Chapter 21 Isabel
ISABEL
Agirl.
I couldn’t stop thinking about it as we drove back to Miremont. The image from the ultrasound was burned into my memory—that tiny profile, the curve of her nose, the way she’d stretched and kicked as if already impatient to meet the world.
Our daughter.
Kick’s hand found mine on the center console, and I laced my fingers through his. Neither of us spoke. We didn’t need to. The joy filling the car was tangible, warm, and enough.
When we arrived at the house, the last of the afternoon light was fading behind the hills. Home. It still gave me a small thrill to think of it that way—this place that had been abandoned and forgotten, now filled with life again. Our life.
Inside, Kick disappeared into the kitchen while I went upstairs and wandered into the sitting room. My grandmother’s portrait looked down from above the fireplace, her expression serene. Someone—probably Kick—had already laid fresh wood in the grate, ready to be lit.
“Dinner’s almost ready,” Kick called up to me.
“You made dinner?” I asked, walking out and looking down on him from the landing.
“Come eat.”
I joined him to find the table set with mismatched plates and candles stuck in empty wine bottles. The meal was simple—roasted chicken, potatoes, and a salad made from greens I suspected came from Whitmore’s garden. Nothing fancy. But the effort he’d put into it made my chest ache.
“This looks so good!”
“Don’t sound so surprised.” He pulled out my chair with exaggerated formality. “I have hidden depths.”
“Clearly.”
We ate by candlelight, talking about nothing in particular. The renovation progress. Whether we should get a dog once we were settled or wait until after the baby was born. Easy conversation, the kind that came from knowing someone so well that silence wasn’t uncomfortable.
But something was off.
Kick kept fidgeting. Adjusting his napkin. Reaching for his water glass, then setting it down without drinking. His knee bounced under the table, a nervous habit I’d never seen from him before.
“Are you okay?” I asked.
“Fine,” he said too quickly.
I raised a brow but didn’t push.
After dinner, we returned to the sitting room, where he lit a fire in the grate.
I settled onto the sofa, and Kick sat beside me. Close, but not touching. His hands clasped between his knees, his gaze fixed on the flames.
“You’re being weird,” I said.
He glanced at me. “Weird?”
“Not bad weird. Just…” I studied his face, the tension around his eyes, the set of his jaw. “Something’s going on. You’ve been jumpy all through dinner.”
He laughed, but it sounded strained. “That obvious?”
“To me? Yes.”
The fire popped and hissed in the silence that followed. Outside, the wind moved through the vineyard, rustling the bare vines.
Then he turned to face me fully, and the look in his eyes made my heart stutter.
“I’ve been trying to figure out the right way to do this,” he said. “The right words. The right moment. I’ve been carrying this around for weeks, waiting for some perfect opportunity that probably doesn’t exist.”
“Carrying what?”
He reached into his pocket and took out a small velvet box.
My breath caught.
“Isabel.” He sounded steadier, the nervousness replaced by something deeper. He shifted off the sofa and got on one knee. “You’re the only person I can imagine my life with. I fell in love with you in that bar two years ago. I just didn’t know it yet.”
He opened the box. Inside, a ring gleamed in the firelight.
“This was my grandmother’s,” he said. “Lucia’s mother.”
Tears blurred my vision. I blinked them back, not wanting to miss a single moment of this.
Kick took the ring from the box and lifted my left hand. “Isabel Van Orr, will you marry me?”
His proposal landed in my chest and bloomed there, filling every hollow space I’d ever carried. This man. This life. This future stretching out before us, full of possibilities I’d never dared to imagine.
“You showed up and refused to leave.” My voice broke. “You made me believe I was worth staying for.”
“Is that a yes?”
“Yes.” I laughed through the tears streaming down my face. “Yes, of course yes.”
He slid the ring onto my finger. It fit perfectly, as if it had been made for me.
Then he pulled me off the sofa and into his arms, and I kissed him with everything I had.
Joy and relief and love so fierce it almost hurt.
He held me tight, one hand cradling the back of my head, the other splayed across my lower back, and I felt our daughter kick between us—as if she knew something important had just happened.
