9. Rafael #3
“The Salazar ranch is outside Austin,” he said finally. “I’ll text you the coordinates. But Rafael-”
“Thank you.”
I hung up.
Twelve hours later, I was standing on a porch in Texas, watching Gus Salazar walk toward me with murder in his eyes.
The ranch was bigger than I remembered. Bigger than it had looked in the photos, the ones I’d studied before the wedding, trying to understand the woman I was about to marry.
Fields stretched in every direction, golden in the late afternoon light.
Cattle dotted the distant hills. The air smelled like dust and grass and green, growing things.
Gus came from the barn. He’d seen my car pull up. He’d taken his time walking over, and I understood that the slowness was deliberate. A power move. A way of making me wait.
He was bigger than I remembered. Broader. He’d spent his whole life working the land, and the land had worked him right back, carving him weathered and immovable.
He stopped ten feet away. Didn’t offer his hand.
“You’ve got some nerve,” he said.
“Mr. Salazar-”
“I’m not interested in what you have to say.”
“I need to know where she is.”
“You need.” He laughed. The sound had no warmth in it. “You need. That’s the problem, isn’t it? You need. What about what she needs? Did you ever ask yourself that question?”
I opened my mouth. Closed it.
“You had three years,” Gus said. His voice was quiet now, which was worse than shouting. “Three years with my daughter. Three years to figure out that she was the best thing that ever happened to you. And you chose to waste them.”
“I know-”
“You don’t know anything.” He stepped closer.
I didn’t step back, but I wanted to. “I watched that interview. The one where you made jokes about chickens and boots and taking the girl off the farm. I watched my daughter sit there and smile while you turned her into a punchline in front of the whole country.”
“I’m sorry-”
“Sorry doesn’t fix it.” His hands were shaking.
Not with fear. With rage. “She came to visit, you know. After the interview. She didn’t tell me she was coming.
Just showed up at the door, and I could see it in her face.
How sad she was. How small you’d made her feel.
My daughter, who I raised to be strong and proud and fearless.
You made her small, Rafael. And I’ll never forgive you for that. ”
The words went in under the ribs, right where I’d been storing all the guilt I didn’t know what to do with.
Bree’s face on the morning show came back to me. The smile that didn’t reach her eyes. The way she’d absorbed the joke and deflected it and never once let the audience see her flinch.
I’d thought she was fine. I’d thought she was in on it. I’d thought we were performing together, a comedy duo for the cameras.
I’d thought wrong.
“I want to make it right,” I said.
“You can’t.”
“I have to try.”
“Why? Because you feel guilty? Because your conscience finally woke up?” Gus shook his head.
“She’s better off without you. She’s building a life somewhere.
I don’t know where, and even if I did, I wouldn’t tell you.
Because the best thing I can do for my daughter right now is make sure you never find her. ”
“I love her.”
The words came out raw. Broken. I hadn’t meant to say them, hadn’t planned to, but they were true, and sometimes truth didn’t wait for permission.
Gus stared at me. His face flickered. Surprise, maybe. Or pity.
“Then prove it,” he said. “Not to me. To yourself. Become the man she deserved. And if you ever find her again, if she ever gives you another chance, don’t waste it.”
He turned and walked back into the house.
The door closed behind him with the same finality as Okonkwo’s conference room door. Another ending. Another failure. Another person telling me that Bree was gone and I had no one to blame but myself.
I stood on that porch for a long time, watching the Texas sun sink toward the horizon.
The sky turned orange, then pink, then purple. The cattle moved in the distant fields, dark shapes against the fading light. A dog barked somewhere far away. The air cooled, and the smell of the land shifted, becoming richer, deeper.
She’d grown up here. She’d walked these fields, breathed this air, watched this same sun set over these same hills. This was the world I’d mocked on national television.
No wonder she’d left.
She was out there somewhere. Building a life. Moving on. Becoming whoever she was supposed to become without me dragging her down.
I could let her go. I could respect her wishes, sign the papers, disappear into the company that had cost me everything, and pretend I’d never known her.
Or I could become the man she deserved.
I got in the car. Started the engine.
I wasn’t giving up.
She was out there. Someday, somehow, I’d find her. And when I did, I’d be ready. I’d be worthy. I’d have the words I should’ve said in that hallway, and I’d say them, and I’d pray she believed them.
I love you.
The three words burned in my chest the whole drive back to the airport.
I wasn’t giving up.