Excerpt

So late I’m clenching my hands in my lap and grinding my teeth, I exhale my relief as Ponce’s sun-drenched pier swims into view. Gravel crunches under the rental’s tires as Mamá parks before a hand-painted sign with blocky red letters reading Isla del Corazón Roto, Heartbreak Island.

A black arrow on the sign points down the pier where an exceedingly tall man—a dark-haired Viking—assists a group wearing orange life vests onto a boat.

Mamá grabs at the gold cross around her neck. “Ay. I don’t like it, Lucinda. This whole thing is strange. I don’t think you should go.”

That motherly fear explains her insisting we visit my Titi Sonia first, dawdling over lunch, and her excruciatingly slow driving. Ay. I can’t leave her this worried.

The tanned Viking stares our way. I lean forward, wave frantically, and hold up a one-sec finger. He turns back to the others.

Maybe, he didn’t see me through the dusty glass?

“Mamá,” I struggle to keep my voice light, as the smell of salt and fish wafts through the blowing vents. “You promised if I let you come to Puerto Rico—”

“Let me come?” She cuts me off indignantly. “This is my home.”

Mamá was born in the mountains of Arecibo and takes great pride in coming from the island. In Pennsylvania Mamá says things like, “They should do something about these roads.” In Puerto Rico she says, “We should do something about these roads.”

I love the island too. I’ve been visiting my family here since I was a kid. Still, northeastern PA is home to me, and we really should do something about those roads.

There’s a long deep blast of a horn. Using the toe of a white boat shoe, the Viking lifts then casually pushes aside the gangplank as if all that steel weighs nothing.

Scrambling out of the car, I wave my arm as frantically as a drowning person in need of rescue. He raises his head, seems to take me in from head to foot, but astonishingly returns to unmooring the boat.

What the heck?

Tugging down my slightly-too-tight shorts, I pull out my suitcase and slip my backpack over my, “Trees are People Too” t-shirt. 

Her hand upraised, Mamá comes around the car and stands in my way. “They probably don’t even have running water.” 

So says the woman who let me run around the woods with all five of my brothers from sunup to sundown. We literally drank from streams to avoid going all the way back to the house. It’s a wonder I never got sick. “They have running water.”

“Stay. Let’s go look at the yurts again online. The one with the skylight was very nice.”

It was nice. I even know how I’d decorate it, and which trees I could nestle my yurt near––the big trees at the edge of the campground. 

I could continue to work for my parents, live near the campground, and forget all this foolishness of trying to overcome the loss of Jude through a shock-therapy workshop. It would be so easy to burrow into that kind of life, even if it isn’t the life I want. 

As Papí says, I’ll heal eventually.

Except, months after being left at the aisle, it took every bit of determination I possess to apply for this workshop, to drag myself off the farm, to the airport, and to this dock. 

No. It wasn’t determination. 

It was pain. 

More exactly, my inability to live with the pain of my regrets, anger, and loss of self. 

I miss the Lucky who woke up every day with a song on her lips and a “things will all work out” pounding in her heart. She’s frozen inside me, along with a shockingly absent sense of self-worth. 

Love can make you do crazy things. 

Losing love can make you crazy. 

Shoving down my doubts, fears, and a deep desire to go back to the safety of my home instead of trying something so radically different, I throw my arms around Mamá and squeeze. Her familiar honeysuckle perfume saturates my senses, and I once again quell my fears about leaving. I let go.

She catches my hand in hers and squeezes in question. I tug gently and like a claw machine trying to pick up a too heavy object, my hand drops from her grasp. Wiping at my eyes, I pick up my bag and run.

“I’m coming!”

My thick-treaded sandals thwack the wooden planks with every racing footfall, my hardshell suitcase spanks my thighs, my butt jiggles, and my breathing quickly becomes audible. 

The Viking finishes unwinding the rope from the dock cleat.

“Hey,” I gasp, picking up speed, catching my toe on a loose board, stumbling forward then righting myself all within a beat of time. My toe throbs. 

He pushes the boat off and jumps inside.

“Wait!” 

The boat drifts away from the dock. 

Oh, hell no. 

I’m not being left behind. No one else gets to cast me aside ever again. 

With a grunt as primal as my need to escape my current life, I heave my bag across the water like I’m shot-putting at the Olympics. It jerks from my hands, flies into the air and lands with a crack. Without pause, I follow, launching over open space, spreading my legs wide. 

For a beat, ocean water glitters below me. 

With an audible curse, I smash onto the deck and crash onto all fours. There are a few astonished gasps, then a smattered round of applause from those seated. 

Struggling to my feet, I ignore my throbbing toe, torn and bleeding knees and scraped palms. Eyes spitting fire, I right my well-worn travel backpack, plant my feet, and glare at Dark Viking. 

He looks down at me through arrogant aviator sunglasses. I want to rip them from his face and stomp them into shiny golden shards of dust. 

“Why didn’t you wait?” I gasp.

Lifting those glasses into his dark hair––exposing heart stopping silver green eyes set off by island tan skin—he glances from my face toward the deck. Or, more exactly, the contents of my sequined suitcase scattered at our feet. 

