All Yours
Palm fronds clattered softly in the night breeze.
Layla Reyes had come alone. Thirty-four, recently single after a long, quiet unraveling of a relationship that had stopped feeling like home years before she left it. She was tall, sun-kissed, with shoulder-length black hair that curled at the ends from the salt air, dark eyes that caught light, and a body that moved with the easy confidence of someone who had learned to take up space without apology. She wore a simple black bikini during the day and, tonight, a thin white linen dress that tied at the neck and fell loose to mid-thigh—nothing underneath, because the heat made anything more feel like punishment.