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“Sure.” I had to make a mental note to set my alarm for half an hour earlier than usual. Most days when he was in Dallas during the offseason, Aiden did cardio at his house, had breakfast, and then left to do his weightlifting and other kinds of workouts with whatever trainer he’d deemed to honor with his presence. Some days, he woke up earlier and went straight to the gym.
The facility was located on the opposite side of town, so I’d either have to make him breakfast at my house and go straight there, or wake up even earlier to drop by his house, which was out of the way, and then head over there. No thanks. I barely survived on my usual four to five hours of sleep most nights. I wasn’t about to lose what little I had left.
I stepped back from the counter and grabbed the gallon of water I’d refilled earlier, holding it out for him, locking my gaze on his thick neck before forcing myself to look him in the eye. “By the way, I talked to Trevor about me leaving, and he said he’d start looking for someone else.”
Those dark orbs met mine for a second, only just a split second, cool and distant like always, before he looked away. “Okay.” He took the jug from me as he threw his bag over his shoulder.
Just as he reached the door that connected the garage with the kitchen, I called out, “Bye.”
He didn’t say anything as he closed the door behind him, but I thought he might have wiggled a finger or two. I was probably imagining it.
Who was I kidding? Of course I was imagining it. I was just being an idiot for even thinking there was a possibility he’d done otherwise. While I wasn’t the bubbliest person in the world, Aiden had me beat by a landslide.
With a resigned sigh, I shook my head at myself, and started making my way around the kitchen when my personal cell phone started ringing. Taking a quick peek at the screen, I hit the answer button.
“Herro,” I said, slipping the phone between my ear and my shoulder.
“Vanny, I don’t have time to talk. I have an appointment in a minute,” the bright voice on the other line explained quickly. “I just wanted to tell you Rodrigo saw Susie.”
Silence hung between Diana and me on the phone. Two moments, three moments, four moments. Heavy and unnatural. Then again, that was what Susie did best—messed things up.
I wanted to ask if she was sure it was Susie that her brother, Rodrigo, had seen, but I didn’t. If Rodrigo thought he saw her, then he had. She didn’t have the kind of face that was easy to mistake, even after so many years.
I cleared my throat, telling myself I didn’t need to count to ten, or even five. “Where?” My voice came out in a slight croak.
“In El Paso yesterday. He was visiting his in-laws this weekend with Louie and Josh, and said he saw her at the grocery store by the old neighborhood.”
One, two, three, four, five, six, seven.
Nope. That wasn’t enough.
I had to start counting all over again, all the way to ten the second time. A thousand different thoughts went through my head at the mention of Susie’s name, and they were all pretty terrible. Each and every single one of them. It didn’t take a genius to know what she was doing in the old neighborhood. Only one person who we both knew still lived there. I could still remember our old stomping ground so clearly.
It was where Diana and I had met. Back when I lived with my mom, Diana’s family had lived next door to us. They’d had the pretty house—the freshly painted blue one with white trim and a nice lawn—the dad who played with his kids outside, and the mom who kissed boo-boos. The Casillas were the family I had always wanted when I’d been a kid, when things had been at their worst, and the only thing I found consolation in was my notebook, not the mess within the walls of my house.
Diana had been my best friend for as long as I could remember. I couldn’t count the number of times I’d eaten over at their house with my little brother until Mom had lost custody of us. Diana had always done what my own family didn’t, and that was watch out for me. She was the one who had found me—Stop it. Stop it. It wasn’t worth the energy it took to think about things in the past I was over. It really wasn’t.
“Huh. I had no idea she was back.” My voice sounded just as robotic aloud as it sounded in my head. “I just talked to my mom a week ago and she didn’t say anything.” Diana knew I was referring to my real mom, the person who had actually given birth to me and my four other siblings, not my foster mom of four years who I still kept in touch with.
At the mention of my birth mom, Diana made a small noise I almost missed. I knew she didn’t understand why I bothered trying to have a relationship with her. Honestly, half the time I regretted it, but that was one of those rare things I never told the person I was closest to in the world because I knew what she would say and I didn’t want to hear it.
“I figured you would want to know in case you were planning on visiting,” she finally said in kind of a mutter.
I didn’t visit El Paso often, but she was right. I definitely wouldn’t want to go now that I knew who was there.
“I really have to go in a sec, Vanny,” my best friend quickly added before I could say anything. “But did you tell Miranda you’re leaving?”
The ‘Miranda’ went in one ear and out the other. I’d been calling him that for so long, it sounded so natural it didn’t even register. “I just told him yesterday.”
“And?”
She couldn’t just let me sulk in my reality. “Nothing.” There was no point in lying or making something up that would make me seem more important to Aiden than I was. While I didn’t tell anyone a whole lot about him because of the non-disclosure agreement I signed when I first started working for him, Diana knew enough to get why his name was saved on my personal phone under Miranda Priestly from The Devil Wears Prada.