Shorts, shirts, sports bras, panties, super flow tampons, ibuprofen, vitamins, and there, among the jungle of my personal belongings, is not one, but three vibrators. 

To be fair, two are very small, fun size even. Barely noticeable. And then there’s big Hank, purple and very noticeable, laying across a plastic bag in which rests Isabella, my childhood baby doll, one brown eye shut and one open in horror. 

Kill me now. 

Every muscle in my body wants to drop to my knees and scoop Isabella and all the rest of my stuff back into my bag, but fuck that. 

Dying from embarrassment is one thing, but scrambling to hide that humiliation isn’t my style. I’d rather stand here and let my face catch fire as I clench my butthole and cover my embarrassment with bravado. 

“Why didn’t you wait?” I hiss again, stepping forward. Something pops under my shoe. I don’t want to look down, but I do. I’ve stepped on a tube of lube. Now, the deck, my sandal soles, and the frilly edge of white underwear are spattered with clear goo. 

The Viking looks too, makes a face that conveys both disgust and alarm, before looking back up at me. I hear repressed and outright laughter from some of the other heartbroken peeps watching this scene unfold.

My face bursts into flames. Sweat rolls into my eyes. “Well?” I demand of him, as if my butt cheeks aren’t clenched tight enough to create diamonds. 

A muscle in his indecently sharp jawline twitches, and I’m not sure if he’s going to laugh, yell, or toss me off the boat. 

After a breath, he says, “Ms. Lucinda Moreno?”

His soft Spanish accent caresses the “r” in Moreno. The lilt sets my insides aflutter. I swear there is no lovelier accent than from Spain. “Yes. And you are?”

“You’re late.”

“Interesting. Do you go by You’re or Late?”

This block of a human blinks at me. Okay, so Dark Viking has zero sense of humor. “That’s a joke.” 

He slow-blinks again then the corners of his mouth twitch. It’s like watching a badly dubbed movie with a half-second delay. It looks off.

Maybe, Mamá was right. Maybe, things are strange here. Maybe, this will end up being a robotic island full of gorgeous androids with sharp jawlines and impossibly beautiful green eyes made to look human. Maybe, it’s an experiment. Maybe, I should grab Hank and Isabella and jump from this boat while I can still swim to the pier.

Robot man shifts. “I’m Dr. Rosales’ assistant, Ezequiel Hart.”

His name drips deliciously from his gorgeous lips, tingling across my tastebuds like honey from a comb.

Yum.

Still, that’s not what my skittering, embarrassed attention latches onto. “Hart? And you work with people who have broken hearts.” I giggly madly. “That’s funny.” 

Stiff silence from him.

“Stop already,” a throaty woman says from behind me, but I can’t. 

I’m so fully the center of attention there’s no part of me not blushing. So, of course, it happens. 

That thing where my mortified mouth, trying to make things better, decides to reveal what’s going on in my babbling brain. “I have an old work friend known for her dewy sunrise photography, and I kid you not, her first and middle names are Misty Dawn.” 

He frowns at me, clearly not a fan of names that match people’s profession. I almost double down and tell him about my mom’s friend Barbara Dahl, who owns the biggest collection of Barbies in Pennsylvania. 

He raises his dark eyebrows. “Are you certain you’ve committed to all that this treatment will entail?”

What. A. Tool. “Yes, Dr. Zeke,” I rudely shorten his name without permission. “I’m all in. How about you? Are you certain you’ve committed to this cold aspect as your bedside manner?”

Zeke’s eyes go flat. His lips thin into a stern line. Which, annoyingly, does nothing to make him less good looking. “You can call me Zeke as I’m not serving as a medical professional for this workshop.”

“You can call me Lucky. As in you’re lucky I don’t—” 

My cell buzzes, and I pull it from my pocket, grateful because the end of that sentence was a bit rude. Besides, these are the last moments I’ll have with my beloved cell phone, which is a no-no on the island. 

Jude my dude: Please call me. We need to talk. 

My mouth goes dry. My heart thrashes with an unexpected emotion—hope.  I reread the text. I can’t believe this. Why would he text after months of silence? What could he have to say? Is something wrong? Did he find out I was going to the island?

“Phone in bag. Now.”

I look back up and startle to find Zeke holding out a clear bag filled with cell phones. 

He can’t be serious. I need to answer Jude. 

Zeke glowers. “Would you like me to turn this boat around?”

I’m honestly tempted to kick him in his way-too-obvious package. Truth. His cargos need to go up one size. Those thigh-huggers are doing us all a big favor. 

Still, it’s taken too much effort and too many tears to get here—not to mention a nonrefundable payment. I’m not going back. 

Jude survived months without me, so he can survive a bit longer. 

Zeke clears his throat. 

Ay. This guy really gets under my skin, which doesn’t bode well for my time on the island. Grinding my teeth, telling myself this is the first step toward healing and recovering the old Lucky, I drop my phone into his damn bag. 

And instantly start to plot how I’m going to get it back.