The Most Beautiful Girl in Cuba - Chanel Cleeton Page 0,58

loosely, his body is slighter than I remember.

“Are you well?” he asks me, worry in his eyes. I know what I must look like, all the changes that have occurred since he left. I nod jerkily, words still failing me, and out of the corner of my eye I catch sight of Carbonell and Decker standing outside the open door.

Decker and Carbonell hesitate, before looking to me, and I offer them another quick nod to let them know all is well and to be on their way. They file past us, their heads ducked, hats pulled low, not making eye contact with Mateo.

The hallway is once again empty now that they’re gone, and Mateo takes a step toward me, and then another, stopping when we are close enough that the skirt of my ragged dress brushes against his serviceable trousers.

He tugs on my hand, leading me to the door nearest him, the room he originally stepped out of, and it is the most natural thing in the world for me to do as I have since we were children.

I follow him.

* * *

—

Mateo closes the door to his hotel room.

I can’t resist the urge to reach out, placing my palm against his cheek, the beard he’s grown since he’s been gone scratchy beneath my fingertips. My fingers drift to his mouth, tracing the shape of his lips.

“Marina,” he breathes.

Tears fill my eyes.

I’ve been holding it together for so long, trying to do my part, to take care of our daughter, his mother, to be strong as the world around me falls apart, but now the sight of him before me is my undoing.

“Is everyone else well?” he asks me urgently, his voice low. We are alone, but in Havana and throughout Cuba now, the walls have ears, and neither one of us can forget the precariousness of our positions.

“Yes. They’re both well.”

Relief fills Mateo’s expression. “And you, Marina? How are you?”

What is there to say? I can’t add to his worries by telling him the truth, how we are hanging on by a thread in the camp.

“I am healthy,” I reply. “I have been fortunate. We all have.”

“You don’t know how many nights I’ve wondered if you were all safe,” he says.

“We’re safe.”

He squeezes my hip reassuringly, leaning forward so his forehead rests against mine. His hand drifts lower, his touch instantly shifting to something else entirely, his fingers stroking my hip, clasping the folds of my dress.

The time apart has created a distance between us we’ve never experienced before. I’ve changed in these past years, too, life in the camp altering me, making my bones more pronounced, my cheeks gaunt, my skin sallow. Vanity hardly seems to matter, though, considering the most salient point:

We are both alive when so many are not.

Not a moment has gone by when I haven’t felt the absence of him acutely.

We reach for each other in a frenzied tangle of limbs, pretense abandoned.

Mateo’s mouth is at my neck, his teeth scraping over my skin, my back hitting the wall as he reaches between us, hiking up my skirts as I grapple with his trousers.

His lips find mine, and I reach up, threading my fingers through his hair, pulling his head down toward me, giving me better access to deepen the kiss, the fire inside me that has been dormant for so long suddenly awakening.

I thought I’d lost the ability to feel passion, another casualty of this war, but there’s something powerful about the two of us here, together, and for a moment, it’s as though we were never parted.

I would know him anywhere.

Mateo moans against my mouth, his body hardening against mine, whispered endearments breaking through between our kisses. His hands roam the planes of my body, and I am too far gone to care that the curves he once knew and loved have disappeared. I have become someone stronger than I imagined since he left, and it feels as though he is learning this new part of me as I am doing the same to him.

“Marina.”

Tears prick at the sound of my name falling from his lips, the familiarity of it taking me back to a different time even as his hands and mouth on my body hold me firmly to the present.

Mateo grips my hips, lifting my leg up, bracing me against the wall.

There’s some fumbling between us, hands brushing, a frenzy taking over, and then he thrusts inside me, our bodies one.

When we both find our release, he sags against me,