Chapter 486: I Like You the Most
The music was still soft in the background when we finally stopped dancing, and I realized I hadn’t thought about the steps once in the last several minutes. I had just followed him, and it had felt easy, like breathing.
The island nights were their own kind of beautiful. No city noise, no crowds, just the sound of the ocean and the wind moving through the trees. I had even stopped being afraid of the snakes a long time ago , they were just part of the landscape now, the way everything here eventually became familiar. The only thing that never got easier was the quiet when Vito was gone. No family. No friends. Just me and the teachers who spoke to me only in lessons and never once asked how I was doing.
So when Vito came, I became a different version of myself. Lighter. Like something that had been held under pressure finally got to surface.
That night, after my bath, I grabbed my pillow and pushed open his bedroom door without knocking.
He had just come out of the shower. A towel was wrapped low around his waist, water still clinging to his hair and shoulders, and he stepped back the second he saw me, startled in a way I didn’t fully understand. "What are you doing here?"
I climbed onto his bed and hugged my pillow to my chest. "I’m sleeping here tonight. What are we talking about? No bedtime story , tell me about the outside world instead."
He disappeared back into the bathroom, came out fully dressed, cleared his throat, and opened his mouth like he was going to say something important. I patted the spot beside me before he got there. He closed his mouth. Sat down. Pulled the blanket over himself and positioned himself as far to the edge as possible, which I found strange but didn’t comment on.
I turned off the lamp and immediately closed the distance between us, curling against his chest the way I always had when I was small. My legs found his waist and held on. He went completely rigid.
I pressed my face into his neck and sighed. He still smelled exactly the same , something clean and warm underneath everything else, something that had always meant safe. "Vito, you always smell so good."
He didn’t respond, but I felt him swallow. After a moment, he started talking , the outside world, the way the city moved, the things I’d missed. I listened for a while before I got to what I actually needed to ask.
"Have you seen Ethan? Elena? Are they okay?"
"They’re fine."
I bit my lip. "Can I see them? Even just once, from a distance. I won’t do anything. I just want to look at them." I nudged him when he stayed quiet. "Vito. Please."
He breathed slowly in the dark. "Stay still."
I didn’t. I pressed closer instead. "Not until you say yes."
Another long pause. Then, quietly: "A year from now, I’ll find a way to get you off this island."
"A whole year?"
It felt impossibly long. But I knew Vito kept his word. I let myself settle into that promise, let it carry me, and somewhere in the warmth of his presence I drifted off to sleep.
I don’t know how much later it was when I felt him try to shift away. Even half asleep, my arms tightened around his. "Don’t go."
He stayed. I felt his hand move to my face, just once, his fingers light against my cheek. His voice was so quiet I almost missed it. "Anna... I was never a good person to begin with."
I was already asleep before I could answer.
When I woke up, he was gone.
There was a letter on the pillow beside me. Short, careful, written in his handwriting. He had left again , faster than usual, without warning. But the promise was in the letter too, written out in plain words: one year.
After that, I had something to hold onto.
Every day I went to the cliff’s edge and looked out at the water. I watched the light change over the sea, morning and evening, and I waited. The island had become so much a part of me that even the snakes left me alone now without the repellent , sometimes one would wind up next to me on the rocks while I sat watching the horizon, resting its head on my leg like it was waiting too.
Sunrises and sunsets blurred together. And then, one morning, I saw a ship.
I ran down the mountain without stopping, my heart ahead of my feet the whole way. By the time I reached the shore I was breathless, and I cupped my hands around my mouth and shouted anyway.
"Vito!"
He had already seen me from the deck. I could tell by the way he was already looking. My hair had grown long, and I was in the white dress I’d put on that morning without knowing why, just some pull toward something clean and bright. Later he told me I looked like something that had grown wild out of the trees.
The second his feet hit the sand I launched myself at him. My arms went around his neck and I held on, grinning so hard my face hurt. "I’ve been waiting forever. Did you miss me?"
He steadied us both, and I felt something change in the way he was holding me , something careful and aware. His ears had gone red at the tips again. "Let go first."
"Not until you answer."
A pause. Then his voice, lower than usual: "I did."
I pulled back just enough to look at his face. He meant it. I could tell. I had spent enough years reading him to know when he was just saying what I needed to hear and when he actually meant something, and this was the second kind.
I rose onto my toes and pressed my face into his neck, breathing him in after a whole year of not having this. "I missed you too. Are you taking me away today?"
He flicked my nose lightly. "Do you miss me, or do you just want to leave?"
"Both," I said honestly. "Can we go right now?"
He laughed , a quiet sound, rare enough that I always noticed it when it happened. He ruffled my hair. "Alright."
I blinked. I had expected negotiation, conditions, a maybe. Not that. I pulled back and looked at him again to make sure he meant it, and when I saw his face I went up on my toes and kissed his cheek before I could think about it.
"You’re the best. I like you the most."
Something moved across his expression , quick, quiet, gone almost before it landed. He looked away toward the water.
But I saw it.
