But Kick had. Again and again. He’d tracked me down at Whitmore, refused to leave, claimed the baby as his before he even knew for certain. He’d held my hand in the hospital, talked to my stomach like our daughter could hear him, and looked at me like I was worth sticking around for.
He hadn’t asked me to be anyone other than who I was. He hadn’t required me to earn his acceptance or his presence. He’d juststayed.
And I’d kept running anyway.
“I’m done,” I said. “I’m done blaming him. I’m done running. I’m done waiting for someone to prove they’re going to leave so I can say I knew it all along.”
I grabbed my purse from the passenger seat and climbed out of the truck.
The bar was mostly empty in the midafternoon lull. A couple sat at the far end, nursing beers and talking quietly. A man in a cowboy hat occupied a stool near the taps, watching a muted sports broadcast on the TV mounted in the corner. The bartender—a man I didn’t recognize—wiped down glasses behind the counter.
I chose a booth near the back. The same booth where Kick and I had eventually ended up that nighttwo years ago, after we’d stopped pretending we didn’t want to talk to each other.
I slid onto the cracked leather bench and rested my hands on the table, palms down, like I was trying to ground myself.
The man from behind the bar appeared. “What can I get you?”
“Ginger ale, please.”
“Wanna start a tab?”
I took my credit card from my purse. Not one my father controlled. One I’d gotten on my own that he didn’t know about.
The guy took it and left without a comment. No judgment about a pregnant woman alone in a bar in the middle of the afternoon. No questions about why I looked like I’d been crying.
I stared at my phone’s dark screen.
I could call him. I could dial his number and tell him where I was, make it easy, remove any uncertainty about whether he’d find me.
But that felt wrong. Too controlled. Too much like the old Isabel, the one who managed everysituation, who never let anything happen without her explicit direction.
If Kick came, I wanted it to be because he’d looked for me. Because he knew me well enough to guess where I’d go. Because he refused to give up even when I gave him every reason to.
And if he didn’t come…
I set the phone face-down on the table.
If he didn’t come, I would still be here. I would still have stopped running. I would still have chosen to wait instead of flee, to stay instead of hide, to sit in the discomfort of uncertainty instead of sprinting toward the nearest exit.
That was the point. Not whether he showed up, but whether I could stay.
The man returned with my ginger ale. I wrapped my hands around the cold glass and watched the bubbles rise.
“This is where it started,” I murmured, low enough that no one else could hear. “Me and your daddy. I felt like a different person that night. Like maybe I could be someone other than Baron Van Orr’s disappointing daughter.”
The baby stirred. A kick this time, sharp and definite.
“I know. I’m talking too much. But you’re the only one who has to listen to me right now, and I need to say this out loud, or I’ll lose my nerve.”
I took a sip of the ginger ale. The fizz burned pleasantly against my throat.
“I love your daddy. I told him so last night, and I meant it. I whispered it because I was scared, but I said it. And he said it back—he said it first, actually, which was the braver thing. He’s always been braver than me.”
The afternoon light shifted as clouds moved across the sun. The bar grew dimmer for a moment, then brightened again.
“Your grandmother called memija. Do you know what that means? My daughter. She looked at me, and she called me her daughter, and I couldn’t breathe. Because my own mother never?—”
I stopped. The tears were threatening again, and I was tired of crying.
