Chapter 7
Camila
Lately, my body’s been betraying me. I wake with the sunrise instead of fighting it, as if my almost month-long stay on the ranch is starting to seep into me.
I can’t get used to those massive breakfasts.
I prefer a black coffee on the porch, savoring the quiet before the ranch picks up its pace.
Mr. Henderson has told me my grandmother, Rosa, did the same, preferred to drink her coffee alone while the rising sun washed the Sacramento Mountains with light, though then I’m starving by midmorning.
The ranch is starting to smell like home, and I don’t know when that started to feel normal.
My phone buzzes in my pocket, and reading the message leaves me with a bittersweet feeling.
Michelle: Cami, one of the speakers at the renewable energy conference in Santa Fe can’t make it. Since you’re nearby, I put your name forward, and they accepted. You’ll be moderating a panel.
I reread her words several times. For the past few years, that message would’ve been a lifeline, a sign the business world still values me. A chance to make connections that would push my legal career forward.
I sigh as I watch one of the cats stretch out to bask in the first rays of sun.
She’s attached a link, and, when I tap it, I see my photo, though I hardly recognize myself.
Hair flat-ironed within an inch of its life, a smile flashing perfect teeth, a designer suit clinging to me like a second skin.
Me: Thanks for thinking of me. See you in Santa Fe this afternoon.
And as soon as I hit send, an odd feeling I can’t quite name washes over me.
Liz comes out of the house and gives me a slight smile, tipping the brim of her hat with her fingers in greeting. She’s pulled on brown leather chaps over her pants. Yesterday she mentioned she was going to try a new horse her sister brought for the next rodeo.
“I have to go to Santa Fe for a conference,” I announce before she heads to the stables.
Liz stops and turns slowly. She tries to look very calm, but she grips her left bicep with her hand in that telltale gesture she makes when something doesn’t sit right with her.
“It’s nothing crucial, but I have to go. I can’t get out of it,” I explain, trying to keep my tone as casual as possible.
“How long will you be there?”
“I’ll be back tomorrow, maybe even tonight. Want me to bring you something from the city? A new hat, maybe?” I try to joke, but she doesn’t smile. Not even a little.
“I suppose you’re going with that Michelle, right?” she blurts, clicking her tongue in disdain.
“I’m not exactly going with her, but she’ll be there, and so will hundreds of other people. It’s a big conference,” I explain to her.
“Fine. We won’t count it as you bailing on the sixty-day trial,” she grumbles, walking away from me before I can say anything else.
***
After almost a month living on the ranch, the luxury hotel feels almost like a spaceship, its perfect temperature sealing us off from the heat outside. Even so, what strikes me most is the lack of any smell. It doesn’t smell like anything. It’s completely neutral.
From my room’s window I can see a sea of electric cars in the parking lot that makes me smile. Somewhere to the south is the ranch, though it almost feels like another planet. I miss Liz’s dented pickup truck.
The conference is a hothouse of ambition. All the men are dressed almost exactly the same. Every other woman has my haircut—or the one I should have had if I’d gone to the salon this morning. Even so, I become the old Camila again, the one who finds the right words and never lets silences stretch.
In barely twenty minutes, my pocket is full of business cards. I’m good at this. I know I am. It’s a skill I honed first by watching my mother and later at the firm I work for. I laugh at the right moments, ask the right questions, drop rehearsed lines that sound very smart.
But here, every conversation is the same. The problems are purely theoretical; they don’t have the urgency of the ranch’s daily decisions, where each one can mean keeping the lights on and making payroll.
At six p.m., Michelle appears at my side with a martini in hand, her nails perfectly manicured. She’s wearing a bespoke suit that probably costs more than our stables’ annual maintenance budget.
“Camila Mendoza, the most dangerous woman in the room,” she greets, winking and stroking my left arm. “You look gorgeous; everyone’s saying it. You’re making the rest of us look bad,” she jokes.
She smiles—it’s exactly the smile that used to disarm me in under ten seconds, but now it feels like an ad for something I no longer need.
She pulls me into the main current of the crowd, and we turn into a kind of spectacle as we work the room. The young attorney with a promising career on the arm of the queen.
Michelle has a special talent for what she calls working the room.
Everyone listens to her. She knows how to drop figures and names at just the right moment to impress.
She talks about her latest deal in Los Angeles, about the yacht she’s chartered in the Bahamas for her best clients.
Still, the worst part is she tells it with such ease you almost want to thank her for the chance to stand by her side.
“Tell me you didn’t miss it,” she whispers, squeezing my arm. “You’ve been holed up in the middle of nowhere for almost a month.”
“It’s not the middle of nowhere, it’s my grandmother’s ranch,” I protest, the words spilling out on instinct.
“Sorry, I didn’t mean it like that,” she apologizes. “It’ll be wonderful once we carry out our plans for the luxury hotel. You’ll see. And then I’ll get the firm to make you a partner. You’ll be one of the youngest to make it,” she assures me.
I hesitate for a moment, and she notices. Michelle is a predator, and predators can spot even the tiniest blink of weakness.
“By the way, I’ve booked dinner at the best restaurant in Santa Fe. Just you and me, like before,” she announces with a wink as her thumb discreetly brushes my wrist.
Muscle memory hits me. The old Camila from a month ago would have said yes before she finished the sentence and, after dinner, would be naked in her bed.
“I have to get back to the ranch tonight,” I apologize.
“You’d make me eat dinner alone? Why don’t you head out after dinner or in the morning?”
“It’s more than a three-and-a-half-hour drive,” I remind her.
She pushes with that confidence that gets her what she wants, and I end up saying yes, even though I hate myself for not standing my ground. Then I think that once I sell the ranch in a month, I’ll need her help, and I convince myself I’m doing the right thing.
Two hours later, the restaurant is everything Michelle promised. They seat us in a private booth with spectacular views of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, which turn their signature red at sunset.
Michelle orders a bottle of wine without asking and lays her hand over mine. She keeps using the word “we” as if it were a spell, while her thumb strokes my wrist.
“Tell me you want it as much as I do,” she whispers, slipping off her shoe to trace the inside of my legs with her foot and make me sigh.
“Michelle, no...”
But she leans in to shut me up with a kiss.
It’s a ritual I know too well. A few kisses, sweet words over dinner, risky touches right before the waiter appears with the food.
.. And later, her room. With her, there’s no improvising; we’d never end up in the restaurant bathroom for something quick.
With Michelle, everything is carefully calculated.
And I’ll admit she kisses well. Very well. Yet, for some reason, the spark is gone. I won’t deny that every time she strokes the inside of my thighs it turns me on, but it’s not the same anymore. Something’s changed. She senses it, and doesn’t even press for us to spend the night together.
***
Night on the highway east of Santa Fe is black as pitch. At this hour, there are hardly any cars. I drive in silence, a hair over the speed limit but not enough to risk a ticket. No music, no podcast. Just the sound of the wind and the tires humming over the asphalt.
Close to one in the morning, I pull off to a roadside gas station that looks frozen in time since the eighties. There are two pumps and a small store with an “OPEN” sign where a bored-looking kid of about eighteen watches me curiously.
The miles slip by, and the monotony turns almost hypnotic. There are no curves; I barely pass another car. My mind empties out, and, for some strange reason, I start humming a country tune I hear every day on the ranch.
And I catch myself thinking about Liz. About how her arms tense when she tightens the saddle cinch. About how nervous I get every time she rests her hand on the small of my back to explain something. And I wonder if those moments of silence between us scare her as much as they scare me.