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“Holly, Zoey, let’s go!” Rose’s motherly voice echoed through their house. She pulled her shades on and grabbed as many of the bags piled up by the front door as she could. And as Rose was a perfectionist and strived for effectivity, she managed to get all their luggage at once.
With one foot already across the threshold, she felt a familiar hand sneak around her waist and her cheek was soon after met with a pair of the softest lips.
“You ready to go, babe?” Luisa chimed, holding all of their raincoats over her wrist. Rose stopped to comically compare the weight they were both carrying, moving her head from side to side. Luisa grinned at her, amusedly observing Rose’s over exaggeratedly subtle plea for help.
“Yes, as soon as I am discovered from under this pile of sleeping bags, backpacks, and a minifridge, then I am ready to go,” she witted, staring at her wife. Luisa giggled, placing a chaste kiss on Rose’s lips before ignoringly skipping out to their car, pulling her own red-framed sunglasses from her hair and leaning against their shining black Volvo. She was posing like supermodels do on the pages of car magazines – her leg bent in her slightly loose khaki pants and the heel of her beige camping boots resting against the slick surface of the vehicle.
Rose couldn’t stay mad at her when she acted like this. Shaking her head happily, she followed her wife, letting everything drop from her hands as soon as Luisa’s lips landed on hers again.
“Why am I always the one to do the heavy-lifting?” she sighed, absentmindedly twirling a strand of Luisa’s golden-brown hair fallen out from her ponytail between her fingers.
Luisa scoffed. “You weren’t the one to do all the work last night.”
“But you like that,” Rose shot back, sending a wink in Luisa’s way before grabbing their luggage from the ground and stuffing it into the trunk. As Rose was leant into the trunk to plug in the minifridge, Luisa couldn’t resist and let her hand rest on Rose’s ass.
“Yeah, I do,” she husked. Rose had finally managed to plug in the fridge and stood back up, her back pressed tightly against Luisa’s front. Luisa ghosted her lips over Rose’s neck, making her wife release a shuttered breath.
“But it’d be nice if you’d help me with other work sometimes, too,” Rose said before pecking Luisa’s lips and escaping her embrace. Luisa was left standing disappointedly on the spot, holding on to thin air instead of Rose.
“Girls, come on! Let’s go!” Rose yelled into the house again. “Don’t forget Donut!”
“We’re coming, mommy!” Holly chimed, appearing to the doorway, her vibrant red curls visible far away. She was followed by her slightly older sister and their golden retriever puppy, Donut.
Luisa chuckled, hooking her hand around Rose’s. “I still can’t believe you managed to convince them to name our dog Donut.”
Rose frowned. “I still can’t believe you ate the last powdered donut this morning.”
Luisa brushed the pout away from Rose’s lips with her fingers, offering her a comforting smile.
“It was a very tasty donut, if it’s any consolation to you,” she hummed.
“It’s really not,” Rose shook her head.
“Then I’ll make it up to you later,” Luisa husked, before the girls got to them, each flinging to one of their mothers’ legs.
“Let’s go, let’s go, let’s go!” Zoey chimed, her tiny excited brown eyes sparkling as Luisa picked her up. Her mother giggled and set her in her car seat next to her younger sister.
When Rose and Luisa had shut the car doors, before opening their own, Rose looked at Luisa. “I’m cancelling the next month’s order of Nickelodeon.”
“I’m right there with you.”
“So, where are we going for family vacation this summer?” Rose pulled her chair under the dinner table, looking at her wife and daughters already dining.
Holly’s eyes immediately shot up from her meal, the tiny blue eyes wide with excitement.
“Camping!” she chimed, banging her spoon against the table. After her incident involving almost poking Luisa’s eye out with a fork, Holly had been only allowed to eat with a spoon. Rose hadn’t been too keen on the idea of her wife having a glass-eye or wearing an eyepatch on a daily basis. That Halloween when Luisa had dressed up as a sexy pirate had been a totally different matter.
Rose turned her gaze to her wife’s, desperately signaling her to do something about this idea; as big of a badass as Rose was with grown-ups, she could rarely deny her daughters something.
Luisa grinned, clearly enjoying this needy look on Rose.
“Where would you like to go camping?” she decided to torture Rose even more. Luisa herself had nothing against camping, she’d been a real tomb-boy as a kid. But Rose was not on the best terms with mother nature. When they’d been on the run on the submarine, they’d visited an island with dolphins as regular visitors of the island’s best beach. And when Luisa and Rose had decided to go for a swim there, Rose had encountered a dolphin who’d – according to the redhead herself – kept returning like an unwanted guest. Later, it turned out Rose was allergic to the seaweed growing in the sea and developed an angry rash. And to top things off, when she came out of the water, she stepped on a jellyfish who mercilessly stung her. In short, Rose wasn’t fond of the outdoors anymore.
