Chapter 30
thirty
BILLIE
The thing about following someone who doesn’t want to be followed is that your footsteps sound twice as loud.
Every crunch of gravel beneath my shoes announces itself as a small betrayal, and I’m already cataloguing the ways this conversation is going to go wrong before it even starts.
It’s a talent, really— anticipating disaster.
I’ve built an entire career on it. Twelve years of fetching coffee and rearranging schedules has taught me people will never be happy, no matter how hard you try. But still: I’m going to try.
“Rodrigo,” I say. My voice comes out smaller than I want it to. Classic.
He stops walking. Doesn’t turn around. His hands are in his jacket pockets and I watch his back rise and fall with one long breath. The rolling hill of the Tuscan horizon seem to sigh in the distance.
He turns around.
And his face— God. His face does this thing where every emotion he’s feeling is right there, just right there, like he’s never learned to hide a single one. It’s the thing I noticed about him first. Rodrigo Esperanza feels things at full volume and it shows.
Right now, what it shows is hurt.
“Tell me something,” he says, and his voice is calm, which is worse than yelling. Calm means he’s been thinking. “Why are you pushing me back toward her?”
“I’m not— that’s not what I’m doing.”
“It is, though.” He takes a step closer. “You are asking me to go back to everything I have been trying to leave behind.”
“That's not?—”
“Billie.” My name, firm and soft at the same time.
Like a door being shut gently but definitely shut.
“I have spent— I cannot tell you how long I have spent trying to get away from this. From people like her. From the chaos. And now you want me not just to go back, but to take you— this person I’ve found who is wonderful, and kind— and to watch you be in danger— And I am trying— estoy intentando— to understand why. ”
I open my mouth to say something clever. Something that will defuse this the way I defuse everything— with a little self-deprecation, a joke, a shrug that says don’t worry about me, I’m fine, I’ve always been fine. But nothing comes out.
“Can we just—” I gesture vaguely at a fallen log near the edge of the clearing, like sitting down will somehow make this easier. Like difficult conversations have ever been improved by seating arrangements. He doesn’t move. Okay. We’re standing, then.
I try again.
“I know how it looks,” I say. “I know it looks like I’m dragging you back into something toxic, and I get why that scares you. I really do. But this isn’t about her, Rodrigo. Not really.”
“Then what is it about?”
This is the part where I’m supposed to be articulate. Where the version of me that exists in my head— the confident, together, knows-what-she-wants version— steps forward and delivers a speech that makes everything make sense. But that version of me is tired, so I settle for all I’ve got.
“I mean... I just...” I press my palms against my thighs. Take a breath. “Okay. I’m going to say something, and I need you to let me get through it, because if I stop I'm going to lose my nerve and then I’ll just make a joke about it and we’ll both pretend this conversation never happened.”
Something in his expression shifts. He nods, once. Waiting.
“My whole life,” I say, “I have been small.”
The word hangs there, and it’s such a simple word— small— but it holds everything.
Every meeting I sat in the back of. Every idea I whispered to someone else so they could say it louder.
Every time I drafted the negotiation strategy and then watched my boss take credit while I refilled his water glass.
Every time someone asked what I do I said Oh, I’m just an assistant with that little laugh, that laugh that says don’t look too closely, there’s nothing to see here.
“I have spent my entire career— my entire life— shrinking myself to fit into whatever space other people left for me. I’m the person in the background of the photo.
I’m the name in the CC line. I’m— God, I’m the human equivalent of a participation trophy.
Thanks for showing up, Billie. Here’s your lanyard. “
A flicker crosses his face. Almost a smile. Almost. That means he understands. Good.
“And for the first time,” I continue, my voice getting steadier in a way that surprises me, “for the first time, I have a chance to do something that actually uses what I’m good at.
Not fetching coffee. Not scheduling conference calls.
Not smiling while someone else takes the bow.
This— going back in there, dealing with Alana, using everything I know about negotiation and reading people— this is me standing up.
This is me saying I’m not just The Assistant anymore. ”
I can feel the heat behind my eyes and I blink it back because if I cry right now I’ll be furious with myself. The new Billie Harper does not cry during arguments. The new Billie Harper cries later, alone, in the shower, like a person with dignity.
