Chapter 14 Isabel
ISABEL
Idrove without knowing where I was going.
Kick’s truck seat was adjusted for his longer legs, and the mirrors were angled wrong.
I gripped the steering wheel with both hands and turned onto the first road that led away from Los Caballeros, away from the Stonehouse, away from all those warm, welcoming faces that made me feel like I was drowning.
The vineyards blurred past my windows. Dormant vines stretched across the hills in neat rows, their bare branches reaching toward a sky I refused to look at.
I knew this landscape. I’d grown up surrounded by it, had spent my whole life moving through wine country like a ghost—present but not quite real, visible but never seen.
My phone sat on the passenger seat where I’d tossed it. The screen was dark. I’d turned it off right before I fled.
Fled. I’d done it again. The one thing I’d promised myself I wouldn’t do, and I’d done it anyway.
What Lucia said repeated again and again. You’re mine now. You’re ours.
My hands tightened on the wheel until my knuckles ached.
She meant to be kind. To welcome me. To give me the very thing I’d been starving for—unconditional acceptance from a parent who didn’t keep score, didn’t dangle love like a prize to be earned.
And I’d run from it like it was a threat.
Because that’s what I did. That’s who I was. The woman who couldn’t accept kindness without waiting for the catch, who couldn’t believe in belonging without bracing for the moment it would be snatched away.
I turned onto Vineyard Drive without thinking, then onto Adelaida Road, winding deeper into the hills.
The afternoon sun cast long shadows across the pavement as I passed winery after winery—names I recognized, families I knew, an entire community that had watched me make a fool of myself year after year at the bachelor auction—worse, being a bitch to everyone who’d been kind to me.
My throat burned with tears I couldn’t stop from falling, no matter how hard I tried.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered.
My apology hung in the cab of the truck, absorbed by the leather seats and the faint smell of Kick that lingered everywhere. His jacket was draped over the back of the passenger seat. His sunglasses sat in the cupholder. His presence surrounded me even in his absence.
“I’m so sorry, baby girl.”
My hand moved to my stomach without a conscious thought. At nineteen weeks, the swell was unmistakable now. I couldn’t hide it anymore, not that I’d been trying. Not with Kick. Not with Thomas and Bas. Not with anyone who mattered.
The baby shifted inside me—a flutter, a ripple, like tiny bubbles rising through water. She’d been doing that more often lately, making her presence known in quiet moments when I least expected it.
“Your mama is a mess,” I began. “You probably already figured that out. You’ve had a front-row seat to all of it—the crying, the worrying, the running away from people who were trying to love me.”
Another flutter. I pressed my palm flat against the curve of my belly.
“I wanted to be different for you. I wanted to be better. When I found out about you, I promised myself I’d become someone worthy of being your mother. Someone who didn’t make the same mistakes over and over. Someone who could accept love without destroying it.”
The road curved through a section of oak trees, their branches bare and gnarled against the winter light. I slowed the truck to navigate the turn.
“And then your grandmother—your other grandmother, Kick’s mom—she said things that spooked me. That I belonged. And I couldn’t…I didn’t know how to…”
I drew a shaky breath.
“I blamed your daddy. In my head, I was already doing it. Telling myself this was his fault for bringing me there, for putting me in that room with all those women, for making me face something I wasn’t ready for.”
The words came easier now, spilling out in the privacy of the truck cab, where no one could hear them except the baby I prayed would find it in her heart to forgive my shortcomings. My insecurities.
“It’s what I do. I blame other people. My father taught me that—or maybe I just learned it from watching him. When something goes wrong, find someone else to hold responsible. When you can’t handle your own feelings, make them someone else’s fault.”
I turned onto another road, this one narrower, less traveled. The vineyards gave way to pastureland, then back to vines again.
“But it’s not his fault. None of this is his fault. Kick didn’t make me run. He didn’t make me panic. He didn’t create the broken parts of me that can’t accept love without waiting for it to be taken away.”
