Lulu and I reclined in the red plush seats in the dark of the central city movie theater, near our apartments, watching a Disney cartoon movie dubbed in Spanish. As usual whenever I needed a break, we’d escaped to the make-believe land of a screen and someone else’s story.

The movie was almost done. You could tell. Our hearts would be happy that it all resolved in the end.

But then we heard a boom…BOOM, that was no sound effect. The movie skidded to a halt, and the lights came on. Heads jerked around, and the audience immediately started talking.

“What was that?” I whispered to Lulu.

“I don’t know, but I don’t like it,” she muttered back, eyes wary and alert.

One by one, audience members got up, until it was an exodus of people leaving. We joined the crowd jostling up the narrow aisles, leaving the darkened theater into the lobby full of smoke. The noise level raised by decibels, people now starting to yell.

My heart in my throat, unsure of whether to go outside or stay in, I screamed at Lulu, “What should we do?”

The glass had blown out of the movie theater doors, and popcorn covered the floor.

“Let’s get out of here!”

Pushing our way through the crowd to get outside, I scraped my forehead on jagged glass on the door, coughing on the fumes.

She held my wrist in a vice-like grip. “Dani, I’m scared.”

“Me too.” My eyes darted around. “I don’t know where to go. I don’t know what’s happening.”

“You’re cut! Let me give you a tissue.”

As she rummaged in her purse, I checked my phone. Trent had texted that he’d meet me at the movie theater any minute now. What if he was outside?

We needed to find him.

Blood from my cut dripped down past my eyes, into my dry mouth, the metallic taste making me sick. But I felt no pain. Bodies bounced against us. We had no space in the street full of people, cars, and mopeds. We were closed in, claustrophobic, frightened about what was happening.

She handed me a packet of Kleenex, and I pressed one to my forehead. “Stay with me.”

“Always.”

We elbowed our way past an ambulance that had fought its way through the crowd. A crew hustled out with a stretcher, followed closely by another ambulance and another stretcher. An emergency technician with a first aid box and bottles of water called, “¿Alguien necesita un vendaje?”

I ran up to him. “¡Sí!”

He handed me a sterile wipe and a bandage. Lulu cleaned up my forehead, and we both snagged bottles of water.

Now I could see.

And what I saw was awful.

People clutching bloody handkerchiefs to faces, arms, legs. Children crying. People covered in soot and ashes.

A building a block away on fire.

My chest hurt. I blinked rapidly. I gripped Lulu’s hand. People walked around us, calling for loved ones.

“You okay?” I asked her.

She shook her head. “No.” With a determined set to her jaw, she said, “Let’s see how we can help.”

A little girl with her hair in pigtails, maybe eight years old, ran up to us, crying. “¿Dónde está mi mamá?” She was looking for her mother.

Lulu bent down to talk to her. “No sé, mija. Vamos a ayudarte buscarla.” She didn’t know, but she’d help her find her.

“Lu, while you help her, I’m going to go find Trent. He was supposed to meet me here.” I tried not to screech in panic, my stomach hard like granite.

“Okay. Keep your phone on.”

I wrapped her in a big hug. Lulu took off with the little girl, holding her hand, calling for her mother.

Turning down the street by my apartment, I glimpsed Trent.

Oh, thank God.

My muscles weakened, and my walk got unsteady. He saw me and sprinted over, wrapping me in his arms. “Dani!”

“Trent!” I sobbed. “Oh my God, Trent. You are the best thing I could ever see!”

He held me up before my legs gave way, and I slumped in his arms. I hadn’t realized how fragile I felt in the confusion of smoke, debris, and people.

That turmoil continued around us, but I felt safer in his warm, comforting arms. His familiar clean smell, his soft clothes, his scratchy chin all meant home.

“Are you okay?” he asked in his low voice against the top of my head.

“Yeah. I think so. I’m scared, and I don’t know what’s going on.”

“Me neither. I think we need to get out of here.”

He pulled away and gestured at my Band-Aid. “What happened to you? Do we need to see a doctor?”

“No. I just cut my forehead on some glass.”

“Do you need stitches?”

“I don’t think so. We can check when we get home.”

Studying my head for a moment more as if evaluating whether he needed to load me in an ambulance, he seemed to satisfy himself that I was telling the truth. I wasn’t badly hurt. Not physically, anyway. “Okay,” was all he said.

“Let’s get out of here.” I tugged his hand. We started walking in the direction of my apartment, away from the smoke.