“Hey there, little one,” he said, resting his hand on my belly. His eyes widened when she kicked again. “I guess you approve.”
When we finally broke apart, we were both laughing. Crying a little too. The kind of messy, happy tears that came from getting everything you’d ever wanted.
“We should call your mother,” I said.
“She’s going to lose her mind.”
“I know. That’s why we should call her first.”
He grabbed his phone from the coffee table and dialed. I pressed close to his side so I could hear, his arm wrapped around me, my left hand resting on his chest where I could see the ring catch the firelight.
Lucia answered on the second ring. “Mijo? Is everything okay?”
“Everything’s perfect, Ma. Isabel and I have news.”
“What kind of news?”
Kick looked at me, his eyes bright. “She said yes.”
The shriek that came through the phone made us both wince and laugh. I could hear Lucia crying, words tumbling out in a mix of English and Spanish too fast to follow.
“My baby,” she finally managed. “My last baby, getting married. Oh, mijo. Your father would be so proud. He would be so, so proud.”
I thought of Kick’s father, the man whose presence I felt in every story his children told. The patriarch who had built this family, whose legacy lived on in his sons and daughter.
“Thank you, Lucia,” I said, leaning toward the phone. “For raising him. For welcoming me.”
“Mija, you are my daughter. You always will be.”
We talked for a few more minutes—about the ring, about the proposal, about when we might have a wedding—then Lucia insisted we call the rest of the family before they heard the news from someone else.
Snapper answered on the first ring. “Tell me you finally did it.”
Brix offered quiet congratulations and said he looked forward to welcoming me officially. Bit made a joke about Kick finally growing up, then said how happy he was for us. Cru said he supposed Snapper would be the best man, even though he should be, since he’d named him.
“What do you mean?” Kick asked.
“Rascon. It was my idea.”
“I’ve never heard that story before.”
Cru laughed. “That’s because it isn’t true. I just thought maybe it would get me the best-man gig. I’ll settle for groomsman, though. Unless you want me to officiate.”
“Are you ordained?” I asked.
“No, but I think you can do it in like a day.”
We both laughed, and Kick ended the call, saying he had to tell Alex before she heard it from someone else.
His sister squealed so loud that he held the phone away from his ear. “I knew it,” she said. “I knew you two were perfect for each other. I called it years ago.”
“You did not,” Kick said.
“I absolutely did. Ask anyone.”
By the time we’d made it through the family, my face hurt from smiling. We collapsed onto the sofa, tangled together, the fire burning low in the grate.
“That was a lot,” I said.
“Welcome to the Avilas.” Kick pressed a kiss to my temple. “It only gets bigger and louder from here.”
I smiled and nestled closer. His hand found my belly, resting there the way it always did now, as if he couldn’t stop reaching for our daughter.
“Have you thought of any names?” he asked.
“I have.” I hesitated. “But I’m not sure you’ll like it.”
“It?” He tilted his head to look at me. “Just one?”
“Just one.”
“Tell me.”
“Ana?s.”
He closed his eyes, and a smile spread across his face, slow and certain, like sunrise breaking over the vineyard hills.
“I thought of one too. Just one,” he said. When he opened his eyes, they were bright with emotion. “Ana?s.”
My breath caught. “You—”
“The moment I saw her face. Your grandmother’s face. Your face.” He cupped my cheek in his palm. “I’ve been holding onto that name for weeks, waiting for the right time to say it.”
“Ana?s Avila,” I whispered.
“Perfect,” he said. “Just like her mother.”
I kissed him, soft and slow, tasting the future on his lips.
“She’s going to grow up with so much love,” I said when we finally broke apart. “Grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins. All those people who just screamed at us through the phone.”
“Chaos,” he agreed.
“The best kind.”
We lay there, in the quiet, the fire crackling softly, the ring warm on my finger. Outside, the vineyard stretched, dark and dormant, waiting for spring. Inside, everything was warmth and light, with the steady rhythm of Kick’s heartbeat beneath my ear.
This was my life now. This man. This family. This house that we would fill with children and laughter and wine made from grapes we’d grown ourselves.
I closed my eyes and let myself believe it.
All of it. Finally.