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Before I could even stand to go grab my cell phone, there was knocking on the front door. As I went to answer, I was shocked to see Yara standing there.
“What…” I stuttered.
“Hi, Alejandro,” she breathed out.
“Hi, Yara.”
Confusion swirled in my head. “What, how are you here? How did you even know where here was?”
“Tatiana brought me.” She reached into her pocket and pulled out a letter. “It turns out a few from the other side have been playing matchmaker.”
“Is that from Mr. Parker?”
“Yeah, it is.” She placed the letter back into her pocket before pulling me into a hug. “Are you okay?”
“No,” I confessed. I buried myself against her. “They destroyed the restaurant. I’m still trying to process it. I’m sorry I missed your messages. I just needed some time to clear my head. You didn’t have to come all the way out here, though.”
She took a breath. “A donde vayas, yo voy.”
And just like that, my heart didn’t hurt as much as before.
Where you go, I go.
I took her hands and kissed her palms gently before pulling her back into my chest. We stood there for the longest time. We stood there as the sun began to set. We stood there as the moon began to shine. I held on to her, knowing that I’d do it for the rest of my life because, unlike everyone else before her, she did something different. She stayed.
CHAPTER 44
Alex
One Year Ago
“Here?” I muttered as I sat on a bench at nightfall, staring across the street at an old run-down movie theater in the middle of a tucked-away small town called Honey Creek, Illinois. The town was packed with cornfields and paved sidewalks with no stoplights to be seen for miles. The town’s centerpiece was the huge clock tower on the red-brick Main Street, where the shops of Honey Creek all resided, including an old, abandoned theater.
The property seemed somewhat out of place beside the preserved Victorian-style shops that surrounded the building. It was hard to believe that Chicago was only a twenty-minute drive from Honey Creek. Being in that town felt as if I’d gone back forty years in time and landed in my personalized torture chamber.
I hated small towns. They came with small-minded people who gossiped more than they worked. I didn’t live a life where gossip was the norm. At least not so much in one’s face. Chicago had a different way of handling things. For the most part, I worked hard to keep to myself. It was almost impossible to do such a thing like that in a place like Honey Creek.
It smelled so stereotypically small town: wafts of fresh-baked bread and apple pies perfumed the air. It was predictable to the point of being cloying. It seemed that the only culinary redemption this town had was its apple pie.
I hated apple pie.
“Here,” my great-aunt, Teresa, retorted with an air of finality as her delicate frame sat on the bench beside me, holding her walking cane in her right hand. Her old, worn handknit sweater hung loosely against her shoulders as she stared at the building in front of us with a tiny smile on her face. The tiny smile matched her brown eyes that twinkled with unyielding certainty. Though barely five feet tall, Teresa’s vivacity made her seem larger than life.
“You can’t be serious.”
“It has charm.”
“And a legion of rodents,” I grumbled, frustration mounting. I leaned against the bench backing and sighed. “When you mentioned Illinois, I envisioned a high-end Chicago location. Not…” I gestured vaguely toward the decaying theater.
She dismissed my grumbles with a wave of her hand. “You already have a Chicago restaurant. That’s boring. But this, this is something new.” She gestured toward the theater. “This is a challenge.”
“Why fix what isn’t broken? My other four restaurants are thriving, and I don’t see how this new and challenging placement would benefit anyone.”
“This venture will be no different from the others,” she said. “Success will come.”
I narrowed my eyes. “This town barely has a thousand people. How am I supposed to sustain a high-end restaurant here? People aren’t here, and those who live here are eating at”—I waved my hand behind me—“Peter’s Café.”
“This is the spot,” Teresa affirmed, undeterred by my skepticism. “Ever since you promised me a restaurant when you were just a boy, I’ve envisioned it here.”
“That promise can be fulfilled in Chicago.”
“You said I can pick the location. I pick this one, Alejandro Luis Ramírez.”
She used my full name.
A sign of her finalization.
Exasperated, I leaned back against the bench. “Why here? I was willing to open a restaurant anywhere, even in Madrid. Wouldn’t you want it in your homeland?”
“Home isn’t a place, Alejandro. Home is a person, and that person was from here.”
“Your person was from the middle of nowhere town in Illinois?” I asked, utterly bemused.
