“It was like nothing life had ever prepared me for. It was terrifying the first few times I went up in the air. The first time I shot a plane down, knew I’d killed a man . . .” His voice drifts off for a moment. “I didn’t think you could get used to a thing like that.

“After a while, though, you do get used to it. You know each time you go up that you may die, but you make peace with it, I suppose, learn to adjust to sitting next to a man in the bar one day, knowing he probably won’t come home the next. And then it’s all over, and miraculously, you didn’t die, and you go home.

“Everyone wants to thank you for your service, and they call you a hero, and you struggle to find where you fit in this world again.”

Our gazes lock.

“You go to balls, and parties, and drink champagne, and dance with pretty girls, but there’s always a piece of you back there, amid the bombs, thinking of the lives you could have saved, but didn’t, the sons, husbands, and fathers that should have come home, but didn’t. And you begin to wonder why you were saved when all those good men weren’t, if there’s some reason for your life, something you’re meant to do to pay back the debt you owe. It eats at you, over and over again, and it’s hard to get those thoughts out of your head. It’s hard to find people who understand.”

Do I really even stand a chance?

It was so much easier to discount him as just another Palm Beach playboy, more style than substance, more privilege than responsibility, but the truth of it is in front of me, swimming in those blue eyes that are clearly in another time, in another place, haunted by images he can’t erase, sounds that wake him in a cold sweat throughout the night.

I still hear the firing squads in La Caba?a executing Cubans with terrifying precision, still smell the stench of death, damp, and filth in the hellhole of a prison; the noise of the crowd cheering and jeering as men were condemned to death in the stadium wakes me in the middle of the night. It’s the sound of fear that lives with me now, the refrain of uncertainty: a whirring engine as a plane takes flight, a body hitting the ground, a car screeching away.

“I’m sorry,” I reply, knowing how little comfort the words offer.

“I know.”

Silence descends, a prick of discomfort filling me, the sensation that he has indeed uncovered another one of my secrets—a real one—the pain beneath the diamond smile.

“They’re not staring anymore,” I comment, struggling to fill the silence with something innocuous and impersonal. Something safe.

“Who?”

“The rest of the party.”

There’s that smile again. “I didn’t notice.”

The song ends and he stills.

It feels unnatural to stop, to pull away from this man.

“Thanks for the dance,” he says, his tone formal compared to the intimacies we shared moments ago, the veneer returned once more.

Which version of him does his fiancée know and love? The man with ghosts in his eyes or the composed one standing before me now?

There’s faint pressure at my elbow, and I don’t have to look to know Eduardo is standing at my side. The evidence is etched all over Nick’s expression.

Nick inclines his head, not offering any words for Eduardo, a glance passing between them over my head. Seeing them together like this, I am struck by the sensation that Eduardo is a boy, whereas Nick Preston is a man.

And then Nick is gone, walking away from me once more, all broad-shouldered, long-limbed grace.

Eduardo hands me the champagne flute. My fingers tremble as I grasp the stem.

“I almost feel sorry for the man,” he comments.

My gaze follows Nick’s retreating back until the party swallows him up and he disappears completely.

“Why?”

“You’ll break his heart eventually,” Eduardo predicts.

“I highly doubt that.”

If I had a heart left to lose, I’d fear he’d eventually break mine.

chapter four

Through the grapevine, word spreads that Nick Preston has left Palm Beach for Washington D.C., garnering political capital in preparation for the upcoming election in November. Weeks pass, the season insufferably dull in his absence. His pretty little fiancée remains behind, our paths crossing at a distance throughout the social whirl even if we do not speak. She is shepherded around Palm Beach by a host of Prestons and Davieses; her own prestigious surname is enough to elevate her to a distinct social stratum from the sphere I inhabit.

Eduardo shows up on my doorstep one February afternoon, orchids in hand.

I shake my head at the sight of my favorite flowers, a smile playing at my lips; his reduced circumstances notwithstanding, Eduardo always did have style down to an art form.

“Come for a drive with me,” he says when he greets me.

The flowers are likely more of a bribe than an attempt at romance, and if he thinks I can be bought with a pretty pair of orchids, he’s sorely mistaken. Then again, the possibility of getting into mischief—and Eduardo always guarantees mischief—is far more entertaining than my alternative plans for the day: reading fashion magazines on the couch next to Isabel and listening to my mother bemoan our lack of prospects. That she’s said little of the gossip surrounding my dance with Nick Preston speaks to how much our fortunes have fallen; even my mother realizes how far out of reach he is.

“Where will this drive take us?” I ask Eduardo.

“To visit a mutual friend. He wants to meet with you again. He’s interested in your proposition and wishes to discuss the logistics.”

I’d almost given up on the CIA man in the intervening month between our first meeting and now.

“He wants to move forward?”

“He’s definitely interested. I told him we’d meet him for lunch.”

“And you assumed I’d be available?”

“I assumed you’d be bored out of your mind and looking for an adventure.” Eduardo holds open the car door for me. “Are you coming?”

I get into the car, the flowers dangling from my fingers.

* * *

? ? ?

The wind from the open road blows my hair as we speed down the highway. The weather is a bit cooler than I’d like; while many flock to Palm Beach to escape the colder weather up north, it’s nothing compared to Cuba’s tropical climes. I almost ask Eduardo to put the top up, but the question sticks in my throat as we whip around a curve.

Eduardo drives with the same carefree approach he adopts with everything else in life, and it is both his best and his worst quality. When you are along for the ride, that lassitude opens up a whole new world of possibilities. When you are caught up in whatever wreck his carelessness has caused, it is his tragic flaw. When I was younger, I fancied him a bit; indeed, among our set and contemporaries, I’m fairly certain having a crush on Eduardo Diaz was a rite of passage of sorts. The three years between us gave him an air of sophistication, the closeness between our families a constant comfort. He was always there in the background of my life in Cuba, as much a part of my memories as the sound of the waves off the Malecón, my sisters’ laughter, my brother’s voice.

I stole a kiss once when we were kids playing in the backyard of my house in Miramar and swore him to secrecy later. I never would have heard the end of it had Alejandro found out I’d kissed his best friend. Does Eduardo even remember? The edges of the memory blur. It feels like such a long time ago, as though the moment belongs to a different girl.

“Where are we meeting him?” I raise my voice to be heard over the sound of the wind and the waves near the road.

“A little restaurant up in Jupiter. Nothing fancy. He thought it would be better this way,” Eduardo shouts back.

“How well do you know Mr. Dwyer?”

“Not well at all,” Eduardo admits, his fingers strumming the steering wheel as the little car takes another sharp turn. My stomach lurches with the movement even as I welcome the speed, even as I weigh the odds of waking with a wicked head cold in the morning. Why are the things that are the most fun invariably the worst for you?

“And yet, you trust him.”

“I wouldn’t say I trust him, but we don’t have many options available to us. He’ll probably cast us aside when we’re no longer useful, but at the moment, our interests align. Hopefully, they will continue to do so for long enough for us to get what we want out of the deal.”

“And if we don’t get what we want?”

“I don’t know. We’re working on some other things.”

“Like what?”

“You’ll see.”

“So there are secrets between us now?”

He shoots me a sidelong glance. “You tell me. What did you and Senator Preston discuss during your dance?”

I turn away from him, casting my gaze out to sea.

“Nothing of interest.”

He chuckles softly. “Now why don’t I believe that? I saw the way he looked at you. That certainly wasn’t nothing.”

“We spoke of the weather. Of the party, the social season.”