Another siren went by. He wrapped his arm around my shoulders, gripping me tight, but he didn’t flinch. It was like he was so focused on keeping me up that it overrode his reactions.

“Did you come here with Lulu? Is she okay?”

“Yes. She’s helping a little girl who lost her mother.”

“Fuck.”

“She’s going to text me when they’re reunited.”

He nodded. “Good, good.”

We kept walking toward my apartment, then turned the corner where we were shielded from the smoke. Fewer people were around us.

“What happened?” I asked.

“I don’t know. Some sort of explosion. Let’s go to your place. Get inside.”

My phone buzzed with a text from Lulu. We found the little girl’s mother, and she’s all safe. I’m going home.

“Oh, thank God.” I showed the text to Trent. Relief registered across his face, the furrow in his brow smoothing and his jaw loosening.

As we turned down the next street, almost to my apartment, I stopped him mid-stride.

“I have so much to tell you.” I started saying, then covered my mouth with my hand, unsure of what he thought of me. A few people walked by, but we were out of the confusion and rubble. “I read your letter.”

He cleared his throat and rubbed the back of his neck. “Okay.”

“Trent. You have to know—”

A flush crept across his cheeks. “I wrote it a long time ago—”

In the middle of the cobblestone street, I put my hand on his chest, right by his heart. “Trent. I love you.”

His mouth fell open.

“I’ve always loved you,” I continued. “I love how caring you are. How watchful. You put my needs before yours. That is the very definition of love.”

He shook his head, incredulous, almost dazed. As if he couldn’t believe what I was saying. “I’m not worthy of you. I vowed to protect you…look what just happened. I promised myself, hell, I promised Degan that I’d look after you. But I failed.” His head dropped down, but his eyes looked up at me.

“No, you didn’t—”

“I did.” His hands fell to his sides. “I’m not the right one for you. For your sake, I need to leave you alone. I hurt you just being around you, by making you dredge up too much misery. I don’t want to see you in pain. I’ll let you be.”

“No!” I yelled. I placed my hands on my hips and tapped my foot. “No. I love you. You’re my Trent. You make me real. I lived in a fake, fairytale land. One I constructed. None of it was real. You made me real, Trent.”

He tilted his head and paused, then cleared his throat, not saying anything. Shaking his head again, he said, “No, Dani. You always were real. I didn’t do anything.”

“You broke me loose. Don’t you understand? Before, I lived in a prison of my own mind. One I created. And you helped me escape by smashing the bars and letting me fly.”

“What does this mean?”

“It means I love you. Always have. Always will.”

Blinking as if he didn’t believe me. “But I failed you.”

“You won me. You are the bravest soldier I’ve ever met. Who else would fly halfway around the world to tell the girl he loved that Degan had died? It must have given you absolute nightmares.”

I didn’t get a reaction from him, but that was confirmation enough.

“Don’t you see? We belong together. You’re my base. You support me. And you help me fly.”

He bowed his head. “You give me a reason for being.”

“And you give me a home. One I never thought I’d have again.”

“Oh, Dani.” He lifted his head, opening his eyes. Then he took a step forward and hugged me tight, kissing me everywhere, careful with my bandage. “I love you, too,” he said.

Held in his arms, in the middle of this disaster, not knowing what happened or what was going to happen, I knew that with him by my side, I could survive anything.

Even my brother’s death.

And I knew that he was the most loyal, glorious man I’d ever met.

“Want to know something?” I asked, needing him to know that he really and truly was forgiven.

“Yeah.”

“I know you would have died for my brother.”

With a reverent move, he laid his hand on his heart and closed his eyes, nodding. My Trent was beating himself up because Degan was the one to die, not him. But if the situation had been reversed, he’d have done the same thing as my honorable, courageous brother.

I continued, knowing that he needed the validation, “I know you’d die for me, too.”

“I absolutely would,” he vowed.

“And you know what? You don’t have to. Because we’re gonna be together. I love you, don’t you understand that? I’m in love with you.”

He picked me up like a bride and kissed me, while my hands clung to his neck. Then he carried me up all four flights of stairs to my home.

* * *

“A terrorist attack shocked the Andalusian city of Granada tonight as a car bomb went off in a busy shopping district. Dozens of people were injured, but luckily no fatalities. It appeared that the timing mechanism malfunctioned and that the bomb, intended for a night club in the evening, went off ahead of time. Thankfully, this meant that fewer people were near the blast. Now turning to local news—”

I flipped off the BBC.