I sounded steadier. The truth had a weight to it, a solidity that felt different from the lies I’d been telling myself.
“This is my pattern. My fear. I’ve been doing this my whole life—pushing people away before they can leave, running before anyone can reject me, convincing myself I don’t deserve the things I want most.”
The baby moved again, more insistent this time. I smiled despite the tears tracking down my cheeks.
“I know. I hear it too. How stupid it sounds when I say it out loud.”
I reached an intersection, stopped, and let the engine idle while I tried to decide which way to go. Left led toward the coast. Right led deeper into wine country. Straight ahead led to town.
To Paso Robles. To the bar where everything had started between Kick and me.
“Two years ago,” I said, “I met your daddy at a bar after the Wicked Winemakers’ Ball.
I was still wearing my fancy dress—no, wait, I’d changed.
I’d gone back to my car and changed into jeans because I couldn’t stand wearing that red gown for another minute.
Couldn’t stand being the woman I turned into when I wore clothes that felt more like armor. ”
I kept going straight, now that I had a destination in mind.
“I’d been there for a few minutes when he walked in.
I can still see myself sitting at the bar, drinking bourbon on the rocks, knowing I looked like I wanted to be anywhere else but had nowhere to go.
” I took another deep breath. It was less shaky than the last. “We didn’t like each other then.
Or we thought we didn’t. We’d spent years circling each other at events, making assumptions, and building walls. ”
The memory rose up, clear and sharp. The dim lighting. The smell of hops and old wood. Kick taking a seat at one end of the bar, while I was at the other, both of us pretending the other didn’t exist until pretending became impossible.
“He got up first, walked over and sat on the stool beside me. Neither of us spoke for several minutes. And then, I told him things I’d never told anyone.
About why I kept bidding on Snapper at the auction—how it was never about him, it was about winning, about feeling visible for one night a year.
I let him see the real me in those few short hours we sat and drank together.
The lonely, desperate, invisible me that I’d been hiding behind designer clothes and perfect hair. ”
I slowed as the outskirts of town appeared. Strip malls and gas stations, then older buildings with more character, then the downtown area with its tasting rooms, shops, and restaurants.
“He said I wasn’t invisible. He looked right at me, and he said it like he meant it. Like he could actually see me.”
The bar appeared on my right. Same weathered sign. Same small parking lot. Same unremarkable exterior that hid the place where my life had started to change.
I parked and, for several seconds, sat in the truck, staring at the entrance. The afternoon sun that filtered through the windshield felt warm on my face. My hand stayed pressed to my stomach, and the baby stayed quiet, as if she was waiting to see what I would do.
I could leave. I could turn the truck around and drive back to the Russian River Valley, back to Whitmore, back to the cottage where I’d built a new life.
I could pretend this weekend had never happened, that I’d never gotten to know Kick’s family, that I’d never felt the terrible weight of being offered everything I’d ever wanted.
Or I could walk into that bar and sit down and think. About me. About Kick. About our baby.
About my fucking father. About twenty-seven years of trying to earn his love, of twisting myself into shapes that might finally be good enough, of waiting for approval that never came. I’d spent my whole life waiting for Baron to choose me, and he never had. Not once.
But Kick had. Again and again. He’d tracked me down at Whitmore, refused to leave, claimed the baby as his before he even knew for certain. He’d held my hand in the hospital, talked to my stomach like our daughter could hear him, and looked at me like I was worth sticking around for.
He hadn’t asked me to be anyone other than who I was. He hadn’t required me to earn his acceptance or his presence. He’d just stayed.
And I’d kept running anyway.
“I’m done,” I said. “I’m done blaming him. I’m done running. I’m done waiting for someone to prove they’re going to leave so I can say I knew it all along.”
I grabbed my purse from the passenger seat and climbed out of the truck.
The bar was mostly empty in the midafternoon lull.
