13. Bree
— ? —
Bree
I’d been stupid to think I could hide forever.
The boy from the bicycle was still talking, but I couldn’t hear him anymore. I couldn’t hear anything except the blood pounding in my ears and the voice in my head screaming the same word over and over.
Run.
But I didn’t run. I’d spent four years running, and it hadn’t been enough, and now Rafael Grant was standing thirty feet away in his goddamn suit and his goddamn watch and his goddamn face that I still saw every time I closed my eyes.
He looked older. Gray at his temples. Lines around his eyes that hadn’t been there before. He was thinner, too, the bulk of him somehow diminished, and for one disorienting moment I wondered if he’d been sick.
Then I remembered that I didn’t care.
Never let the enemy pick the ground.
My father had taught me that. One of his many lessons about business and life and the ways they were the same thing. If someone’s coming for you, don’t wait for them to arrive. Go to them. Make them fight on your terms.
I handed my cash box to Molly without looking at her.
“Take over.”
“Bree, what-”
I was already walking.
The distance between us closed with each step. Twenty feet, then fifteen, then ten. I could see his face more clearly now, the way his expression shifted as I approached. Hope, and fear, and a raw desperation I refused to acknowledge.
I watched him straighten, and I didn’t let myself feel anything about any of it.
I stopped three feet away. Close enough to count the gray at his temples. Close enough to smell his cologne, the same one he’d always worn, sandalwood and a darker note underneath.
Close enough to hit him, if I wanted to.
“What the fuck are you doing here?”
His mouth opened, then closed. He was staring at me with an intensity that made my skin prickle.
“Bree.”
“Don’t. Don’t say my name, don’t act surprised, don’t pretend this is some kind of coincidence. I saw your scout. I know Grant Foods sent someone to take pictures of my farm. What the fuck are you doing here?”
“I’ve been searching for you.” His voice was hoarse. “For four years. I’ve been-”
“Okay. Great. You found me. Now leave.”
“Bree, please. Let me explain.”
“Explain what? That you tracked me down through a corporate sourcing report? That you flew across the country to ambush me at my own farm stand? What is there to explain, Rafael?”
“The report was an accident.” He was talking fast, the words tumbling over each other. “I didn’t send anyone here specifically. It was a regional survey, random farms, and your photograph was in the background, and when I saw it I couldn’t-”
“Stop.”
He stopped.
The word cut clean through his rambling, and he fell silent immediately, his mouth still half-open, his eyes fixed on my face.
“I don’t care.” I kept my voice flat. Controlled.
The voice I used when I was teaching women how to defend themselves, calm and steady and completely in command.
“I don’t care how you found me or why you came or what you want to say.
I left. I filed for divorce. I disappeared on purpose, Rafael.
Do you understand what that means? It means I didn’t want to be found. ”
“I know.”
“Then why are you here?”
“Because I couldn’t stop looking.” His voice cracked.
“Because every day for four years I’ve woken up thinking about you, and I couldn’t stop, and I tried, Bree, I tried to move on and I couldn’t, and when I saw your face in that photograph I got on a plane without packing a bag because I needed to see you.
That’s why I’m here. I’m not here for the company.
I’m here because I’ve been looking for you since the lobby. ”
The lobby.
The day I’d left, the last time I’d seen him, standing in the doorway of our penthouse with that stunned expression on his face while the elevator doors closed between us. Then the cab ride to Penn Station and the train carrying me south while I fell apart in a window seat.
I don’t know what I feel about you. I’ve never known.
“It doesn’t matter.” My voice came out harder than I’d intended. “Whatever you think you feel, whatever you think you want, it doesn’t matter. I built a life here. A good life. And you’re not part of it.”
“I know that too.”
“Then why won’t you leave?”
“Because I need you to know.” He stepped closer. “I need you to know that I was wrong. About everything. About the way I treated you, about the things I said, about-”
He reached for my arm.
I didn’t think.
The move was muscle memory, drilled into me since I was eight years old. His hand came toward me, and my body responded without consulting my brain.
I grabbed his wrist. Twisted. Used his own momentum to spin him around and down.
He went face-first into my produce table.
The tomatoes scattered and the lettuce went flying. His cheek pressed into the arugula I’d picked that morning, and I held his wrist locked behind his back while his expensive shoes scrambled for purchase on the dusty ground.
The table creaked under his weight. A crate of peppers toppled, spilling red and yellow across the dirt. His free hand grabbed at nothing, fingers splayed, completely unprepared for what had just happened.
