeze on her fingers let Sofia know how hard this was for him. She squeezed right back. She’d be here for him.
“Will you continue to make music?” Amelia asked.
“Definitely,” Aish said immediately. “I can’t not. It’s going to be up to you guys to decide if you want to listen to it.”
Sofia squeezed his hand again, this time in excitement. Aish, on his own, out of the shadow of John and with no directives other than that of his fiery, artistic heart. She couldn’t wait to hear every song inside of him.
Amelia smiled, looked at them both through her big glasses. “So now, the question that everyone’s been waiting for...” She put up her hands. “What’s going to happen to #Aishia?”
Aish looked over at her.
“I don’t want to demand anything you’re not willing to give.”
Sofia took her hand from his and clasped both of hers in her lap. She could see the worry on Amelia’s face, saw the wide eyes of the camera person. She took a deep breath. She was about to declare to the whole world, adamantly and definitively, what she needed.
“From the beginning, Aish has literally worn his emotions on his sleeve,” she said. “I’m the one people are unsure about. I’d like to clear up any doubt about my feelings now.”
She pushed off the bar stool and stood. “I fell in love with Aish Salinger when I was nineteen years old. He broke my heart, and I swore to myself that I would never fall in love again.”
She began to lift the hem of her short dress. “I swore it as I walked into the tattoo shop in Madrid, six months after we’d parted.” She leaned on the wobbly legs of her wild child as she began to reveal her upper thigh. “I swore it as I showed the artist what I’d drawn, what I wanted her to ink on me.” She’d worn black, high-cut briefs, no more revealing than a swimsuit, but high enough to show what was on her hip. A hip she was showing to the world now, holding the skirt up on one side.
A hip she was showing to Aish.
“For those of you who don’t know,” she said, “Aish means fire. It means passion and inspiration.”
She looked down at it, at this constant reminder she’d inked on herself, thinking it meant one thing when it actually meant something else, this tattoo on the same spot where her mother had tried to cut away her ability to love. It was a flame two hands’ width long, at the bend of her thigh and up her waist, a gorgeous flame of yellow and oranges and blue black that reminded her of Aish’s hair. Of the star he’d inked into his chest.
Just beneath the flame, in simple black ink, was one word: Siempre.
Always.
She thought she wanted a reminder, forever, for always, that Aish’s love had burned and scarred. But the understanding that Aish hadn’t turned his back on her when she needed him, the belief that he would have been at her side in an instant, and the knowledge that he’d mourned her absence every day for the last ten years—just as she’d mourned his—helped her realize what her heart had been hiding.
She would never hide her brave, brilliant, loving heart again.
Keeping her skirt high, she turned her head and looked directly into Aish’s eyes. “I swore
