The power went out just after sunset.
The sky outside turned bruised and heavy, pressing down on La Sirena like a threat. Lina lit one of the antique oil lamps Milo kept tucked behind the wine rack—she'd teased him about them once, but now the flicker made her feel less alone.
She found him on the terrace, his silhouette cut in half by the glow of a cigarette.
"Storm's heading in," he said without turning.
"Of course it is," she murmured. "Nothing ever comes quiet around here."
Milo exhaled. "You always this poetic when things go wrong?"
She sat across from him. "You always this calm?"
"I'm not calm," he said. "I just don't panic out loud."
Thunder cracked. Close.
She looked out toward the sea, where the water was churning like a mouth full of broken teeth. "I remembered something."
He glanced at her then.
"A fight. The night he died. It was loud. I was screaming. He called me pathetic. Told me no one would care if I disappeared."
Milo said nothing.
"And I pushed him," she added, voice so quiet it barely held shape. "I don't know if it was before or after the storm hit. But I pushed him."
He put the cigarette out slowly as it mattered.
"Where?"
"We were on the cliffs. The ones near the old cypress trees."
"Then he didn't fall from there," Milo said. "They found him in the cove."
She blinked. "What?"
"The report said he was found in the cove. Below your villa. If you pushed him from the cliffs, he wouldn't have ended up there."
Lina's hands trembled. "So what are you saying? That I'm lying? Confused?"
"I'm saying memory is a bitch," Milo said. "And grief turns everything sideways."
She stood up, pacing. "But if I didn't push him... then why do I remember it?"
"Maybe because you wanted to."
Silence swallowed the space between them.
"You think I'm capable of it?" she asked, her voice brittle.
Milo looked at her carefully. "I think everyone is. Under the right pressure."
"And yet here you are. Letting me sleep under your roof."
He poured another glass. "Maybe I'm tired of my own ghosts."
She walked over, took the glass, and drank it without flinching.
"I didn't come here to fall apart," she said.
"Then maybe you came to find out what happens when you do."
Their eyes met—his dark, unreadable; hers fevered, desperate for something solid.
And then she kissed him.
Not gently. Not sweetly. Like she needed to prove she still had a body, and that someone else could hold it.
He didn't pull away.
Later, when the storm finally broke, they lay tangled in sheets and silence. Her hand was on his scarred shoulder. His mouth was near her ear.
"I don't know if I trust you," she whispered.
He brushed the hair from her face. "Good."