A couple sat at the far end, nursing beers and talking quietly.
A man in a cowboy hat occupied a stool near the taps, watching a muted sports broadcast on the TV mounted in the corner.
The bartender—a man I didn’t recognize—wiped down glasses behind the counter.
I chose a booth near the back. The same booth where Kick and I had eventually ended up that night two years ago, after we’d stopped pretending we didn’t want to talk to each other.
I slid onto the cracked leather bench and rested my hands on the table, palms down, like I was trying to ground myself.
The man from behind the bar appeared. “What can I get you?”
“Ginger ale, please.”
“Wanna start a tab?”
I took my credit card from my purse. Not one my father controlled. One I’d gotten on my own that he didn’t know about.
The guy took it and left without a comment. No judgment about a pregnant woman alone in a bar in the middle of the afternoon. No questions about why I looked like I’d been crying.
I stared at my phone’s dark screen.
I could call him. I could dial his number and tell him where I was, make it easy, remove any uncertainty about whether he’d find me.
But that felt wrong. Too controlled. Too much like the old Isabel, the one who managed every situation, who never let anything happen without her explicit direction.
If Kick came, I wanted it to be because he’d looked for me. Because he knew me well enough to guess where I’d go. Because he refused to give up even when I gave him every reason to.
And if he didn’t come…
I set the phone face-down on the table.
If he didn’t come, I would still be here. I would still have stopped running. I would still have chosen to wait instead of flee, to stay instead of hide, to sit in the discomfort of uncertainty instead of sprinting toward the nearest exit.
That was the point. Not whether he showed up, but whether I could stay.
The man returned with my ginger ale. I wrapped my hands around the cold glass and watched the bubbles rise.
“This is where it started,” I murmured, low enough that no one else could hear. “Me and your daddy. I felt like a different person that night. Like maybe I could be someone other than Baron Van Orr’s disappointing daughter.”
The baby stirred. A kick this time, sharp and definite.
“I know. I’m talking too much. But you’re the only one who has to listen to me right now, and I need to say this out loud, or I’ll lose my nerve.”
I took a sip of the ginger ale. The fizz burned pleasantly against my throat.
“I love your daddy. I told him so last night, and I meant it. I whispered it because I was scared, but I said it. And he said it back—he said it first, actually, which was the braver thing. He’s always been braver than me.”
The afternoon light shifted as clouds moved across the sun. The bar grew dimmer for a moment, then brightened again.
“Your grandmother called me mija. Do you know what that means? My daughter. She looked at me, and she called me her daughter, and I couldn’t breathe. Because my own mother never—”
I stopped. The tears were threatening again, and I was tired of crying.
“It doesn’t matter. What matters is that I ran instead of staying. I ran instead of letting myself be loved.”
I looked up at the clock behind the bar. An hour had passed since I’d fled the Stonehouse. Kick was probably frantic by now. Searching. Calling everyone he knew. Tearing apart the county, trying to find me.
Or maybe he wasn’t. Maybe he’d finally had enough. Maybe watching me bolt from his family had shown him what everyone else already knew—that I was too broken, too damaged, too scarred to be worth the effort.
If that was true, I would survive it. I would be devastated, but I would survive. I had the baby. I had my work at Whitmore. I had a life I’d built on my own, independent of my father’s money and approval.
I shook my head and rested one hand on my stomach. “Your daddy isn’t the kind of man who gives up, and I shouldn’t be, either.”
I raised my glass, finished the ginger ale, then walked over to the bar to get my card.
What I was doing—waiting for him—was bullshit. He shouldn’t have to find me. I should find him. Tell him how sorry I was. Pray he gave me another chance. Us another chance.
“I’ll take the check now, please.”
“It’s on the house, Ms. Van Orr.”
Behind me, I heard the door open and felt the warmth of the light that had spilled in. Or maybe it wasn’t the sun’s rays at all. Maybe it was the man I felt walking up to me. His warmth.