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CHAPTER38
Katie was a bundle of nerves on the flight. The flight attendants just assumed she was afraid of flying, and she let them speak their reassuring words to her.
But that wasn’t it at all. She was flying to see Antonio, hoping for something she had no right to hope for.
Throughout the last several months, she’d thought of Cassandra healing from her ordeal. She’d written her letters as well as Antonio, but Cassie’s were never answered. Her therapist had told her it was to be expected. Cassie was working through a trauma, one that would take a lifetime to recover from, and she wouldn’t want to be reminded of it. Or her life before. Katie was a reminder of both.
It still stung, and she knew with her entire being Cassandra wouldn’t approve of her actions today.
After that last letter though, the very tiny part of her that was holding her back had snapped, and she’d packed a bag and booked a flight.
Katie had been working through her own stages of grief, and her therapist still didn’t approve of most of her thoughts about Antonio. Of course, like any high paid therapist, she didn’t say it outright, but the pursed lips had said enough. She’d tried to lead Katie through a burial of Lobo Gris, but she had succeeded in unearthing more than she’d anticipated.
And Katie wanted to see what would happen if she saw him again.
She wasn’t angry anymore.
The anger had faded with his hugs on their dinner out. His letters had soothed the rest.
He was a man. One who’d made some horrific mistakes, but was trying to atone for them.
When the plane touched down, the landing was bumpy, but with each bounce of the tires on the tarmac, Katie had felt a lurch of her own heart, bouncing on the same soil Antonio was on.
She’d traveled across the country to see what could happen between them because she couldn’t seem to let him go.
She rented a car and checked her phone for directions to the address the letters had come from. Getting herself in the mood for an hour and a half drive, she set out to find her future, whatever it may be.
Katie had some shit to work through with Antonio. This wouldn’t be a clothes ripped off and mind-numbing kisses sort of reunion. They still had a couple of conversations to have. But still, she was hoping they could regain the connection they’d had before all this started.
Her heart pounded in her chest the entire drive. Her mom was supportive of her decision, knowing how important closure would be. That’s what her mom thought this was. Closure. Her dad didn’t understand it and told her to be careful. Her therapist thought it would send her backward in her therapy.
Everyone thought it was a mistake, but Katie didn’t. She thought doing anything else would be a mistake.
The drive was beautiful. The interstate was clean and easy to drive, with the Davis Mountains as a backdrop. Scrubby grass dotted the landscape, with very few buildings to interrupt the flow.
Raw cedar fencing marked the driveway to Padre’s, the ranch that Antonio owned. She knew it was named for his father, who’d worked a west Texas ranch up until he’d died, his one dream outside of a bigger family being to own a ranch of his own one day. He was fulfilling his father’s dream.
It was sweet.
Her eyes took in everything as she bumped the tiny rental car up the dirt road that meandered and wound until it finally stopped at an old house.
The house itself was run down, but the grounds were neatly kept, the barbed wire marking new pastures new and a tidy-looking barn with a corral off to the left of it. There were a few outbuildings, but the house was huge.
She got out of the car and stood there, taking everything in, when the screen door slammed and she turned to see Antonio, but not like she’d ever seen him before.
At the rehab ranch, he’d been wearing hand-me-down clothes, a plain t-shirt, and pants that were too short, with Velcro tennis shoes. Before, he’d been dressed in all black, all the time.
Now, he wore a stained white t-shirt, dusty jeans, and cowboy boots with pointy toes, but perfectly broken in. A tanned cowboy hat was in his hands.
Her mouth broke out into a pool of drool.
“Cariño?”
His voice broke her train of thought, and she looked at his face. He couldn’t believe she was here. It was almost comical, how he swiped his hand across it, wiping it clear of whatever to look again.
“What are you doing here?”
A sense of trepidation slithered through her body, making her shiver in spite of the heat.