My hair was wet from a shower, and I had a new bandage on my forehead. The most delectable man lingered in my kitchen, jeans riding on his hips, T-shirt clinging to his muscles, which mounded like snow moguls on a groomed ski run. He’d made spaghetti. The table was set. Outside all was quiet, although the city was shaken.

And we were exhausted. Mentally, physically, emotionally. Shock waves had blown through the city, and we’d been caught up in them. We needed time to heal.

Luckily, I had him by my side.

I reached up on my tiptoes to kiss him, and I was kissing Trent Milner again, the way I’d wanted to. The way I always wanted to.

He groaned.

“I could do this the rest of my life,” he said against my ear.

“Then do it.”

“You mean that?”

“I do. You’re the one for me. You always have been.”

He skimmed his fingers along my jawline. “And you’ve been the only one for me.”

After dinner, I curled up with him on my couch. Night noises came in. Quieter than normal. As if no one dared go outside until it was okay.

That sense of safety, broken.

I trembled in his arms.

“I was so scared you were hurt,” he whispered. “I lost my best friend. I couldn’t lose you, too.”

“I didn’t know what was happening. I think it’s gonna take me a while to process.”

“That’s what post-traumatic stress is. Maybe you should talk to Marie, too.”

“I’ll do that. You talked with her today, right? How did that go?”

“It was like cleaning out a wound with peroxide. It stung, but I felt better after. The main thing I got out of it was that she said Degan’s death wasn’t my fault, and I needed to forgive myself.”

I stared at him. “Degan’s death wasn’t your fault.”

He bopped my nose. “Even you blamed me for it.”

“I didn’t mean it, though.” I faced him directly. “Trent. Degan’s death was caused by the bomber. Not you.”

“I know. But I still feel like I could have done more.”

I set my head on his shoulder. “I know. I feel that way, too.”

With a deep breath, he kept talking. “She told me that forgiveness is a gift you give yourself. It’s self-healing, self-liberating, and self-empowering. Without forgiveness, you are hopeless, helpless, and powerless. But with forgiveness, while you can’t change your past, you can change how you relate to it.”

“I like that. I’ve been beating myself up for everything.”

“Me too.”

I kissed him. “I can’t change my past.”

“Neither can I,” he whispered against my lips.

An invigorated feeling ran through my body as an idea took shape. “But I can change how I relate to it. What would it feel like to forgive, say, Degan, for going into the army?”

He chuckled. “Try it.”

“Degan, I forgive you, my beloved little brother, for joining up in the army when I didn’t want you to!” I called out. Chills sliced down my arms. “Is it that easy?”

“Yeah. I think it is.” Big blue eyes encouraged me. “Keep going.”

“I forgive you, Degan! I forgive you! It’s okay! You did what you wanted! And it’s okay!”

With every word, I was liberated. I became more and more independent from my past. I declared my own future.

He beamed at me. “It’s like forgiving the Spaniards for being Spaniards and bullfighting.”

“Exactly!” I got up and started pacing, calling to the ceiling. “Degan! I forgive you for being you! You don’t have to be like me! I can love you the way you are!”

“Atta girl.”

“Trent?”

“Yeah.”

I reached over and took his hands, looking into his eyes. “I forgive you. I know I told you I forgave you earlier. But I’m saying it again. I get it. I get you. You care. I love you. And I forgive our past. I am committed to moving forward.”

He got up and started pacing with me, giddy and excited. He pointed to me. “Try forgiving yourself.”

I hugged my arms around my waist. “I forgive you, Dani, for not being there.” And as I said the words, I burst out in tears. “I forgive you. I forgive you. I forgive you. For blaming your brother. For holding on to old fights and past regrets. For being too scared to open up to love. For not giving it a chance. I forgive!”

Tears poured down my face. “I am weightless,” I said. “I am free. Forgiveness releases me. It releases the guilt I’ve been carrying around about Degan. About yelling at him before he left. That his last words from me were angry. That I can never go back and fix them. You guys were meant to be in the army. You are badasses. You’re soldiers. You defend people. You care about our freedoms. My freedom.”

“Right. Exactly right.”

“Trent. You try it.”

He anchored his feet on the ground, closed his eyes, held my hand, and said in a deep voice, “I forgive you, Trent, for not saving Degan.”

And he let out a breath.

“Dani,” he whispered. “It releases the guilt.”

“What if his life had meaning? And his death did too?”

“It absolutely did,” he assured me. Then he held me the rest of the night.

* * *

Later that night, after we’d made love, I showed him the letter from the university. “We’ve got one little problem, though.”

He read it. “Leave that to me.”