Page 196 of Modern Romance November 2024 5-8

Being here in Greece reminded her of how different Santos could be...and how different she could be with him. With him like this, she didn’t doubt him or herself. She didn’t let herself get sucked into those old, toxic thought patterns of feeling inadequate or unlovable. She didn’t want to get sucked back into it once—if—they returned to Seville.

Would knowing this about him make enough of a difference?

‘Ready to snorkel?’ Santos asked and Mia nodded with something like relief. She didn’t want to think like this. She just wanted tobe...with Santos.

Taking a deep breath, she dived down under the crystalline water and kicked her fins to glide ahead, with Santos swimming easily by her side. She turned to smile at him and he grinned back, his lips curving around the mouthpiece of his breathing tube. Then he pointed, and she looked ahead to see a school of tiny blue fish moving like a cloud through the water, and she gave a gurgle of underwater laughter.

They continued to swim side by side, pointing out various fish and sea creatures to each other. At one point Santos saw an octopus in the distance, its tentacles almost seeming to move balletically as it propelled itself forward through the sea. After about an hour, Mia started feeling tired, and Santos suggested they swim back for a rest and their picnic, which sounded like heaven to her.

‘I forgot how tiring swimming is,’ she remarked as she waded through the water towards the beach of their little island, her mask and fins in her hand. Santos was at the boat, lifting a picnic basket Rosita had packed for them from its interior. He’d already tossed his snorkelling things onto the beach. Mia smiled in anticipation of a few hours eating and lazing—and who knew what else?—on the beach under the sun on this private slice of paradise.

If only they could stay here for ever...

But no, she reminded herself, she wasn’t going to think that way.

‘Hungry?’ Santos asked, turning to her with a smile, the picnic basket looped around one arm. His chest was beaded with droplets of water, his dark hair slicked back from his forehead. He looked utterly delicious, never mind what was packed in their picnic.

‘Ye—ouch!’ Mia let out a gasp of pain as she grabbed her right foot. ‘I think I stepped on something!’ Already her foot was starting to throb.

Santos’s forehead furrowed with concern as he chucked the picnic basket back into the boat and hurried towards her.

‘Let me see.’ He grabbed hold of her arm to steady her as Mia winced in pain. Whatever she’d stepped on, it had really hurt. She supposed she shouldn’t have taken off her fins before she’d got out of the water. ‘Can you walk?’ he asked.

‘I think so,’ she said after a second’s hesitation, because she hated feeling feeble, and she was certainly used to doing things for herself, but her foot reallyhurt.

Santos must have heard her uncertainty because without another word he swept her into his arms and carried her to the beach himself.

‘Santos, I’m sure I’ll be fine,’ Mia protested, struggling a bit feebly to get down. Santos’s arms merely tightened around her. ‘It was probably just a jagged rock or something.’

‘Well, let’s check it out.’ He lay her on the blanket he’d already spread out and then knelt in front of her, taking her foot into his hands. Mia bit her lip hard because, now that she was sitting on the ground, her foot started to feel hot and swollen, throbbing in time to the beat of her blood, which couldn’t be good.

‘I think you were stung by a sea urchin,’ Santos told her. ‘It can hurt quite a bit, but it’s generally not very serious—a bit more than a bee sting, but that’s all. Still, there are some spines embedded in your foot, which is causing you the pain. I can get them out, if you can hold still.’

‘Okay,’ Mia replied, her voice wobbling a little even though she wanted to sound brave. Her mother had never tolerated any weakness or whining, and Mia had always tried to take care of herself and stay strong. It was an instinct she struggled to shed, and yet right then it felt almost unbearably comforting and poignant to have Santos looking after her so tenderly.

He removed four spines, each one causing both a sharp pain which was followed by an abrupt relief, and when he was finished Mia sagged back onto the blanket. ‘Goodness, I don’t want to go through that again,’ she said faintly with an attempt at a laugh that didn’t quite work.

‘Your foot is quite swollen and hot to the touch.’ Santos frowned. ‘Maybe we should head back. We could have a doctor look at it.’

‘You said it was only a little worse than a bee sting,’ Mia protested. As much as she liked Santos taking care of her, she realised she did not want to be made a fuss of. She never had.

‘Still...’ His frown deepened as he glanced down at her foot. ‘It looks worse than I’d expect for a sea urchin sting.’

A frisson of alarm went through Mia at that, but she kept her voice light. ‘Well, have you ever been stung by a sea urchin?’ she asked.

‘No,’ he admitted, frowning. ‘But I don’t like the look of it.’

Mia shrugged. ‘I’m sure it’s fine. By the time we’ve eaten lunch and dried off, I’ll be ready to snorkel again.’ Even if it was hurting like the dickens just then.

‘All right,’ Santos agreed reluctantly. ‘I suppose we might as well eat. But if it’s still hurting after that, we’ll go back.’

He went back to fetch the picnic basket from the boat, and that was when Mia felt the first wave of dizziness sweep over her and start to pull her under. She blinked and the whole world seemed to waver as though she were in a dream. Nausea surged in her stomach, and she blinked rapidly in an attempt to clear her head.

Santos turned from the boat and was heading back to shore, the basket over his arm, but it looked as if he was rippling...that the whole world was rippling...and everything was happening in slow motion. Her foot felt both icy and hot, numb yet throbbing with pain. How was that even possible? What was going on?

The rippling version of Santos came closer, everything about him distorted and blurry, but even then Mia could see the alarm on his face as he dropped the basket, sending strawberries and olives rolling across the sand. She opened her mouth to say something, but nothing came out. A strawberry rolled towards her and she kept her gaze fixed on it, trying to anchor herself in reality, except reality was fading in and out and she felt so verystrange...

‘Mia!’ Santos cried, reaching for her.

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