Page 52 of Iron Hearts

I smiled then, and nodded, and let him lead me into the fort.

From above, the Castillo de San Marcos was shaped almost like a ninja throwing star. Silly, but true. The fortress was in the shape of a square, but the four points of it had these almost diamond shaped protrusions off of them. Only one of them had a rounded watchtower with a dome on it, though – the one facing the mouth of the intracoastal waterway, to watch for approaching enemy ships.

I’d been here plenty of times before, on school field trips, but that had been ages ago in likeelementaryschool. Still, I was curious as to what Striker was keen on showing me. I half expected it to be the part of the fort where the leader of the Seminoles was killed, but no – he took me to a different part of the fort, away from that side.

“You ever hear of the ‘lost lovers of Castillo de San Marcos?’” he asked.

I squinted and put my sunglasses atop my head and said, “Vaguely. I don’t know the full story.”

“Okay, well, legend has it, when the fort was still being built there was this Spanish fucker that was running the show here, right? Some big military general or high baller.”

“Okay,” I said laughing at the way he put it.

“Story goes, he brought his wife here, and she was alooker, like… He wolf-whistled, and I laughed some more. “She wassmokin’hot and this dude’s pride and joy.”

“Ew, you make that sound like he’s one of those dudes that married his wife and then treated her like his property.” I wrinkled my nose.

“BINGO,” he said. “That was exactly it. Anyway, she was here but she didn’t like it – in fact, she was terribly homesick and fuckinghatedit here – which who could blame her? It was unbearably hot, humid, and the mosquitos werewicked bad. So were things like yellow fever and dysentery, right?”

“Right,” I nodded and didn’t even realize I’d just sort of naturally cuddled into his side, my fingers finding the spaces between his and my other arm curled around the same one we held hands with.

He smelled good, I noticed it then. Like sunshine, salt air, clean laundry, and something woodsy. He smelled distinctly masculine and it tickled my senses, turning me on and making me want to melt into him – which low-key made me feel kind of stupid, likegirl! Get it together!

He kept talking, like he didn’t notice my internal struggle with myself over just how hot I thought he was, and how bad I was leaning toward wanting him.

“Make matters worse, her husband wasn’t spending likeanytime with her and she was terribly lonely.”

“Right,” I nodded, and hoped like hell I was being subtle and cool, that I wasn’t throwing super bad mixed signals – good lord, how did this man simultaneously make me second guesseverything I did,but at the same time, made me feel so comfortable that I was cuddling into his side like it was as natural as breathing?

“Now, from every story I’ve ever heard or read about it, shetriedto tell her husband – ‘look, yo, youneedto spend some time with me. I’m lonely, I’m miserable, and like you can either spend some time with me to make it better or if you don’t want to do that, then at least let me gohome.’ Now her husband did what most dudes nowadays do and just kind of waved her off and said ‘yeah, yeah, yeah, bitch;whatever.’ The more she persisted, the more he pushed her off, until finally he basically told her, ‘Look, I’m in charge of this place, suck it the fuck up, because I’mbusyand like it or not – you’re here, because you’re not going home to Spain!’”

“Oo, so he was arealpeach,” I said, all sarcasm intended.

“Basically, yeah,” he said.

“What a choad,” I said and he snorted caught off guard and laughed.

“Absolutely,” he said.

“No offense, but when it comes to stories like this, I hope she cheated on him. Sounds like she was doing everything to communicate that she needed some attention or whatever from her husband and he just wasn’t listening.”

“Exactly,” he said, “and that’s the thing – she did. She communicated in every way what she needed short of interpretive fucking dance, and this guy was just ignoring her. So, and spoiler alert, she did. There was this young buck in the military or whatever, closer to the wife in age and with a lot in common, and they started talking and one thing led to another and they fell in love and started carrying on.”

“I think I remember this story now,” I said smiling and stopping.

“Yeah?” he asked.

“Yeah,” I said. “They ended up cheating and then disappeared together, right?”

“Right.”

“Except they didn’t. Husband found out about the affair and had them chained up here in the fort and sealed them in.”

“Exactly,” he said. “Here.”

I looked around us, “Here?”

He pointed at a low opening and said, “Technically, in there. Feeling brave enough to go in?”

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