“I’m not pushing you toward Alana,” I say.
“I’m pulling myself forward. And I know— I know— those two things look the same from where you’re standing, but they’re not.
They’re not the same thing. I need to finish this for myself.
If I can take down the Twin Ledger, it will change my life in the best possible way.
You told me— you said yourself that life can be a type of therapy, and well— maybe this is my therapy.
And I— I think all of this is happening because I met you,” my voice cracks, and I hate it, but I keep going.
“Because you make me—” I pause, trying to find the words.
And then: there they are. “You make me feel brave.”
The silence that follows is the kind that has texture. It settles between us like something physical, like weather.
Rodrigo’s jaw works. For a second I think he’s going to walk off and I’ll be standing here alone with my big speech and my big feelings and my tiny, hammering heart. But he doesn’t walk. He stays.
“Billie, you can do this, yes, of course you can. But the question is— should you?” He sighs, running a hand through his hair. “I believe in you. Of course I believe in you. You are— Dios mío— you are the most capable person I have ever met and you don’t even know it, which makes it worse. But?—”
The but. There it is. The word I’ve been bracing for since I walked out here.
“— I do not understand this.”
“So you don’t trust me,” I say, and my voice is steady. It is absolutely steady. That is the official report.
“That is not what I said.”
“It’s what you meant.”
“No, corazón.” He exhales sharply through his nose.
Then, he admits it. The thing I’ve been waiting for him to claim: “I have rushed into every love of my life,” Rodrigo throws his hands in the air.
“All I wanted was to stay here and paint with you. To spend time in the truth of you, not the adventure. Is that so wrong? That I want to know who you really are outside of the gunshots and the danger?”
“You’re afraid you’re rushing into things again,” I say, stung.
He doesn’t answer. He stands there in the silence, unable to form the words I need to hear.
There it is. The truth. He’s afraid he’s rushing into this— into us. This is something broken inside him that has nothing to do with me and everything to do with every woman who came before me, every Alana and pre-Alana and whoever taught him that love and danger feel exactly the same.
And I can’t fix it.
I want to close the distance between us. I want to put my hands on his face and say look at me, really look, I’m right here and I’m real. But I can’t.
Instead, I straighten my spine. I have spent my entire life putting aside my own adventures to make other people happy. And I can’t do it this time.
“You don't have to come,” I say. “If you can’t trust what this is— if you need more time to figure out whether I’m real or just the next building that’s going to fall on you— then stay here. I’ll go. I’ll handle it.”
The words taste like metal in my mouth. Like biting down on a coin.
Because I don’t want to go alone. I don’t want to do any of this alone.
But I also can’t be someone's maybe. I’ve been a maybe my entire professional life— maybe we'll promote her, maybe she’s ready, maybe next quarter, Billie— and I am so tired of maybe that I could lie down on this gravel and sleep for a year.
Rodrigo stares at me. Something moves behind his eyes— something that looks like the beginning of a decision being made.
“No,” he says.
One word. Simple. Final. It wasn’t the answer I expected.
“No?” I ask, surprised.
“I will not let you go alone.” He says it like he's angry about it, like the words are being pulled from him against his will. “Whatever I feel— whatever I am afraid of— I will not sit here while you walk into something dangerous without someone watching your back. Eso no va a pasar.”
“Because you think I can’t handle it?”
“Because I will go where you go,” he says, and his voice cracks in a way that makes my eyes sting. “That is not negotiable, so long as you will have me.”
“… you will?”
“Yes,” he nods.
We stand there. Five feet apart and a thousand miles away from where we were an hour ago, when the chalet was warm and the paintings were catching the light and his hand had been resting near mine on the worktable like it was the most natural thing in the world.
That feels like a very long time ago.
“Okay,” I say.
“Okay,” he says.
I turn back toward the chalet. The light is still on inside, golden and inviting through the windows. I barely recognize the person I’ve become— but I know what she needs. I start walking toward the chalet, not expecting Rodrigo to follow me, but he does and somehow— our first fight is not the end.