“I want to go to the Enchanted Forest! Dora’s forest!” Holly replied eagerly, revealing her source of eagerness. Rose sighed, fully-aware they were going to end up going camping, no matter what she would have said.
“I want to have a marshmallow!” Zoey pleaded, reaching for the bag of fluffy treats beside Luisa. Luisa shot her an asking look, waiting for the magic word. Zoey made her puppy-eyes and smiled.
“Please,” she added, receiving the bag immediately.
Rose draped her hand around Luisa’s shoulders and let her eyes wander. She had to admit camping hadn’t turned out to be as bad as she’d thought it would. After a three hour drive they’d made it to a campsite by this beautiful lake. It was the same lake Luisa and Rose had made up by years ago.
She was following her usual nightly ritual of taking a stroll by the lake. The breezy air of the evening always seemed to gather her thoughts into a whole and clear her lungs from all the stale air of the guest house she was running. It was a special occasion every time someone stayed there, it didn’t happen a lot. Luisa was surprisingly satisfied with that; she had been an extrovert her whole life, so it was a nice change to have some time to herself. Besides, the whole thing with Rose had exhausted her to her very core. And hurt her even more.
The magical fish her mother had once been so fond of were lighting up the whole lake, painting it with bright, vibrant colors. There was green, yellow, blue, pink, orange… and red. Even after all of these years, red was the color that brought Luisa back to that night at the girl bar on the fourth of July. Rose’s red dress haunted her in every tone even a little bit similar to red.
She cast her eyes away from the fish, looking around in the dark woods. Luisa had been scared of the infinite darkness at first, but now she could wander around there and not give a damn if an axe murderer really did jump out behind the next pine tree and slaughtered her. She’d witnessed much worse.
Her eyes stopped suddenly. She thought she had seen something, someone. After a couple deep breaths, she detected movement just a few yards before her.
“Someone there?” she stuttered, clenching her hands into fists. There was no reply, only a foot appearing into the lighted area in front of her, before a whole person came to her sight. Luisa’s eyes widened, and a sharp gasp escaped her lips as she started backing up, her bottom lip trembling.
“Luisa,” the figure breathed her name like a prayer, taking a step after her. Luisa kept backing up like a prey escaping its predator.
“Wh-what are you doing here, Rose?” she uttered. She suddenly hit a tree with her back, startling as she did.
“I came for you. Your brother told me where you were,” she looked down at her fingers, “in exchange for me telling him who his parents were.”
Luisa felt tears starting to make their way down her face. She’d thought Rafael would betray her again. There really was no one left for her to trust.
“He shouldn’t have done that,” Luisa managed to say between tears. Rose shrugged, taking a careful step towards Luisa.
“I’m not here to hurt you nor kidnap you, again. I just need to know… what did I do wrong, Lu?” she looked genuinely heartbroken as she said this, unconfidently fiddling with her fingers.
Luisa exhaled, brushing away her tears and trying to find the woman’s eyes in the dim light of the night.
“You’re just not good for me, Rose. It’s nothing that you did, it’s what you are. I can never have the life that I want to have with you. You’re always going to be the infamous Sin Rostro – the killer of dozens of people and the retired drug lord who illegally changed criminals’ faces. The society doesn’t care if you promise to be done with crime, because they know crime is not done with you. They are afraid one day you’ll relapse, and someone will die again. And I want to have a life with someone I can proudly point at and say, “that’s my wife”. I will never get to do that with you,” she looked longingly at Rose, her heart aching with each word she said. Rose swallowed hard, taking another step towards Luisa. She came to stand in front of her, placing each hand on each side of Luisa as she leaned against the pine tree Luisa was standing up against.
“But I will be good for you. I want to start all over. Your love is my turning page, Luisa. I will change for you. I want to be a better person and be who you want me to be. I will surrender my past life for our joint future life. I will surrender who I am if it means I get to have you. Just, please,” Rose begged, her words emitting breaths against Luisa’s lips. Their faces were barely an inch apart now. Luisa closed her eyes, trying to fight the urge to lose the distance between them and after all of these months, pull Rose’s rosy red bottom lip between her lips. Her breath hitched in her throat as she finally surrendered, and Rose’s lips moved into her mouth.
She arched into her, needing her more than possible. She pulled away from her, hurting with every kiss they fell back into. But as their tongues met and Rose lowered her hand to Luisa’s hip, the opposed part of Luisa’s heart slowly surrendered, too. All that was left was the bare lust to feel Rose’s body against hers.
