The baby shifted inside me—a flutter, a ripple, like tiny bubbles rising through water. She’d been doing that more often lately, making her presence known in quiet moments when I least expected it.
“Your mama is a mess,” I began. “You probably already figured that out. You’ve had a front-row seat to all of it—the crying, the worrying, the running away from people who were trying to love me.”
Another flutter. I pressed my palm flat against the curve of my belly.
“I wanted to be different for you. I wanted to be better. When I found out about you, I promised myself I’d become someone worthy of being your mother. Someone who didn’t make the same mistakes over and over. Someone who could accept love without destroying it.”
The road curved through a section of oak trees, their branches bare and gnarled against the winter light. I slowed the truck to navigate the turn.
“And then your grandmother—your other grandmother, Kick’s mom—she said things that spooked me. That Ibelonged. And I couldn’t…I didn’t know how to…”
I drew a shaky breath.
“I blamed your daddy. In my head, I was already doing it. Telling myself this was his fault for bringing me there, for putting me in that room with all those women, for making me face something I wasn’t ready for.”
The words came easier now, spilling out in the privacy of the truck cab, where no one could hear themexcept the baby I prayed would find it in her heart to forgive my shortcomings. My insecurities.
“It’s what I do. I blame other people. My father taught me that—or maybe I just learned it from watching him. When something goes wrong, find someone else to hold responsible. When you can’t handle your own feelings, make them someone else’s fault.”
I turned onto another road, this one narrower, less traveled. The vineyards gave way to pastureland, then back to vines again.
“But it’snothis fault. None of this is his fault. Kick didn’t make me run. He didn’t make me panic. He didn’t create the broken parts of me that can’t accept love without waiting for it to be taken away.”
I sounded steadier. The truth had a weight to it, a solidity that felt different from the lies I’d been telling myself.
“This is my pattern. My fear. I’ve been doing this my whole life—pushing people away before they can leave, running before anyone can reject me, convincing myself I don’t deserve the things I want most.”
The baby moved again, more insistent this time. I smiled despite the tears tracking down my cheeks.
“I know. I hear it too. How stupid it sounds when I say it out loud.”
I reached an intersection, stopped, and let the engine idle while I tried to decide which way to go. Left led toward the coast. Right led deeper into wine country. Straight ahead led to town.
To Paso Robles. To the bar where everything had started between Kick and me.
“Two years ago,” I said, “I met your daddy at a bar after the Wicked Winemakers’ Ball. I was still wearing my fancy dress—no, wait, I’d changed. I’d gone back to my car and changed into jeans because I couldn’t stand wearing that red gown for another minute. Couldn’t stand being the woman I turned into when I wore clothes that felt more like armor.”
I kept going straight, now that I had a destination in mind.
“I’d been there for a few minutes when he walked in. I can still see myself sitting at the bar, drinking bourbon on the rocks, knowing I looked like I wanted to be anywhere else but had nowhere to go.” I took another deep breath. It was less shaky than the last. “We didn’t like each other then. Or we thought wedidn’t. We’d spent years circling each other at events, making assumptions, and building walls.”
The memory rose up, clear and sharp. The dim lighting. The smell of hops and old wood. Kick taking a seat at one end of the bar, while I was at the other, both of us pretending the other didn’t exist until pretending became impossible.
“He got up first, walked over and sat on the stool beside me. Neither of us spoke for several minutes. And then, I told him things I’d never told anyone. About why I kept bidding on Snapper at the auction—how it was never about him, it was about winning, about feeling visible for one night a year. I let him see the real me in those few short hours we sat and drank together. The lonely, desperate, invisible me that I’d been hiding behind designer clothes and perfect hair.”
I slowed as the outskirts of town appeared. Strip malls and gas stations, then older buildings with more character, then the downtown area with its tasting rooms, shops, and restaurants.
“He said I wasn’t invisible. He looked right at me, and he said it like he meant it. Like he could actually see me.”
The bar appeared on my right. Same weathered sign. Same small parking lot. Same unremarkable exterior that hid the place where my life had started to change.
I parked and, for several seconds, sat in the truck, staring at the entrance. The afternoon sun that filtered through the windshield felt warm on my face. My hand stayed pressed to my stomach, and the baby stayed quiet, as if she was waiting to see what I would do.
I could leave. I could turn the truck around and drive back to the Russian River Valley, back to Whitmore, back to the cottage where I’d built a new life. I could pretend this weekend had never happened, that I’d never gotten to know Kick’s family, that I’d never felt the terrible weight of being offered everything I’d ever wanted.
Or I could walk into that bar and sit down and think. About me. About Kick. About our baby.
About my fucking father. About twenty-seven years of trying to earn his love, of twisting myself into shapes that might finally be good enough, of waiting for approval that never came. I’d spent my whole life waiting for Baron to choose me, and he never had. Not once.
