I paused, watching the waves crash against the rocks below. The sun was sinking lower now, casting long shadows across the sand. A pelican dove into the water and came up empty.
“I let you walk away once, and it was the biggest mistake of my life. I’m not doing it again. So wherever you are, please just…come back to me. Or tell me where you are, and I’ll come to you. Just don’t disappear. Not now. Not when we’re so close to having everything.”
I hung up and sat there as the light faded over the water.
Isabel was out there. I didn’t know where, but I would find her. But I wouldn’t quit searching. I loved her more than I’d ever known was possible.
I pushed myself off the boulder and walked back toward Snapper’s truck. He stood near the hood, arms crossed, waiting with the patience that had always defined him.
“Ready?” he asked.
I looked back at the ocean, at the endless expanse of water and sky. “Yeah, let’s go.”
We climbed into the truck. As Snapper started the engine, my phone buzzed in my pocket. I yanked it out, heart pounding.
“Yeah?” I said, answering the call from a number I didn’t recognize.
“Is this Rascon Avila?”
“It is.”
“I’m calling about Isabel Van Orr.”
14
ISABEL
Idrove without knowing where I was going.
Kick’s truck seat was adjusted for his longer legs, and the mirrors were angled wrong. I gripped the steering wheel with both hands and turned onto the first road that led away from Los Caballeros, away from the Stonehouse, away from all those warm, welcoming faces that made me feel like I was drowning.
The vineyards blurred past my windows. Dormant vines stretched across the hills in neat rows, their bare branches reaching toward a sky I refused to look at. I knew this landscape. I’d grown up surrounded by it, had spent my whole life moving through wine country like a ghost—present but not quite real, visible but never seen.
My phone sat on the passenger seat where I’d tossed it. The screen was dark. I’d turned it off right before I fled.
Fled.I’d done it again. The one thing I’d promised myself I wouldn’t do, and I’d done it anyway.
What Lucia said repeated again and again.You’re mine now. You’re ours.
My hands tightened on the wheel until my knuckles ached.
She meant to be kind. To welcome me. To give me the very thing I’d been starving for—unconditional acceptance from a parent who didn’t keep score, didn’t dangle love like a prize to be earned.
And I’d run from it like it was a threat.
Because that’s what I did. That’s who I was. The woman who couldn’t accept kindness without waiting for the catch, who couldn’t believe in belonging without bracing for the moment it would be snatched away.
I turned onto Vineyard Drive without thinking, then onto Adelaida Road, winding deeper into the hills. The afternoon sun cast long shadows across the pavement as I passed winery after winery—names I recognized, families I knew, an entire community that had watched me make a fool of myself year after year at the bachelor auction—worse, being a bitch to everyone who’d been kind to me.
My throat burned with tears I couldn’t stop from falling, no matter how hard I tried.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered.
My apology hung in the cab of the truck, absorbed by the leather seats and the faint smell of Kick that lingered everywhere. His jacket was draped over the back of the passenger seat. His sunglasses sat in the cupholder. His presence surrounded me even in his absence.
“I’m so sorry, baby girl.”
My hand moved to my stomach without a conscious thought. At nineteen weeks, the swell was unmistakable now. I couldn’t hide it anymore, not that I’d been trying. Not with Kick. Not with Thomas and Bas. Not with anyone who mattered.