Just like that, Luisa had fallen back under Rose’s spell and frankly, there was nothing she wanted to do about it anymore. As they made love by the magical lake with the glowing fish, she accepted the fact that she would always love Rose, and she never wanted to spend a day without her for the rest of her life.
Having made their way to the guest house, Luisa clung to Rose’s bare body under the blanket and whispered into her ear.
“Don’t change. I love you for who you are,” she pulled back a bit to look her straight in the eye. “But no more killing people, okay?”
She smiled warmly, absentmindedly toying with Rose’s once again vibrant red hair. The redhead laughed, earning a kick in the shin from the woman in her embrace.
“I’m serious,” Luisa pouted. Rose stopped laughing and brought her hand to Luisa’s cheek. With soft circles, she brushed her thumb over her skin and nodded.
“No more killing people, I promise,” she said with a spark in her eyes, leaning in for a kiss. The kiss eventually turned into many more, and just before the sunrise, they closed their eyes after a night of love making, marking their getting back together.
This place really held some precious memories for them. Luisa couldn’t believe they hadn’t been back here once after she’d sold the guest house. Life had taken a rapid turn for them after that, though. It hadn’t even been a year after they had started to talk about having kids. Soon after had Luisa gotten down on her knee and proposed to Rose. It had been almost six years now that they had been together again, and they couldn’t have been happier. Every morning when Luisa woke up to Zoey or Holly by their bed, expressing their need for breakfast or just to be held, Luisa gained reassurance that she’d made the right decision taking Rose back. It was unbearable to imagine a life different from this one.
After watching the fireflies glow in the dark just before their tent, they put their daughters to bed. The girls’ eyes drooped shut faster than ever, the fresh air seeming to have exhausted them, or the constant running around they’d practiced during the day as Rose and Luisa had set up their tent.
“Push it in,” Rose groaned, wiping sweat off her forehead.
“No, you have to pull it in,” Luisa groaned right back.
“No, the poles will break apart then and we won’t be able to move them inside the seams. Come on, babe, please, push.”
Luisa rolled her eyes and did as Rose asked, the tent instantly strutting up and Rose setting the poles inside the ground.
“See? Next time your wife asks you to push, just push,” Rose witted, walking to her wife and slinging her arms around her neck. Luisa smirked, eyeing Rose’s lips.
“Oh, I will.”
“You want to go for a walk?” Rose asked her as she zipped the tent closed, petting the sleeping Donut’s head before offering her hand to Luisa. Luisa accepted it with a smile and stood up from her seat by the fire.
“Donut, please watch the girls for us while we’re gone, okay? We’ll be back in no time,” Luisa said to the dog, mumbling a quiet yet commanding “stay” when he raised his head to follow them.
After ten minutes of roughing it through the bushes, they made it to the trail by the lake Luisa had once taken every night. As her boots touched the gravel of the trail, Luisa took Rose’s hand and held it tight. Their earlier speedy tempo slowed down into a calm pace, almost synchronized with their hearts.
Luisa carefully eyed each tree they passed, wondering if she’d still remember which tree was the one they’d made love against that evening six years ago. Rose noticed Luisa being all quiet and staring at every tree by the trail.
“Where are you?” she softly asked, squeezing Luisa’s hand. Even in the very minimal light of the night Rose could tell Luisa was blushing.
“Do you remember which tree it was we… you know,” she murmured, biting her lip. Rose grinned.
“Sure,” she said as she picked up their pace, leading her wife to a pine tree by the trail. Luisa took a skeptical look at it, eyeing the tree from all angles.
“How can you be sure?”
Rose smiled and crunched down, pointing at the bark with her index finger.
“You see that? Some bark has been scratched off from here,” she showed her. Luisa leaned closer and gasped.
“How did this get here?” she brushed her hand over an engraving in the spot where bark had fallen off.
“Well, the bark came off when you came the first time that night, I think. And in the morning when you were still sleeping, I took my pocket knife and came here to write this,” Rose once again pointed towards the writing in the tree.
I surrender who I am
for who you are.
I love you, Lu.
Luisa incredulously let her fingers trail over the engraving. This was one of the sweetest things anyone had ever done for her. She giggled – she felt like a teenager again, cutting names into tree trunks and making out against that same tree.
Gradually, she stood up, Rose following suit. She darted her eyes back and forth from the dedication to her wife. And the next thing Rose knew, Luisa had her pinned up against the tree, and their lips were locked together. Luisa sneaked her hands under Rose’s shirt as she sighed.
“I love you, too.”