Unless something else came up.
As of now, nothing had.
Chris grabbed Valeria’s chin and tipped her head back so she was staring at him again. “Don’t you want a chance?”
“W-what?”
“A chance to do whatever you want—to live, or to love? To be whoever you want to be, and not who someone else demands from you?”
Fire rushed her stare. “Of course, I do.”
“Then, don’t give up. You can’t.” Chris sighed, glancing over his shoulder to scan the land in case someone was coming. Although, they would have heard the horses approaching. “Did anyone see you leave?”
“Carla—the nanny—knew I was going, but she didn’t see us leave the stables.”
“No one else? Jorge?”
Valeria shook her head.
Chris nodded. “Okay, go back before he sends someone out after you and her. Don’t make him angry—keep the peace, however you can.”
“I can’t do this anymore. I can’t keep letting him use me and hurt me.”
He didn’t have the right words for that.
Nothing to make it better.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered.
Valeria’s shoulders lifted and sank with her heavy breaths. “I just ... I want that chance, Chris.”
“You’ll get it,” he promised. “I’ll make sure.”
“I don’t want to go back.”
“Yeah.”
The unspoken words hung between them—but you have to.
Valeria climbed out of his lap with help, and then Chris stood too after brushing off his clothes. Silently, his hand found hers, their fingers wove together, and he squeezed before letting go.
“Jorge said you would leave mid-week.”
“Probably tomorrow.”
He got a flight.
Valeria made a heartbroken noise.
“Shh,” Chris hushed, tugging her close to his side to press a kiss to the top of her head, and hide her away from the rest of the world while he was able. “It will be fine.”
“It won’t.”
“Let me show you.”
Then, another thought popped into his mind.
“The stables,” he said, “at midnight. That’s when the second shift change happens for the guards—every twelve hours. They meet at the gate for an hour before heading back to their posts. If you’re there, that’s where I’ll be tonight. Okay?”
She nodded.
Chris gestured at the horse she brought along. “Go ahead. Get back before he sends someone out for you.”
Maria glanced up from the kitten in her lap. “You have Butter.”
He smiled at the girl and passed a glance at the horse he brought along. Butter, that was. “Butter is a great horse.”
“My favorite.”
Oh?
“You can take him back for me,” Chris said, knowing it would be a five-mile walk back to the ranch, “as long as you promise to keep this a secret.”
Maria stood up from the ground, packing her kitten away in the rucksack hanging across her small body. “Deal.”
He helped Valeria to get the horses ready for the ride back, but before she left him behind at the cliffs, he grabbed her wrist. Her gaze met his, and he tugged to make her lean down. One more kiss between them, and he held her gaze.
“I always keep my promises, Val.”
That fire was back in her stare.
He liked it better, now.
“You better,” she said.
He would.
Chris watched the girls and the horses fade in the distance. Pulling that flower Maria had given him from his breast pocket, he fished out his wallet, too. He flipped the wallet open to a spot in the back, and laid the flower on the leather before closing it up, pressing firmly to keep it in place. Once he had the chance, he would take it out and press it safely between the pages of a book he kept on his desk at home.
Someday, he wanted to show Maria that he kept it, and her mother, too. Because this day? It felt like it changed everything.
• • •
The sky had blackened by the time Chris walked those five miles back to the ranch. Not that he minded—walking hurt nobody, and he used the time to clear his head. The weather had stayed decent during his stay in Mexico, so he wouldn’t say anything bad about that, either.
He wasn’t at all surprised to find the ranch quiet when he returned. The one guard walking the pathways between the houses gave him a nod as he passed, but the man didn’t even realize Chris wasn’t out for one of his normal strolls. That had become normal to them, and so they didn’t even question it, now.
A blessing, really.
Chris intended on heading to the house he was using on the ranch, having a quick shower, and then making his way to Jorge’s home to sign off on the deal for his father, even if was still a ruse. A throat clearing to his left stopped his walk up short.
Sitting on the porch of the small bungalow she and her brother used, Abril Lòpez raised an eyebrow when Chris’s gaze landed on her.
“Good walk?” she asked.
Chris nodded, careful with his words because he wasn’t sure what to make of this woman. She went along with her brothers, and their plans more often than she didn’t. After watching her for a while, he found that she followed the rules, even if she seemed to enjoy pushing the boundaries around her.
A complex.
Nothing like Valeria.
She had been easy to figure out.
Abril ... not so much.
“It was nice,” he said.
Abril leaned forward on the steps, a sly smile curving her lips as a glint twinkled in her russet gaze. “I thought you took out a horse earlier? I was in the stables, remember? Butter.”
Shit.
Chris forgot about that.
A mistake he couldn’t afford.
“You didn’t see me come back?”
He hoped to distract the woman with a lie, but perhaps he should have known better than to even try. There was something about Abril that was not the same as her brothers although what it was, he wasn’t sure. She was quiet, always sticking to the shadows, but never inserting herself into conversations.
However, Chris understood it was the silent ones someone had to watch more than the others. They were the people who saw things, but never said a word. They heard conversations and filed them away in their minds for a later date.
He doubted Abril was different.
“No, I didn’t see you come back,” Abril said, resting her arms over her jean-covered knees, and tipping her head to the side. “But I saw Val leave with one horse, and her daughter, and then come back with two horses. Maria was riding Butter.”
Chris cleared his throat.
Abril smiled.
“You’re playing a dangerous game, Christopher Guzzi, and I want you to tell me exactly what kind it is.”
“I’m not sure what you’re talking—”
“Cut the shit. I’ve seen you dancing around her since you arrived. Last weekend? You got out of her room just in time because Jorge got home an hour later and passed out in the hallway before his men came up and put him in a spare bedroom.”
Fuck.
“The door closing,” Chris murmured.
Abril shrugged one bare shoulder where her flimsy blouse had fallen down. “I don’t trust new people, and I had every reason to wonder about you.”