Chapter 11
Chapter Eleven
PRESENT
My night was haunted more by those questions in Santi’s eyes than by the loss of my car. Julia reassured me we can stay with her as long as we need, and living here, we are right next to Heritage, so I can walk to work and at a push, most places in town. Julia has horses she said she’ll lend us and reassured me there are hitches all over the town.
My life has become the Wild West.
This might have been fun when I was a teenager, but now? I have Theo to think about.
So why do so many of my thoughts keep circling back to Santi, as if he were the real disruption in my life?
Why did he stare at me like that—like he was searching for answers, not holding them?
I always assumed he’d just decided I wasn’t worth it, that he’d changed his mind about dragging some girl around from rodeo to rodeo. Maybe he concluded I wasn’t the type to eat gas station dinners and sleep in the back of his truck. Maybe Miss Reno Rodeo was just too tempting.
All I know is that I sat in my car, my entire apartment packed up, parked at the bottom of our hill, waiting until the sun bled into the sky, tears in my bloodshot eyes.
And he never came.
Never called. Never explained.
I could have hunted him down at his house. Demanded answers. But what would I have said? What would I have done if I’d seen him and he looked… happy?
It took me two years to move on. I visited our tree one last time before I let him go. Traced my fingers over the K his expression darkens. “What’s all this…?”
My voice is shaky. “I don’t know.”
“Let’s get you inside,” he interrupts, helping me to my feet. “We’ll talk after we get you looked at.”
I nod, but the unease lingers. I don’t know who it was meant for, but thank God it was me and not Theo or Julia.
As Luis guides me toward the store, I can’t shake the feeling that someone wanted this to happen. And then an eerie thought crosses my mind. Maybe it was the same someone who broke into our house—maybe they weren’t finished with what they started.