Promises and Pomegranates by Sav R. Miller

Kal owns half the island?
A heaviness descends on my bones with the realization that I don’t
actually know this man at all.
The man I’ve watched and admired from afar since I was a kid, who
inspired a love of poetry and nature and life in me despite being the
embodiment of the very opposite, seems to be entirely different from the one
who forced me to come here.
I’m not exactly sure how to reconcile the two.
Finally straightening, Vinny drops his hands, stretching his lips in a
circular motion. He makes eye contact with me just as I turn to leave again, a
strangled sound ripping from the back of his throat.
“Seriously... woman. You can’t leave. Kal will skin me alive if I don’t
keep an eye on you like I promised.”
I raise my eyebrows, nodding my chin at the bruise spreading up the
bridge of his nose. “If you try to touch me again, I’ll wear your skin. Kallum
isn’t the boss of me, nor do I need a babysitter.”
“What you need is cash,” Gwen mutters, sliding down the bar to tend to a
customer with a big, purple sun hat.
Vinny sighs, taking a step toward me. “Please don’t make this harder than
it needs to be.”
His hand slips into the pocket of his cargo shorts, and I have a momentary
flashback to the recurrent nightmare I kept having in the weeks following my
one night with Kal—how they always started out so tame, with me reading or
writing in a beautiful meadow, connecting with the earth in the most primal
way.
How Mateo’s presence always seemed to ruin them, and they’d end with
me being accosted with a chemically-laced cloth until I passed out.
The image lashes against my brain so quickly, I see a quick burst of white
light. Then it’s shifting, molding from my imagination to something more
concrete, something real.
A memory, not just a dream.
Kal approaching me on my balcony back home, removing a syringe from
his coat pocket. Me giving in immediately, just because I didn’t feel like
fighting it.
What was the point, when he’d find me regardless?
For only the second time I could recall, I’d been given a choice. A shitty
choice, but a choice nonetheless: marry Kal or watch him slaughter my loved