Note: For the time being, this story is a one-shot deal. Should I get the necessary inspiration to go forward with the return of Luis and Brenda to Port Charles, I will post it as a sequel to this story. However, for the time being, this story stands on its own.

Somewhere off the coast of the Riviera, a white yacht with blue trimming drifted in the turquoise waters. Brenda Barrett stared off into the distance, her hands wrapped tightly around the railing. Land had long since disappeared and the only thing within eyesight was water. There was the occasional sea mammal and a few sea gulls, but for the most part, there was only water. Water, the yacht, herself, and him.

He was supposed to be dead, and even as she stood on his yacht, still feeling his hands holding her wrists, she couldn't shake the thought, He was supposed to be dead. She hadn't shed a tear for him when he died, but when she saw him again, walking towards her in that little Parisian café, she felt the tears start to collect in the rim of her eyes then trickle down her cheeks. When he died, she'd only wanted to be rid of him. Once he was gone, she realized just how alone she had been without him.

Most would say that Brenda held a bit of a masochistic streak. She would say that she held one hell of a masochistic streak, especially when it came to men. She could never stay away from those that caused her heartache. In fact, she seemed to be drawn to them, as though their promises of heartbreak and pain were a magnetic that pulled her to them. Or like those little girls in Godzilla, but instead of calling the great monster to save Tokyo, they called Brenda to the great monster.

He was no good for her anymore than the others were, but at least with him she could say that it wasn't her heart that had been trampled on. If anyone's heart had felt the Texas Two-Step, it was his. He'd loved her, cared for her, treated her like a freaking queen. And what did she do in return? She betrayed on him and, in the end, was the cause for the death that never truly happened. It wasn't all on her head, of course. He had made his own enemies, but in the end… Brenda was the reason he came to town in the first place, and she was the reason he had stayed.

Luis Alcazar wasn't a sentimental man, by any means, but Brenda knew that he had loved her. He had loved her enough to kill in order to keep her. Even when she made it perfectly clear that she didn't want him, swore that she didn't love him, he still insisted that they belonged together. Now, she wasn't so sure that he was wrong. And she knew for a fact that when she told him she hated him, that she didn't love him, she had been lying through her teeth.

So many loves had been through Brenda's life, but only two of them, she thought, had ever been real, and both of those had left her in tears. Every time the clouds cried she thought about Sonny Corinthos. She remembered standing in her white, embroidered dress with tears in her eyes as Jason Morgaon told her that Sonny said it had been a nice ride. She remembered standing in the doorway of the church, thinking about the last time he had left her. "He always leaves me standing in the rain." Those words rang in her head with each summer rain, and no amount of rainbows or trips to the Eiffel Tower could make them go away.

Jasper Jacks had been the one that she thought would always be there. He would never abandon her. He wasn't hateful or malicious. He was able to give his whole heart. He shared his secrets. He held her tenderly and told her that she was the most beautiful woman in the world. He was also the man that walked her down the aisle, made it through half of the ceremony, and then walked away from her. "You're your own worst enemy," he had told her, and in a way, he was right.

She was the one that went back to these men. She was the one that gave them chance after chance to love her. She was her own worst enemy because she couldn't stop going back to men who loved the idea of her instead of the woman that lay beneath the model's skin. She was her own enemy because she couldn't see a good guy when she saw one. She was her own worst enemy because she just couldn't learn how to give up on love and tell it to take a long walk off a short pier.

Luis… He wasn't good, by any means. Honestly, a man that would murder couldn't have been that good to begin with. However, the time she'd spent away from him, thinking of him after his greatly exaggerated death, she decided that somewhere in his past, a woman had hurt him. Some woman, probably his dead daughter's mother, had hurt him in the same way that Brenda had hurt him. She'd left him for someone who loved her less, and he wanted to do what he could to be sure that it didn't happen a second time. That wasn't an excuse to kill, but it was good enough reason for her to understand why he'd gone to such extremes.

He was supposed to be dead. Luis Alcazar was supposed to be dead, and Brenda was supposed to be able to live out the rest of her life swearing that she would never love again, only to be waiting deep down for the next man in black to steal her heart and squash it under his bootheel. But, Luis was alive, and instead of waiting for the pain, she was waiting for it to reside. Luis had healed her heart before, though his methods had been less than admirable. Sure, he'd tricked her into believing she had her mother's illness and kept her away from Port Charles, but she couldn't deny that she had been happy with him. For all of his dastardly deeds and irrevocable insanities, he had made her happier in the four years they had been together than she had been in her entire life.

Arms wrapped around her waist from behind and she jumped. Brenda had lived in solitude for so long, with no one for company but Robin Scorpio, that male arms touching her bare skin was still a shock. Luis kissed her neck, then worked his way up, just below her earlobe, and Brenda relaxed. Tension rushed from her body as she leaned back against him. Her dark, wavy hair crushed against his chest. His arms brushed against the lower curve of her gold bikini top. His hand drifted down until his fingers walked along the top of her black sarong. He slipped one finger inside the knot at the side, and the thin sheath slid from her body.

Brenda moaned softly and, with his lips pressed against her neck, she could feel his lips turning into a grin. Luis muttered, "You're thinking. We're at sea, no one around to bother us, and you're thinking."

"I've been doing that a lot, lately." Brenda closed her eyes and let out a contented breath. "Thinking about where I've been, where I'm going… Where we're going."

"No thought needed there," he told her. "We'll go inland at Italy, then fly to Caracas."

"But after that, Luis." She turned to him and looked up. She flattened her palms against his stomach, then slid her hands up his chest and over his shoulders. Her arms straightened, then folded back in. She lightly held the back of his head. "I've done the same thing over and over. I've come back to someone I couldn't trust, but even with that, you've made me happy. It's just… It's hard."

"I know what you're asking, and I told you already, mi corazon. We're not going back to kill them."

"But, we're going for revenge. Not on Alexis, though. I know what she did was wrong, so very wrong, but you were wrong, too. I don't think Lorenzo saved you for you to come to town and kill. Right now, where he is right now… You told me he wouldn't want that."

"I don't really care what Lorenzo wants," he said, rolling his eyes. "If he'd paid more attention instead of living his life… If he'd let me tell Sage…" He stopped and Brenda saw the pain in his eyes. She didn't know Sage very well, mostly because he didn't know his daughter very well, but that didn't mean that he didn't love her. That he didn't miss her. "I'm not going to kill Alexis Davis."

"Or anyone else."

"If they try to kill me, I have to fight back."

"I know. Just… don't enjoy it." She sighed. "But, we're going to make them pay. You've convinced me that they deserve to pay for what they've done. They just don't need to pay with their lives."

"There are other ways to make them pay, Brenda, and believe me… they will." He touched her cheek, brushed her hair back from her face, then cupped her jaw. Luis leaned down and kissed her gently, murmurring soft Spanish words against her lips. He rose from her and said, "They will learn that your heart is not theirs to hold and destroy."

She smiled at him and, for the first time, felt a strength that was all her own. Brenda let her arms fall and turned in Luis's arms. Her hands covered his and she stared off into the distance. Brenda had been the victim for so long, from the men in her life and herself. She had to be strong, resilient… She couldn't afford to be weak, else she would drown in her own deep blue sea of misery. And there was no one better than Luis Alcazar to put steel in her backbone… and to love her.