Everything. Nothing. I couldn’t describe the panic clawing up my throat, for the grief and longing and terror tangled together until I couldn’t tell them apart.
“I need air. I’m sorry. I just—I need?—”
I didn’t finish the sentence.
I ran.
The Stonehouse doorbanged shut behind me, but I didn’t slow down.
My feet carried me across the garden path, past the winter roses and the ivy-covered walls, toward the parking area where the trucks and cars waited. I didn’t think about where I was going. I didn’t think about anything except the desperate need to escape, to get away from all that warmth before it suffocated me.
Kick’s truck was where he’d left it, parked with the other family vehicles. The keys still sat on the center console, where he’d left them.
I climbed inside and slammed the door.
For a moment, I just sat there. My hands were shaking so hard I couldn’t grip the steering wheel. My breath came in ragged gasps that sounded like sobs.
Because they were sobs. The tears had started without my permission, and I couldn’t make them stop.
You’re mine now. You’re ours.
Lucia’s words chased me, refusing to let go.
I didn’t know how to be someone’s. I didn’t know how to belong to a family that hugged instead of negotiated, that welcomed instead of weighed and measured. I’d spent twenty-seven years trying to earn love from a man incapable of giving it, and now, this woman—this stranger who should have been suspicious of me, who had every reason to question my motives and my past—was offering it freely,unconditionally.
She was everything my mother should have been. Everything I’d spent my whole life aching for without knowing how to name it.
And I couldn’t bear it.
The engine turned over on the first try. I put the truck in gear and drove out of the parking area, navigating by instinct toward the main road. The gate opened when I got close as if I could come and go as I pleased. As if I belonged here. As if I was part of the family.
Except I wasn’t. And no amount of kindness could change the fundamental truth that I didn’t know how to accept what they were offering.
The tears blurred my vision as the Los Caballeros estate disappeared in the rearview mirror. I wiped at them with the back of my hand, trying to see the road, trying to breathe through the pressure crushing my chest.
I’d done it again. The one thing I swore I wouldn’t do. The pattern I’d been trying so hard to break.
I’d run.
And this time, I had no idea if I could find my way back.
13
KICK
Iarrived at the caves just as the last of thecaballeroswere taking their seats. Everyone was in attendance except Baron.
Rather than Brix, who usually led our meetings when he was in town, Tryst stood at the head of the long table, his expression grave. When I slid into the empty chair beside Snapper, my uncle gave me a short nod and began.
“Baron Van Orr requested a formal meeting with Los Caballeros three days ago,” he said. “He wanted the brotherhood to help him locate Isabel.”
My jaw tightened. I’d known Baron wouldn’t let this go, but using thecaballerosto hunt down his own daughter felt like a new low.
“We voted at the end of that meeting,” Tryst continued. “Given that Isabel is safe, that she’s with Kick, and that she’s an adult capable of making her own decisions, we declined to assist.”
Snapper shifted in his seat beside me. “How’d he take that?”
“About as well as you’d expect.” Tryst’s mouth formed a grim line. “He left furious.”
