Chapter fifteen
The Oasis
Summer 1922
The denial.
C arlos crouched near the edge of the spring like he always did. He liked the quiet as he focused on his carving.
At least, he used to.
But now, his eyes kept drifting toward the path. As much as he hated to admit it, he’d gotten used to the girl and her easy laughter that somehow got under his skin in all the right ways.
“Hola, Carlos!”
“I thought I told you to stop coming here,” he muttered, his eyes flicking up briefly as she stepped closer to him.
Catalina grinned, her skirt swishing around her ankles as she walked toward him. “You did.”
Carlos arched a brow, setting the carving down. “Then why do you keep coming back?”
He expected her to say something like because I was bored or because I like swimming in the water . But instead, she said, “Because I wanted to see you.”
Carlos’s head snapped up, and his eyes locked on hers. He couldn’t understand why those words affected him so much. Maybe it was because he wanted to see her, too.
“You shouldn’t say things like that,” he gruffed.
“Why not?” She pushed a little further.
“Because you don’t know what you’re saying.”
“You know what I think? I think you wanted to see me, too.” She gave him a knowing look.
“You’re imagining things.” His lips pressed into a thin line.
“Am I?”
We both knew she wasn’t wrong .
He hated that she was right. He had started looking forward to her showing up, to the sound of her laughter filling the space around them, and to the way she made him feel like he wasn’t completely alone.
And that scared him more than anything.
“I have work to do.” He turned back to his carving, pretending her presence wasn’t unraveling something inside of him.
But Catalina wasn’t letting him off the hook that easily. “That’s not a no,” she teased, leaning closer to him.
Carlos sighed, shaking his head. “You don’t give up, do you?”
“Nooo,” she said, exaggerating the O’s.
His hazel eyes flicked to hers again, softer this time, like he was trying to figure her out. She didn’t look away.