Page 57 of LA Reign

She sighs dramatically. “Fine. I’ll be outside on my own then. I’ll just go and put my teeny tiny bikini on first…” she winks at him yet again, then saunters off inside. Hugo stares after her, then turns his attention back to me with a snap of the head. “Are you okay?” he asks as we walk down the hallway together.

“Yes. Thanks for asking. I’m worried about Alejandro, though.”

Hugo nods. “He’s had a rough couple days. But then so have you. And Lucia’s been desperate to have you home.”

“I know. And Alejandro was right. I shouldn’t have left her like that.”

He lets out a snort and shakes his head. “Hey, we do what we need to do, Alana. Don’t be so hard on yourself. You’re one of the kindest people I ever met. So what if you’re not perfect? None of us are.”

“I think my friend Kelsey thinks you’re pretty damn perfect, Hugo.”

He laughs and throws his hands up in the air. “Then she’s in for a big disappointment. I’m going to see the boss. Are you sure you’re okay? There are extra guards on the gate, and Alejandro has patrols on too.”

It hadn’t even occurred to me not to feel safe here. This is my home. “Thanks, Hugo. I’m good.” I leave him to talk to my husband, and go in search of Lucia.

After checking her two favorite places, the den and the kitchen, I eventually find her in her bedroom. Her door is open, but I knock lightly before popping my head inside. She’s sitting up on her bed flicking through a parenting magazine. At her age she should be staring at the glossy pages of a fashion or lifestyle mag or browsing the latest trends online. Somehow though, despite her youth, I know she’s going to make a terrific mom. She’s so much more mature than her seventeen years on the planet suggest.

“Hey, sweetheart. Can we talk?”

“Whatever,” she says with a roll of her eyes. Okay. Well, maybe she’s not mature all the time.

I walk into the room and sit on the bed beside her. “I’m really sorry I took off like that. It was wrong of me.”

“Nothing to apologize to me for. Like I care, anyway. You don’t owe me anything,” she snorts before going back to her magazine. She pretends to be deeply involved in it, which might work better if not for the fact that it’s actually upside down.

I swallow. She isn’t going to make this easy on me. And maybe I don’t deserve easy.

“Well, I think I owe you an apology, even if you don’t, and also an explanation if you’ll hear me out?”

She finally looks up from her magazine and shrugs her shoulders. “Your choice,” she says, sounding nonchalant but keeping her dark her eyes fixed on me.

I nod, and take a deep breath. This isn’t easy to talk about, but she deserves the truth. She needs to know I didn’t abandon her on a whim because of something trivial.

“You know I was having those tests at the doctor’s?”

“Yeah? Just routine you said?” She sounds a little worried now.

“That’s how it started. But yesterday, Dr. Kelly gave me some news about the results. She told me that I’ll find it very difficult to have children naturally.”

“Oh,” she says, her face softening slightly. She turns it over in her mind. “How difficult? Like, impossible?”

“Not totally impossible, but extremely unlikely. As in, we should start looking at alternatives. Surrogacy, adoption, that kind of thing. Neither of which are at all bad, but it was a shock, you know? I’d always assumed I’d be able to have a baby. There was no reason not to. So as a result of all that, I started acting like an idiot.”

She smiles, a touch of warmth back in her eyes. “Overthinking and overreacting?” she suggests. I laugh.

“Exactly. I started worrying about the future, and my marriage, and questioning whether Alejandro would even want me if I couldn’t give him a baby. I started to feel broken, like I wasn’t enough of a woman for him.”

I don’t mention the conversation I overheard between him and Mateo. The man has suffered enough without me badmouthing him while he lies in his hospital bed.

“Alana, there’s so much wrong with that sentence I don’t know where to start. A woman is not defined by her ability to have a baby.”

“I know that really. And I’m glad you do too. Like I say, it was a shock, and I was upset. I wasn’t feeling especially rational.”

“No, I get that. But Alana, you’ve got to know…”

She shakes her head and looks at me in disbelief. “What? What have I got to know?”

“That Alejandro Montoya literally worships the ground you walk on. You, Alana. His wife. His companion, his, ugh, lover. He adores you, and his love is the big kind. The kind that doesn’t come with conditions and lasts forever.”