From the diner window, someone cheered.
I looked up. Half of Marigold was watching through the glass, and they were applauding. Dot was actually pumping her fist. Martha and Ruth had their faces pressed to the window, grinning. The man from the hardware store had come outside and was clapping slowly, deliberately.
The adrenaline was still surging. My breath was coming fast, and my hands were steady on his wrist, and for one satisfying moment I let myself enjoy the sight of Rafael Grant face-down in my vegetables.
The CEO of Grant Foods. The man who’d commanded boardrooms and negotiated billion-dollar deals. Pinned to a card table by his ex-wife, covered in produce, in the middle of a town square in rural Texas.
I let go of his wrist and stepped back.
The adrenaline drained, and the satisfaction went with it, because the truth was I didn’t think Rafael Grant would ever raise a hand to me. The throw had been reflex, muscle moving before judgment could catch up, and reflex wasn’t fair.
“That part, I’m sorry for.” I kept it low, just for him. “You startled me. I don’t think you’d hurt me. That was instinct, and it wasn’t fair to you.”
He straightened, arugula in his hair, tomato juice down his collar, his ruined suit hanging off him in the Texas heat. “It’s okay,” he said. “I deserve-”
“I’m not finished.”
He went still.
And then I stopped keeping my voice down.
Because the whole square was watching now, the diner window and the two old women on the bench who’d given up pretending not to listen, and for the first time in my life I was standing on the right side of the audience.
Manhattan had made me perform. Manhattan had put a camera on my face and dared me not to flinch while my husband made me a punchline, and I’d smiled, and smiled, and swallowed it, because smiling was the only move I’d had. I didn’t live in Manhattan anymore.
“You want to know why you ended up face-down in my arugula?” My voice carried now, even and unhurried, all the way to the glass.
“Because the last time I let you close, you forgot my birthday and canceled on me for months. Then you went on national television and called me the girl you couldn’t take the farm out of, and you laughed, and you never once looked over to see that I wasn’t laughing with you.
You made me small in front of the entire country, Rafael.
And you didn’t even notice you’d done it. ”
He didn’t defend himself. There was nothing in his face now but a man understanding exactly how public this was going to be.
“So here’s where things stand. This is my town.
These are my people, and that’s my produce you’re wearing.
And you don’t get to fly in here in a ten-thousand-dollar suit and reach for me like the last four years never happened, like I’m a thing you set down and came back for.
” I stepped in, and I watched him hold his ground and want to give it.
“You lost the right to reach for me the day you decided a phone call mattered more than I did.”
Somewhere behind me, from inside the diner, a voice said, “Amen.” A phone lowered. And I understood that this, too, would be all over town by nightfall, but this time, the story would be mine.
Rafael was quiet for a long moment. When he finally spoke, it wasn’t a defense, and it wasn’t a deflection.
“You’re right,” he said. “About every word of it. And I’m not going to stand here and pretend you’re not.”
He didn’t look away. Neither did I.
Four years. Four years of anger and hurt and the bitter satisfaction of knowing I’d walked away. And now he was standing in front of me covered in produce, telling me he deserved to be thrown into a table.
“You’re not going to leave, are you?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because I don’t have anywhere else to go.” He had the grace to look embarrassed. “I came without a car. Or a bag. Or a plan.”
“You flew across the country without packing a bag.”
“I wasn’t thinking clearly.”
“You’re a CEO. You run a multinational corporation. You’re supposed to think clearly.”
“I’ve never thought clearly about you.” The words were quiet. Honest. “That’s part of the problem.”
The diner crowd was still watching. I could feel their eyes on us, could hear the murmur of speculation through the glass.
“Fine.” I started gathering my scattered produce. The tomatoes were bruised now, unsellable. The lettuce was wilted from the heat. An entire afternoon’s work, ruined. “There’s an inn three blocks east. Dot’s sister runs it. Tell her I sent you and she might give you a room.”
“Might?”
“This town doesn’t care for outsiders. Especially outsiders in expensive suits who upset the locals.”
He looked down at himself. At the ruined fabric, the vegetable stains, the dust coating his shoes. The suit had probably cost more than my monthly expenses. Now it was fit for nothing but the trash.
“I’ll manage.”
“You won’t.” I finished stacking tomatoes. “But that’s not my problem.”
