Ale squeezed my shoulder. “Take some time to think. Maybe try talking to Russell again. He might cool off and stop being a dick. It’s not like you and Kaia share the same blood. Who the fuck cares if two young people whose parents are dating want to be together?”
Nobody but Russell and my mother cared. It changed nothing.
“What would you do?” I doubted Ale had an answer. Nobody did. Not even me. I only wanted him to say I wasn’t an asshole for doing the right thing, because I already hated myself for the pain I hadn’t caused her yet.
Ale exhaled hard. “I don’t know. But if I loved someone, I’d do whatever was best for her.”
So would I. Always.
Her love was the best thing that had ever happened to me. With her, I finally knew what happiness felt like.
We could’ve had children—beautiful, loved in a way so few ever were. A hot tear slid down my cheek. Fuck. This hurt worse than losing Dad.
Ale shut his laptop. “Let it out, mi niño. I’ll be in the living room when you need me.”
The kitchen door closed with a soft click.
He left, giving me the space to grieve what might have been.
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
Kaia
“See? All the answers are correct. You aced it.” Alba lifted her hand for a high-five, but all I managed was a tight smile.
Something was wrong.
I expected my father’s rage the way one expects rain from a storm cloud. The outburst was bound to happen.
But it didn’t. He called, but never mentioned the weekend I spent with Asher.
He asked about SAT camp. The weather. My roommates. It was so unlike him I wondered if he was on drugs.
Still, my father wasn’t my biggest concern. Asher was.
Something had shifted after our weekend together. Instead of calling every night like before, he only texted—generic, meaningless things. No mention of our first time. Nothing about the future. He hadn’t even responded when I told him my father knew he’d picked me up on Saturday.
And he hadn’t said he loved me since Sunday.
It was Friday. He’d race tomorrow, and I wanted to wish him luck, but the thought of calling and him not answering made me sick.
Alba sighed, gathering the pages of math exercises I’d been working on. She was too good at math to need the practice, but she made me do it anyway, sitting beside me and knitting while I wrestled with equations.
“You know what.” She set the papers aside. “Just call him. He might be stressed. Didn’t you say he has to win this season no matter what?”
I stared at my silent phone, heart so heavy it struggled to beat. “I’m scared. I thinkhe—”
The phone buzzed. Asher’s face filled the screen, and I answered instantly.
“Ash! I was going to—”
“I’m here, peque,” he said. “Can I see you?”
Peque. He wouldn’t call me that if he didn’t love me. He wasn’t that cruel.
“Sure. I’m in the yoga room with Alba. I’ll go to the backyard now.”
“Okay.”