I walked him to the inn myself, because I knew Patsy would turn him away if I didn’t. The walk was silent. He kept pace beside me, still picking arugula out of his hair, and I kept my eyes forward and my face neutral.
The streets of Marigold passed by, the hardware store and the library and the little park where Rosie played on the swings. All of it familiar, all of it mine, and he was walking through it now, leaving footprints in my world.
“Here.” I stopped at the entrance. The inn was a converted Victorian, white with green trim, a wraparound porch lined with rocking chairs. “Ask for Patsy. Tell her Bree said to give you the room at the back. It’s the quietest.”
“Thank you.”
“Don’t thank me. I’m doing this so you’ll have somewhere to sleep while you figure out that you shouldn’t be here.”
“I’m not leaving.”
“Then you’ll die of boredom.” I turned to go. “This town has one stoplight and nothing to do. The highlight of the social calendar is the Saturday market, which you just ruined.”
“Bree.”
I stopped. Didn’t turn around.
“I’m going to earn it.” His voice carried across the distance between us. “Whatever it takes. However long it takes. I’m going to earn the right to be in your life again.”
I walked away without answering.
Three blocks later, I pulled out my phone and called my father.
He picked up on the second ring.
“Mija. Is everything okay?”
“He found me.”
A long pause. I could hear my father breathing on the other end of the line, could picture him in his study, probably reaching for his bourbon.
“Rafael?”
“He’s here. In Marigold. Standing in the street covered in tomato juice because I threw him into my produce stand, but here.”
My father laughed. A short, surprised sound. “You threw him into your produce stand?”
“Instinct. He reached for me.”
“Good girl.” There was pride in his voice. “Your mother would be proud.”
“Dad.”
“I know. I know.” He sobered. “Do you want me to come?”
“Not yet. I don’t know. I don’t know what I want.”
“What does he want?”
“He says he wants to earn the right to be in my life again. Whatever that means.”
Another pause. “Do you believe him?”
“I don’t know what to believe anymore.”
“Then make him prove it.” My father’s voice was calm. Steady. The voice he’d used when he’d taught me to ride, to negotiate, to stand my ground. “You’re a Salazar, mija. We don’t give anything away for free. If he wants anything from you, make him work for it.”
“And if he does? If he actually proves it?”
“Then you’ll have more information than you do now. And you can decide what to do with it.”
I hung up. Kept walking.
The farmhouse came into view, white paint glowing in the late afternoon light. Butterbean was sunning himself on the porch, his belly pressed to the warm wood. Everything looked exactly the way it had this morning, before Rafael Grant had blown back into my life.
I walked up the steps. Opened the door.
“Mommy!”
Rosie came barreling toward me from the living room, her hair in pigtails, her face lit up with the particular joy of a child who’d been waiting for her mother to come home.
I caught her. Held her. Pressed my face to her hair and tried to breathe.
She smelled like sunshine and strawberry shampoo. She was warm and solid and real, and she had no idea that her father was three miles away.
Behind her, the nanny was gathering her things.
“She was great today, Bree. Ate all her lunch, took a good nap. We did some coloring.”
“Thank you, Grace.”
“Same time tomorrow?”
“Please. Rosie will be counting the minutes.”
Grace left. I stood in my living room holding my daughter, and I thought about Rafael three miles away at the inn, and I thought about Rosie’s questions, and I felt fate laughing at me.
She was just asking about her father.
And now he was here.
“Mommy?” Rosie squirmed in my arms. “Why do you look sad?”
“I’m not sad, baby.”
“You look sad.”
Kids saw everything. I’d forgotten that, or maybe I’d only gotten better at fooling adults, who wanted to be fooled.
“I’m just thinking.”
“About what?”
I set her down. Looked into those blue eyes, so pale, so familiar, so impossible to escape. Rafael’s eyes, staring up at me from my daughter’s face.
“About complicated things,” I said. “Grown-up things.”
“Is it about my daddy?”
My heart stopped.
“Why would you ask that?”
“Because I was thinking about him today.” Rosie’s face was serious. “I was thinking maybe he’s not working so far away anymore. Maybe he’s closer now.”
I stared at my daughter. My daughter who had no idea her father was three miles away, covered in tomato juice, planning to earn the right to be in our lives.
“Maybe,” I heard myself say. “Maybe he is.”
Rosie smiled. Went back to her coloring.
I stood in my kitchen and watched her, and I felt the world shifting under my feet, and I cursed fate for its terrible, terrible timing.